The Fediverse is not a monolithic place. It’s constantly evolving and being shaped by smart, passionate people who want to make sure that the open social web is better than the social media we’ve had before.

One steward everyone should know is Tim Chambers, the co-founder of Dewey Digital out of the Dewey Square Group, a public affairs firm in DC. Tim is the author of the quarterly Twitter Migration report, which tracks the exodus from X and other trends unfolding as a result. He is also the server admin of indieweb.social, a 1,500-strong instance on Mastodon where he learns by leading.

Tim brings an informed perspective on many of the most important elements of life on the open social web. Highlights from this conversation include:

01:58 Why care about the Fediverse? 04:35 Most important things to keep in mind as Fediverse grows 06:55 Moderation in the Fediverse: inherently a better model? 12:52 Isolate Gab incident: the first stress test 14:40 Importance of freedom of association 15:57 Toxicity and chaos on X vs Mastodon 18:00 Structural nature of platforms and impact on disinformation, toxicity, micro-targeting 19:09 “Exodus shock” 19:52 Indieweb.social – “1% of the Fediverse” 22:22 Building community and control as an instance admin 24:42 Managing spammers as an instance admin 25:40 WordPress Akismet project 27:11 Threads, federation and spammers 27:42 Is it a good thing net-net if Threads federates? 31:49 “People want a better social home” 32:35 Decentralizing innovation 34:33 The pace of innovation 34:50 Mammoth app opening up source code 35:13 What else can be built from this ‘incredible soup’ 36:38 Everyone’s a generalist in the world of walled gardens 37:18 A robust ActivityPub test suite 38:51 Commercial funding and investment in the Fediverse (Flipboard, Mozilla, WordPress 40:47 “May a thousand business models bloom” 42:27 Search, discovery and algorithmic models inside the Fediverse 45:45 Predictions for 2024

🔎 You can follow Tim on Mastodon at https://indieweb.social/@tchambers

✚ You can connect with Mike McCue on Mastodon at https://flipboard.social/@mike, or via his Flipboard federated account, where you can see what he’s curating on Flipboard in the Fediverse, at https://flipboard.social/@mike@flipboard.com

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