Unlike traditional social media, the fediverse operates without a central authority. This creates a unique set of challenges and opportunities for how it’s governed.

Luckily, there are thoughtful stewards who want to see decentralized social media succeed in the most human — and humane — fashion. Two of the most prominent are Erin Kissane, a writer and researcher working on new networks, and Darius Kazemi, a senior engineer at the Applied Social Media Lab at Harvard University.

Earlier in 2024, the pair researched and wrote a 40,000-word report on governance in the fediverse. Now they are deep in other projects designed to move the fediverse forward, including Erin’s new studio devoted to network work and Darius’ Fediverse Schema Observatory (software built to enhance the ecosystem’s interoperability while being sensitive to user data). You’ll hear about these projects and more in the latest episode of our Dot Social podcast.

Highlights of the conversation include:

1:25 Results of U.S. election and impact on fediverse work 3:59 Xodus, Bluesky migration 8:06 Bluesky innovation 9:45 Fediverse Schema Observatory 11:22 Bluesky and decentralization; bridging and context collapse 14:32 Priorities now 16:24 Rough consensus and running code, long-form text, private groups 18:14 Forms of refuge, sustainability, finding a place to land 22:12 Legal concerns for server runners 23:15 Fediverse governance 23:59 Risks of open networking 26:10 “Nutrition label” for fediverse servers 30:06 The truth about most open source projects 33:15 Sustainability and business models; the European way 37:10 Avoiding fragmentation, ActivityPub + AT Proto 44:35 Bluesky’s fascinating experiments, constituting place 45:25 Blacksky 48:09 Next things they’re excited to work on

Mentioned in this episode:

• How to buy shoes in the fediverse https://www.wrecka.ge/fediverse-shoes/
• Findings report: governance on fediverse microblogging servers https://fediverse-governance.github.io/
• Applied Social Media Lab at Harvard University https://asml.cyber.harvard.edu/
• IFTAS https://about.iftas.org/
• Blacksky https://bsky.app/profile/rudyfraser.com/feed/blacksky
• Fedify https://fedify.dev/
• Bonfire Networks https://bonfirenetworks.org/

🔎 You can find Erin at wreckage/salvage (https://www.wrecka.ge/) or learn more about her via her personal site (https://erinkissane.com/). She’s also posting on Mastodon (https://mas.to/@kissane) and Bluesky (https://bsky.app/profile/kissane.bsky.social).

🔎 Darius’s home on the Internet is at Tiny Subversions (https://tinysubversions.com/). He works at the Applied Social Media Lab at Harvard University (https://asml.cyber.harvard.edu/) and he posts on Mastodon (https://friend.camp/@darius).

✚ You can follow Mike at @mike@flipboard.social and @mike@flipboard.com

💡 To learn more about what Flipboard's doing in the fediverse, sign up here: http://about.flipboard.com/a-new-wave