Dot Social

Dot Social

Mike McCue

Learn about the Internet’s next wave on the open social web and what it will unlock for how we connect, communicate, and innovate online. Hosted by Flipboard CEO Mike McCue.

Making Better Networks for Humans, with Erin Kissane and Darius Kazemi

Making Better Networks for Humans, with Erin Kissane and Darius Kazemi

Unlike traditional social media, the fediverse operates without a central authority. This creates a unique set of challenges and opportunities for how it’s governed. Luckily, there are thoughtful stewards who want to see decentralized social media succeed in the most human — and humane — fashion. Two of the most prominent are Erin Kissane, a writer and researcher working on new networks, and Darius Kazemi, a senior engineer at the Applied Social Media Lab at Harvard University. Earlier in 2024,

Dec 11, 2024 • 55:45

How Decentralization Benefits Publishers, with 404 Media’s Jason Koebler and ProPublica’s Ben Werdmuller

How Decentralization Benefits Publishers, with 404 Media’s Jason Koebler and ProPublica’s Ben Werdmuller

It’s tough being a media outlet these days. Audiences are fractured, referrals from search engines are dropping, and publishers are at the mercy of algorithms they don’t control.Savvy journalists at forward-thinking newsrooms are not letting this happen to them. Instead, they’re doing the work that arguably has been most critical all along: building direct connections with their audiences. It’s common to do this through email lists and subscription models, but the open social web offers a new, m

Oct 16, 2024 • 52:56

How the Open Social Web Will Change Everything, with Bluesky’s Jay Graber

How the Open Social Web Will Change Everything, with Bluesky’s Jay Graber

There’s a reason journalist and Bluesky board member Mike Masnick calls the platform “the most interesting experiment going in social media.” Originally launched as a project within Twitter in 2019, Bluesky has since become an independent company intent on making social more like the web. What does that mean, exactly, and why does it matter? Bluesky founder and CEO Jay Graber says social media is stagnating because “we're in this trap where users are locked in and developers are locked out.” It’

Oct 1, 2024 • 58:55

The Fediverse’s Trust and Safety Warriors, with Samantha Lai and Jaz-Michael King

The Fediverse’s Trust and Safety Warriors, with Samantha Lai and Jaz-Michael King

The fediverse offers an opportunity to rethink how trust and safety works in social media. In a decentralized environment, creating safe and welcoming places relies on community moderation, transparent governance, and innovation in tooling. No longer is one company making — and enforcing — its own rules. It’s a collective responsibility.Samantha Lai, senior research analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Jaz-Michael King, the executive director of IFTAS, are here to expla

Aug 1, 2024 • 55:55

The Fediverse’s Trust and Safety Warriors, with Samantha Lai and Jaz-Michael King

The Fediverse’s Trust and Safety Warriors, with Samantha Lai and Jaz-Michael King

The fediverse offers an opportunity to rethink how trust and safety works in social media. In a decentralized environment, creating safe and welcoming places relies on community moderation, transparent governance, and innovation in tooling. No longer is one company making — and enforcing — its own rules. It’s a collective responsibility.Samantha Lai, senior research analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Jaz-Michael King, the executive director of IFTAS, are here to expla

Aug 1, 2024 • 55:56

This Publishing Platform Sees the Future, with Ghost’s John O’Nolan

This Publishing Platform Sees the Future, with Ghost’s John O’Nolan

John O’Nolan, the founder and CEO of Ghost, calls himself “the inverse Peter Thiel.” That’s because he wants to build a tech company that bucks the usual narratives, with as few monopolies as possible. His open-source publishing platform is structured as a nonprofit and is integrating with the ActivityPub protocol, giving creators digital sovereignty. No longer do writers have to perform for an algorithm to succeed or get stuck inside closed systems that monetize off their backs.Does this scenar

Jun 25, 2024 • 1:06:17

Entering a New Phase of the Web, with Citation Needed’s Molly White

Entering a New Phase of the Web, with Citation Needed’s Molly White

Molly White is a leading cryptocurrency critic, but get to know her and you’ll see she’s anything but cynical. In fact, this researcher, writer and software engineer cares so deeply about free and open access to high-quality information that she’s been a Wikipedia editor since she was a teenager. Now Molly is the force behind the Citation Needed newsletter and the Web3IsGoingGreat site, and frequently speaks to journalists and makes media appearances. Despite tracking and writing about crypto’s

May 16, 2024 • 49:17

Building Bridges to the Fediverse, with Bridgy Fed’s Ryan Barrett

Building Bridges to the Fediverse, with Bridgy Fed’s Ryan Barrett

The beauty of an open system is that anyone can build on top of it and try to make it a better place. In the Fediverse, software engineer Ryan Barrett is one such developer.Ryan’s been building social network bridges and related tools for over 12 years, including Bridgy, which connects personal websites and blogs to centralized social networks, and Bridgy Fed, which connects them to the Fediverse. He’s also a co-founder of Google AppEngine, which informed Google Cloud’s infrastructure, and has h

