Dot Social

Unlike traditional social media, the fediverse operates without a central authority. This creates a unique set of challenges and opportunities for how it’s governed. 

Luckily, there are thoughtful stewards who want to see decentralized social media succeed in the most human — and humane — fashion. Two of the most prominent are Erin Kissane, a writer and researcher working on new networks, and Darius Kazemi, a senior engineer at the Applied Social Media Lab at Harvard University. 

Earlier in 2024, the pair researched and wrote a 40,000-word report on governance in the fediverse. Now they are deep in other projects designed to move the fediverse forward, including Erin’s new studio devoted to network work and Darius’ Fediverse Schema Observatory (software built to enhance the ecosystem’s interoperability while being sensitive to user data). You’ll hear about these projects and more in the latest episode of our Dot Social podcast.

Highlights of the conversation include:

• The impact of the 2024 U.S. Presidential election on this work
• Thoughts on the migration to Bluesky
• A model for how to socialize software in the fediverse
• What needs to be done next: a prioritized list
• The nutritional label analogy
• Funding and sustainability
• Bridging protocols and avoiding fragmentation

Mentioned in this episode:

• How to buy shoes in the fediverse
• Findings report: governance on fediverse microblogging servers
• Applied Social Media Lab at Harvard University
• IFTAS
• Blacksky
• Fedify
• Bonfire Networks

🔎 You can find Erin at wreckage/salvage or learn more about her via her personal site. She’s also posting on Mastodon and Bluesky. 

🔎 Darius’s home on the Internet is at Tiny Subversions. He works at the Applied Social Media Lab at Harvard University and he posts on Mastodon.  

✚ You can follow Mike at @[email protected] and @[email protected]

💡 To learn more about what Flipboard's doing in the fediverse, sign up here: http://about.flipboard.com/a-new-wave

It’s tough being a media outlet these days. Audiences are fractured, referrals from search engines are dropping, and publishers are at the mercy of algorithms they don’t control.

Savvy journalists at forward-thinking newsrooms are not letting this happen to them. Instead, they’re doing the work that arguably has been most critical all along: building direct connections with their audiences. It’s common to do this through email lists and subscription models, but the open social web offers a new, more equitable ecosystem for quality journalism to thrive.  

Two people on the frontlines of this movement are Jason Koebler, a journalist and co-founder at 404 Media, and Ben Werdmuller, the senior director of technology at ProPublica. In this episode of Dot Social, the two talk about their fediverse experiences so far and why they’re hopeful for publishing in the future.

• Addressing online media’s biggest challenge 
• Solving problems around discovery 
• Core selling points of decentralized social media
• Will Threads become the whale in this pond?
• Ghost vs Substack
• The threat of AI-generated content and how it plays algorithmically 

Mentioned in this episode:

• “What We Learned in Our First Year of 404 Media”
• “Wherever you get your podcasts” is a radical statement
• John O’Nolan’s Dot Social episode
• Threads announcement from 8/28
• “Protocol Wars - The Fediverse Explained!”(WVFRM podcast)

🔎 You can find  Ben at https://werd.io/ and @[email protected]. You can find Jason @[email protected] and 404 Media at @[email protected] 

✚ You can follow Mike at @[email protected] and @[email protected]

💡 To learn more about what Flipboard's doing in the fediverse, sign up here:  https://about.flipboard.com/a-new-wave/

There’s a reason journalist and Bluesky board member Mike Masnick calls the platform “the most interesting experiment going in social media.” Originally launched as a project within Twitter in 2019, Bluesky has since become an independent company intent on making social more like the web. 

What does that mean, exactly, and why does it matter? Bluesky founder and CEO Jay Graber says social media is stagnating because “we're in this trap where users are locked in and developers are locked out.” It’s time to open things up again, she states, like in the innovative early days of the internet. 

