sohyeon hwang

@s0hw@hci.social
118 Followers
174 Following
116 Posts
postdoc @ CITP princeton.
chronic online lurker :)
i study how people shape the governance of digital / platform technologies. you can find more about my research on my website. feel free to email or message me!
websitehttps://www.sohyeonhwang.com/
google scholar pub list...?https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ryouEjYAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao

Seeing the Politics of Decentralized Social Media Protocols

https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.22962

by Tolu (@tolu), Sohyeon (@s0hw) et al.

Presented and discussed at #fediforum

Seeing the Politics of Decentralized Social Media Protocols

Calls to decentralize feed-based social media have been driven by concerns about the concentrated power of centralized platforms and their societal impact. In response, numerous decentralized social media protocols have emerged, each interpreting "decentralization" in different ways. We analyze four such protocols -- ActivityPub, AT Protocol, Nostr, and Farcaster -- to develop a novel conceptual framework for understanding how protocols operationalize decentralization. Drawing from protocol documentation, media coverage, and first-hand interviews with protocol developers and experts, we contextualize each protocol's approach within their respective socio-technical goals. Our framework highlights how control over key components is distributed differently across each protocol, shaping who holds power over what kinds of decisions. How components are arranged in relation to one another further impacts how component owners might offset each other's power in shaping social media. We argue that examining protocols as artifacts reveals how values shape infrastructure and power dynamics -- and that with a holistic framework as a guide, we can more effectively evaluate and design decentralized platforms aligned with the social and political futures we envision.

arXiv.org
snagged Space I - join usssss
if you're at #FediForum, @tolu and I are facilitating a session on the politics of protocols and designing with power in mind in about 5 minutes! we want to talk about our recent pre-print (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2505.22962v1) but it's mostly free-form, open discussion related to the topic
@rzeta0 hello! sorry for my late response, i've been pretty offline the past few days. yes, i'd certainly be interested in creating room for that discussion. i've been running workshops as a facilitator/moderator: folks bring issues that they want to focus on + i let those drive the convos. we're going to do a 2nd push to try to organize more sessions in early july. please feel free to reach out to me via email about this and we can discuss more on planning a session for this.
@CaribenxMarciaX thank you for spending time with us in the workshop!! i really loved hearing your thoughts about "duty of care" - it's also just a really evocative phrase that i think has room for so much discussion. definitely want to follow-up more about it!

New blog post
Also available on my content page
Thanks to @s0hw for the invite
https://subscribers.artistmarciax.com/governance-frictions/

#writer #blog #fedimeta

Governance Frictions

This post is also available on my free blog (Marcia's Post Its) The other day I was invited to participate in a workshop with other people in the Fediverse. I was invited by Sohyean H to participate, to which I am grateful to her. I won't name the other participants

Artist Marcia X

Signal Messenger is warning that Recall, the AI tool rolling out in Windows 11 that will screenshot, index, and store everything a user does every three seconds, poses a risk to its users. Effective immediately, the Windows Desktop version will by default block the ability of Windows to screenshot the app. Of course, Microsoft provides no API to disable Recall from screenshotting specific apps, so Signal is getting creative. They are invoking a digital rights management API that blocks the screenshotting of copyrighted material.

https://signal.org/blog/signal-doesnt-recall/

By Default, Signal Doesn't Recall

Signal Desktop now includes support for a new “Screen security” setting that is designed to help prevent your own computer from capturing screenshots of your Signal chats on Windows. This setting is automatically enabled by default in Signal Desktop on Windows 11. If you’re wondering why we’re on...

Signal Messenger
@mayel ooh thank you for the heads up :0 ill follow up with folks
bye bye santa fe :’)

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