Flipboard Dot Social

Building the internet you want to find, with Search Engine's PJ Vogt

Flipboard Dot Social — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 14:00:07 GMT

Dot Social’s Mike McCue talks to PJ Vogt, host of the Search Engine podcast. PJ is also a co-founder of the Forkiverse, a Mastodon instance launched with the Hard Fork team as an experiment in community and a concrete way to show how a decentralized social network can work.

The conversation is a timely reminder that the internet is still something we can — and should — build together.

Highlights include:

01:50 The Forkiverse origin story
06:37 “The best way to talk about this is to try it”
14:30 Reactions to The Forkiverse
19:52 Social media as IRL social gathering
22:13 RSS podcasting: strengths and how fediverse helps with hard parts
25:08 Thinking about further integrations
27:52 Great promises of the fediverse
30:04 Slowing down and trying new things
33:04 Next steps for The Forkiverse
36:20 PJ’s answer to the “media apocalypse”
39:22 How PJ got discovered
42:10 Search Engine’s amazing sound design
45:00 The quality of media now
46:46 Reasons for creators to join the fediverse

Mentioned in this episode:

The Forkiverse social network: https://theforkiverse.com/
“How do we survive the media apocalypse”: https://pjvogt.substack.com/p/how-do-we-survive-the-media-apocalypse
“The Chairs Are Where the People Go": https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780865479456/thechairsarewherethepeoplego/

🔎 You can find PJ @pj@theforkiverse.com

✚ Connect with host Mike McCue at @mike@flipboard.social and @mmccue.bsky.social.

🌊 Catch the wave! Surf the open social web and create your own custom feeds at surf.social, a new product from the people at Flipboard. https://about.surf.social/

Mastodon’s First and Next 10 Years, with Executive Director Felix Hlatky

Flipboard Dot Social — Wed, 27 May 2026 14:00:04 GMT

As Mastodon celebrates its 10-year anniversary in 2026, the open source platform’s new Executive Director, Felix Hlatky, is focused on what it’ll take to make the next 10 years even more impactful.
That vision includes an overhaul in version 5.0, a new feature called Collections, and continuing its critical role at the heart of the fediverse.
Highlights of the conversation include:

00:56 What Felix is most excited about right now
02:11 Felix’s Mastodon history
04:16 Mastodon’s growth and organizational change
08:10 Getting set up for success
10:27 Collections — a major new feature
15:18 Lesson to learn from Bluesky
17:05 Weaponization, privacy, nuances around collections
19:35 Making social media more manageable
21:00 Groups
23:44 Power of building at the protocol level
25:40 Collaborations across platforms and protocols
27:27 Bridging technologies and standards work
31:15 Mastodon’s backend infrastructure
33:56 Funding and the EU
37:27 Governments use of Mastodon
40:05 The Forkiverse
45:05 Podcasts in the fediverse
47:14 Custom feeds on Surf, ex dotsocial.surf.social
49:58 Vibrant creator communities on the social web
51:20 Mastodon 5.0, FASPS
53:59 Entering a new era

Mentioned in this episode:

https://dotsocial.surf.social/
The Forkiverse https://theforkiverse.com/

🔎 You can find Felix at @felix@mastodon.social

✚ Connect with host Mike McCue at @mike@flipboard.social and @mmccue.bsky.social.

🌊 Catch the wave! Surf the open social web and create your own custom feeds at surf.social, a new product from the people at Flipboard. https://about.surf.social/

Why Open Social Matters for Creators, with Skylight’s Tori White

Flipboard Dot Social — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 17:00:41 GMT

What do TikTok, Mark Cuban and Bluesky have in common? Skylight.

When the future of TikTok was thrown into question in January 19, 2025, Skylight CEO Tori White and her co-founder/CTO Reed Harmeyer saw a moment and seized on it.

But they took a new approach, one that puts creators in charge of their content, their audience relationships, and their reach. Giving creators all of the control and fun, and none of the uncertainty, fuels Tori’s mission.

Today, Skylight is a great example of the open social at work, bringing videos from across the AT protocol community into a single experience people can enjoy.

The conversation includes:

1:01 Skylight’s origin story
2:04 White’s background as a creator
4:45 How other creators reacted to TikTok uncertainty
6:41 Making the case to creators to join the social web
8:20 Building on AT protocol
11:27 Benefits of ecosystem collaboration, like live-streaming and feeds
16:31 What about the ActivityPub protocol?
20:22 What it means to cross-post, to win
22:36 White’s standout creators on Skylight
23:44 How creators are reacting to what’s happening on social web
28:01 What will be the tipping point?
31:06 Monetization models
35:30 What’s holding creators back from joining the social web?
38:45 What’s next for Skylight
39:50 Financial sustainability and decentralizing resources

🔎 You can find Tori at @buildwithtori https://www.buildwithtori.com/

✚ Connect with host Mike McCue at @mike@flipboard.social and @mmccue.bsky.social.