Highlights of this conversation:

• Bluesky’s origin story 
• The case for decentralization — and Bluesky
• Developer activity and other “wacky experimentation” 
• Workings of identity online and DIDs (decentralized identifiers)
• Bridging AT Protocol and ActivityPub
•  Bluesky’s exciting cultural moments

Mentioned in this episode:

• Hard Fork podcast episode featuring Jay Graber

🔎 You can find Jay at @jay.bsky.team

✚ You can connect with Mike McCue at @mmccue.bsky.social and at @[email protected]

💡 To learn more about what Flipboard's doing in the fediverse, sign up here:  https://about.flipboard.com/a-new-wave/

The fediverse offers an opportunity to rethink how trust and safety works in social media. In a decentralized environment, creating safe and welcoming places relies on community moderation, transparent governance, and innovation in tooling. No longer is one company making — and enforcing — its own rules. It’s a collective responsibility.

Samantha Lai, senior research analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Jaz-Michael King, the executive director of IFTAS, are here to explain how. Samantha co-authored a seminal paper, “Securing Federated Platforms: Collective Risks and Responses,” along with Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth. Jaz runs IFTAS, which offers trust and safety support for volunteer content moderators, community managers, admins and more. The two often collaborate and bring perspectives from the policy and operational sides. 

Highlights of this conversation:

• Moderation approaches in the fediverse
• Role of IFTAS
• Is moderation better in the fediverse?
• Collective intel and resources
• Scaling with AI tools and tooling overall

Mentioned in this episode:

• IFTAS Connect - https://connect.iftas.org/
• Samantha and Yoel Roth’s paper for Journal of Online Trust and Safety - https://www.tsjournal.org/index.php/jots/article/view/171
• Bluesky composable moderation https://bsky.social/about/blog/4-13-2023-moderation

🔎 You can find Samantha at @samlai.bsky.social and Jaz at @[email protected] 

✚ You can connect with Mike McCue on Mastodon at @[email protected] or via his Flipboard federated account, where you can see what he’s curating on Flipboard in the fediverse, at @[email protected]

💡 To learn more about what Flipboard's doing in the fediverse, sign up here:  https://about.flipboard.com/a-new-wave/

John O’Nolan, the founder and CEO of Ghost, calls himself “the inverse Peter Thiel.” That’s because he wants to build a tech company that bucks the usual narratives, with as few monopolies as possible. His open-source publishing platform is structured as a nonprofit and is integrating with the ActivityPub protocol, giving creators digital sovereignty. No longer do writers have to perform for an algorithm to succeed or get stuck inside closed systems that monetize off their backs.

Does this scenario seem too good to be true? As you’ll hear in this conversation with Flipboard CEO Mike McCue, John doesn’t think so. There’s still a lot to be figured out, but both entrepreneurs are here for whatever this next phase of the internet brings. 

Highlights of this conversation:

• Why John believes in ActivityPub
• Ghost’s ActivityPub integration
• Parallels with the early internet
• Being at a grassroots stage
• Decentralizing human connection
• Impact of catering to algorithms
• Micropayments and other models

🔎 You can find John at https://john.onolan.org/

✚ You can connect with Mike McCue on Mastodon at @[email protected] or via his Flipboard federated account, where you can see what he’s curating on Flipboard in the fediverse, at @[email protected]

💡 To learn more about what Flipboard's doing in the fediverse, sign up here:  https://about.flipboard.com/a-new-wave/

Molly White is a leading cryptocurrency critic, but get to know her and you’ll see she’s anything but cynical. In fact, this researcher, writer and software engineer cares so deeply about free and open access to high-quality information that she’s been a Wikipedia editor since she was a teenager. 

Now Molly is the force behind the Citation Needed newsletter and the Web3IsGoingGreat site, and frequently speaks to journalists and makes media appearances. Despite tracking and writing about crypto’s shames, she is actually hopeful about how the internet is evolving in ways that are more open, collaborative, and in the user’s control. 

In this interview, Molly shares her thoughts on how the social web is transforming our lives, why everyone should be a blogger, and how the concept of digital ownership is changing before our eyes. She also explains the POSSE model — Publish [on your] Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere — which has the potential to revolutionize how we share digital content and think about our online identities. 

