Federating the Social Web

Author

Affiliation

Carl Colglazier

Northwestern University

Abstract

Decentralized online social networks (DOSNs) represent a new way of organizing online communities and present both challenges and opportunities. The decentralized design of spaces like the Fediverse provide more indepdence, but this increased autonomy comes at the expense of collective action problems which must be solved in new ways. This work considers how the collective actions problems are addressed in practice and designs potential new ways to solve them.

1 Introduction

The World Wide Web has reshaped our communication landscape with pervasive economic and cultural effects (Litan and Rivlin 2001; Crandall, Lehr, and Litan 2007; Najarzadeh, Rahimzadeh, and Reed 2014; DiMaggio et al. 2001). The Internet, which forms the technological underpinning for the Web, solved the problem of connecting disparate networks, computers, and operators around the world by creating a flexible system based around interoperability: protocols like TCP/IP and HTTP allowed enough standardization for meaningful communication while allowing individual systems to still experiment and retain control over their data, access, and code. One key to its success is that the largely decentralized nature of the TCP/IP protocol allowed new nodes to join the network with limited friction (Campbell-Kelly and Garcia-Swartz 2013, 28).

This approach has facilitated a strong network of person-to-person communication, developing various systems to facilitate communication between their stakeholders. Early Internet developers used email to coordinate their efforts (Leiner et al. 2009, 24, 25). Later, early online communities developed on Bulletin Board Systems, USENET, and discussion forums (Rafaeli 1984; Hauben and Hauben 1997). The blogosphere of the 2000s became a significant media power in its own right and many alumni from this era successfully transitioned into roles in traditional mass media, which itself adopted many of the norms and practices from the bloggers (Drezner and Farrell 2008). Further, the rise of social networking sites brought online communication to a larger audience (see Figure 1.1) and marked a shift in the organization of communities from being around topics to being around people (boyd and Ellison 2007, 219).

The history of the design and use of these systems each reflect the needs and values of the people who built and use them. Early email, for instance, was closed off to academics and government employees who quite literally met in person to plan the early email programs (Partridge 2008). As operators could easily be mapped to their real name and identities, there was less need for security and privacy protections when the protocols were first developed.

Figure 1.1: Reported use of a selection of major social media platforms by adults in the U.S. over time according the surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center (PRC). Note that in 2021 and before, PRC administered the survey over the phone, while after 2021 they administered the survey online and via mail.

Online communities have not come without problems; connecting so much together creates a number of benefits, but it also comes with challenges. Significant resources are spent by the companies who run them to try to keep them free from spam, harassment, and illegal content (Gillespie 2018). Differences in international law and norms can make this a challenge and norms can vary by culture and location (Kaye 2019). The largest platforms have becoming increasingly closed off and less transparent to researchers (Freelon 2018). Concerns persist over the dominant economic model for the commercialized Web, which relies heavily on advertising and attention (Davenport and Beck 2001).

While the commercial Web has received significant media and lawmaker focus, it does not represent the totality of Web. Much of the early online communities were run by hobbyists and non-profit organizations (Driscoll 2022). Projects like IndieWeb have sought to create a more decentralized Web, where people own their own data and can interact with others on their own terms (Jamieson, Yamashita, and McEwen 2022). Today’s Fediverse is an extension of the original spirit of the Web: powered by the ActivityPub standard, the Fediverse is a collection of interoperable and interconnected websites that retain their independence and autonomy. With millions of active accounts, the Fediverse has established itself as a viable alternative to the commercial Web.

While significant work has gone into technical interoperability on the Fediverse (e.g. how do we pass messages between servers?), work on social interoperability is still emerging (e.g. how do we determine which servers we want to get messages from?). Fediverse servers must handle many of the challenges faced by the commercial Web in addition to some of the new challenges imposed by their decentralized design. This prospectus outlines a research agenda to understand how the Fediverse handles these challenges.

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