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)
Fediverse projects
(aka "server software", or "applications")
- https://fediverse.party/en/miscellaneous/
- https://github.com/emilebosch/awesome-fediverse#Applications
Explore an instance
Mastodon flavors
What do we want to run?
...
Groups
sysadmin/server
moderation
- #Fediblock https://subscriptions.boricua.style/fediblock-a-tiny-history-2/
- content warnings
- local timelines
- ...
customization
- custom emoji sets
- avatar
- home page
- ...
culture(s)
- scraping netiquette
- mapping projects
- timelines
- instance specific culture
- fediverse project specific culture
- ...
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