Richard Stallman had a dream where you control your computing. And XMPP is the closest social network in line with Richard Stallman’s vision of the internet. This instant message protocol, allows for you to easily host your own server, it’s fast and efficient, and has lots of different open source clients to choose from. Additionally, by making it extensible, it allows for anyone to build upon it to get their own desired features. This article goes over some of the basics of XMPP: https://simplifiedprivacy.com/xmpp-decentralized-signal-get-your-own-social-network/
Note: There are no affiliate links or sales text in this educational article discussing open source. Let’s discuss the technology and not attack the author.
XMPP has a few issues, like not being that great for tunneling through HTTP and also having a concept of presence built in at its core that’s no longer relevant in today’s always-online world.
It also needs a lot of extensions to be usable, like session resumption.