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

Why We Need Protocols

• Writing Someone a Letter is a Protocol

Why We Need Protocols

• We Would Be Upset If Meta Owned That

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

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

Why this is good

• You’re not supporting fascism
• No algo or build your own
• Control your data and who sees it
• No ads (most places)
• Not designed to make you doomscroll

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?”

Reasons to go ATmosphere

• Easier to sign up and get started
• More polished and popular with the general population.
• Use one login for everything – tweets, blogs, bookmarks, and more!
• If you like sports, celebrities, or current events, you’ll get more out of Bluesky
• You can host your own data.
• Easy to move your account
• Privacy is not your #1 concern

The ATmosphere things to know

• You can use one login with lots of different apps
• Content moderation is built in (so small apps may use moderation from BlueSky, etc.)
• No private data. Everyone can see your posts.
• 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.”

Reasons to go Fediverse

• You can host your own everything – make a friends-only social network.
• Lots of niche communities have their own server
• More options for privacy
• You want to connect with more nerds
• The protocol is older and more established

The Fediverse things to know

• You log in to an individual server.
• Some apps connect to each other. Some do not.
• Servers can be private
• Truly decentralized & open source
• A bit more nerdy and sometimes harder to use
• You can control who sees your posts more than ATProto
• 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

Image by April Reisssmann

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
• OR you can use your own website as a handle
• My project’s handle is @octothorp.es
• You can follow it at https://bsky.app/profile/octothorp.es

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

• social.coop is a Mastodon server for people interested in co-ops and collectives.
• They have registration form and a well-documented set of values
• If you create an account here your handle will look like @handle@social.coop
• 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, it’s more than 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

How it all works

Image by April Reisssmann