Dot Social – Details, episodes & analysis

Social networks were built on short posts designed for speed and scale. But what if the next era of the web was built for something deeper?

Two of the social web’s “longformers” are working on this. John O’Nolan, the founder and CEO of Ghost, and Matthias Pfefferle, the developer behind the ActivityPub plugin for WordPress, are at the forefront of integrating social features with blogs, newsletters, essays — anything that doesn’t fit in a box of 500 characters or less. 

In this episode of Dot Social, the trio talks about rediscovering the magic of the blogosphere; why formatting, identity, and interoperability are tricky problems to solve; and where writing belongs in the next chapter of the internet.

Highlights include:

• Importance to writers and bloggers
• Models for discovery 
• Core principles around bringing long-form to the social web
• Lessons from Web 2.0, email
• Rough edges and need for collaboration

Mentioned or related to this episode:

• Julian Lam of Node BB
• “Digital Sovereignty Is the New Influencer Status, with Citation Needed's Molly White”
• “Steps Forward in Long-form Text”

🔎 You can find John at  https://john.onolan.org/ and Matthias at https://pfefferle.dev/

✚ You can connect with Mike McCue at @mmccue.bsky.social.

🌊 Catch the wave! Surf the social web and create your own custom feeds at surf.social, a new beta from the people at Flipboard. https://about.surf.social/

Thanks to the rise of the open social web, it’s more viable than ever for creators to take back ownership and control of the distribution of their work, their connection to their audiences, and their livelihoods overall. Real alternatives to walled-garden platforms aren’t just theoretical ideas — they’re here, and getting stronger every day.

No one knows this better than Molly White, the researcher, writer and software engineer behind the Citation Needed newsletter and the project Web3 Is Going Just Great. Molly’s not only an outspoken advocate for an open, ethical web, she’s also cracked the code on being a successful, autonomous creator herself. During this conversation with Flipboard CEO Mike McCue, recorded live at SXSW 2025 on March 9, 2025, White explains her setup, philosophy, and learnings, and takes smart questions from the audience at the end.

Highlights include discussions of:

• Importance of owning your online identity
• Strategies for digital ownership
• Moving content freely without platform constraints
• Monetization and sustainable models
• Video content, e-commerce, surveillance capitalism 

Mentioned in this episode:

• Ghost
• Cory Doctorow’s talk, “Tensions in Creative Labor & Generative AI”

🔎 You can find Molly at mollywhite.net.
✚ You can connect with Mike McCue at @mike@flipboard.social and @mmccue.bsky.social.
🌊 Catch the wave! Surf the social web and create your own custom feeds at surf.social, a new beta from the people at Flipboard: https://about.surf.social/

The fediverse offers an opportunity to rethink how trust and safety works in social media. In a decentralized environment, creating safe and welcoming places relies on community moderation, transparent governance, and innovation in tooling. No longer is one company making — and enforcing — its own rules. It’s a collective responsibility.

Samantha Lai, senior research analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Jaz-Michael King, the executive director of IFTAS, are here to explain how. Samantha co-authored a seminal paper, “Securing Federated Platforms: Collective Risks and Responses,” along with Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth. Jaz runs IFTAS, which offers trust and safety support for volunteer content moderators, community managers, admins and more. The two often collaborate and bring perspectives from the policy and operational sides. 

Highlights of this conversation:

• Moderation approaches in the fediverse
• Role of IFTAS
• Is moderation better in the fediverse?
• Collective intel and resources
• Scaling with AI tools and tooling overall

Mentioned in this episode:

• IFTAS Connect - https://connect.iftas.org/
• Samantha and Yoel Roth’s paper for Journal of Online Trust and Safety - https://www.tsjournal.org/index.php/jots/article/view/171
• Bluesky composable moderation https://bsky.social/about/blog/4-13-2023-moderation

🔎 You can find Samantha at @samlai.bsky.social and Jaz at @jaz@mastodon.iftas.org 

✚ You can connect with Mike McCue on Mastodon at @mike@flipboard.social or via his Flipboard federated account, where you can see what he’s curating on Flipboard in the fediverse, at @mike@flipboard.com

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

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. 

