Third Spaces in the Fediverse: FediCon thoughts Part II

The day after FediCon, Vancouver waterfront was overtaken by hundreds of cosplayers at Anirevo - the Anime Revolution convention. Power Rangers, One Piece pirates and classic Japanese anime characters, with photographers and props in tow. Turning a patch of the city into what Johanna B called, in her FediCon presentation, a Third Space. A concrete, urban convention centre transformed into an imaginative mix of film set, playground and gathering.

The vibrant cosplayers in Vancouver echoed the warm energy of FediCon. A diverse crowd of non-techies and techies optimistically discussed future pathways for the Fediverse. Reminding us that communities - in Vancouver and on the social web - are not nodes.* Communities are colourful, messy, fluid/concrete gatherings, mixing flyers, FOSS and Frequency; hardware, humour and hugs; jokes, jamming sessions and jubilation. It was a stimulating weekend. I may not have dressed like an anime cartoon pirate, but I left feeling like one.

The biggest, most piratical thought at FediCon was presented by Johannes Ernst:

Stop battling oligarch-owned big-tech walled gardens in their own space, where they have all the power. Move away, to open, unexplored territories, creating social connections for millions of unconnected websites and apps, and social spaces for billions of people outside mainstream social media. 

Third Space patches and paths, boosted up into the millions and billions. Here are three pathways to sustainable, grounded growth which stood out at FediCon, and two we’re working on at Newsmast.

Campaigning for the Commons

In Vancouver, Crissy, one of the Fedicon organisers, is inviting people to Fedicollective sessions in a coffee shop: Brew and Build. In Montreal, Paige is doing the same in pubs: Activity in the Pub. Throughout British Colombia, Chris is talking to councillors, persuading them to join the Fediverse. Canadian outreach work echoed by Janet in LA, with Tech Reclaimers, Tommi in Italy, promoting the Fediverse in libraries, and Liz at Media Revolution in the UK, aiming to mass onboard people to alternative forms of media on 5th November, Guy Fawkes Day. The experimentation is wonderful, and as Chrissy says:

“I believe those Third spaces are a key to warmly welcoming younger adults and BIPOC folx into Fedi.”

The issue for local initiatives is scale. Campaigns like Save Social in Europe show the potential to reach hundreds of thousands of people. What’s more, at FediCon I realised that this local, grassroots outreach work is on a continuum with Bounce, from A New Social, enabling Bluesky users to jump ship to the Fediverse, and Evan Prodromou’s efforts to plumb in platforms like Tumblr, YouTube and LinkedIn to ActivityPub. The issue at this global level is making meaningful connections that offer welcoming, comfortable paths to Third Spaces, not just an ActivityPub switch a la Threads Fediverse Sharing. 

From local to protocol to global, Fediverse pioneers are extending invitations and providing pathways for people to change. To reach Johannes’ billions (or even millions), we need to find ways to share experiments, work out what works, and multiply this across the world.

Growing Communities

Canada has a lively, diverse, caring range of Fediverse communities. There were two inspiring presentations about starting and growing small, local servers, from socialbc.ca and cosocial.ca. Over coffee and lunch I heard more. The Canadian Fediverse group is already looking to come together in a forum to share news, knowledge and contacts.

These are communities built around purpose, not product, as Johanna B put it. Spaces where people can “slow down, and be kind, not move fast and break things.” The challenge here again is to work out how to grow, and multiply these communities. That was the original power of Facebook. One allotment group in a small city spread to groups for every allotment group in the country (multiplied out to over 10 million Facebook groups worldwide).

Each community doesn’t need to get big, noisy and hard to moderate. We just need many, many more of them. Millions of local street, garden and allotment parties and gatherings, not one big, toxic, global town square.

Rewarding Creators

The week after FediCon, Ghost 6.0 shipped, with full federation, a simple, streamlined marketing message - ‘Ghost publications are now connected with an open network…Distribution is now built in’ - and big numbers for creator revenue creators on the platform: over $100 million.

On a smaller scale, Ben Pate and Charles Reiver showcased two early tech solutions to make payments to creators: Bandwagon and CrowdBucks. Ghost is leading the way here. Bringing the BBC or the FT to the Fediverse turned out to be a dead end. The action is elsewhere. Journalists are becoming paid content creators with their own user base.

The next step is to roll out this model to many other types of content creators - musicians, artists, video creators - and make the social distribution and engagement work.

Creators can become conversation starters and community builders, growing the social web around them.

Curating Content and Onboarding Organisations

These are two pathways we’re working on at Newsmast (more to follow in Part III). Community based content can deepen engagement, making spaces stickier. And campaigns, communities and creator spaces all connect to organisations - charities, large non-profits and campaign groups, local businesses, local publishers, large content creators - giving the opportunity to snowball growth.

What VOX is doing with SB Nation and its 300+ sports communities shows the potential, and the challenges. In a release just out, short-form posts are now fully integrated with news articles under The Feed, but for the moment it’s a closed system, with embedded posts from X prominent. The next step, according to VOX insiders, is to connect to ATProto, with ActivityPub trailing due to the lack of sports content.

The more the Fediverse can be baked into systems already in use, as with the Wordpress plugin and Ghost 6.0, the easier it will be to make connections without platform or protocol battles. 

One Piece, Two Lessons, Third Spaces

Mashing up Johannes and Johanna B, the big question of life, the Fediverse and everything, is how pioneering patches and pathways can combine distance and difference from walled gardens with comfortable scalability. Growth with a grassroots vibe. Not easy! Going back to anime pirates, the first cheesy lesson is that we can’t each do it alone. The second cheesy lesson is that we all have different strengths.

We need our own Third Spaces, supporting Fediverse spaces and space makers, where we can come together, share and multiply our work. FediCon was a great beginning.

Notes

*see Part I