By now you have most likely heard of the Fediverse. Lately it has gained momentum due to the acquisition of Twitter and its subsequent demise, causing so-called ‘migrations’ to other platforms. Among them, Mastodon, one small part of the Fediverse.

If not, or you want to learn more, see below. The Rchaeology community now has a Mastodon account and a chat on Element/Matrix (Slack alternative). Both are hosted on archaeo.social. Both are open source!

A screenshot of the Rchaeology website home page showing off the new icons for Mastodon and Matrix

New icons on the homepage!

Join our platforms

You can access our platforms in a variety of different ways. Element is a common app to access a matrix chat. You can create a free account on the matrix server or on archaeo.social. If neither of those options are your particular cup of tea, you can locate a server on this list. Or if you want complete control over your data, you can host your own server and join the conversations!

If you use Thunderbird you can also access the matrix chats there, or use RSS feed readers to follow Mastodon accounts. That’s the beauty of the open standard protocols underlying the Fediverse!

We still have a Twitter account and a Slack workspace, but the hope is that these will eventually be phased out.

If you use an RSS feed or Thunderbird you can also subscribe to our Mastodon toots by adding https://archaeo.social/@Rchaeology.rss to your feed! If you didn’t know that you can subscribe to RSS feeds with Thunderbird, see this cool blog post!

There are costs associated with running the archaeo.social server, so please consider donating via opencollective.

What is the Fediverse

The fediverse is a collection of community-owned, ad-free, decentralised, and privacy-centric social networks. https://www.fediverse.to/

The concept is similar to that of email. Just because you have your email account with outlook, gmail, or proton, doesn’t mean you are limited to communicating with others with an account with the same company. That would be very limiting and REALLY annoying. Yet, this is exactly what’s happening with social media platforms. If you’re on Twitter (sorry, X…) you’re limited to interacting with others on Twitter. Facebook with other users on Facebook. Sure, you can cross-post between Facebook and Instagram, but that’s still within Meta platforms, so they are in control.