Highlights of this conversation include:

• Why Molly is optimistic about the future of the web
• “Everyone is a blogger”
• POSSE — Post on Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere
• New framework for identity on the web
• Digital ownership and sovereignty
• Enabling creators to build relationships that transcend platforms
• Business models and public funding

🔎  You can find everything Molly’s posting via the POSSE implementation on her website at https://www.mollywhite.net/feed. She’s also on Mastodon at @[email protected].

✚ You can connect with Mike McCue on Mastodon at @mike@flipboard.social or via his Flipboard federated account, where you can see what he’s curating on Flipboard in the Fediverse, at @[email protected]

💰 Mastodon is a non-profit that runs on donations from the community. You can help Mastodon succeed by supporting the organization via Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mastodon

💡 To learn more about what Flipboard's doing in the fediverse, sign up here:  https://about.flipboard.com/a-new-wave/

The beauty of an open system is that anyone can build on top of it and try to make it a better place. In the Fediverse, software engineer Ryan Barrett is one such developer.

Ryan’s been building social network bridges and related tools for over 12 years, including Bridgy, which connects personal websites and blogs to centralized social networks, and Bridgy Fed, which connects them to the Fediverse. He’s also a co-founder of Google AppEngine, which informed Google Cloud’s infrastructure, and has held engineering leadership roles at Google, Color and NCX. 

Most recently, Ryan’s work to connect Bluesky, which uses the AT protocol, to Mastodon and other platforms using the ActivityPub protocol ignited a firestorm. Ryan wanted to advance the Fediverse’s promise of interoperability but he inadvertently stirred up culture clashes between platforms and fervent discussions around consent, maintaining safety, fears of commercialism, and what being an open standard really means.

Highlights of this conversation include:

• why Ryan strives to bridge disparate social networks
• the Bridgy Fed rollout — and fallout
• positive reactions and community feedback
• reaction on Bluesky and culture differences between platforms
• what motivates Ryan and keeps him going

🔎 You can follow Ryan  at /snarfed.org. He’s also on Mastodon at @[email protected] and on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/snarfed.org

✚ You can connect with Mike McCue on Mastodon at https://flipboard.social/@mike, or via his Flipboard federated account, where you can see what he’s curating on Flipboard in the Fediverse, at https://flipboard.social/@[email protected]

💰 Mastodon is a non-profit that runs on donations from the community. You can help Mastodon succeed by supporting the organization via Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mastodon

💡 To learn more about what Flipboard's doing in the fediverse, sign up here:  https://about.flipboard.com/a-new-wave/

On March 21, Meta’s Threads entered the fediverse. This means that people on other ActivityPub-powered platforms, like Mastodon, can follow federated Threads profiles and see, like, reply to, and repost posts from the fediverse. (Eventually, you’ll be able to follow other fediverse accounts from Threads, too.) It’s still early days, but Threads’ entry shows the ecosystem coming together at a larger scale, starting with the promise of interoperability. 

Threads’ presence in the fediverse has been the elephant in the room since it was announced in July 2023. Now that it’s actually happening, there is as much skepticism as excitement. Why is Threads doing this? How is the team working with the community? How are they thinking about moderation, monetization and privacy in these early days and going forward?

In this episode of Dot Social, Flipboard CEO Mike McCue talks to two key leaders tasked with building the Threads experience: Rachel Lambert, Director of Product Management, and Peter Cottle, Software Engineer. Both are long-time Meta employees with a genuine care for open-source software and communities, as well as trust and safety. In fact, Rachel launched the Oversight Board, which helps Meta be accountable for trust and safety decisions across its social apps. 

