Move Slowly and Build Bridges: Mastodon, the Fediverse, and the Struggle for Democratic Social Media

my paperback of this book has arrived!!! i am legiterally in it, in the part that talks about mutual aid on fedi and also the final chapter about threads and fedipact. highly recommend giving it a read! this is one of the best books i've ever had the pleasure of experiencing, and i'm not only saying that because i'm in it!!! lol :3

shoutout to the author @rwg for writing such an awesome thingy!!!!!

https://moveslowlybuildbridges.com

#MoveSlowlyAndBuildBridges #books#FediPact #vantaselfie

STAY WEIRD FEDI: IN DEFENSE OF THE ECCENTRIC, ECLECTIC, AND ERRATIC

by vanta rainbow black

-

"queer people joined, and furries. it comes in waves." --Gargron, 2018

-

a person's attitude towards furries is a great litmus test for their level of tolerance generally, and the presence of furries and queer people and other outcasts in a space is a major sign of a healthy social ecosystem. maybe the biggest one even. with statistics showing the vast majority of furries are queer in some capacity, it makes sense that 2000's era meme furry hate was nothing more than thinly-veiled bigotry

the fediverse is an interesting place. what happens when you accidentally sextuple-overbook the same convention center with a queer pride event and furry convention and punk show and kink festival and antifa assembly and hacker conference? you get early mastodon, essentially. the november 2022 twitter waves and meta threads' activitypub integration have diluted this vibe considerably, but the fighting spirit of the fediverse is still there. and as corpo gentrifiers (meta, etc.) continue to attempt to chip away at what makes the fediverse so wonderful, here's why it's worth saving:

-

ONE: because it's beautiful

the fediverse is the only major social media platform where trans people can freely express themselves and be visible without fear of experiencing unmoderated hate-speech. provided your instance has adequate moderation, of course. but this is the case more often than not. sure, the occassional new bigot pleroma instance pops up once in a while. but at least you can trust that something will actually be fucking done about it when you submit a report. nazis get banned and defederated. it's such a low godddamn bar to clear... and yet, by and large, the fediverse is the only major social media platform that actually manages to do this (the decent sections of it, at least). why? well, here's the big secret: BECAUSE WE DON'T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT PROFIT!!! big companies allow nazis to fester on their services because it makes them money, and here we're not beholden to such a corrupting influence. that's kinda the entire point

all the good servers have all the bad ones blocked. that's the beauty of the fediverse. they're essentially isolated from the good portion of the network. in a book i got interviewed for (Move Slowly and Build Bridges: Mastodon, the Fediverse, and the Struggle for Democratic Social Media by Robert W. Gehl) this is termed the "covenantal fediverse" due to said instances broadly following the mastodon server covenant, the most important point of which is "active moderation against racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia." the rest is just technical stuff. still important, but nowhere near as influental

-

TWO: because it's subversive

c'mon. being "normal" is boring as fuck. "is anything as strange as a normal person? is anyone as cruel as a normal person?" pushing back against the mainstream is awesome and epic and cool as fuck. not just for the sake of it of course, but because the mainstream SUCKS. compulsive heterosexuality, patriarchy, transphobia, ableism, competition instead of cooperation, sanitized advertiser-friendly language ("unalived" etc.), silence in the face of injustice, compromise, conformity, boring watered-down top 100 pop hits playing on the radio and barbeques with a biological family who harshly judges and really just outright hates you

DON'T WE FUCKING DESERVE BETTER?!?!?!?!?!?!

i think we do. let's be less like uptight milquetoast suburbanites and more like the neighbors down the street who they despise -- the punk house with a front yard full of empty beer bottles and crumpled up anarchism zines that's constantly getting noise complaints. in other words: let's have fun, and be awesome, and fuck the corpo stiffs trying to stand in our way!

you can't even say swear words on tiktok. and other corpo social media platforms don't fare much better. that's no way to live. FUCK!!!!!

