Through their seven theses, Aymeric Mansoux and Roel Roscam Abbing scrutinize federated networks as one of the most significant recent developments in alternative network cultures. The authors discuss how, in what they call the ‘latest episode of the never-ending saga of net and computational culture’, the emergence of federated network initiatives is challenging the established working methodologies of FLOSS (Free/Libre and Open-Source Software).
This concerns critical questions on selective online presence, precarious communities, platform independent and co-developed platform infrastructures, and environmental sustainability. For Mansoux and Roscam Abbing, this opens up new ways to accomplish crucial links between independent media and the structures of owning, building, and maintaining networks.
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The current popularity of the Fediverse can be seen to be driven by two parallel tendencies. First, an interest in engaging with specific technical choices and concerns about closed protocols and proprietary platforms. Second, a wider willingness to recover agency as users of social media infrastructures. More specifically, while corporate social media platforms have allowed many to publish content online, the biggest impact of Web 2.0 has been the apparent decoupling of matters of infrastructure from matters of social organization.
The mix of operating systems and social systems from which net culture first emerged, has been replaced by a system of limited user permissions and privileges. Those who engage with the Fediverse work to undo this decoupling. They want to contribute to network infrastructures that are more honest about their underlying ideologies. These infrastructures do not hide behind manipulative or delusional exploits of ideas like openness, universal access, or apolitical engineering.
Although today it is too early to tell whether or not the Fediverse will live up to the expectations of its inhabitants, and how it will impact FLOSS in the long run, it is already possible to map current transformations, as well as the challenges faced in this latest episode of the never-ending saga of net and computational culture. To do so, we present seven theses on the Fediverse and the becoming of FLOSS, in the hope of opening up discussions around some of their most pressing issues.