Highlights of this conversation:

• Meta’s motivations
• How foundational is the fediverse for Threads (vs. it being a “feature”)
• Deciding to use ActivityPub instead of another protocol
• Threads’ roadmap and next step
• Addressing community concerns around seriousness of investment, moderation, monetization and more
• Future of interoperability within Meta

🔎 You can follow Rachel at @[email protected] and Peter at @[email protected]

✚ You can follow Mike on Mastodon at @[email protected] and @[email protected], and on Threads at @[email protected]

💡 To learn more about what Flipboard's doing in the fediverse, sign up here: http://about.flipboard.com/a-new-wave

For stewards of the fediverse (they sound like superheroes, right?), FediForum is a key date on the calendar. The third edition of the “unconference” is happening soon, on March 19-20, 2024. With Threads saying it will federate later this year, FediForum comes at a time of growing curiosity and promises juicy topics and demos.

What are the issues that are top of mind for the developers and leaders in this movement? What needs to happen for the fediverse to cross the chasm from early adopters to the mainstream? What are the opportunities for entrepreneurs, and how should they think about business models in the Fediverse?

Johannes Ernst, one of FediForum’s founders and an entrepreneur himself as the CEO of Dazzle Labs, discusses these questions and more in this episode of Dot Social, a podcast hosted by Flipboard CEO Mike McCue. Johannes’ projects also include FediTest, a test suite for the fediverse, and The Fediverse Developer Network.

Highlights of this conversation include:

• FediForum top-of-mind topics
• what it will take to bring people to the fediverse
• the business model for the open social web
• importance of strong use cases
• ways to solve spam attacks
• governance questions and ideas

🔎 You can follow Johannes on Mastodon @[email protected] and his projects:
* FediForum: https://fediforum.org
* Personal home page: http://j12t.org
* Fediverse developer network: https://fedidevs.org
* Dazzle Labs: https://dazzlelabs.net

💰 Mastodon is a non-profit that runs on donations from the community. You can help Mastodon succeed by supporting the organization via Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mastodon 

✚ You can connect with Mike McCue on Mastodon at @[email protected], or via his Flipboard federated account, where you can see what he’s curating on Flipboard in the fediverse, at @[email protected].

💡 To learn more about what Flipboard's doing in the fediverse, sign up here:  https://about.flipboard.com/a-new-wave/

Something happened when the internet turned into an ad-driven business. Incentives became oriented around grabbing attention over valuing substance and connection. 

What’s happening now in the Fediverse gives us a chance to reverse that. To pivot out of the attention economy into something more meaningful. 

Tony Stubblebine has already emphasized a focus on quality at Medium. As the publisher of Better Humans and its sister publications, Tony was one of Medium’s most successful community members. He knew the platform better than almost anyone and so when it came time to look for a CEO, he got the job in July 2022. 

In January 2023, Medium set up a Mastodon instance at me.dm. Tony’s said that he believes Mastodon is “an emerging force for good in social media,” although he’s still exploring what that means for his company. 

In today’s episode, Mike and Tony discuss their reasons for wanting to participate in the Fediverse, going so far as standing up their own instances for their communities. They also discuss what’s wrong with the attention economy, a framework for high-quality recommendations, and why it’s an exciting time for entrepreneurs, builders, writers and consumers.

Highlights of this conversation include:

• under the hood on Medium’s algorithm

• why human curation is a true service

• optimizing for substance

• the third business model era of the internet 

• how to get started in the Fediverse

💰 Mastodon is a non-profit that runs on donations from the community. You can help Mastodon succeed by supporting the organization via Patreon:  https://www.patreon.com/mastodon

🔎 You can follow Tony on Mastodon at https://me.dm/@coachtony. 

✚ You can connect with Mike McCue on Mastodon at https://flipboard.social/@mike, or via his Flipboard federated account, where you can see what he’s curating on Flipboard in the Fediverse, at https://flipboard.social/@[email protected]

💡 To learn more about what Flipboard's doing in the fediverse, sign up here:  https://about.flipboard.com/a-new-wave/

The Fediverse is not a monolithic place. It’s constantly evolving and being shaped by smart, passionate people who want to make sure that the open social web is better than the social media we’ve had before. 

One steward everyone should know is Tim Chambers, the co-founder of Dewey Digital out of the Dewey Square Group, a public affairs firm in Washington D.C. Tim is the author of the quarterly Twitter Migration report, which tracks the exodus from X and other trends unfolding as a result. He is also the server admin of indieweb.social, a 1,500-strong instance on Mastodon where he learns by leading. 