-

THREE: because it's important

as fascism ever-encroaches digital spaces free from corporate tyranny will only become more important. as trans people are being actively genocided here in the U.S. and abroad, alternative social media systems are a place where we can truly express ourselves. find ourselves. become ourselves. corporations are rolling back DEI initiatives and rules against queerphobia. these corpo platforms are no place to thrive. when i joined mastodon in 2017, it was at a crucial time in my gender journey. fedi singlehandedly saved me from being some doofy techbro and turned me into the amazing cyberpunk catgirl i am today. it gave me the critical positive trans representation i so desperately needed, and gave me a likeminded community. a space to learn and grow, and try on new aspects of identity to see what fit. i credit it almost entirely with shaping me into Vanta Rainbow Black

it's a common thread on the fediverse. always has been. even today. so much so that i came up with a name for it, way back in 2017: The Fediverse Effect. people tend to join and realize they're trans due to the sheer abundance of trans people on the network. it really helps to have positive representation y'know? like actual tangible people to dispel common myths and misconceptions, who you can even talk to personally about this stuff. it was indispensible in my journey towards finding myself and molding myself into the person i was meant to be

-

in closing... fuck meta. fuck automattic. fuck flipboard. and fuck all the other corporate gentrifiers in the future who might try to encroach upon our beautiful weird digital haven in the name of turning a profit. you have nothing but my contempt

we should stay weird. unsanitized. unmarketable. for to do otherwise would be to forfeit the very soul of what makes the fediverse so special

stay weird fedi

also published on my blog: https://vanta.blog/posts/2025-8-14-stay-weird-fedi

#StayWeirdFedi #fediverse#FediPact #meta #threads #automattic #flipboard

STAY WEIRD FEDI: IN DEFENSE OF THE ECCENTRIC, ECLECTIC, AND ERRATIC

by vanta rainbow black

-

"queer people joined, and furries. it comes in waves." --Gargron, 2018

-

a person's attitude towards furries is a great litmus test for their level of tolerance generally, and the presence of furries and queer people and other outcasts in a space is a major sign of a healthy social ecosystem. maybe the biggest one even. with statistics showing the vast majority of furries are queer in some capacity, it makes sense that 2000's era meme furry hate was nothing more than thinly-veiled bigotry

the fediverse is an interesting place. what happens when you accidentally sextuple-overbook the same convention center with a queer pride event and furry convention and punk show and kink festival and antifa assembly and hacker conference? you get early mastodon, essentially. the november 2022 twitter waves and meta threads' activitypub integration have diluted this vibe considerably, but the fighting spirit of the fediverse is still there. and as corpo gentrifiers (meta, etc.) continue to attempt to chip away at what makes the fediverse so wonderful, here's why it's worth saving:

-

ONE: because it's beautiful

the fediverse is the only major social media platform where trans people can freely express themselves and be visible without fear of experiencing unmoderated hate-speech. provided your instance has adequate moderation, of course. but this is the case more often than not. sure, the occassional new bigot pleroma instance pops up once in a while. but at least you can trust that something will actually be fucking done about it when you submit a report. nazis get banned and defederated. it's such a low godddamn bar to clear... and yet, by and large, the fediverse is the only major social media platform that actually manages to do this (the decent sections of it, at least). why? well, here's the big secret: BECAUSE WE DON'T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT PROFIT!!! big companies allow nazis to fester on their services because it makes them money, and here we're not beholden to such a corrupting influence. that's kinda the entire point

all the good servers have all the bad ones blocked. that's the beauty of the fediverse. they're essentially isolated from the good portion of the network. in a book i got interviewed for (Move Slowly and Build Bridges: Mastodon, the Fediverse, and the Struggle for Democratic Social Media by Robert W. Gehl) this is termed the "covenantal fediverse" due to said instances broadly following the mastodon server covenant, the most important point of which is "active moderation against racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia." the rest is just technical stuff. still important, but nowhere near as influental

-

TWO: because it's subversive

c'mon. being "normal" is boring as fuck. "is anything as strange as a normal person? is anyone as cruel as a normal person?" pushing back against the mainstream is awesome and epic and cool as fuck. not just for the sake of it of course, but because the mainstream SUCKS. compulsive heterosexuality, patriarchy, transphobia, ableism, competition instead of cooperation, sanitized advertiser-friendly language ("unalived" etc.), silence in the face of injustice, compromise, conformity, boring watered-down top 100 pop hits playing on the radio and barbeques with a biological family who harshly judges and really just outright hates you

