Robert W. GehlAs a scholar advocating for building democratically-run alternatives to corporate social media, I have watched growing discontent over corporate social media with varying degrees of hope....
It all was too much, so Ro shut Playvicious down....
DJ Sundog is a musician living in rural Georgia, USA. Sundog told me that the fediverse has helped change him. When he was growing up, he “had life on easy mode” because “I was a young white man who grew up in the church,” the son of a preacher....
People have received a crash course in the economics of corporate social media over the past few years. We can sign up for TikTok, Twitter/X, Facebook, or Instagram for free. As the aphorism goes, however, “if it’s free, then you’re the product.” In corporate social media, advertisers foot the bill....
Many of the moderators, admins, and fediverse members I spoke to discussed giving others the benefit of the doubt and being willing to listen, but only to a point. By far the most work moderators and admins must do involves inquiring with other moderators and admins about posts that violate codes of conduct....
GNU social isn’t the only federated social media system that actively shuns the use of codes of conduct. Pleroma, another Twitter-like microblog which runs on ActivityPub and is thus part of the fediverse – capable of federating with Mastodon instances – also has a culture of eschewing codes of conduct....
But even more importantly, they have their roots in activism against bigotry in tech development....
But then, something unexpected happened. The demise of Playvicious became a mark of shame among fediverse members. I observed people discussing the demise of Playvicious, seeing it as the failure of Mastodon and the fediverse’s struggle for a more democratic, equitable, and just digital communications system....
A bunch of reviews are in for Move Slowly and Build Bridges, my book about the fediverse, and... they're good!
https://moveslowlybuildbridges.com/endorsements.html
"essential reading... realistic, honest, and deeply informed... highly recommended reading... an academic text that's enjoyable and easy to read... insightful, superbly researched... a better version of what the internet could be..."
By the time of the Social Web Working Group, the big corporate social media players were operating alone, leery of working together. The best that they would do was not prohibit the W3C from pursuing a social media standard. I spoke to Evan Prodromou, who co-chaired the SocialWG and was a co-author of the ActivityPub standard....