How the Fediverse Could Save Democracy

& Why it Probably Won't

Barry S. Stahl

Solution Architect & Developer

@bsstahl@cognitiveinheritance.com

https://CognitiveInheritance.com

Favorite Physicists

1. Harold "Hal" Stahl
2. Carl Sagan
3. Richard Feynman
4. Marie Curie
5. Nikola Tesla
6. Albert Einstein
7. Neil deGrasse Tyson
8. Niels Bohr
9. Galileo Galilei
10. Michael Faraday

Other notables: Stephen Hawking, Edwin Hubble, Leonard Susskind, Christiaan Huygens

Favorite Mathematicians

1. Ada Lovelace
2. Alan Turing
3. Tim Berners-Lee
4. Isaac Newton
5. Emmy Noether
6. Johannes Kepler
7. René Descartes
8. George Boole
9. Carl Friedrich Gauss
10. Grace Hopper

Other notables: Blaise Pascal, Daphne Koller, Grady Booch, Evelyn Berezin, Pascal Van Hentenryck

• Group of Social apps

  • Communicate using the open ActivityPub protocol

• No centralized control

  • Many decentralized servers

• No corporate control

  • Not at the whim of a "tech-bro"

  • Can't be sold

• "Easy" to change instances

  • Your graph and your content are yours to move

[Actor] did [Activity] to [Entity]

• W3C Standards

  • ActivityStreams: Objects and vocabulary
  • ActivityPub: API surface and behaviors

• Communication terms

  • Actors
  • Entities
  • Activities

• Examples

  • Ada sold her Rivian R1T pickup truck to Niels
  • René bought 200 shares of MU stock
  • Nikola updated the timeline of project LUMEN with an integration milestone

• Micro-blogging: Mastodon
  • also WriteFreely, Misskey, Pleroma & GoToSocial
• Photoblogging: PixelFed
• Social Network: Friendica
• Link Aggregation: Lemmy
• Video Sharing: PeerTube
• Video Streaming: Owncast
• Audio Sharing: Funkwhale
• Badges: CommunityCredentials
• Other Projects
  • Hubzilla, Kbin, Mobilizon

• Most "thought-leaders" have a presence
  • Some cross-post, others have migrated completely
  • A tipping-point is coming
• Tech-heavy at the moment
  • Other domains are hit-or-miss
• Sanctuary for underserved communities
  • Moderation policies vary by instance
• Requires some up-front decisions
  • More barriers to entry than corp solutions

• No algorithm

  • No incentive to the extremes

  • No advantage to being evil

• Not corporate controlled

  • No universal policies

  • If your instance changes for the worse-move

  • Lawsuits: still an attack vector

• Less governmental control

  • There will always be an instance...

  • Support direct action

  • Governmental blocks: still a risk

• Inertia
  • Change is a last-resort
  • Discovery is hard
• Open-Source is often a hobby
  • Features may deploy slowly
  • Distribution makes changes harder
  • Moderation is time-consuming
• Active subversion by corps
  • Migration away is intentionally hard
  • Predatory activities
  • Bait & Switch
  • Divide & Conquer
  • Adversarial interop

• Help build-up the platforms
  • Sign up for Mastodon
  • Use it even if it seems limited now
  • Cross-Post if you must
• Encourage Migrations
  • Govt comms must not be corp-controlled
  • Support media joining the Fediverse
  • Push your favorite communities to migrate
• Contribute
  • Submit Code
  • Review Code
  • Documentation
  • External Tools
  • Content Moderation