ether+nick

If you're attending #FediForum let's have a discussion tomorrow around this open access paper: Governing Together: Toward Infrastructure for Community-Run Social Media which argues that decentralized platforms like the Fediverse focus on governing within communities, but ignore the frictions between them. From workshops with 24 Fediverse community organisers, they identify six design challenges (visibility, information collation, tiered sharing, relationship-building, customization, and adoption) and propose three principles for "inter-community governance": modularity (shared vocabulary, like governance nutrition labels) and forkability (copy and adapt others' governance structure or rules), polycentricity (overlapping trust bubbles instead of one global network, i.e. archipelagos), . Decentralisation and autonomy alone aren't enough, communities need connective tissues to interconnect them beyond just technical federation (a mycelium network if you like 😊)

If you're interested and are able to read or peruse it ahead of time that will help us have a more grounded and potentially productive discussion based on it...

@mayel

I guess 'Ensuring Polycentricity' is at the top of the value list for many of us, right?

Me wonders if 'Resilient Multi-Stakeholder' - AFAIK that's the term Daniel Holmgren used - means the same?

BTW: the 'connective tissue' metaphor seems useful to me too (although I fear the category mismatch may turn out to be fatal). AFAIK, IPFS folks use it too for their framings.

You heard it here first: Mastodon 5.0 (eta Oct-Dec 2026) will introduce major improvements to the core user experience. We're making Mastodon the most human-centred software on the .

That’s where you come in.

Discovery Week 🗓️ 11-15 May 2026

Join our Head of Design @imanijoy for a jam-packed 5 day sprint inviting stakeholders from within and beyond Mastodon to weigh in on the future of the product.

See how you can get involved and contribute: app.hi.events/events/6360/mast

@rdp @reiver we have a problem on the Fediverse; once one implementation decides on a shape it will accept for activities, everyone else has to limit what they send to that shape.

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