The notes and accounts from the FediForum in late September suggest that some of "the people who move the fediverse forward", as the conference promotes itself as platforming, are also acutely interested in moving forward the agenda of Meta.
The forum's notes tell the tale. Though a number of topics, including many of genuine benefit, were touched upon, digging through the sessions turns up a path of breadcrumbs that leads straight back to Palo Alto.
About half of the Fediverse addresses typed by FediForum attendees into the session notes are missing the leading "@".
People typed in their very own Fediverse handles. And because they came to FediForum, it's very likely they are very well acquainted with the right syntax.
Pretty strong circumstantial evidence that most people won't be able to distinguish Fediverse handles from e-mail addresses.
I have long believed that they should be the same.
One of the sessions yesterday at the #FediForum focused on CSAM, quite a tough topic.
If you host your own instance, even if it's just YOU on that instance, you need to read this and consider taking action to protect yourself and your moderation team.
Kudos to @thisismissem and @iftas for exploring new ways to manage this without scarring moderators for life.
We would like to hear more from traditionally underrepresented and marginalized Fedizens at the next #FediForum.
We asked FediForum participants, and they most mention LGBTQIA+ and black communities, people with disabilities, as well as voices from outside the usual rich western countries whose residents tend to dominate tech-related events.
Can you help us reach out further than we can on our own? We'd appreciate introductions.
Today is the first day I thought that the #nostr#bluesky model might be a better way to build a decentralized social network. Because seemingly smart and honest people told me those protocols make using one profile for lots of different services much simpler and automatic than #ActivityPub. I still have serious questions re how they seem more likely to remain more centralized via relays and unlikely to do moderation well enough, but we haven't really solved those here yet either. #fediforum
I am expecting a large amount of money to enter the #fediverse probably starting next year. Driven by startups with #venturecapital.
Why? Because the investment opportunity of an open social network is simply too juicy to ignore. Most potential fediverse entrepreneurs may not know yet, but once #threads actually does #activitypub, it will become clear very quickly.
If you couldn't make it to FediForum, but would like to know what was discussed, these notes are for you.
And if you came to FediForum but there were too many interesting parallel sessions and you couldn't go to all that interested you, they are for you, too.
FediForum 2024 is almost here! Flipboard CEO @mike catches up with conference co-organizer and Dazzle Labs CEO @J12t to get a taste of top-of-mind topics for fediverse stewards, including how this space can cross the chasm into the mainstream. It’s a new episode of Dot Social, the first podcast about the open social web.
In the #Fediforum today, we've been talking about how to monetize Fediverse content. I have talked about a rough outline for how to do it before -- setting up a private account, enabling out-of-band payment, and approving followers based on payment.
As a proof of concept, I've set up a premium account on my personal server. @evanplus is a subscription only private account (separate from my friends-and-family account) where I will post content I think is worth paying for.
At #FediForum, @n00q discussed a Federated music service for #BandCamp refugees. After a few days of drawing up requirements and specs, and a couple days of code, something interesting is taking shape.
Here's a too-fast-tour of a hypothetical album page built with #Emissary. Custom skins, uploads, and transcoding music is still TBD, but so far this feels like magic.
Bands' profiles will be native citizens of the Fediverse to like, share, and comment. Excited yet?
What is and isn't acceptable for businesses to do in the #Fediverse?
Lots of opinions, many strongly held. The fact of the matter, of course, is that businesses are connecting to the Fediverse, from news organizations to Meta and everything in between.
Would be useful to come up with a set of acceptable things to do for businesses and unacceptable ones. Or maybe a scale.
I want to run a #FediForum session on this next week, and brainstorm with you all.
Whew! Already at 2400 words written about Fediverse Moderation Tooling, and the potential future directions we can take. This is quite the undertaking!
Yes, most of my time over the past few weeks has been spent writing literature and proposals on moderation tooling, which honestly is an under-appreciated task essentially to improving the fediverse.
I'll also be doing up some slides with a summary of my thoughts for @fediforum.
Takeaways from today’s #FediForum thoughts, although my brain is filled with all kinds of tangents right now:
Onboarding new devs sucks. There’s way too many assumptions of what developers are supposed to know before they write a single line of code. There’s cultural hostility towards things people barely take the time to learn about or understand. There’s not really much of a welcoming committee for new devs. Sash’s experience definitely came up here.
I'm no longer #camping in the wilds of Hampshire; but, I'm still on vacation for a few more days. I'm unfortunately missing #Fediforum tomorrow and Thursday, but hoping to catch up on discussions later. Thanks for your patience.
So, it seems that watching me type is incredibly boring. So, even though I could live-code a custom Fediverse app in the first 10-15 minutes of a #FediForum session, it's probably better to just show it working.
It's only ~100 lines of JSON config, and less than than in HTML templates. You all won't mind if we skip my typos and get to the good stuff, will you?
Looking forward to Day 2 of the online unconference tomorrow, my speed demo, and hopefully some good follow up discussions after.
I'm observing the community has some work to do to promote the consistent use of Fediverse user handles.
I'm going through the registrations for #FediForum, and note that attendees use all sorts of variations on their handles, including @user, user@server, https://server/@user and @user (???)
I would guess that attendees at FediForum tend to be more knowledgeable about the Fediverse than the average user, so it seems safe to say that the world is confused about fediverse handles.