Sometimes a Blog Post Starts With an Image

Monday mornings on the Fediverse don’t start with trepidation, like other platforms. They start with anticipation of what wonders we will find. Today being no exception. One of my favorite follows recently has been Elena Rossini on Mastodon. Her profile – “Italian filmmaker, photographer and writer based in Paris, France.” – is intriguing in and of itself, but her enthusiasm for the Fediverse is to say the least infectious. Besides writing a series of blog posts about the Fediverse – The Future is Federated – she, being a filmmaker, is undertaking a project to make a Fediverse video series. Exciting stuff with built-in anticipation. No pressure or anything, Elena 😉

However, that wasn’t necessarily the thing I was most excited about this morning. It was instead a photo. A simple kind of “stock” photo if you will, but professionally done. It is the featured image of this post. What’s so great about it is, well, many reasons. First, the image was born of an article in Forbes that she read that talked about Fediverse apps, specifically Pixelfed – which you know I’ve been talking about (too much? nah), and will talk about more. In the article she noted a typo that Forbes kept making in the spelling of “Mastadon”, now since corrected to “Mastodon”. The focus of the article is alternatives to Instagram, TikTok, and WhatsApp, which are being created by one person – Daniel Supernault – another super enthusiastic denizen of the Fediverse, and obviously a talented programmer/developer.

The image that Elena created is perfect for the new age of social media that is encompassed by services such as Pixelfed, Loops, and Sup, but also by PeerTube, MastOdon, and Lemmy (…and Friendica, and ActivityPub, and…). However the second reason that is great about the image is that the Fediverse is built around support for sharing. In this case sharing the photo with a Creative Commons (CC) license. One of the great features of Pixelfed is that you can turn on a setting to automatically assign your photos that you post with a CC license. Oh, and are you ready for a third great reason?

With Pixelfed, and Mastodon, you are strongly encouraged to add ALT Text to images in your post so that people who can’t physically see the images, can “see” the images with text that describes them! Like I’ve said before, the Fediverse community is an ethical and supportive place, and it’s the most exciting thing about this universe.

So, Elena and Dan, keep up the great work! You’re what makes these services so awesome. I’m so happy to see these younger folks aiming to do good things in the world, and supporting and drawing attention to them is the least I can do.

Photo credit goes to Elena Rossini. The file is available on Wikimedia Commons and is licensed Creative Commons BY-SA