Flipboard Dot Social

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 scenario seem too good to be true? As you’ll hear in this conversation with Flipboard CEO Mike McCue, John doesn’t think so. There’s still a lot to be figured out, but both entrepreneurs are here for whatever this next phase of the internet brings.

1:03 Federating over ActivityPub — why? 3:55 Platformer’s switch to Ghost 4:40 Talking to creators about ActivityPub 6:37 Discovery mechanisms on Ghost and ActivityPub effect 8:44 Google search algorithm leak 9:31 Creator concern about discovery and ActivityPub establishing human connection 10:52 ActivityPub is about a two-way connection; being a part of a network, not just pushing to a network 12:03 Product problem he thinks about the most 18:23 Account model behind the scenes 20:00 Flipboard as a gateway to read ActvityPub 22:17 No longer one algorithm fits all 23:43 Organic thinking about discovery mechanisms; ActivityPub browser? 24:53 Dismantling old gatekeepers and boundary pushing 29:55 Parallels to early internet work, Netscape era 34:30 “No one has won this space” 35:29 The case for “as few monopolies as possible” 38:51 The most under-appreciated thing right now: the scale of fediverse 42:40 Companies will need to specialize 44:05 What is unique to Ghost, independent of ActivityPub 45:08 “To have journalism with integrity, you have to have technology with integrity” 46:55 Ghost as a nonprofit, “true independence” 48:40 Enabling payment model; business model 51:51 “1000 true fans” can be sustainable; be on a topic that people care about 52:51 Federating the subscription button 55:11 Optimizing to algorithms; getting to diversity of algorithms 59:59 Micropayments 1:02:00 Bundling models 1:03:00 “The fit is perfect for what we want to do”

Mentioned in this episode: https://kagi.com/ - paid search engine

🔎 You can find John at https://john.onolan.org/

✚ You can connect with Mike McCue on Mastodon at @[email protected] or via his Flipboard federated account, where you can see what he’s curating on Flipboard in the fediverse, at @[email protected]

💡 To learn more about what Flipboard's doing in the fediverse, sign up here: http://about.flipboard.com/a-new-wave

Hello Fediverse!

I'm excited to let you know that we have stood up our very own #PeerTube instance. This is so cool. We've posted all the videos for my Dot Social podcast. We also posted our original Flipboard launch video for fun.

You can check out our PeerTube instance here:

http://flipboard.video

You can follow the Dot Social channel on our PeerTube instance here:

@dot_social

I'm super impressed with PeerTube. It's quite a capable platform and it is fully federated via ActivityPub.

It’s been an exciting time in the world of decentralized social media. 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?

These are the questions tackled in today’s episode of Dot Social, the first podcast to explore the world of decentralized social media. Each episode, host (and Flipboard co-founder and CEO) Mike McCue talks to a leader in this movement; someone who sees the Fediverse’s tremendous potential and understands that this could be a significant shift for the internet.

This time, Mike’s talking to Eugen Rochko, the founder and CEO of Mastodon. Eugen is on a hero’s journey right now. He’s not only working tirelessly to provide a safer, more trustworthy and less commercial alternative to platforms like X, but also he’s on a mission to fundamentally shift how social media works and how we connect to each other.

This is a sprawling conversation that looks back on Mastodon’s epic year, dissects the moment we’re in today, and ponders a future filled with big changes and new ideas. More urgently, if you’re following what’s happening with Threads, it is essential listening for understanding Meta’s strategy and how the Fediverse is responding.

Highlights include:

0:51 Looking back on Mastodon’s epic year 3:22 Small team, big goals 4:55 The arrival of Threads/Meta: pro or con? 9:01 The way Mastodon/Fediverse is architected to provide a better social media experience 11:24 The “big win” of Meta adopting an open standard 12:10 The game-changing paradigm shift in how social media works 17:30 Why Meta is committing to Threads — a significant moment for the social web 18:10 Mastodon community’s reaction to Threads’ entry 19:24 Preemptively building walls to block Threads: self-defeating? 21:10 Tools and advice for instance owners on interoperating with Threads 26:09 Gaining momentum: who will federate next? 28:34 Bluesky 30:00 ActivityPub: the beauty of a generic protocol 38:24 User experiences in the Fediverse 41:06 “Embrace, extend, extinguish” and the XMPP comparison 50:28 Funding Mastodon through Patreon donations 53:10 U.S. nonprofit version of Mastodon and grant applications 54:23 On outside contributions to Mastodon’s code base 57:42 Hopes and dreams for the future

💰Mastodon is a non-profit that runs on donations from the community. You can help Mastodon succeed by supporting the organization via Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mastodon

🔎 You can follow Eugen on Mastodon at https://mastodon.social/@Gargron

✚ You can connect with Mike McCue on Mastodon at https://flipboard.social/@mike, or via his Flipboard federated account, where you can see what he’s curating on Flipboard in the Fediverse, at https://flipboard.social/@[email protected]

💡 To learn more about what Flipboard's doing in the Fediverse, sign up here: http://about.flipboard.com/a-new-wave

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, 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 deleting content across several platforms.

What does ActivityPub unlock for product builders and tech entrepreneurs? How will social networks without walled gardens change our relationship to content and to each other? Why does any of this matter?

All that’s covered in this episode of Dot Social, a podcast about the world of decentralized social media, aka the Fediverse. Each episode, host (and Flipboard co-founder and CEO) Mike McCue talks to a leader in this movement; someone who sees the Fediverse’s tremendous potential and understands that this could be the internet’s next wave. Mike is a true believer in the open social web and what it will unlock for how we connect, communicate and innovate online.

In this episode, Mike talks to Evan Prodromou, one of the co-authors of ActivityPub. Evan is a long-time entrepreneur, technologist and advocate of open source software. He’s also the Director of Open Technology at the Open Earth Foundation.