🌊 Catch the wave! Surf the open social web and create your own custom feeds at surf.social, a new product from the people at Flipboard. https://about.surf.social/

AltStore and the Indie App Renaissance

Flipboard Dot Social — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 14:00:38 GMT

AltStore co-founders Riley Testut and Shane Gill are the perfect example of necessity being the mother of invention. When Apple denied the launch of their retro video game app, Delta, in 2016, they realized that indie app developers needed another solution — one that could bring apps to communities without Apple dictating the rules and taking a cut.

Founded in 2019, AltStore is that solution. The creators of the first decentralized app store share their journey, including what an open app store means for developers and how they’re investing in the fediverse.

The conversation includes:

1:11 Genesis of AltStore
3:00 Getting Delta in Apple’s App Store
5:34 The Fortnite factor
8:10 The value of an alternative app store
12:04 The difference between putting an app in AltStore v App Store
14:41 Indie market for apps
18:03 Ecosystem safety
21:30 Is AI increasing the total number of apps out there?
22:45 Vibe coding and paths for app distribution
24:42 Fediverse and eureka moment
32:26 People-powered discovery — a broader movement
34:29 Building communities around apps
36:44 Patreon integration, supporting developers directly
38:38 Curating apps and source collections
40:07 Solutions for in-app payments
43:27 Pieces of the next generation ecosystem
45:56 Decentralizing app innovation
46:32 Relationship with Apple now
51:23 What’s on the horizon for AltStore
54:21 How to experience AltStore

Referenced:

Explore AltStore: https://explore.alt.store/
Riley + Shane’s Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/cw/rileyshane

🔎 You can find Riley and Shane at https://altstore.io/.

✚ Connect with host Mike McCue at @mike@flipboard.social and @mmccue.bsky.social.

🌊 Catch the wave! Surf the open social web and create your own custom feeds at surf.social, a new product from the people at Flipboard. https://about.surf.social/

Disclosure: Dot Social host Mike McCue serves on the board of AltStore.

Rediscovering the Magic of the Blogosphere, with John O’Nolan and Matthias Pfefferle

Flipboard Dot Social — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 20:34:40 GMT

Social networks were built on short posts designed for speed and scale. But what if the next era of the web was built for something deeper?

Two of the social web’s “longformers” are working on this. John O’Nolan, the founder and CEO of Ghost, and Matthias Pfefferle, the developer behind the ActivityPub plugin for WordPress, are at the forefront of integrating social features with blogs, newsletters, essays — anything that doesn’t fit in a box of 500 characters or less.

In this episode of Dot Social, they talk with Flipboard CEO Mike McCue about rediscovering the magic of the blogosphere; why formatting, identity, and interoperability are tricky problems to solve; and where writing belongs in the next chapter of the internet.

Highlights of this conversation:
1:24 Why should writers and bloggers care about this topic?
8:35 How the plugin has been received
12:15 Building social into blogs
17:35 Will this increase discovery?
20:15 Models for discovery
23:03 Tumblr in its heyday and status of integration
25:17 How they’re thinking about AT Proto
33:20 Thoughts on bridging
37:16 Core principles around integrating long-form content into protocol
44:06 Leveraging lessons from email?
46:16 Need for collaboration
49:10 Rough edges
52:50 New experiences

Mentioned or related to this episode:

Julian Lam of Node BB https://nodebb.org/
“Digital Sovereignty Is the New Influencer Status, with Citation Needed's Molly White” https://dot-social.simplecast.com/episodes/molly-white-sxsw
“Steps Forward in Long-form Text” https://socialwebfoundation.org/2025/05/01/steps-forward-in-long-form-text/

🔎 You can find John at https://john.onolan.org/ and Matthias at https://pfefferle.dev/.
✚ You can connect with Mike McCue at @mike@flipboard.social and @mmccue.bsky.social.
🌊 Catch the wave! Surf the social web and create your own custom feeds at surf.social, a new beta from the people at Flipboard. https://about.surf.social/

Architecting a New Era of Community, with Blacksky’s Rudy Fraser

Flipboard Dot Social — Tue, 20 May 2025 16:00:47 GMT

What if your social media experience weren’t controlled by an algorithm or a corporation, but by your community? That’s the idea behind Blacksky, a decentralized project built on the AT Protocol — the same infrastructure powering Bluesky.

Though their names contain the same suffix, it’s important to know that Blacksky is not hitching its wagon to the Bluesky app, team or platform. The community, helmed by founder and CEO Rudy Fraser, is charting an independent and ideally replicable path, the kind that’s only possible in an open-source ecosystem.