DON'T WE FUCKING DESERVE BETTER?!?!?!?!?!?!

i think we do. let's be less like uptight milquetoast suburbanites and more like the neighbors down the street who they despise -- the punk house with a front yard full of empty beer bottles and crumpled up anarchism zines that's constantly getting noise complaints. in other words: let's have fun, and be awesome, and fuck the corpo stiffs trying to stand in our way!

you can't even say swear words on tiktok. and other corpo social media platforms don't fare much better. that's no way to live. FUCK!!!!!

-

THREE: because it's important

as fascism ever-encroaches digital spaces free from corporate tyranny will only become more important. as trans people are being actively genocided here in the U.S. and abroad, alternative social media systems are a place where we can truly express ourselves. find ourselves. become ourselves. corporations are rolling back DEI initiatives and rules against queerphobia. these corpo platforms are no place to thrive. when i joined mastodon in 2017, it was at a crucial time in my gender journey. fedi singlehandedly saved me from being some doofy techbro and turned me into the amazing cyberpunk catgirl i am today. it gave me the critical positive trans representation i so desperately needed, and gave me a likeminded community. a space to learn and grow, and try on new aspects of identity to see what fit. i credit it almost entirely with shaping me into Vanta Rainbow Black

it's a common thread on the fediverse. always has been. even today. so much so that i came up with a name for it, way back in 2017: The Fediverse Effect. people tend to join and realize they're trans due to the sheer abundance of trans people on the network. it really helps to have positive representation y'know? like actual tangible people to dispel common myths and misconceptions, who you can even talk to personally about this stuff. it was indispensible in my journey towards finding myself and molding myself into the person i was meant to be

-

in closing... fuck meta. fuck automattic. fuck flipboard. and fuck all the other corporate gentrifiers in the future who might try to encroach upon our beautiful weird digital haven in the name of turning a profit. you have nothing but my contempt

we should stay weird. unsanitized. unmarketable. for to do otherwise would be to forfeit the very soul of what makes the fediverse so special

stay weird fedi

also published on my blog: https://vanta.blog/posts/2025-8-14-stay-weird-fedi

#StayWeirdFedi #fediverse#FediPact #meta #threads #automattic #flipboard

As you've probably seen or heard Dropsitenews has published a list (from a Meta whistleblower) of "the roughly 100,000 top websites and content delivery network addresses scraped to train Meta's proprietary AI models" -- including quite a few fedi sites. Meta denies everything of course, but they routinely lie through their teeth so who knows. In any case, whether the specific details in the report are accurate, it's certainly a threat worth thinking about.

So I'm wondering what defenses fedi admins are using today to try to defeat scrapers: robots.txt, user-agent blocking, firewall-level blocking of ip ranges, Cloudflare or Fastly AI scraper blocking, Anubis, stuff you don't want to disclose ... @deadsuperhero has some good discussion on We Distribute, and it would b e very interesting to hear what various instances are doing.

And a couple of more open-ended questions:

• Do you feel like your defenses against scraping are generally holding up pretty well?

• Are there other approaches that you think might be promising that you just haven't had the time or resources to try?

• Do you have any language in your terms of servive that attempts to prohibit training for AI?

Here's @FediPact's post with a link to the Dropsitenews report and (in the replies) a list of fedi instances and CDNs that show up on the list.

https://cyberpunk.lol/@FediPact/114999480874284493

@fediverse @fediversenews

#MastoAdmin#Meta#FediPact

In his recent FediCon talk, Evan Prodromou implicitly rationalized his collaboration with Meta by proclaiming, "you don't negotiate with friends". Maybe not, but you don't hand enemies the keys to your kingdom either, which is exactly what he has done by giving Meta seats at the table of the ActivityPub working group. And for that matter, accepting a relatively significant sum of money from those enemies to fund your foundation goes rather beyond the negotiation phase as well, does it not?

