Evan Prodromou
boosted
the potential of AP to provide #DemocracyOfReach for even journalists like @mondoweiss is so important.
I made it to London for #ProtocolsForPublishers . If you're here too, let me know.
the potential of AP to provide #DemocracyOfReach for even journalists like @mondoweiss is so important.
Most won't care about social media decentralization until they think of social media as more than entertainment. AOL and the early web didn't really matter until it became seen as essential. As infrastructure.
That's going to be harder to do with social media but I think the argument is that it's the way out of rich people controlling our attention. A problem ever since mass media existed, but more acute with greater media concentration and corporate social media algorithms.
This is absolutely awesome! The @leavex campaign now has their website up an running, so we can see exactly which members of the EU parliament still support Musk's disinformation platform X, and avoid voting for them.
I hope @leavex expands to add every national parliament — the disinformation has to end.
Se their excellent overview here:
https://leavex.eu/politicians/
Please boost this to support the campaign.
I support it but misinfo and hate are an inherent part of the internet. Of the ability for anyone to have a website.
The problem with corporate platforms (and mass media) is their ability to control attention. To decide lots of people should see the misinfo. Ultimately it means money can be turned into influence via ads, algos and owners deciding what gets aired.
Decentralized social media lets us decide together what gets attention. Trust the people. #DemocracyOfReach
🫧 socialcoding..
and 1 other
boosted
The vision of #ActivityPub AFAIK is that social media servers would be as ubiquitous as websites and email servers and just as independent. That's not the goal of #bluesky relays or any other social media model I'm aware of.
Am I wrong to think that matters in regards to free speech and #DemocracyOfReach? Is it somehow unworkable? Or are there other goals that people think matter more? What am I missing? #SocialWeb
The vision of #ActivityPub AFAIK is that social media servers would be as ubiquitous as websites and email servers and just as independent. That's not the goal of #bluesky relays or any other social media model I'm aware of.
Am I wrong to think that matters in regards to free speech and #DemocracyOfReach? Is it somehow unworkable? Or are there other goals that people think matter more? What am I missing? #SocialWeb
hamish campbell
boosted
A new narrative is coming...
It will be the argument of the establishment, that we need to return to a few trusted sources. That all decentralized #SocialMedia should be thought of as #AlgoMedia, where the business model pushes the worst stuff to go viral. That basically the fedi, podcasts and blog/newsletters should not exist. They are not properly vetted.
While they are right about big tech, they are wrong about us. Trust the people. Fuck their money. #DemocracyOfReach
@dansup brings up an important point. I don't know of a lot of Fediverse developers who have received grants from the Canadian government. I built pumpio.org almost entirely with SR&D credits for StatusNet. That's the best example I can think of.
Given how many of us there are here, and how important the Fediverse is to our digital sovereignty, shouldn't there be more funding available?
I have a big civic vision of what we're doing here ( #DemocracyOfReach) but otherwise...
I don't think there's wide agreement on what problems we are solving. people don't see social media as essential and so why does it need to be decentralized? who cares about more entertainment options, we have plenty. and the establishment would rather a few people control the information/opinion flow anyway. and can't we just text or email each other? that's basically decentralized already.
A new narrative is coming...
It will be the argument of the establishment, that we need to return to a few trusted sources. That all decentralized #SocialMedia should be thought of as #AlgoMedia, where the business model pushes the worst stuff to go viral. That basically the fedi, podcasts and blog/newsletters should not exist. They are not properly vetted.
While they are right about big tech, they are wrong about us. Trust the people. Fuck their money. #DemocracyOfReach
Roland
boosted
I call it #DemocracyOfReach.
imo "social networking" is more about private groups, friends and family ala FB.
but decentralized "social media" promises the public that we can regain control over our collective attention. that via boosts, we can decide together what info, ideas and art goes viral. not corporate media, big tech or advertisers (including politicians spending donor cash). it's revolutionary.
it's not microblogging but our social news feed. build AP into everything.
Social media is important. It’s not pointless gossip or just a waste of time. It’s the news and information distribution system of our world.