In this episode of Dot Social, Fraser takes host Mike McCue under the hood of Blacksky’s infrastructure, philosophy, and future plans.

Highlights of this conversation:

04:31 Mutual aid and community building
11:21 Explaining AT Protocol and Blacksky’s infrastructure
14:30 It’s not about the killer app anymore — it’s about the community
15:54 Blacksky’s sub communities
17:55 Dotted line communities and dark social
18:45 Project Cypher and the value of portable identity
21:01 Participating in multiple communities; Northsky
21:36 Joining Blacksky
23:34 Lessons from running Blacksky
25:29 SafeSkies, auto-reporter and other tools
26:37 Blacksky’s business model and licensable tools
29:22 DIDs and applying first principles to communities
33:12 Building for longevity
37:04 Challenges
38:50 Block lists as harassment vectors
39:32 Designing systems around trust; “lazy trust”
44:25 Feature ideas, like delegated moderation
48:32 Better sensible, practical defaults
49:53 Fundraising models
51:31 Monetization scenarios in the future
53:35 Size of and gratitude for Blacksky team
56:18 Check it out, see how you can contribute, do weird stuff

Mentioned in this episode:
Rudy’s ATmosphere conference talk, “Beyond Horseless Carriages”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZN8y8kVFFI
Rudy’s blog post, “An internet of many autonomous communities”: https://blog.rudyfraser.com/an-internet-of-many-autonomous-communities/
Blacksky Labeler: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:d2mkddsbmnrgr3domzg5qexf
Cypher: https://github.com/blacksky-algorithms/rsky/tree/main/cypher
Rsky-Relay: https://github.com/blacksky-algorithms/rsky/pull/87
SAFEskies: https://github.com/blacksky-algorithms/SAFEskies
New Yorker article mentioning Rudy: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/04/14/blueskys-quest-to-build-nontoxic-social-media

🔎 You can find Rudy at @rudyfraser.com.
✚ You can connect with Mike McCue at @mmccue.bsky.social.
🌊 Catch the wave! Surf the social web and create your own custom feeds at surf.social, a new beta from the people at Flipboard. https://about.surf.social/

Move Fast and Break Kings, with Cory Doctorow

Flipboard Dot Social — Thu, 24 Apr 2025 21:42:39 GMT

Blogger, journalist, author and activist Cory Doctorow can embark on a 10-minute monologue about what’s wrong with tech and still leave you hungering for more of his rapid-fire analysis and biting humor. It’s stunning to be presented with the big picture of the mess we’re in — and how to potentially get out of it.

In this episode of Dot Social, recorded live at the Fediverse House at SXSW 2025, Doctorow unpacks the concept of “enshittification.” It’s a term he coined to show how we got to this place where platforms prioritize business interests over user experience, leading to tragic declines in quality and trust. He talks about how to challenge platform monopolies and the importance of true federation.

Highlights include:

01:52 The path to enshittification
12:50 Is there a way out of this?
17:18 How Cory uses RSS
22:20 Advice for people building the social web
28:07 Take on Bluesky and Mastodon
33:44 On being a “sharecropper in Musk’s farm”
36:05 EFF’s biggest mandate this year
39:04 What bad regulations are going away?
40:16 Is enshittification inevitable?
46:27 What happened to change the way that we enforce antitrust?
53:14 “Radicalized” and take on political violence
59:27 Cory’s book, “Picks and Shovels”

🔎 You can find Cory at @pluralistic@mamot.fr

✚ You can connect with Mike McCue at @mike@flipboard.social

🌊 Catch the wave! Surf the social web and create your own custom feeds at surf.social, a new beta from the people at Flipboard. https://about.surf.social/

Creating an ATmosphere of Possibility, with Bluesky’s Paul Frazee

Flipboard Dot Social — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 13:00:39 GMT

From the outside, Bluesky may seem like a Twitter clone. But anyone who’s close to the technology — and the team — knows that they’re building something much deeper: they’re rethinking the internet’s architecture to create a more flexible, user-centric web.

Bluesky’s CTO Paul Frazee is the perfect person to explain all this, as he’s fantastic at tying technical concepts to their practical application and wider impact. In this interview with Mike McCue, recorded live at the Fediverse House at SXSW 2025, Frazee unpacks Bluesky’s first principles, what makes AT Protocol different from ActivityPub, why identity portability is a radical shift, and how decentralization could lead to more humane social spaces.