Highlights of this conversation:

• Why John believes in ActivityPub
• Ghost’s ActivityPub integration
• Parallels with the early internet
• Being at a grassroots stage
• Decentralizing human connection
• Impact of catering to algorithms
• Micropayments and other models

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

✚ You can connect with Mike McCue on Mastodon at @mike@flipboard.social or via his Flipboard federated account, where you can see what he’s curating on Flipboard in the fediverse, at @mike@flipboard.com

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

Molly White is a leading cryptocurrency critic, but get to know her and you’ll see she’s anything but cynical. In fact, this researcher, writer and software engineer cares so deeply about free and open access to high-quality information that she’s been a Wikipedia editor since she was a teenager. 

Now Molly is the force behind the Citation Needed newsletter and the Web3IsGoingGreat site, and frequently speaks to journalists and makes media appearances. Despite tracking and writing about crypto’s shames, she is actually hopeful about how the internet is evolving in ways that are more open, collaborative, and in the user’s control. 

In this interview, Molly shares her thoughts on how the social web is transforming our lives, why everyone should be a blogger, and how the concept of digital ownership is changing before our eyes. She also explains the POSSE model — Publish [on your] Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere — which has the potential to revolutionize how we share digital content and think about our online identities. 

Highlights of this conversation include:

• Why Molly is optimistic about the future of the web
• “Everyone is a blogger”
• POSSE — Post on Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere
• New framework for identity on the web
• Digital ownership and sovereignty
• Enabling creators to build relationships that transcend platforms
• Business models and public funding

🔎  You can find everything Molly’s posting via the POSSE implementation on her website at https://www.mollywhite.net/feed. She’s also on Mastodon at @molly0xfff@hachyderm.io.

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

💰 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

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

The beauty of an open system is that anyone can build on top of it and try to make it a better place. In the Fediverse, software engineer Ryan Barrett is one such developer.

Ryan’s been building social network bridges and related tools for over 12 years, including Bridgy, which connects personal websites and blogs to centralized social networks, and Bridgy Fed, which connects them to the Fediverse. He’s also a co-founder of Google AppEngine, which informed Google Cloud’s infrastructure, and has held engineering leadership roles at Google, Color and NCX. 

Most recently, Ryan’s work to connect Bluesky, which uses the AT protocol, to Mastodon and other platforms using the ActivityPub protocol ignited a firestorm. Ryan wanted to advance the Fediverse’s promise of interoperability but he inadvertently stirred up culture clashes between platforms and fervent discussions around consent, maintaining safety, fears of commercialism, and what being an open standard really means.

Highlights of this conversation include:

• why Ryan strives to bridge disparate social networks
• the Bridgy Fed rollout — and fallout
• positive reactions and community feedback
• reaction on Bluesky and culture differences between platforms
• what motivates Ryan and keeps him going

🔎 You can follow Ryan  at /snarfed.org. He’s also on Mastodon at @snarfed.org@snarfed.org and on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/snarfed.org

✚ 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/@mike@flipboard.com

💰 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

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

On March 21, Meta’s Threads entered the fediverse. This means that people on other ActivityPub-powered platforms, like Mastodon, can follow federated Threads profiles and see, like, reply to, and repost posts from the fediverse. (Eventually, you’ll be able to follow other fediverse accounts from Threads, too.) It’s still early days, but Threads’ entry shows the ecosystem coming together at a larger scale, starting with the promise of interoperability. 

Threads’ presence in the fediverse has been the elephant in the room since it was announced in July 2023. Now that it’s actually happening, there is as much skepticism as excitement. Why is Threads doing this? How is the team working with the community? How are they thinking about moderation, monetization and privacy in these early days and going forward?

In this episode of Dot Social, Flipboard CEO Mike McCue talks to two key leaders tasked with building the Threads experience: Rachel Lambert, Director of Product Management, and Peter Cottle, Software Engineer. Both are long-time Meta employees with a genuine care for open-source software and communities, as well as trust and safety. In fact, Rachel launched the Oversight Board, which helps Meta be accountable for trust and safety decisions across its social apps. 