Tim brings an informed perspective on many of the most important elements of life on the open social web. Highlights from this conversation include:

• most important things to keep in mind as Fediverse grows
• moderation in the Fediverse
• toxicity and chaos on X vs Mastodon
• building community as an instance admin
• Threads and federation
• search, discovery and algorithmic models inside the Fediverse
• predictions for 2024

💰Mastodon is a non-profit that runs on donations from the community. You can help Mastodon succeed by supporting the organization via Patreon:  https://www.patreon.com/mastodon

🔎 You can follow Tim on Mastodon at https://indieweb.social/@tchambers

✚ You can connect with Mike McCue on Mastodon at https://flipboard.social/@mike, or via his Flipboard federated account, where you can see what he’s curating on Flipboard in the Fediverse, at https://flipboard.social/@[email protected]

💡 To learn more about what Flipboard's doing in the fediverse, sign up here:  https://about.flipboard.com/a-new-wave/

It’s been a momentous time for the Fediverse. New versions of Mammoth and Ivory launched. WordPress and Tumblr reaffirmed their commitment to integrating ActivityPub. And then both Threads and Flipboard rolled out their plans to federate.

What does this all mean for the Fediverse? How will moderation work as the Fediverse grows in leaps and bounds? Who will be next to federate?

Mastodon’s founder and CEO Eugen Rochko goes deep with Flipboard CEO Mike McCue for a sprawling conversation that looks back on Mastodon’s epic year, dissects the moment we’re in today, and ponders a future filled with big changes and new ideas. 

More urgently, if you’re following what’s happening with Threads, it is essential listening for understanding Meta’s strategy and how the Fediverse is responding. 

Highlights from this conversation include:

0:51 Looking back on Mastodon’s epic year
3:22 Small team, big goals
4:55 The arrival of Threads/Meta: pro or con?
9:01 The way Mastodon/Fediverse is architected to provide a better social media experience
11:24 The “big win” of Meta adopting an open standard
12:10 The game-changing paradigm shift in how social media works
17:30 Why Meta is committing to Threads — a significant moment for the social web
18:10 Mastodon community’s reaction to Threads’ entry
19:24 Preemptively building walls to block Threads: self-defeating?
21:10 Tools and advice for instance owners on interoperating with Threads
26:09 Gaining momentum: who will federate next?
28:34 Bluesky 
30:00 ActivityPub: the beauty of a generic protocol
38:24 User experiences in the Fediverse
41:06 “Embrace, extend, extinguish” and the XMPP comparison
50:28 Funding Mastodon through Patreon donations
53:10 U.S. nonprofit version of Mastodon and grant applications
54:23 On outside contributions to Mastodon’s code base
57:42 Hopes and dreams for the future

💰Mastodon is a non-profit that runs on donations from the community. You can help Mastodon succeed by supporting the organization via Patreon:  https://www.patreon.com/mastodon

🔎 You can follow Eugen on Mastodon at https://mastodon.social/@Gargron

✚ You can connect with Mike McCue on Mastodon at https://flipboard.social/@mike, or via his Flipboard federated account, where you can see what he’s curating on Flipboard in the Fediverse, at https://flipboard.social/@[email protected]

💡 To learn more about what Flipboard's doing in the fediverse, sign up here:  https://about.flipboard.com/a-new-wave/

The Internet as we know it is now over 30 years old, and author John Battelle says we must get over the ‘extraordinary inertia’ of the system we’ve built. He would know: As a founder of WIRED Magazine and as an entrepreneur himself, John’s been tracking and writing about the evolution of technology and its impact on society for a long time. 

What exactly is the difference between what he calls “the internet that we have and the one that we deserve”? Why are we now at an inflection point? Can we still fix the system? How would monetization work in this world?

