The decline of Twitter and the rise of Mastodon raise key questions for people in the tech world: how should social media and other tech be owned and governed? Who should control the data and moderate the content? Who maintains the software and minds the servers? Who pays? Who benefits?
Mastodon is superficially similar to Twitter: micro-blogging with followers and boosts. But, instead of a single centralized network owned and ruled by a for-profit corporation, Mastodon is a federated network of over 13,000 “instances” which communicate using the ActivityPub protocol (which is shared by several different types of software, including WordPress, Pixelfed, Drupal, and Friendica).
Social.coop is an instance of Mastodon that operates as a cooperative–meaning that it is owned and maintained by its users who pay a modest fee for its upkeep. Moderation, administration, and tech work are done by elected working groups, with decisions made by members on Loomio (also a cooperative). Meetings are held on Meet.Coop, a video-conferencing platform using the BigBlueButton software. Budgets, contributions, and expenses are handled transparently on OpenCollective.
Read the rest at Irish Tech News
Add new comment