As it stands, we have a hostile element enmeshed in the development process which undergirds the entire network, all the while systematically violating every last consent boundary the fedi has defined and defended over the course of its history. This is a power imbalance so egregious and amoral that it negates the raison d'etre of the fediverse altogether. Meta must be removed from SWICG

🧵 3/3 end

#DefederateMeta#FediPact#Meta#Zuckerberg#Threads#Facebook#Instagram#SocialWebFoundation#SWICG

The development process of the protocol is poisoned by the presence of Meta. Any significant revision the organization proposes will be perceived as an aspect of the Meta incursion, suspected and resisted, whatever its actual origin. The backlash to any perceived attempt by Meta to manipulate the backbone of the fedi could lead to an existential crisis.

Under these circumstances the only way to avoid such a backlash is to refrain from advancing protocol development at all, which is also unsustainable. The way out of this is the ejection of the Meta intruders from SWICG and any other working group which has an influence on the future of ActivityPub.

🧵 2/3

#DefederateMeta#FediPact#Meta#Zuckerberg#Threads#Facebook#Instagram#SocialWebFoundation#SWICG

We already know that the Social Web Foundation and SWICG leadership will ignore the latest news of Meta's mass datacrime against the fediverse and continue enabling the parasitic Zuckerberg entity to influence the future of ActivityPub development by facilitating its presence on the W3C working group overseeing AP. This is not a sustainable arrangement.

There is absolutely no basis of trust whatsoever between the fediverse network of communities and Meta. The idea that representatives of this slimy fascist operation are insinuated into the organization shaping the next generation of the protocol underlying our network, while they simultaneously inflict nonconsenual predatory "AI" extractivism against us, is ludicrous and intolerable. This right here is the destruction of every single value the fediverse claims to stand for in one fell swoop.

🧵 1/3

#DefederateMeta#FediPact#Meta#Zuckerberg#Threads#Facebook#Instagram#SocialWebFoundation#SWICG

The Threads interpolation was a broad-day heist. They covered it with rosy blog posts, and comments meant to confuse and drain your energy. You remember two years ago, they were all under our posts putting in the work.

Why or how these major tech blogs never caught on to all this, I'll never know.

Never stop talking about it. It'll come to light.

#Fedipact#SocialWebFoundation

From: @ophiocephalic
https://kolektiva.social/@ophiocephalic/115011235861054411

The Threads interpolation was a broad-day heist. They covered it with rosy blog posts, and comments meant to confuse and drain your energy. You remember two years ago, they were all under our posts putting in the work.

Why or how these major tech blogs never caught on to all this, I'll never know.

Never stop talking about it. It'll come to light.

#Fedipact#SocialWebFoundation

From: @ophiocephalic
https://kolektiva.social/@ophiocephalic/115011235861054411

As you've probably seen or heard Dropsitenews has published a list (from a Meta whistleblower) of "the roughly 100,000 top websites and content delivery network addresses scraped to train Meta's proprietary AI models" -- including quite a few fedi sites. Meta denies everything of course, but they routinely lie through their teeth so who knows. In any case, whether the specific details in the report are accurate, it's certainly a threat worth thinking about.

So I'm wondering what defenses fedi admins are using today to try to defeat scrapers: robots.txt, user-agent blocking, firewall-level blocking of ip ranges, Cloudflare or Fastly AI scraper blocking, Anubis, stuff you don't want to disclose ... @deadsuperhero has some good discussion on We Distribute, and it would b e very interesting to hear what various instances are doing.

And a couple of more open-ended questions:

• Do you feel like your defenses against scraping are generally holding up pretty well?

• Are there other approaches that you think might be promising that you just haven't had the time or resources to try?

• Do you have any language in your terms of servive that attempts to prohibit training for AI?

Here's @FediPact's post with a link to the Dropsitenews report and (in the replies) a list of fedi instances and CDNs that show up on the list.

https://cyberpunk.lol/@FediPact/114999480874284493

@fediverse @fediversenews

#MastoAdmin#Meta#FediPact

In his recent FediCon talk, Evan Prodromou implicitly rationalized his collaboration with Meta by proclaiming, "you don't negotiate with friends". Maybe not, but you don't hand enemies the keys to your kingdom either, which is exactly what he has done by giving Meta seats at the table of the ActivityPub working group. And for that matter, accepting a relatively significant sum of money from those enemies to fund your foundation goes rather beyond the negotiation phase as well, does it not?