Apr 30, 2024 • 1:01:43

Threads Has Entered the Fediverse, with Meta’s Rachel Lambert and Peter Cottle

Threads Has Entered the Fediverse, with Meta’s Rachel Lambert and Peter Cottle

On March 21, Meta’s Threads entered the fediverse. This means that people on other ActivityPub-powered platforms, like Mastodon, can follow federated Threads profiles and see, like, reply to, and repost posts from the fediverse. (Eventually, you’ll be able to follow other fediverse accounts from Threads, too.) It’s still early days, but Threads’ entry shows the ecosystem coming together at a larger scale, starting with the promise of interoperability. Threads’ presence in the fediverse has been

Apr 22, 2024 • 41:16

Moving the Fediverse Forward at FediForum and Beyond, with Johannes Ernst of Dazzle Labs

Moving the Fediverse Forward at FediForum and Beyond, with Johannes Ernst of Dazzle Labs

For stewards of the fediverse (they sound like superheroes, right?), FediForum is a key date on the calendar. The third edition of the “unconference” is happening soon, on March 19-20, 2024. With Threads saying it will federate later this year, FediForum comes at a time of growing curiosity and promises juicy topics and demos.What are the issues that are top of mind for the developers and leaders in this movement? What needs to happen for the fediverse to cross the chasm from early adopters to t

Mar 15, 2024 • 43:55

Pivoting Out of the Attention Economy, with Medium's Tony Stubblebine

Pivoting Out of the Attention Economy, with Medium's Tony Stubblebine

Something happened when the internet turned into an ad-driven business. Incentives became oriented around grabbing attention over valuing substance and connection. What’s happening now in the Fediverse gives us a chance to reverse that. To pivot out of the attention economy into something more meaningful. Tony Stubblebine has already emphasized a focus on quality at Medium. As the publisher of Better Humans and its sister publications, Tony was one of Medium’s most successful community members.

Jan 16, 2024 • 50:08

Moderation and Migration for a Better Social Web, with Fediverse Leader Tim Chambers

Moderation and Migration for a Better Social Web, with Fediverse Leader Tim Chambers

The Fediverse is not a monolithic place. It’s constantly evolving and being shaped by smart, passionate people who want to make sure that the open social web is better than the social media we’ve had before. One steward everyone should know is Tim Chambers, the co-founder of Dewey Digital out of the Dewey Square Group, a public affairs firm in Washington D.C. Tim is the author of the quarterly Twitter Migration report, which tracks the exodus from X and other trends unfolding as a result. He is

Jan 9, 2024 • 51:31

The State of the Federation, with Mastodon's Eugen Rochko

The State of the Federation, with Mastodon's Eugen Rochko

It’s been a momentous time for the Fediverse. New versions of Mammoth and Ivory launched. WordPress and Tumblr reaffirmed their commitment to integrating ActivityPub. And then both Threads and Flipboard rolled out their plans to federate.What does this all mean for the Fediverse? How will moderation work as the Fediverse grows in leaps and bounds? Who will be next to federate?Mastodon’s founder and CEO Eugen Rochko goes deep with Flipboard CEO Mike McCue for a sprawling conversation that looks b

Dec 20, 2023 • 1:04:22

Overcoming the ‘Extraordinary Inertia’ of the Web We've Built, with Author John Battelle

Overcoming the ‘Extraordinary Inertia’ of the Web We've Built, with Author John Battelle

The Internet as we know it is now over 30 years old, and author John Battelle says we must get over the ‘extraordinary inertia’ of the system we’ve built. He would know: As a founder of WIRED Magazine and as an entrepreneur himself, John’s been tracking and writing about the evolution of technology and its impact on society for a long time. What exactly is the difference between what he calls “the internet that we have and the one that we deserve”? Why are we now at an inflection point? Can we s

Dec 12, 2023 • 47:51

BBC's Experiment in the Fediverse, with Senior Firestarter Ian Forrester

BBC's Experiment in the Fediverse, with Senior Firestarter Ian Forrester

We’re on the precipice of a new wave of innovation in the Fediverse, and it’s important that even established organizations listen up and see what’s unfolding.One person watching closely is the BBC’s Ian Forrester. As the Senior Firestarter in the broadcaster’s R&D Lab, Ian susses out new technologies and opportunities so that the public service broadcaster can stay current and true to its values. Among those values is trust, so the chance to verify its own journalists and run a social media ser

Dec 5, 2023 • 48:15

ActivityPub and the End of Walled Gardens, with Evan Prodromou

ActivityPub and the End of Walled Gardens, with Evan Prodromou

There was a time where people couldn’t email each other unless they were using the same email client. That changed when developers came up with a protocol that made it so it didn’t matter if you were using AOL or CompuServe or Prodigy — it just worked. The same analogy explains how things work in the Fediverse, an open-source system of interconnected, interoperable social networks. The Fediverse is powered by a protocol called ActivityPub, which provides an API for creating, updating and deletin

Nov 28, 2023 • 53:09

Decentralizing Innovation, with Techdirt's Mike Masnick

Decentralizing Innovation, with Techdirt's Mike Masnick

In the 1990s, we saw an acceleration from walled gardens like America Online to the open web. This marked an era of exciting innovation and meteoric growth. But, over time, we witnessed the rise of a new set of walled gardens: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, etc.Is history about to repeat itself? Will the open social web become a mainstream alternative to the walled gardens we live in today? Will people own their online relationships, or will there always be a company that owns th

Nov 21, 2023 • 58:36

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