Highlights of this conversation:

01:33 Bluesky’s growth spike
04:08 First principles of Bluesky’s architecture
08:47 Addressing the cold start problem with fediverse technologies
10:00 Nebula, Tidal and creator distribution channels
14:01 Building on ActivityPub v. AT Proto
16:26 Bridging strategies — Bridgy.fed and A New Social
19:15 Importance of identity to Bluesky
24:01 Explaining composability, stackable moderation
28:39 AT Proto federation questions
33:12 Double-stack developers like Surf.Social
34:20 Q&A 1: Self-sovereign identity — how much is ICANN the boss of the internet?
37:45 Q&A 2: Lessons he’s learned from time at Secure Scuttlebutt and Beaker Browser
40:33 Q&A 3: Breaking out of echo chambers

Mentioned in this episode:

• Beaker Browser post-mortem: https://github.com/beakerbrowser/beaker/blob/master/archive-notice.md

🔎 You can find Paul on Bluesky @pfrazee.com: https://bsky.app/profile/pfrazee.com

✚ You can connect with Mike McCue all across the social web, including on Bluesky @mmccue.bsky.social: https://bsky.app/profile/mmccue.bsky.social

🌊 Catch the wave! Surf the social web and create your own custom feeds at surf.social, a new beta from the people at Flipboard: https://about.surf.social/

Turning Moments Into Movements, with Hashtag Inventor Chris Messina

Flipboard Dot Social — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 20:27:37 GMT

In 2007, the hashtag was a simple, yet revolutionary, idea that changed the way we organize and amplify content. Today, it is either endangered or more useful than ever, depending on whom you talk to. On the open social web, hashtags are an important unifying mechanism — not just for content but for people too.

Why is that? How did we get here? What’s next for this small but mighty feature and for the web at large? Here to tell us is Chris Messina, the inventor of the hashtag, the creator of the DiSo Project, and the No. 1 hunter on Product Hunt. In this episode, Messina goes wide to explain where this next 20-year cycle of the internet is taking us. From the community-pulling power of the hashtag to decentralization and the massive shifts ignited by AI, he threads the needle on it all.

Highlights of this conversation:

00:57 “The death of the hashtag” and Elon Musk’s disparaging comments
04:24 Hashtag as an organizing principle, #BelieveinFilm
06:15 Photo sharing and 15th anniversary of hashtag on Instagram
07:02 “Adversarial opportunity” and cross-platform communities
10:25 Early reception of hashtag within Twitter
11:14 Why the hashtag is a big idea
12:22 Hashtag abuse (and dealing with it)
13:36 Under-appreciated aspects of the hashtag
13:58 The first hashtag on Twitter
15:30 Hashtag adoption
18:05 Adding support for the hashtag
19:45 What’s next for the hashtag
22:01 Identity on the (social) web
28:00 Why decentralization is necessary and complex
29:32 Urgency of this moment in time
30:00 What moderation is and does — and how LLMs could assist
33:33 Establishing reputation
37:27 Starter Packs
44:40 Where Chris spends his social media time
46:20 Mastodon, Bluesky pros and cons
54:33 Advice giving to people building in this space

Mentioned in this episode and/or acronyms for clarity:

bitly.com/tagchannels - original hashtag spec
DID stands for “decentralized identifier” and is a self-owned, verifiable digital identity that operates without a central authority
PGP is an encryption standard used for securing communication, data integrity, and authentication

🔎 Learn more about Chris at his website, ChrisMessina.me, or find him on Bluesky @chrismessina.me, Mastodon @chrismessina@mastodon.xyz, and Threads @chris.

✚ You can connect with Mike McCue all across the social web, including on Bluesky @mmccue.bsky.social, Mastodon @mike@flipboard.social and Threads @mmccue.

🌊 Catch the wave! Surf the social web and create your own custom feeds at surf.social, a new beta from the people at Flipboard. https://about.surf.social/

Leaving the City of Big Social, with Fediverse Enthusiast Chris Trottier

Flipboard Dot Social — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 17:14:21 GMT

When you’re in an open source community, you’re a part of a collective effort with a common goal. In the fediverse, there are early adopters doing a lot of the heavy lifting now. They’re the voices you want to follow to make sense of the place.

One such person is Chris Trottier. Chris describes himself as a “fediverse enthusiast” (he’s also passionate about video games). He’s a sage presence who makes smart observations and has a 10,000-foot view of all the innovation happening on the open social web — not to mention a few ideas of his own.

