Becoming part of Fediverse

This is a page with material for the social media track with XPUB1, 2025 trimester 3.

First explorations

• the terms "fediverse" and "federation" https://monoskop.org/images/c/cc/Mansoux_Aymeric_Abbing_Roel_Roscam_2020_Seven_Theses_on_the_Fediverse_and_the_Becoming_of_FLOSS.pdf (page 2+3)
• ActivityPub (AP) https://activitypub.rocks/
• other federated protocols Fediverse page on Wikipedia + https://github.com/emilebosch/awesome-fediverse#Protocols
• timelines https://monoskop.org/File:Fediposter_Jan_2020.png (Fed Up!, chronological diagram of federated social web projects, by Lídia Pereira, Artemis Gryllaki and Bohye Woo, Jan 2020.)
• the idea of "instances" https://distro.f-91w.club/fedizine/#fedi-thoughts
• moderation, just one example: https://lurk.org/TOS.txt + https://fediverse-governance.github.io/
• mastodon https://joinmastodon.org/
• the idea of a "server" and "client"
  • a "client" is sometimes also called an app: https://joinfediverse.wiki/Apps
• the idea of "a small social network" https://web.archive.org/web/20250128065617/https://runyourown.social/
• bluesky™ https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/
• threads™ https://fedipact.online/why + https://fedipact.online/ (+ https://fossacademic.tech/2023/12/16/ThoughtsThreads.html)

Mastodon flavors

• Mastodon
• Hometown
• Glitch-soc

Fediverse projects

(aka "server software", or "applications")

• https://fediverse.party/en/miscellaneous/
• https://github.com/emilebosch/awesome-fediverse#Applications

Explore an instance

• https://fedi.garden/
• https://monoskop.org/Fediverse
• https://www.comeetie.fr/galerie/mapstodon/

What do we want to run?

...

Groups

sysadmin/server

• https://things.bleu255.com/runyourown/Mastodon

Who: Kim, Kiara, Eleni

moderation

possible things to explore:

• #Fediblock https://subscriptions.boricua.style/fediblock-a-tiny-history-2/
• content warnings
• local timelines
• ...
• the Collective guidelines page on this wiki
• ...

Who: Sevgi, Chrissy, Fred, Tessa,

customization

possible things to explore:

• custom emoji sets
• avatar
• home page
• ...

Who: Chrissy, Tessa, Charlie, Kiara, Feline,

culture(s)

possible things to explore:

• scraping netiquette
• mapping projects
• timelines
• instance specific culture
• fediverse project specific culture
• ...

Who: Zuhui, Martina, Wynn,

Documentation of other people running an instance

• LURK contributed a chapter about post.lurk.org
• runyourown.social, written by Darius Kazemi who maintains the Hometown fork of Mastodon

Potential deeper dives

• transforming tech with diversity friendly software (2017) https://medium.com/a-change-is-coming/transforming-tech-with-diversity-friendly-software-338f56d91df
• how the fediverse impacts/will impact FLOSS https://monoskop.org/images/c/cc/Mansoux_Aymeric_Abbing_Roel_Roscam_2020_Seven_Theses_on_the_Fediverse_and_the_Becoming_of_FLOSS.pdf (2020)
• why a group of (mostly queer?) mastodon devs decided to work on Forktogether (later renamed to Florance) in response to the developing culture of Mastodon https://cassolotl.medium.com/i-left-mastodon-yesterday-4c5796b0f548 (2018)
  • related: (detailed) fringe Mastodev stories, Kibi Go (2018) https://www.u2764.com/NFIC/2018-09-09/fringe-beginnings/ (from: https://www.u2764.com/NFIC/)
  • related: mastodon's complicated relation to queer activism (2018) https://hoodieaidakitten.dreamwidth.org/453.html

More links

• https://fedi.garden/
• https://fediverse.party/
• https://www.socialmediaalternatives.org/bib.html

Sessions

Session 1

Notes from our first collective explorations: Fediverse/2025/session_1