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Smithereen vs diaspora*: catalog facts
Smithereen	diaspora*
Free Free and released into the public domain under the Unlicense.	Free Free and open source under the AGPL. Hosting is separate.
Self-hosted	Web, Self-hosted
Friends, walls and groups instead of a microblog feed Federates with other ActivityPub servers	Aspects give fine control over who sees each post One of the longest-running decentralised social networks
You need to run and maintain your own server Smaller community than Mastodon or other major fediverse servers	Does not speak ActivityPub, so it does not federate with Mastodon Activity levels are low compared with newer networks
Self-hosted	Self-hosted, Web application
Open source	Open source
License: Unlicense	License: AGPL-3.0
Not stated if an account is needed	Not stated if an account is needed
Not stated if it works offline	Not stated if it works offline
Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 24, 2026	Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 22, 2026

Catalog facts only. Anything “not stated” is unconfirmed. Check full listings for details.