Recorded live at the Fediverse House at SXSW 2025, Mastodon Head of Communications Andy Piper, Bluesky COO Rose Wang, and The Onion CMO Leila Brillson discuss building community on the social web, emphasizing the shift from centralized platforms to decentralized networks like the ones built on top of ActivityPub and AT Proto.

The panel touches on the importance of authenticity, defining and measuring healthy communities, the role of hashtags in fostering community engagement, and the need for flexible moderation systems.

Highlights include:

02:25 What defines a healthy community in 2025 03:34 How has decentralization impacted community 05:10 Describing the Mastodon community 08:10 Bluesky’s cozy corners 10:09 Finding “cozy corners” on Mastodon 12:39 The Onion’s community and platform trajectory 15:00 Hashtags as a magnet for community 18:50 Decentralized moderation as a form of governance 20:59 Empowering moderators 23:14 Bluesky’s moderation system, explained 25:48 Measuring health of communities 33:27 Where does the social web fall short for community builders 36:50 Advice for first-time community builders 39:08 The monoculture is dead, stop thinking about scale 40:30 Q&A: Bluesky team, AT proto and vibe-setting 44:33 Q&A: Global movements vs smaller communities 47:20 Q&A: Is Bluesky, the company, the “Supreme Court” of its moderation stack? 49:33 Q&A: Importance of private groups for communities 51:59 Q&A: Moderating up

The panel is moderated by Mia Quagliarello, Head of Creator Community at Flipboard.