Protocols Over Platforms: The Quiet Revolt of the Digital Self
We don’t need a new platform. We need a new way to exist online.
When Elon Musk bought Twitter in late 2022, the site that once felt like a global town square began changing by the hour. Verification badges turned into paid perks, moderation policies shifted unpredictably, developers lost access to APIs, and long-time users suddenly discovered how fragile their online presence was. Overnight, one person’s decisions determined who stayed visible and who vanished.
That moment became a collective wake-up call: our digital lives depend on other people’s platforms. Many began searching for a way out — something that would let them stay connected without being trapped.
From Twitter to Mastodon – a Different Network
The first major destination was Mastodon. At first glance, it looked like Twitter: posts, timelines, replies, followers. But underneath, it ran on a different foundation. Mastodon isn’t one giant website — it’s a constellation of independently run servers, called instances, each with its own rules and community.
These servers talk to each other through an open standard called ActivityPub — a shared language that lets posts, likes, and follows flow across server boundaries. A user on one Mastodon instance can follow and reply to someone on another, just like sending an email between Gmail and Outlook.
This architecture forms what’s known as the Fediverse: a network of connected but autonomous communities. It looks social, but it’s built like email — based on protocols, not platforms. And that distinction — between protocols and platforms — is the key to understanding why the internet once felt freer than it does today.
Protocol vs Platform
A protocol is an open language that lets different systems communicate. The web itself runs on one (HTTP); email runs on another (SMTP). Anyone can build software that speaks these languages and instantly connect to everyone else who does. A platform, by contrast, is a closed environment controlled by a single company — like Twitter, Facebook, or TikTok — where you can only communicate inside its walls, under its terms.
A protocol is like a language anyone can learn and use freely A platform is a private club that requires its own dialect — and can silence anyone who doesn’t follow house rules.
Protocols ― being open ― grow and improve over time as people build new uses on top of them. Platforms merely accumulate users, until the owner changes direction or the audience leaves. This is the major issue with centralized systems. Mastodon is decentralized (many servers) and federated (those servers can talk). This means that your data is not tied to a single company’s server.
Decentralization is progress, but without portability of identity, data, and relationships, it still falls short of autonomy. After all, your account lives on one specific server, run by someone you likely don’t even know. If that host disappears or blocks you, your identity goes with it. Federation connects communities, but true freedom means being able to take your identity, posts, and connections anywhere — not being tied to one administrator’s goodwill.
Owning Your Digital Self
Freedom online isn’t about posting anywhere — it’s about owning who you are there. It means that you get to decide when to move or delete your posts as part of data ownership. On platforms, you merely borrow space. Privacy means to control who sees your data and how it’s used. In life you don’t share everything with everyone the same way: You tell your doctor one thing, your partner another, and your boss almost nothing. That’s normal boundary-setting. Online platforms break this and make you share everything with the service, even if you meant it for a given context. Privacy online should work like offline life: you decide who sees what and for what purpose.
Thus, the Digital Self means that your identity — posts, connections, and history — should survive beyond any one company.
If switching platforms feels like losing your memories, you don’t own them. Changing platforms should be as easy as changing email providers — your address, history, and contacts should travel with you.
The Hidden Burdens
Decentralization doesn’t erase the work of running things; it spreads it around. Someone pays for servers and bandwidth. Those servers must be updated and secured. Communities must moderate content and manage conflict. Replacing one giant supermarket with many co-ops gives you more choice and accountability — but someone has to sweep the floor. Freedom brings maintenance with it. The cost of control is effort, but that effort keeps the system human.
There are projects out there that explore a deeper form of independence. Secure Scuttlebutt (SSB) lets users share updates directly from one device to another — no central servers at all. Others, like ActivityPub and Nostr test different ways to connect peers under open, community-governed rules. They’re rough and experimental, but they prove something powerful: social networking doesn’t need a company’s permission to exist.
What It Means for You
When you build your online life on a corporate platform, that company controls the bridge between you and your audience. If it collapses, changes hands, or starts charging tolls, you lose more than convenience — you lose continuity.
You don’t have to be an engineer to reclaim that control:
Use tools built on open standards (email, RSS, Matrix, Mastodon). Back up and export your data regularly. Support projects that let you migrate rather than lock you in.
Freedom online is less polished than a single app — but it endures. The web began as a network of protocols. Its future depends on whether we remember how to build and share roads again.
For those of us who design, build, and think about technology — developers, UX designers, researchers — the next decade isn’t about crafting better feeds. It’s about crafting better foundations.
Protocols over platforms. Freedom over convenience. Persistence over novelty.
That’s the future worth building.