@molly0xfff is a leading cryptocurrency critic, but get to know her and you’ll see she’s anything but cynical about the future of the web. Hear why this researcher, writer and software engineer thinks so in this fascinating conversation with @mike:
Flipboard curators have seen over 100,000 boosts, likes and replies from people across the fediverse since April 11. Given this positive signal from the community, today we're federating another 100 accounts representing more than 2,500 Magazines about everything from climate to culture. Read more here:
We ran a webinar on April 18 for creators and curators who are curious about the fediverse, have a federated Flipboard account, and don't know what to do next. Here's a link to the recording, plus the TL;DR bullet points if you don't have time to watch it.
When he built a bridge to connect Bluesky to Mastodon and other ActivityPub-powered platforms, @snarfed.org@snarfed.org started a new chapter for the fediverse. The software engineer opens up to @mike about his rollercoaster ride in the latest episode of Dot Social:
Recent events have spurred some great discussion of fediverse safety and the ways that we can improve it. I'm thrilled to see the growing interest in this problem, but there's one specific angle that concerns me. Specifically, the push for allow-list federation.
First, some background information. Federation between instances is usually controlled by restricting which remote instances (identified by domain name) can send or receive messages from the local instance. In the majority of fedi servers, this is implemented with a "deny list" - a list of instance domains that should be blocked. When using a deny list, all unlisted domains can communicate by default.
This is in contrast with an "allow list", which specifies the domains that should not be blocked. When using an allow list, all unlisted domains are blocked and can not communicate. Deny-list federation is open except for specific routes, and allow-list federation is closed except for specific routes. There are other approaches, but these are by far the most common.
Now, moving on to my actual point. I've recently seen some discussion of using allow-list federation as means to improve user safety. This idea, while very well-intended, is unfortunately flawed and could easily cause more harm than it prevents.
This idea suggests that by limiting federation to known, approved domains, then it becomes easier to block sources of abuse, hate, and illegal content. This is actually quite effective, and some instances are already using allow lists to great effect. They experience minimal contact with dangerous instances, and those that slip through are easy to identify and block. It's a great strategy for specific communities. Unfortunately, however, this approach cannot scale.
Allow-list federation works well for a minority of instances, but only because the majority do not use it. This is due to the network effect. Just as a centralized social network can collapse if there are too few connections between users, a federated social network can collapse if there are too few connections between nodes (instances).
With open or deny-list federation, all nodes are connected to all others. This forms a very strong network - so strong that small and even single-user nodes are possible. The open federation ensures that there are always sufficient connections to keep the network useful.
The same is not true of allow-list federation. In this mode, the network nodes are only connected to a limited subset of others. As the percentage of allow-list nodes increases, the number of connections decreases exponentially. The resulting network is weak and unstable enough to collapse under pressure. A bigger problem, however, is not the network weakness but rather the loss of small instances.
In my experience, it's rare to see a federation allow-list with more than 1,000 entries. Fediverse index websites currently show around 25,000 active instances, which means that most allow-list instances are connected with only 4% of others. We can assume that the 4% is biased towards medium-to-large instances because of their increased visibility. After all, an instance cannot allow-list another node until they've encountered it through a mutual. Larger instances have more mutuals, and thus a greater chance to be discovered.
Over time, this creates an imbalance where larger instances benefit from a richer and broader network than smaller nodes, who have limited reach and reduced federation. Any new instance must somehow maintain a user base while faced with network isolation. This becomes a significant barrier to entry for the fediverse.
This barrier effect is bad enough, but there's another angle to consider. Fedi is large enough to have a constant churn of small instances starting up and shutting down. Currently, more instances are forming than closing, which leads to positive growth in the number of nodes - a good thing for network health. But if it was harder to start a new instance? That ratio would drop or even reverse, causing the network to shrink instead of grow. Reduced network size increases the network effect, which expands the inequality, which strengthens the barrier, which decreases the growth, which reduces the network size. A classic feedback loop.
This process would be devastating for fedi. The cycle would continue until there's no new instances at all, by which point we'd have lost the rich ecosystem of tiny communities that make fedi unique. Large instances can never provide a truly safe space, and often foster a community much like Twitter - problems included. The small, diverse instances are what make this network special. If we lose that, then we lose the fediverse.
Yesterday, we announced our federation of 400 Flipboard curators and curators, so today, we're highlighting just a few you can follow on subjects like food, leadership, basketball, and sustainable food systems.
