Misskey

Misskey

Misskey is an open-source, decentralized microblogging platform and social network. It features functionality similar to Twitter, allowing users to post short messages, follow other users, use hashtags, and more. Misskey emphasizes customizability, privacy, and user control.
Misskey image
decentralized open-source microblogging social-network

Misskey: Decentralized Microblogging Platform

Open-source social network with customization, privacy, and user control features similar to Twitter

What is Misskey?

Misskey is an open-source, decentralized microblogging and social networking platform launched in 2014. It functions similarly to Twitter, allowing users to post short messages up to 512 characters called notes, follow other users, hashtag posts, reply, bookmark, and renote (retweet).

What sets Misskey apart is its focus on customization, privacy, and giving control back to users. As an open-source project, Misskey is highly customizable in terms of theming/UI and features. It allows anonymous posting and opt-in federating to other Misskey instances. Users can choose which content to expose through different visibility scopes. Misskey does not sell user data or show ads.

Some key features of Misskey include customizable profiles with custom fields, polls, chat/messaging, AI-generated avatars, media embedding, lists, bookmarks, blogging, user-created emoji, and more. Its focus on customization fosters a vibrant, creative user community.

As a decentralized social network, Misskey operates through a federated network of independently operated servers called instances. This gives users control and ownership over the content and policies of the services they use. While Twitter is centralized and opaque, Misskey offers transparency, privacy, and autonomy to users.

Misskey Features

Features

  1. Decentralized architecture
  2. Open source
  3. ActivityPub support
  4. Customizable UI
  5. Media embeds
  6. Hashtags
  7. Follow/unfollow
  8. Reactions
  9. Direct messaging

Pricing

  • Open Source
  • Self-Hosted

Pros

User privacy and control

No central authority

Customizable and extensible

Open source transparency

Media rich posts

Cons

Smaller user base than mainstream platforms

Requires some technical knowledge to self-host

Less user discovery compared to larger networks


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