As it stands, we have a hostile element enmeshed in the development process which undergirds the entire network, all the while systematically violating every last consent boundary the fedi has defined and defended over the course of its history. This is a power imbalance so egregious and amoral that it negates the raison d'etre of the fediverse altogether. Meta must be removed from SWICG

🧵 3/3 end

#DefederateMeta#FediPact#Meta#Zuckerberg#Threads#Facebook#Instagram#SocialWebFoundation#SWICG

The development process of the protocol is poisoned by the presence of Meta. Any significant revision the organization proposes will be perceived as an aspect of the Meta incursion, suspected and resisted, whatever its actual origin. The backlash to any perceived attempt by Meta to manipulate the backbone of the fedi could lead to an existential crisis.

Under these circumstances the only way to avoid such a backlash is to refrain from advancing protocol development at all, which is also unsustainable. The way out of this is the ejection of the Meta intruders from SWICG and any other working group which has an influence on the future of ActivityPub.

🧵 2/3

#DefederateMeta#FediPact#Meta#Zuckerberg#Threads#Facebook#Instagram#SocialWebFoundation#SWICG

We already know that the Social Web Foundation and SWICG leadership will ignore the latest news of Meta's mass datacrime against the fediverse and continue enabling the parasitic Zuckerberg entity to influence the future of ActivityPub development by facilitating its presence on the W3C working group overseeing AP. This is not a sustainable arrangement.

There is absolutely no basis of trust whatsoever between the fediverse network of communities and Meta. The idea that representatives of this slimy fascist operation are insinuated into the organization shaping the next generation of the protocol underlying our network, while they simultaneously inflict nonconsenual predatory "AI" extractivism against us, is ludicrous and intolerable. This right here is the destruction of every single value the fediverse claims to stand for in one fell swoop.

🧵 1/3

#DefederateMeta#FediPact#Meta#Zuckerberg#Threads#Facebook#Instagram#SocialWebFoundation#SWICG

LEAKED: A New List Reveals Top Websites Meta Is Scraping of Copyrighted Content to Train Its AI (Including Many Fediverse Instances!!!)

"The tech giant is sidestepping guardrails that websites use to prevent being scraped, data show, in a move whistleblowers say is unethical and potentially illegal."

ARTICLE:https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/meta-facebook-tech-copyright-privacy-whistleblower

FULL PDF:https://www.dropsitenews.com/api/v1/file/b3555944-e204-4f5e-9a64-e44281b19a82.pdf

#FediPact #meta #threads#AI

Threads demonstrate why we couldn't trust them. chaos.social being one of the instances Zuckerbergs company scraped for LLama.

"Yes, that data can be scraped. Regardless if they can get at our messages, informed consent is important. If a bad actor gets our data without consent, it reveals that person should never have been trusted with it. We were right to not just hand it over, to federate it. " - me, Consent and the Fediverse , 2023

https://cyberpunk.lol/@FediPact/114999480874284493

#fedipact #threads#AI

Threads demonstrate why we couldn't trust them. chaos.social being one of the instances Zuckerbergs company scraped for LLama.

"Yes, that data can be scraped. Regardless if they can get at our messages, informed consent is important. If a bad actor gets our data without consent, it reveals that person should never have been trusted with it. We were right to not just hand it over, to federate it. " - me, Consent and the Fediverse , 2023

https://cyberpunk.lol/@FediPact/114999480874284493

#fedipact #threads#AI

"By supporting the fedipact we are signalling that we don't consent to interacting with a known abusive actor who revels in their power. Mark Zuckerberg revealed that to us over a decade ago. He revealed what he can do with his power again and again.

You should not trust a company he owns with anything of you. Not your posts, not your contacts, not your metadata." Me - 2023

https://www.onepict.com/consent-fediverse20230627.html

#fedipact #threads#AI