Highlights of this conversation:

00:48 Why Chris got involved with the fediverse
03:50 Hootsuite and Twitter APIs
05:35 A-ha moment from joining fediverse
10:05 Twitter’s original sin
11:55 Running own server at AtomicPoet.org
13:05 What is Akkoma
16:00 Chris’s take on PeerTube
19:31 Sora — third part client that lets you choose your own algorithm
21:43 Revitalizing social media UX
23:14 “The Doom of social media”
24:35 Accelerated innovation and developers
26:40 Where Chris discovers fediverse innovation
27:40 What Chris would love to build in the fediverse
30:15 Addressing the problem of survivability
33:00 The next wave of social
36:35 Power of open social graph
38:35 Leaving the city of Big Social
40:98 Where Mike sees this all going
42:22 Better topics in the fediverse

Services mentioned in this episode include:

Friendica - https://friendi.ca/ - a decentralized social network
Misskey - https://misskey-hub.net/en/ - a microblogging platform
Akkoma - https://akkoma.social/ - “sorta like the child of Twitter and email”
Macstodon - https://github.com/smallsco/macstodon - a Mastodon client for Classic Mac OS
DOStodon - https://github.com/SuperIlu/DOStodon - a Mastodon client for MS-DOS
Amidon - https://github.com/BlitterStudio/amidon - a Mastodon client for Amiga computers
Sora - https://mszpro.com/sorasns - a futuristic iOS app for Mastodon, Bluesky, Misskey; uses local machine learning to rank posts and feature contents to you
Bluesky Firehose - https://firesky.tv/ - republishes every new post/reply from the Bluesky firehose in real-time
Castling Club - https://castling.club/ - chess game built on top of ActivityPub

🔎 You can find Chris in the fediverse at @atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org

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

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

💰 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

Making Better Networks for Humans, with Erin Kissane and Darius Kazemi

Flipboard Dot Social — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 18:09:16 GMT

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

How Decentralization Benefits Publishers, with 404 Media’s Jason Koebler and ProPublica’s Ben Werdmuller

Flipboard Dot Social — Wed, 16 Oct 2024 18:06:24 GMT

It’s tough being a media outlet these days. Audiences are fractured, referrals from search engines are dropping, and publishers are at the mercy of algorithms they don’t control.

Savvy journalists at forward-thinking newsrooms are not letting this happen to them. Instead, they’re doing the work that arguably has been most critical all along: building direct connections with their audiences. It’s common to do this through email lists and subscription models, but the open social web offers a new, more equitable ecosystem for quality journalism to thrive.

Two people on the frontlines of this movement are Jason Koebler, a journalist and co-founder at 404 Media, and Ben Werdmuller, the senior director of technology at ProPublica. In this episode of Dot Social, the two talk about their fediverse experiences so far and why they’re hopeful for publishing in the future.

Highlights of this conversation:

1:40 404 Media’s one year anniversary and learnings
2:29 Addressing online media’s biggest challenge
4:30 Fracturing of social media, of audiences and challenge for publishers
6:01 Ben and his trajectory in media
7:34 How 404 Media and other journalistic organizations can solve problems around discovery
11:15 Premium feeds and the radicalness of “listen to this wherever you get your podcasts”
14:35 The cons of email and the promise of ActivityPub
16:20 Core selling points of decentralized social media
19:17 Seeing it all come together
20:25 Will Threads become the whale in this pond?
25:13 “Federate or die”
29:05 Benefits of owning your own platform and audience
34:36 The time is now; getting feedback to developers
36:24 Picking Ghost (over Substack)
37:54 Flipboard and the movement toward innovation in the fediverse
39:49 The threat of AI-generated content and how it plays algorithmically
42:45 For You feeds and the “black box” model of surfacing content
44:19 Top wishlist items for the web
48:47 Desire for a better advertising ecosystem

Mentioned in this episode:

“What We Learned in Our First Year of 404 Media”
“Wherever you get your podcasts” is a radical statement
John O’Nolan’s Dot Social episode
Threads announcement from 8/28
“Protocol Wars - The Fediverse Explained!”(WVFRM podcast)

🔎 You can find Ben at https://werd.io/ and @ben@werd.social. You can find Jason @jasonkoebler@mastodon.social and 404 Media at @404media@flipboard.com

✚ 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

How the Open Social Web Will Change Everything, with Bluesky’s Jay Graber

Flipboard Dot Social — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 18:47:20 GMT

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 says, like in the innovative early days of the internet.

