Important Notice: this service will be discontinued by the end of 2024 because for multiple years now, Plume is no longer under active/continuous development. Sadly each time there was hope, active development came to a stop again. Please consider using our Writefreely instance instead.

Pluming for freedom

A bit under the hood

Back in the old days before I became software developer, I used to be a plumber, one thing I learned back then is to like the idea of connecting simple, semi-independent components into one large network.

As both political activist and free software user, I’m not total stranger to the concept of Fediverse.

the #Fediverse is designed to respect your #freedom and #privacy. this is more then just service provider being nice, this is ensured by free software, open standards and the decentralized nature of the network. together it comes to your data being yours. the freedom to publish your content or to keep it private, is the core of online freedom of speech and privacy.

No wonder, therefor, that when I decided to start a blog, my first step was to explore the #Fediverse and it’s different platforms (social networks, file hosting, microbloging) to find a platform suitable for writing and sharing with others, independent of any centralist corporate network (such as Facebook or Twitter) and at the same time easily distributed on such networks.

In the case of a blog, privacy is a lesser issue, and the top priority is freedom, not being subject to censorship, thanks to the basic fact that you can be banned from a server but it’s almost imposible to ban you from the whole network. when choosing a platform that respects your freedom, a strong case that comes to mind is the case censorship of #Layla_Khaled by Zoom, Facebook and Youtube (thanks to @cbug@venera.social).

the result, maybe temporary result, is using Plume. a blog engine written in #rust. it does have problems, but that is for another post. the federated design of the #Fediverse lets me “boost” (like retweet) this in my @bhyoram@todon.eu account, which in turn is piped to my twitter.

I may dive into #Plume source code one day, to help improving my ecosystem, it’s more fun then maintaining “friends” in the big book of no faces.