The Fediverse Isn't...
MCLD 2018 | Fri 07 Aug 2 p.m.–2:45 p.m.
Presented by
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Anthony Zone
@ozoned@btfree.social
@btfree_org
https://anthonyzone.com/
With over fifteen years of experience spanning the healthcare and finance industries, he has built a distinguished career in information technology. His seven-year tenure at Red Hat solidified his commitment to open-source solutions and collaborative development practices. Throughout his professional journey, he has consistently championed transparency, security, and user autonomy in digital infrastructure.
In recent years, he founded BT Free (Big Tech Free), a public charity dedicated to advocating for decentralized and open platforms. The organization promotes alternatives to centralized tech ecosystems, with particular focus on the fediverse and community-driven technologies. He also operates tubefree.org, providing resources and support for those seeking privacy-respecting, non-corporate online experiences.
His work reflects a belief that technology should serve individuals rather than extract value from them. Through BT Free, he continues to educate communities about the importance of open standards, data sovereignty, and sustainable digital independence. His advocacy bridges technical expertise with grassroots organizing, helping people transition away from proprietary platforms toward more equitable internet infrastructure.
Anthony Zone
@ozoned@btfree.social
@btfree_org
https://anthonyzone.com/
With over fifteen years of experience spanning the healthcare and finance industries, he has built a distinguished career in information technology. His seven-year tenure at Red Hat solidified his commitment to open-source solutions and collaborative development practices. Throughout his professional journey, he has consistently championed transparency, security, and user autonomy in digital infrastructure.
In recent years, he founded BT Free (Big Tech Free), a public charity dedicated to advocating for decentralized and open platforms. The organization promotes alternatives to centralized tech ecosystems, with particular focus on the fediverse and community-driven technologies. He also operates tubefree.org, providing resources and support for those seeking privacy-respecting, non-corporate online experiences.
His work reflects a belief that technology should serve individuals rather than extract value from them. Through BT Free, he continues to educate communities about the importance of open standards, data sovereignty, and sustainable digital independence. His advocacy bridges technical expertise with grassroots organizing, helping people transition away from proprietary platforms toward more equitable internet infrastructure.
Abstract
There is a word we use loosely, sometimes carelessly. We point to servers, apps, instances, logos—and say this is it. But what if all of that is merely the furniture, not the house? What if we're measuring by the wrong units entirely?
What if the real thing—the actual Fediverse—cannot be found in any repository, cannot be forked from GitHub, cannot be described in a protocol specification?
It's not Mastodon. Not Pixelfed. Not Lemmy. Not your instance's uptime statistics or the purity of your ActivityPub implementation. These are vessels. Vessels can break, can fork, can fade into obscurity. Yet something persists through them all.
And here's the uncomfortable part: the walled gardens haven't left yet. They never did. The infrastructure exists for them to step across, to shed their walls, to breathe freely alongside everyone else. Whether they choose to is not a question of compatibility. It's a question of courage.
We have been building monuments when we should have been tending fires. Protocols don't gather. Servers don't trust each other. Tools don't make friends. People do. Communities do.
This talk will walk through what we've mistaken the Fediverse for—and more importantly, what remains hidden beneath our assumptions. We'll discuss why platform-building is a dead end, why community-building is the only path forward, and why choosing between ActivityPub and ATProto might be the very wrong battle to fight.
You came expecting answers. You'll leave with better questions. That's the point.
There is a word we use loosely, sometimes carelessly. We point to servers, apps, instances, logos—and say this is it. But what if all of that is merely the furniture, not the house? What if we're measuring by the wrong units entirely?
What if the real thing—the actual Fediverse—cannot be found in any repository, cannot be forked from GitHub, cannot be described in a protocol specification?
It's not Mastodon. Not Pixelfed. Not Lemmy. Not your instance's uptime statistics or the purity of your ActivityPub implementation. These are vessels. Vessels can break, can fork, can fade into obscurity. Yet something persists through them all.
And here's the uncomfortable part: the walled gardens haven't left yet. They never did. The infrastructure exists for them to step across, to shed their walls, to breathe freely alongside everyone else. Whether they choose to is not a question of compatibility. It's a question of courage.
We have been building monuments when we should have been tending fires. Protocols don't gather. Servers don't trust each other. Tools don't make friends. People do. Communities do.
This talk will walk through what we've mistaken the Fediverse for—and more importantly, what remains hidden beneath our assumptions. We'll discuss why platform-building is a dead end, why community-building is the only path forward, and why choosing between ActivityPub and ATProto might be the very wrong battle to fight.
You came expecting answers. You'll leave with better questions. That's the point.