Highlights of this conversation:

00:48 Bluesky’s origin story
02:04 Twitter under Elon
04:17 The case for decentralization
05:58 The case for Bluesky
08:33 Mike McCue’s Bluesky a-ha moment
09:55 What Jay’s excited about re: developer activity
11:21 The “wacky experimentation” happening on Bluesky
12:27 Building social experiences in Web 2.0 and why Bluesky needs to exist now
14:38 The social internet and how it’ll evolve; ActivityPub
15:57 Capturing social primitives in a way that’s composable and extensible for new ways of doing social
16:11 Philosophy of user data (and other kinds of data)
16:55 The identity system of AT Protocol, DIDs (decentralized identifiers)
18:15 Example #1: comments on Bluesky feeding into blog comments
19:08 Example #2: Bluesky username as domain name
20:29 Benefit for creators
21:33 How identity system could shake out over time
22:56 "Like Linktree built on an open protocol"
24:21 Bridging from AT Protocol to ActivityPub
25:23 Bridgy.fed and interoperability
27:35 DID standard and how decentralized networks should come together
30:56 Building identity protocols, DID methods
34:05 Importance of open social graphs (“our relationships shouldn’t be owned by one company")
36:28 Phone number portability analogy
38:16 Store passport analogy
38:40 Bring identity to the forefront, independent of the protocol
43:29 Bluesky principle: “Make social more like the Web”
44:20 Bluesky’s roadmap and what’s next
46:22 Custom feeds: build your own, building communities
48:12 One of Mike’s favorite feeds, Quiet Posters
48:30 "Cozy mode"
49:33 Building a foundation developers can trust, building resilience
50:55 Bluesky’s exciting cultural moments
54:10 Showing the world what’s possible

🔎 You can find Jay at @jay.bsky.team

✚ You can connect with Mike McCue at @mmccue.bsky.social and at @mike@flipboard.social

The Fediverse’s Trust and Safety Warriors, with Samantha Lai and Jaz-Michael King

Flipboard Dot Social — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 15:38:18 GMT

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:

01:00 Insights from a moderation event involving neo Nazis
06:05 Average stint of moderators in the fediverse right now
08:00 Shortcomings of Fediblock
11:03 Communities sharing threat intelligence
12:10 IFTAS Connect
14:22 Building up trust and safety against risks on federated services
17:30 IFTAS’s role, resources and tooling; shared list approach
23:33 A fascinating insight into decentralized governance
24:50 Decentralized moderation rules and policies, and added complexities
30:12 Local angle on moderation
31:51 Scaling moderation with LLMs, AI-based tools
37:23 Massive gap with tooling in the fediverse
38:00 IFTAS’s three main goals
40:17 Opinions on Bluesky’s composable moderation
42:42 Concerns during a major election year
48:33 Bluesky’s custom feeds
49:50 “Big Social” algorithms in contrast to fediverse
53:40 “Team Fediverse” and collective collaboration

Mentioned 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/171
Bluesky composable moderation https://bsky.social/about/blog/4-13-2023-moderation

🔎 You can find Samantha at @samlai.bsky.social and Jaz at @jaz@mastodon.iftas.org

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

This Publishing Platform Sees the Future, with Ghost’s John O’Nolan

Flipboard Dot Social — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 21:08:05 GMT

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.

1:03 Federating over ActivityPub — why?
3:55 Platformer’s switch to Ghost
4:40 Talking to creators about ActivityPub
6:37 Discovery mechanisms on Ghost and ActivityPub effect
8:44 Google search algorithm leak
9:31 Creator concern about discovery and ActivityPub establishing human connection
10:52 ActivityPub is about a two-way connection; being a part of a network, not just pushing to a network
12:03 Product problem he thinks about the most
18:23 Account model behind the scenes
20:00 Flipboard as a gateway to read ActvityPub
22:17 No longer one algorithm fits all
23:43 Organic thinking about discovery mechanisms; ActivityPub browser?
24:53 Dismantling old gatekeepers and boundary pushing
29:55 Parallels to early internet work, Netscape era
34:30 “No one has won this space”
35:29 The case for “as few monopolies as possible”
38:51 The most under-appreciated thing right now: the scale of fediverse
42:40 Companies will need to specialize
44:05 What is unique to Ghost, independent of ActivityPub
45:08 “To have journalism with integrity, you have to have technology with integrity”
46:55 Ghost as a nonprofit, “true independence”
48:40 Enabling payment model; business model
51:51 “1000 true fans” can be sustainable; be on a topic that people care about
52:51 Federating the subscription button
55:11 Optimizing to algorithms; getting to diversity of algorithms
59:59 Micropayments
1:02:00 Bundling models
1:03:00 “The fit is perfect for what we want to do”

Mentioned in this episode:
https://kagi.com/ - paid search engine

🔎 You can find John at https://john.onolan.org/

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

Entering a New Phase of the Web, with Citation Needed’s Molly White

Flipboard Dot Social — Thu, 16 May 2024 15:41:01 GMT

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:

1:35 Why Molly is optimistic about the future of the web
4:11 What Molly is optimistic about
7:30 Importance of “social” as it relates to the web
11:12 “Everyone is a blogger”
14:45 POSSE — Post on Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere
18:41 ActivityPub
20:01 Wishlist for a better web
22:57 New framework for identity on the web
25:18 Digital ownership
26:20 Digital sovereignty
29:11 Ghost vs Substack
31:15 Enabling creators to build relationships that transcend platforms
33:55 Business models and public funding
39:20 Wikipedia model
41:48 Exciting projects on the horizon for creators; imperativeness of being user friendly
44:20 A formative time of innovation

🔎 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 @molly0xfff@hachyderm.io.