Highlights from this conversation include:

• the early days of WIRED and the first banner ad
• what’s wrong with the Internet we have
• why we’re at an inflection point now
• Battelle’s take on Threads
• thoughts on monetizing the open social web

🔎 You can follow John on his Website and on Threads https://www.threads.net/@johnbattelle

✚ You can connect with Mike McCue on Mastodon.

💡 To learn more about what Flipboard's doing in the fediverse, sign up here:  https://about.flipboard.com/a-new-wave/

We’re on the precipice of a new wave of innovation in the Fediverse, and it’s important that even established organizations listen up and see what’s unfolding.

One person watching closely is the BBC’s Ian Forrester. As the Senior Firestarter in the broadcaster’s R&D Lab, Ian susses out new technologies and opportunities so that the public service broadcaster can stay current and true to its values. Among those values is trust, so the chance to verify its own journalists and run a social media server according to its own rules is a big reason for the BBC to even swim in these waters.

What has the BBC learned so far from its experiments in the Fediverse? What will decentralized systems unlock for innovation? And how is all this like the early days of the Internet?

Highlights from this conversation include:

• what it means to be a Firestarter at the BBC
• why the BBC is experimenting on the open social web
• what they’re doing there
• owning your sense of identity in the Fediverse
• championing internally and next steps

🔎 You can follow Ian on his Website and Mastodon.  

✚ You can connect with Mike McCue on Mastodon.

💡 To learn more about what Flipboard's doing in the fediverse, sign up here: http://about.flipboard.com/a-new-wave

There was a time where people couldn’t email each other unless they were using the same email client. That changed when developers came up with a protocol that made it so it didn’t matter if you were using AOL or CompuServe or Prodigy — it just worked. 

The same analogy explains how things work in the Fediverse, an open-source system of interconnected, interoperable social networks. The Fediverse is powered by a protocol called ActivityPub, which provides an API for creating, updating and deleting content across several platforms.

What does ActivityPub unlock for product builders and tech entrepreneurs? How will social networks without walled gardens change our relationship to content and to each other? Why does any of this matter? 

In this episode, host Mike McCue talks to Evan Prodromou, one of the co-authors of ActivityPub. Evan is an entrepreneur, technologist and advocate of open source software. He’s also the Director of Open Technology at the Open Earth Foundation. 

Highlights from this conversation include:

• the history of the W3C and ActivityPub
• why the protocol is so important to Evan
• what’s surprised Evan most about its adoption
• why this work is so consequential
• what it will unlock for innovation

🔎 You can follow Evan at https://evanp.me/ and on Mastodon.

✚ You can connect with Mike McCue on Mastodon.

💡 To learn more about what Flipboard's doing in the fediverse, sign up here: https://about.flipboard.com/a-new-wave/

In the 1990s, we saw an acceleration from walled gardens like America Online to the open web. This marked an era of exciting innovation and meteoric growth. But, over time, we witnessed the rise of a new set of walled gardens: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, etc.

Is history about to repeat itself? Will the open social web become a mainstream alternative to the walled gardens we live in today? Will people own their online relationships, or will there always be a company that owns these? 

Host Mike McCue and journalist Mike Masnick dig into questions like these. Mike Masnick founded the blog Techdirt in 1998 and wrote a seminal paper called “Protocols Not Platforms,” in which he predicted the scenario unfolding before our eyes today. Mike has long informed an influential audience of lawmakers, CEOs and activists. In fact, the New York Times called him “something of a Silicon Valley oracle.”

In this interview, Mike McCue checks in with Mike Masnick to see how things have gone since he wrote the paper. The two “Mike Ms” also discuss:

• the first product that truly embraced some of these ideas
• where Mike Masnick is spending time in the Fediverse
• reasoning behind adoption: worthy platforms or just fleeing X?
• how open standards lead to innovation
• why feeds are the new Websites

🔎 You can follow Mike Masnick’s work at techdirt.com, and find him at BlueSky and Mastodon. 

✚ You can connect with Mike McCue on Mastodon.

💡 To learn more about what Flipboard's doing in the fediverse, sign up here: https://about.flipboard.com/a-new-wave/