This online workshop is a follow-up activity to Aymeric Mansoux and Roel Roscam Abbing's Screen Walk. They will dive into one practical example of an alternative social media platform, Mastodon, an open source software for federated micro-blogging, similar to but distinct from Twitter. Mastodon is currently one of the most visible platforms that form the Fediverse. The Fediverse is a combination of the terms “federation” and “universe.” It is a common name for interoperating social platforms running on Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) on a myriad of servers across places and cultures. The main difference between the Fediverse and commercial social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and so on), is that the vast majority are community-run and highly participatory.
Participants will start from a blank Mastodon installation, discuss the client-server models it introduces, draft our terms and services, and possibly code of conduct, decide on who will be the admins, who are the moderators, what kind of content and discourse they would like to favour, and start to explore together the Fediverse.
The workshop is planned for CSNI researchers as part of their Summer School but you can register your interest sending an email to digital.programme@tpg.org.uk
Biography
Aymeric Mansoux has been messing around with computers and networks for far too long. He was a founding member of server based collective GOTO10 (FLOSS+Art, Puredyne, make art festival). Recent collaborations include: The SKOR Codex, an archive about the impossibility of archiving; What Remains, an 8-bit video game about the manipulation of public opinion and whistleblowing for the NES; and LURK, a server infrastructure for discussions around net/computational art, culture, and politics. Aymeric received his PhD from the Centre for Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths University of London for his investigation of the techno-legal forms of social organisation within free and open source based cultural practices. Aymeric currently runs the Experimental Publishing master course (XPUB) at the Piet Zwart Institute, Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam.
Roel Roscam Abbing is currently a PhD candidate at Malmö University’s department of Interaction Design. There he researches alternative social media, on-line federation and community-owned digital infrastructure. Furthermore, he works as an artist and designer with a practice engaged with network infrastructures, the politics of technology and do-it-yourself approaches.