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

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

💰 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

Building Bridges to the Fediverse, with Ryan Barrett

Flipboard Dot Social — Tue, 30 Apr 2024 15:54:39 GMT

The beauty of an open system is that anyone can build on top of it and try to make it a better place. In the fediverse, software engineer Ryan Barrett is one such developer.

Ryan’s been building social network bridges and related tools for over 12 years, including Bridgy, which connects personal websites and blogs to centralized social networks, and Bridgy Fed, which connects them to the fediverse. He’s also a co-founder of Google AppEngine, which informed Google Cloud’s infrastructure, and has held engineering leadership roles at Google, Color and NCX.

Most recently, Ryan’s work to connect Bluesky, which uses the AT protocol, to Mastodon and other platforms using the ActivityPub protocol ignited a firestorm. Ryan wanted to advance the fediverse’s promise of interoperability but he inadvertently stirred up culture clashes between platforms and fervent discussions around consent, maintaining safety, fears of commercialism, and what being an open standard really means.

Highlights of this conversation include:

1:28 Ryan’s approach to bridging disparate social networks
6:30 Why he built Bridgy Fed; 2-way RSS “a breakthrough idea”
8:11 Reactions when he announced bridge to Bluesky
10:07 Ryan’s takeaways and debrief from the outcry
17:30 Managing expectations: instances, defaults, attack vectors
22:03 Reactions on Bluesky
23:30 Culture differences within the fediverse
25:29 What’s next with Bridgy Fed
30:05 Discoverable opt-in and exploration of different approaches
33:10 Thinking at a macro level: protecting ourselves while enabling global growth
43:17 What is motivating Ryan personally
45:43 How Flipboard is thinking about federation
58:52 Good things that came out of the backlash

🔎 You can follow Ryan at snarfed.org. He’s also on Mastodon at @snarfed.org@snarfed.org and on Bluesky at @snarfed.org

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

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

💰 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

Threads Has Entered the Fediverse, with Meta’s Rachel Lambert and Peter Cottle

Flipboard Dot Social — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 15:47:35 GMT

On March 21, Meta’s Threads entered the fediverse. This means that people on other ActivityPub-powered platforms, like Mastodon, can follow federated Threads profiles and see, like, reply to, and repost posts from the fediverse. (Eventually, you’ll be able to follow other fediverse accounts from Threads, too.) It’s still early days, but Threads’ entry shows the ecosystem coming together at a larger scale, starting with the promise of interoperability.

Threads’ presence in the fediverse has been the elephant in the room since it was announced in July 2023. Now that it’s actually happening, there is as much skepticism as excitement. Why is Threads doing this? How is the team working with the community? How are they thinking about moderation, monetization and privacy in these early days and going forward?

In this episode of Dot Social, Flipboard CEO Mike McCue talks to two key leaders tasked with building the Threads experience: Rachel Lambert, Director of Product Management, and Peter Cottle, Software Engineer. Both are long-time Meta employees with a genuine care for open-source software and communities, as well as trust and safety. In fact, Rachel launched the Oversight Board, which helps Meta be accountable for trust and safety decisions across its social apps.

Highlights of this conversation include:

1:21 Reasons why is Meta entering the fediverse with Threads
3:30 How foundational is the fediverse for Threads (vs being more like a feature)?
5:25 Were AT protocol or other protocols ever in consideration, or was ActivityPub always the protocol you knew you’d use?
6:35 Benefits of larger companies adopting new technologies
8:07 More choice and voting with your feet, plus product development upside
9:06 Reactions from users, creators, the fediverse
12:15 Who’s federated that they’re excited about
13:27 The next steps in Threads’ federation
15:55 Addressing concerns about Meta in the fediverse
19:45 Could the concept of federation apply to other areas of Meta?
20:34 Privacy settings: Threads veers public
21:09 Addressing concerns around moderation and inviting in toxicity
25:57 Empowering instance admins; leveraging Meta toolkit for moderation?
27:49 Moderation at the protocol level, refined tools, expectation setting
30:00 Concerns over surveillance economy emerging in the fediverse; concerns over privacy and data
33:24 Evangelizing federation: Patreon, paid access models for creators?
35:55 Spirit of collaboration and community-building

🔎 You can follow Rachel at @rklambo@threads.net and Peter at @pcottle@threads.net

✚ You can follow Mike on Mastodon at @mike@flipboard.social and @mike@flipboard.com, and on Threads at @mmccue@threads.net

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

Moving the Fediverse Forward at FediForum and Beyond, with Johannes Ernst of Dazzle Labs

Flipboard Dot Social — Fri, 15 Mar 2024 17:45:54 GMT

For stewards of the fediverse (they sound like superheroes, right?), FediForum is a key date on the calendar. The third edition of the “unconference” is happening March 19-20, 2024. With Threads saying it will federate later this year, FediForum comes at a time of growing curiosity and promises juicy topics and demos.