Allen Westly, technology enthusiast, cybersecurity practitioner, and diversity advocate — @West1118
Brian Fanzo, digital futurist, podcaster and ADHD advocate — @iSocialFanz
Camille Styles, lifestyle writer passionate about plant-based cooking and design and beauty — @CamilleStyles
Christie Vanover, champion pitmaster and creator of Girls Can Grill — @GirlsCanGrill
Daniel Hakimi, style curator and men’s fashion writer — @DanHakimi
Darryl Benjamin, educator and advocate for sustainable food systems — @Kafkaturtle
Janette Speyer, professional marketer passionate about cooking, travel, fashion and connecting the Flipboard community — @JanetteSpeyer
Jennifer Petoff, travel writer and creator of Sidewalk Safari — @sidewalksafari
Jessica Bethel, Los Angeles-based photographer — @4eyedgirl
Ken Yeung, journalist and author of "The AI Economy" newsletter — @thekenyeung
Louisa Moje, pharmacist, fashionista and foodie — @foodpluswords_
Marco Secchi, visual storyteller and photographer — @msecchi
Markus Weber, sustainable agriculture and agtech — @Maakusi
Maurizo Leo, bestselling cookbook author and creator of The Perfect Loaf — @theperfectloaf
Pete Gleason, PhD, professor, psychologist and innovator — @pgleason
Phil McKinney, technologist, author and podcaster — @philmckinney
Scott Kleinberg, OG Flipboarder and proud Apple fanboy — @scottkleinberg
Scott Monty, business leader, executive coach and podcaster — @scottmonty
Tayo Oredola, food writer and creator of Low Carb Africa — @lowcarbafrica
WBB Daily — curator who specializes in women’s basketball, passionate about growing the game — @smrice
Wesley Fryer, STEM educator and media literacy advocate — @wfryer
In December, we started to federate the accounts of some Flipboard publishers and in February, we introduced Magazines to the fediverse. Now, we’re taking two important steps: federating the accounts of 400 creators and expert curators; and enabling two-way communication so that new followers and fediverse activity are visible and actionable in the Flipboard app.
To learn more about this, take a look at our blogpost:
Thanks so much to everyone who has given feedback on what we’ve done so far. We welcome your thoughts and comments as we continue on our journey to fully federate Flipboard.
Last month, Meta's Threads took its first step into the fediverse. @quillmatiq, aka @quillmatiq took that as his cue to experiment with how his Threads feed would look like on Mastodon. Here's what he discovered about organizing the chaos, different clients (hello @phanpy) and whether he'll cut the Threads cord when federation is complete.
Flipboard CEO @mike's life's work has been to make the content of the internet more easily accessible, from his time at Netscape in the 1990s to today. He talks to @scottmonty on the Timeless Leadership podcast about his early days in tech, and Flipboard's latest journey in the fediverse, helping creators move their content beyond walled gardens.
What does it mean to federate your Flipboard profile? In the simplest terms, it means that whatever you curate (aka share) on Flipboard will be "syndicated" out to the fediverse with no extra effort. @miaq tests it out and breaks it down.
I have decided, as a #selfhost with just two other people on my instance, that I'm going to limit threads.net following the example of @Jerry quoted below. I didn't know that you can “unlimit” specific accounts! This is an interesting option.
For other admins who might not be familiar, I am discovering this too for the first time:
When you ‘Limit' a domain (under Federation—>Add new domain block) and then click on that domain in the list it brings you to the screen in the first picture.
You can then see which accounts have been organically “stored" (i think of it more like being "noticed”) by the server. I’m excited that @stonekettle is there! I miss him!
There is now an (intermediate) option for setting federated repos via UI.
Based on that we are currently developing the sending of activities to distribute stars to the federated repos.
We also noticed that there are some things to consider, regarding activity sending. Feel invited to share your thoughts on this. 🙂
Servers in the fediverse have a responsibility to make decisions they believe are right for their users, like moderation—and naturally, some folks might disagree with those decisions.
But that’s a huge advantage of the fediverse: you can choose or move to a server that you trust, that you agree with, etc. and still interact with the rest of the fediverse; you can even bring your followers with e.g. if you switch between Mastodon servers!
As a reminder, choosing whether or not you want to see/interact with posts from a specific server is also something you’re empowered to do as a user. On Mastodon, for example, you can block any individual account or even an entire server if you know you don’t want to interact with any account from there.
As a practical example, if you don’t want to engage with Facebook/Meta/Threads, it’s two taps to block threads.net—should you care to do so. 💪
Great interview with Jay Graber (CEO, #Bluesky) on Decoder with Nilay Patel (@reckless1280), where they dig into some of the major difference between Bluesky (#ATProtocol) and #Mastodon (#ActivityPub).
"As Flipboard’s head of creator community, I’m often explaining WTF the fediverse is and trying to convince creators to set up camp there. (Flipboard believes this is the future of social media.)," writes @miaq in the latest edition of our Fedi Curious newsletter. "If I’m lucky, the person is open to it, able to figure out how to get set up, and gives it a try. But more often than not, I get the digital equivalent of a blank stare and a groan — not another social platform?!" Here's her post about why creators should pay attention to what's happening here, and why the fediverse is not the same as all those other platforms.