Dot Social

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 momentsMentioned 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 fediverseRole of IFTASIs moderation better in the fediverse?Collective intel and resourcesScaling with AI tools and tooling overallMentioned 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/171Bluesky 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 ActivityPubGhost’s ActivityPub integrationParallels with the early internetBeing at a grassroots stageDecentralizing human connectionImpact of catering to algorithmsMicropayments 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 ElsewhereNew framework for identity on the webDigital ownership and sovereigntyEnabling creators to build relationships that transcend platformsBusiness 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 @[email protected] 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/