Flipboard Dot Social

Hello Fediverse!

I'm excited to let you know that we have stood up our very own #PeerTube instance. This is so cool. We've posted all the videos for my Dot Social podcast. We also posted our original Flipboard launch video for fun.

You can check out our PeerTube instance here:

http://flipboard.video

You can follow the Dot Social channel on our PeerTube instance here:

@dot_social

I'm super impressed with PeerTube. It's quite a capable platform and it is fully federated via ActivityPub.

It’s been an exciting time in the world of decentralized social media. 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?

These are the questions tackled in today’s episode of Dot Social, the first podcast to explore the world of decentralized social media. Each episode, host (and Flipboard co-founder and CEO) Mike McCue talks to a leader in this movement; someone who sees the Fediverse’s tremendous potential and understands that this could be a significant shift for the internet.

This time, Mike’s talking to Eugen Rochko, the founder and CEO of Mastodon. Eugen is on a hero’s journey right now. He’s not only working tirelessly to provide a safer, more trustworthy and less commercial alternative to platforms like X, but also he’s on a mission to fundamentally shift how social media works and how we connect to each other.

This is 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 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/@mike@flipboard.com

💡 To learn more about what Flipboard's doing in the Fediverse, sign up here: http://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.

In addition to co-founding WIRED, Battelle launched Web 2.0 Summit conferences, Federated Media Publishing, The Industry Standard, and The Recount. He’s written a book called “The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules” and is now working on a new book about a better Internet.

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?

These are the questions tackled in today’s episode of Dot Social, the first podcast to explore the world of decentralized social media. Each episode, host (and Flipboard co-founder and CEO) Mike McCue talks to a leader in this movement; someone who sees the Fediverse’s tremendous potential and understands that this could be a significant shift for the internet.

1:27 The early days of WIRED magazine 3:54 Putting WIRED online and reinventing for the internet 4:44 But how are we going to pay for this? 5:55 The dawn of banner advertising 7:07 "The original sin" and first commercial ad on the internet 12:15 Is there still an opportunity to make the internet work better? 13:25 We’re at an inflection point: "the internet grew up and got a brain" 14:38 From an "unholy amalgam of steroidal capitalism and oligarchic companies" to an optimistic view of the internet 19:02 How the Fediverse enables innovation 20:23 We need an at scale generative consumer platform 21:50 "It starts with federation" and the story of Federated Media 24:50 John's take on Threads 28:37 Rethinking the paradigm: person-to-person connection 30:10 Excitement at having an online identity independent from a site 31:59 How could monetization work for an open social web 33:31 How to solve for news' disaggregation problem 34:22 Value accruing to creator in a world of infinite sources 35:15 The eternal problem and opportunity of open versus closed systems 36:42 Going through middlemen has created a surveillance economy 38:40 Building direct connections into internet protocol 39:50 ActivityPub as "two-way RSS" that connects person and person publishing 41:17 Legislation to keep an eye on 43:33 Preview of John’s book

Sure, Mastodon is a replacement for X, but the open-source platform represents something even more significant: the move towards decentralized social media. People fed up with walled-garden social networks are adopting new homes in the Fediverse, where they’re finding stronger engagement, better community, and systems that are more closely aligned to their values.

We’re on the precipice of a new wave of innovation, 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?

That’s the subject of this week’s episode of Dot Social, the first podcast to explore the world of decentralized social media. Each episode, host (and Flipboard co-founder and CEO) Mike McCue talks to a leader in this movement; someone who sees the Fediverse’s tremendous potential and understands that this could be a significant shift for the internet.

01:02 The story behind his "Senior Firestarter" title 04:40 What he’s learned from BBC experiments in the Fediverse so far 09:47 The power of verification in your own hands and sense of identity on the social web 11:33 The BBC’s Fediverse approach (and how it differs from The Guardian's) 13:37 Micro communities and moderation 18:16 Decentralizing innovation 23:17 The opportunity for innovation when you start connecting people to each other 26:43 A day in the life in BBC R&D department 30:15 “It's like the early days of the internet” and the era of the walled gardens coming to an end 36:22 The Human Values project and public service activities 37:35 Advice to other organizations when getting involved with the Fediverse 41:38 The next major revolution for the web? 43:28 Best way to follow Ian’s work

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, 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?

All that’s covered in this episode of Dot Social, a podcast about the world of decentralized social media, aka the Fediverse. Each episode, host (and Flipboard co-founder and CEO) Mike McCue talks to a leader in this movement; someone who sees the Fediverse’s tremendous potential and understands that this could be the internet’s next wave. Mike is a true believer in the open social web and what it will unlock for how we connect, communicate and innovate online.

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

In the 1990s, we saw an acceleration from walled gardens like America Online to the open web. As we all know, 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, and more.

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?

That’s the subject of the first episode of Dot Social, a podcast about the world of decentralized social media — also known as the Fediverse. Each episode, host (and Flipboard co-founder and CEO) Mike McCue talks to a leader in this movement; someone who sees the Fediverse’s tremendous potential and understands that this could be the Internet’s next wave. Mike is a true believer in the open social Web and what it will unlock for how we connect, communicate and innovate online.

Episode 1 features Mike’s conversation with journalist Mike Masnick.

In 1988, Mike founded the blog Techdirt, and in 2019, he 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” discuss the open social web’s current landscape and what it will enable, which services have the most potential, why feeds are the new websites, and so much more.