Decent Tech #1

Welcome

What we’re doing

learning about two different worlds of social media that aren’t controlled by billionaires
signing up for them to try them out
gathering ideas for future meetups

What we’re not doing

going deep on how they work
social media marketing strategy
looking at every single option out there

Whoops

Twitter was a company. It became “the global town square.”

Instagram is a company. It became “here’s how to find me.”

Why We Need Protocols

A protocol is just a way of doing things.
It’s not good when private interests own the abstract idea of how we do things

Writing Someone a Letter is a Protocol

Correspondence by Richard Purcell Mezzotint on medium, moderately textured, cream laid paper - a black and white print of a young woman writing a letter at a desk

We Would Be Upset If Meta Owned That

Correspondence by Richard Purcell Mezzotint on medium, moderately textured, cream laid paper - a black and white print of a young woman writing a letter at a desk but the Meta logo has been crudely photoshopped over the paper

Meet the Decentralized Future

Bluesky and Mastodon represent the two most popular approaches to Decent social media.
They’re (mostly) decentralized
They’re not controlled by one powerful individual or company.
That’s because they are based on open protocols

Today’s Two Protocols.

ATProtocol

Bluesky!

ActivityPub

Mastodon

AT Protocol

Pronounced “At Proto” not “A-T”
The ATmosphere = All the apps and sites that use ATProto

ActivityPub

Mastodon Logo

The Fediverse = All the apps and sites that use ActivityPub
“Fedi” = “Federated”

Why this is good

You can build your own alogrithm, or have a feed without one.
You can have more tools to filter content or behavior you don’t want
No ads (most places)
You’re not supporting fascism
You can (mostly) keep your account and social network even if a platform goes down or gets enshittified.
Most apps aren’t designed to make you doomscroll
You can control your own data (where it’s hosted, who sees it)

A short breakdown of the different cultures and features of each of these

The ATmosphere

Optimistic take:

“What if you could use the same social account for lots of different apps and control your own data?”

The ATmosphere

Skeptical take:

“What if we reimplemented the whole idea of the internet but with only a couple servers and no privacy?”

The ATmosphere

Newer
More polished and popular with the general population.
If you like sports or current events, you’ll get more out of Bluesky

The ATmosphere

No private data. Everyone can see your posts.
Use one login with lots of different apps
Moderation is built into the network (so small apps may use moderation from BlueSky, etc.)
Easy to move your account
Extensible – Germ, for example, can do private, encrypted messaging.
Decentralized in principle, very dependent on BlueSky the company at the moment.

The Fediverse

Optimistic take:

“What if everyone could make their own social network with their own rules and control their own data.”

The Fediverse

Skeptical take:

“What if we made a social network only nerds use.”

The Fediverse

Somewhat more established
A bit more nerdy and sometimes harder to use
Lots of community-specific servers
Very tech focused

The Fediverse

You log in to an individual server.
Some apps connect to each other. Some do not.
Easier to make your data private
You can control who sees your posts more than ATProto
The server owners moderate their own feed
Threads claims to be Fediverse compatible, but the actual experience of connecting the two is so bad it’s basically not.

What Accounts Look Like

Atmosphere Accounts

You create an account with an ATProto app (we’ll say Bluesky.)

This gives you an identity and a place to store your data.

Your account looks like this:

@handle.host

My project’s handle is

@octothorpes.bsky.social

and you can follow it at https://bsky.app/profile/octothorpes.bsky.social

Atmosphere Accounts

You can then use this account to sign into any other ATmosphere app.
Grain, for example, is basically Instagram.
Some apps can read each other’s data.
It all goes into your Personal Data Store. You can move where this lives if you want.
There’s more you can do, but that’s enough for us.

Fediverse Accounts

You create an account with a specific Fediverse Server.
You’ll see different stuff in your feed depending on that server’s rules.
You could also just create your own server.
If you have a Wordpress site, you can do with just a plugin.
But let’s just find an existing one we like.

Fediverse Accounts

mastodon.coffee is a Mastodon server that’s into coffee

If you create an account here your handle will look like

@handle@mastodon.coffee

My project’s handle is @octothorpes@hachyderm.io

You can follow my project at https://hachyderm.io/@octothorpes

Fediverse Accounts

It’s so flexible and decentralized it can be hard to figure out where do I go to use it?
There’s an official Mastodon app and default web UI, but you can use a bunch of different apps with Mastodon.
I like Phanpy as a UI/app.
That’s just a way to use Mastodon in a nicer UI.
This can get confusing.

Fediverse Accounts

App is not a very helpful concept sometimes
Mastodon looks more like Twitter, but other Fediverse services are different.
Pixelfed looks like Instagram.
It has an app you install on your phone, but it’s not just that app.
It’s like Mastodon, but it’s a separate kind of thing from Mastodon.
Like Mastodon there are different servers.
You can mostly follow Pixelfed accounts from Mastodon and vice versa.
The best way to understand the Fediverse is to explore it.

Let’s get started

We’re just gonna dive in.

You can find these slides at https://ideastore.dev/blog/decent-tech
I have a growing list of relevant resources you can follow here

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