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Title: So aside from the discussion3
Category: meet the developer
slug: so-aside3
So aside from the discussion of who listens (or didn't listen) to whose
opinion it can be interesting to have a closer look at action and momentum.
Three projects caught my attention and I think could be an interesting
case for this 'next steps' discussion:
Mastodon (2016) en Conversations (2014) and Peertube (2015) *
All three are projects that during the past twelve months have somehow
reinvigorated (the work on, attention for) their underlying protocols.
Protocols that have been proclaimed dead or unsuccessful for many years.
And probably will be for more to come.
The first one, Mastodon (https://joinmastodon.org/), you may have read
about or even tried out. It is essentially a twitter clone /
alternative. Technically it is based on Ostatus, which is a protocol to
distribute
status updates across networks. Ostatus is the protocol that powered
early 'alternative 2.0 style' social networks such as Friendica and
Lorea. The latter was a product of and important site of organization
for the Spanish Indignados and 15M movements. Mastodon also supports
ActivityPub which is the likely successor of Ostatus as a protocol for
further ongoing work on so-called federated publishing. The interesting
thing is that Mastodon managed to attract a good chunk of the recent Twitter
refugees. These where mostly voices which aren't white, loud or extreme
right wing and for those reasons felt themselves increasingly out of
place on twitter. Mastodon communities managed to involve so many of
these people by focusing on developing tools for community moderation,
content warnings and the ability to block other instances in the
network. As a result (the english language) Mastodon became a site that
is predominantly populated by the queer, PoC, left and artistic, or
anyone that would otherwise be at risk of being on the receiving end of
the Gamergate-style interactions on twitter. The decentralized nature of
mastodon has created a culture of 'thematic mastodon servers (see
https://instances.social/list) that have become a large part of what
makes the network interesting and relevant to its several hundred
thausand users.