Highlights of this conversation:

• Meta’s motivations
• How foundational is the fediverse for Threads (vs. it being a “feature”)
• Deciding to use ActivityPub instead of another protocol
• Threads’ roadmap and next step
• Addressing community concerns around seriousness of investment, moderation, monetization and more
• Future of interoperability within Meta

🔎 You can follow Rachel at @rklambo@threads.net and Peter at @pcottle@threads.net

✚ You can follow Mike on Mastodon at @mike@flipboard.social and @mike@flipboard.com, and on Threads at @mmccue@threads.net

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

For stewards of the fediverse (they sound like superheroes, right?), FediForum is a key date on the calendar. The third edition of the “unconference” is happening soon, on March 19-20, 2024. With Threads saying it will federate later this year, FediForum comes at a time of growing curiosity and promises juicy topics and demos.

What are the issues that are top of mind for the developers and leaders in this movement? What needs to happen for the fediverse to cross the chasm from early adopters to the mainstream? What are the opportunities for entrepreneurs, and how should they think about business models in the Fediverse?

Johannes Ernst, one of FediForum’s founders and an entrepreneur himself as the CEO of Dazzle Labs, discusses these questions and more in this episode of Dot Social, a podcast hosted by Flipboard CEO Mike McCue. Johannes’ projects also include FediTest, a test suite for the fediverse, and The Fediverse Developer Network.

Highlights of this conversation include:

• FediForum top-of-mind topics
• what it will take to bring people to the fediverse
• the business model for the open social web
• importance of strong use cases
• ways to solve spam attacks
• governance questions and ideas

🔎 You can follow Johannes on Mastodon @J12t@social.coop and his projects:
* FediForum: https://fediforum.org
* Personal home page: http://j12t.org
* Fediverse developer network: https://fedidevs.org
* Dazzle Labs: https://dazzlelabs.net

💰 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 connect with Mike McCue on Mastodon at @mike@flipboard.social, or via his Flipboard federated account, where you can see what he’s curating on Flipboard in the fediverse, at @mike@flipboard.com.

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

Something happened when the internet turned into an ad-driven business. Incentives became oriented around grabbing attention over valuing substance and connection. 

What’s happening now in the Fediverse gives us a chance to reverse that. To pivot out of the attention economy into something more meaningful. 

Tony Stubblebine has already emphasized a focus on quality at Medium. As the publisher of Better Humans and its sister publications, Tony was one of Medium’s most successful community members. He knew the platform better than almost anyone and so when it came time to look for a CEO, he got the job in July 2022. 

In January 2023, Medium set up a Mastodon instance at me.dm. Tony’s said that he believes Mastodon is “an emerging force for good in social media,” although he’s still exploring what that means for his company. 

In today’s episode, Mike and Tony discuss their reasons for wanting to participate in the Fediverse, going so far as standing up their own instances for their communities. They also discuss what’s wrong with the attention economy, a framework for high-quality recommendations, and why it’s an exciting time for entrepreneurs, builders, writers and consumers.

Highlights of this conversation include:

• under the hood on Medium’s algorithm

• why human curation is a true service

• optimizing for substance

• the third business model era of the internet 

• how to get started in the Fediverse

💰 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 Tony on Mastodon at https://me.dm/@coachtony. 

✚ 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/@mike@flipboard.com

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

The Fediverse is not a monolithic place. It’s constantly evolving and being shaped by smart, passionate people who want to make sure that the open social web is better than the social media we’ve had before. 

One steward everyone should know is Tim Chambers, the co-founder of Dewey Digital out of the Dewey Square Group, a public affairs firm in Washington D.C. Tim is the author of the quarterly Twitter Migration report, which tracks the exodus from X and other trends unfolding as a result. He is also the server admin of indieweb.social, a 1,500-strong instance on Mastodon where he learns by leading. 

Tim brings an informed perspective on many of the most important elements of life on the open social web. Highlights from this conversation include:

• most important things to keep in mind as Fediverse grows
• moderation in the Fediverse
• toxicity and chaos on X vs Mastodon
• building community as an instance admin
• Threads and federation
• search, discovery and algorithmic models inside the Fediverse
• predictions for 2024

💰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 Tim on Mastodon at https://indieweb.social/@tchambers

✚ 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/@mike@flipboard.com

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