We can build things like the wikipedia, like the fedi OR we can keep pretending it’s all just a side game, unserious and not worth the effort of making it good. We can say “it’s just how I relax” as these powerful people plan out our reeducation to better serve the consolidation and concentration of their power.
Am I an alarmist? I am alarmed.
I call it #DemocracyOfReach.
imo "social networking" is more about private groups, friends and family ala FB.
but decentralized "social media" promises the public that we can regain control over our collective attention. that via boosts, we can decide together what info, ideas and art goes viral. not corporate media, big tech or advertisers (including politicians spending donor cash). it's revolutionary.
it's not microblogging but our social news feed. build AP into everything.
Most of the money that gets donated to political campaigns, gets spent on advertising. Getting people off media distribution systems with ads and instead funding the work directly, would do so much to fix our political process.
It's a huge part of why I want the #SocialWeb and #WebMonetization to win.
so don't we have to propose visions and see which ones make the most sense, are most popular, are compatible?
what's special about social media is the boost. virality. not community or the public square. making it decentralized without algos or ads puts the people fully in control. collectively we can determine what info, ideas and art gets the most attention. I think that's the revolution @rabble talks about. I call it #DemocracyOfReach.
which protocol makes that most likely?
I'm sure other people have noted this but at some point we went from talking about "social network sites" to talking about "social media sites".
At first, the network was the thing that mattered. Then, the media was the thing that mattered.
A quick Google Trends query shows the shift might have happened around 2012:
and I'm glad. public to the world. like a blog. decentralized social media is about the people deciding what gets attention. boosts. that's really important. it's a fix for owners of big media and advertisers dominating culture. imo we should embrace this. #DemocracyOfReach
social networking is humans connecting. important but not necessarily visible to a third party. it could also be a text or phone call.
to me, social media is OG twitter while a social network is more FB.
We have to bulld a new healthier open social web. The current closed, commercialized siloes are indeed a cancer.
GOV. COX:
"Social media has played a direct role in every single assassination and assassination attempt that we have seen over the last 5, 6 years. There is no question... Cancer probably isn't a strong enough word. What we have done especially to our kids, it took us decade to realize how evil these algorithms are."
https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meet-press-september-14-2025-n1312719
@span tchambers
"conflict entrepreneurs"
I'm not sure if this refers to the people running the services or show hosts, but I like it.
I just worry that people won't separate decentralized social media from closed services with algos and ads. imo much of the cable news business model is just a lesser version of the combo of the divisive commentators and the big tech algos that drive people to them for profit.
the #SocialWeb is a way to break free from all of that. #DemocracyOfReach
Activist, Technologist, and Author @pluralistic took time to talk to me about the future of social media, protocols, resisting enshitification, bluesky, the fediverse, and the world we're trying to build together.
@rabble @pluralistic
exits are great but AFAICT the AT structure will mean that most governments and journalists will never have direct access to the public in the same way that they can (and I think will) by running their own AP server. as regards why decentralization matters imo (#DemocracyOfReach), I think this is essential.
We started with a network of writers, and ended up with business models of oligarchs. https://oursocialweb.org
@davew
but doesn't the web imply certain protocols like HTTP? what's special about social media is the boost that enables extreme virality. when decentralized, it allows the public to rival/surpass mass media as determiners of what gets attention. that's essential to restore democracy in an age of big money media and advertising.
Substack has changed the world of journalism, making it easy for journalists to directly charge for a newsletter. Now they're growing in to a whole platform with algorithms, video, podcasts, microblogging... I sat down with their CEO Chris Best to talk about it just as they announce they've raised a $100 million in funding, and also their algorithm sent out an antisemitic push notification with a swastika icon.
@rabble
when you give others control over attention, it will be abused. as much as people might want a corporate algo or prefer ads as a funding source or enjoy a certain closed platform, it will be bad for democracy.
we have a huge opportunity with fedi to do better. so much of our political dysfunction comes down to using mass media where money buys attention. we just have to focus on the mission, spread the ideas and build technology to enable it. #DemocracyOfReach