This week was the FediForum unconference, a virtual unconference about, well, the fediverse. Organised by Kaliya Young, Johannes Ernst and Jennifer Holmes, the goal was to get people together to have discussions on the fediverse, and show demos of projects that people have been working on. There were a ton of different sessions about a wide variety of subjects, ranging from news, trust and safety, discoverability, to growth. It’s too much to cover it all in this article, so I want to zoom in on some of the things that stood out to me.
Demos
All of the demos at FediForum were cool interesting products, and it’s worth checking out the entire list here. Flipboard demoed their integration with the fediverse, and used the opportunity to announce that their Android app also supports Mastodon, and that they’re working on full integration with ActivityPub as well. To have Flipboard themselves explain: “With this integration, you’ll see posts from your Mastodon feeds on Flipboard, and you can like, boost and reply to them from within the Flipboard app. You can also add content from Mastodon to your Flipboard Magazines, and vice versa: share content from Flipboard with your followers on Mastodon.”
It is clear that Flipboard is a supporter of the fediverse. The trajectory they are taking incidentally feels like an indicator of how other companies will also approach their integration. Start with a Mastodon integration, because that is the most well-known product, and from their, expand to a full ActivityPub support once it really settles in how powerful it is to integrate with the products beyond Mastodon.
The demos for micro.blog and Owncast are also important, they are two fully compatible and integrated products into the fediverse, that are less well known. Owncast demoed how quick and easy it is to set up your own streaming service (developer Gabe Kangas had a stream fully up and running in less than 2 minutes, starting from scratch). Micro.blog showed how they have a complete blogging platform that is suitable for both shortform blogging, or full length blog posts. In the fediverse, the overwhelming majority of attention on microblogging goes to Mastodon, so its always good to see that there are other options available.
Also interesting were the demos by developer Akira Fukushima, who showed two different desktop clients for the fediverse, Whalebird and Fedistar. Desktop clients have not gotten a whole lot of attention, so its great to see they are actually available. They are work with other software beyond Mastodon: Pleroma and MissKey.
Trust and Safety
I want to zoom in on the sessions on one specific subject: Trust and Safety, hosted by Jaz. To quote The Verge’s Nilay Patel: “The essential truth of every social network is that the product is content moderation”. The fediverse is no exception to this, in order to have a functional social network that people want to use, the network needs to provide content moderation. Content moderation is hard to do well, and the large tech companies have struggled with this over the last decade.
This is why it is so important to talk about trust and Safety on the fediverse. If we actually want to have a social network that people enjoy using, we need to have a great Trust and Safety system. The openness of the fediverse means that bad actors can and will join.
As part of the session, host Jaz presented results of a survey among moderators that represent roughly 5% of all Mastodon users. The most notable of the results is lack of professionalism. This is understandable in the context that lots of Mastodon servers are run by enthusiasts, and not by professional entities. Servers often do not provide moderating services 24/7, and provide little moderator training and guidance. There are plans to address some of these issues, that are being worked on, and will get more public announcement soon. The presentation from Darius Kazemi at Mozfest provides some early indications of what people are working on. Once more is known, the Fediverse Report will write more extensively about Trust and Safety on the fediverse.
For now, as a reflection on the sessions at the FediForum, it was one of the less popular sessions at the forum. This is in line with the current state of Trust and Safety for a significant part of the fediverse; it seems like it is not of the highest priority. Here’s to hoping that this will change in the future, as content moderation is what makes a successful social network.
Other outcomes
Other sessions had a more developer focused theme, and it’s clear from developers that there is a great demand for regular meetings to talk and discuss the fediverse. Sessions on starting a developer network, or with the Social Web Incubator Community Group, had a very high interest and turn up of people.
A first outcome of these sessions is a new developer meetup on April 10th, with Gabe Kangas (Owncast developer) being the driving force behind it. The Mobilizon event can be found here, and it is openly accessible to everyone.
One of the critiques of the FediForum was the decision to charge an 40USD entrance fee. People found that this goes against the spirit of the open web. The FediForum defended their fee as a way to prevent no-shows, saying they only want people ‘who come and participate’.
Personally, I think this was the wrong choice by the FediForum. DecentSocial showed earlier this year that enough people will show up and voluntarily donate to cover more than the costs. Any potential for exclusion is more harmful than having no-shows. Multiple people that have contributed to the fediverse felt not comfortable with this system, and thus did not participate. This hurt the impact of the conference more than the no-shows would have, I feel.
Regardless, it shows how a growing fediverse also leads to contrasting views and ideas on how to approach the building and expansion of the fediverse. These different views will sometimes create friction. There is value in a larger fediverse where there is space for different competing ideas on conferences and meetups.
Even with the extra barrier to entry, a lot of people showed up, indicating how large the demand from people is to simply just talk about the fediverse. There is a clear excitement from the participants, people actually care about the fediverse, and want it to succeed.
The developer network meetup is clear about the openness and accessibility for everyone, and is actively aiming to get representatives from each active fediverse project on board. I hope this approach will find the greatest success.