What are the issues that are top of mind for the developers and leaders in this movement? What needs to happen for the fediverse to cross the chasm from early adopters to the mainstream? What are the opportunities for entrepreneurs, and how should they think about business models in the fediverse?

Johannes Ernst, one of FediForum’s founders and an entrepreneur himself as the CEO of Dazzle Labs, discusses these questions and more with Flipboard CEO Mike McCue in this episode of Dot Social. Johannes’ projects also include FediTest, a test suite for the fediverse, and The Fediverse Developer Network.

Highlights of this conversation include:

1:30 Third FediForum: when, what to expect, who attends
3:25 Crossing the chasm and how technology markets evolve
6:12 Heterogeneous interoperability
7:45 How the fediverse enables innovation, imagining if Farmville sprouted in the fediverse
10:14 Decentralized innovation
12:21 The network is the application
12:49 What if every website was social?
15:38 Fediverse and business models
17:45 Which aspects of the Fediverse excite Johannes as an entrepreneur
19:54 Recent spam attacks and having to work together to solve
22:54 Principle of modularity and why it’s better
25:20 “The perfect storm” of things to talk through at FediForum 2024
27:04 Ryan Barrett’s bridge to Bluesky and its implications
29:55 Why having an event like FediForum is critical to collaboration
30:35 The freedom of association and non-association
32:27 Protecting communities in the fediverse and the cost of global connectivity
33:00 Criticality of expectation setting within an instance and need for more fine-grained controls
35:31 Governance questions
37:59 Everybody is welcome at FediForum
38:44 What to look out for from Johannes, FediForum and beyond

🔎 You can follow Johannes on Mastodon @J12t@social.coop. His projects are:

FediForum: https://fediforum.org
Personal home page: http://j12t.org
Fediverse developer network: https://fedidevs.org
Dazzle Labs: https://dazzlelabs.net

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

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

💰 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

Pivoting Out of the Attention Economy, with Medium's Tony Stubblebine

Flipboard Dot Social — Tue, 16 Jan 2024 13:00:50 GMT

Something happened when the internet turned into an ad-driven business. Incentives became oriented around grabbing attention over valuing substance and connection.

What’s happening now in the Fediverse gives us a chance to reverse that. To pivot out of the attention economy into something more meaningful.

Tony Stubblebine has already emphasized a focus on quality at Medium. As the publisher of Better Humans and its sister publications, Tony was one of Medium’s most successful community members. He knew the platform better than almost anyone and so when it came time to look for a CEO, he got the job in July 2022.

In January 2023, Medium set up a Mastodon instance at me.dm. Tony’s said that he believes Mastodon is “an emerging force for good in social media,” although he’s still exploring what that means for his company.

In today’s episode, Mike and Tony discuss their reasons for wanting to participate in the Fediverse, going so far as standing up their own instances for their communities. They also discuss what’s wrong with the attention economy, a framework for high-quality recommendations, and why it’s an exciting time for entrepreneurs, builders, writers and consumers.

Highlights of this conversation include:

01:00 Going from Medium user to CEO
03:40 Pivoting away from the attention economy
06:30 Why human curation is still important
08:58 Algorithmic matchmaking and human judgment
10:36 “No. 1 misconception: good content is an opinion”
12:15 Subject matter expertise should live in the community
13:42 Medium’s 3-step recommendation process
16:24 Why subscription model works best for Medium, optimizing for substance
18:10 Launching Medium’s Mastodon instance
19:18 Are we at the end of platform monopolies?
23:30 Merging of Medium and Mastodon communities?
24:17 The curation persona
25:36 “You shouldn’t have to build an audience to have a great story heard”
29:30 An exciting time for entrepreneurs and a new model for discovery
31:49 In the third business model era of the internet
32:33 People as nodes on the social web; changing dynamics and incentives
37:00 AI content on Medium
40:40 Marketplace segmentation for being pro-human
45:30 Collaboration in the Fediverse
46:15 Advice to people getting started in the Fediverse
46:57 How the internet inspired people to cheat — assisted by middlemen

💰 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

🔎 You can follow Tony on Mastodon at https://me.dm/@coachtony.

✚ 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