Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech

What is clear is that there is no simple solution to these challenges, and most of the ones that are normally presented tend not to deal with the reality of the problems or to understand the technical and societal challenges that likely make them impossible.

Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech

So I finally finished reading this and while I agree with the recommendation, I’m a little wary of some of the context it’s rooted in ideologically and I’m wondering if others have thoughts on these things. Equality in the marketplace I think the main problem with the text is that it relies heavily on the idea of “marketplace of ideas,” leaning heavily on the idea that protocols are actually good for markets specifically because they make competition more perfect (because there’s better knowled...

Mike Masnick on protocols for publishers

An interview with @masnick.com (of TechDirt), the author of the influential 2019 paper "Protocols, Not Platforms," reflecting on how his ideas apply to publishers in 2026.

The future for platform holders is cooperation, not just competition | Opinion

When an industry changes -- even quite radically -- it can be hard to pinpoint the moment that the shift began. There a…

Bryan Newbold: Protocol engineering

A protocol engineer at the social-media platform Bluesky describes building an open protocol around a fast-growing social media platform.

A Self-Authenticating Social Protocol - Bluesky

Bluesky’s mission is to drive the evolution from platforms to protocols. The conceptual framework we've adopted for meeting this objective is the "self-authenticating protocol."

Dangerous Protocols - Summer of Protocols

Protocols are frequently touted as the liberating alternative to walled technological gardens, but the historical purpose of protocols has always been to simplify decision-making and reduce human agency. How do we reconcile these two narratives? I explore the dangerous side of protocols, and how their ability to drive coordination means they also have

A guide to platform engineering | Google Cloud Blog

At PlatformCon 2025, we talked about “shift down” — one of the guiding principles behind Google’s approach to platform engineering.

Chad Kohalyk (@chadkoh@indieweb.social)

Web publishing is facing its next challenge: a new iteration of centralizing platforms. BUT there is also a new wave of open protocols and standards that can help us gain our independence. Next month in NYC we are gathering a group of frontier technologists and popular web publishers to discuss how we can sail into this next platform shift as captains. #ProtocolsForPublishers https://pfp.unternet.co

Platform Studies

The Platform Studies book series has been established to promote the investigation of underlying computing systems and how they enable, constrain, shape and support the creative work that is done on them. The series investigates the foundations of digital media — the computing systems, both hardware and software, that developers and users depend upon for artistic, literary, and gaming development. Books in the series will certainly vary in their approaches, but they will all also share certain features: A focus on a single platform or a closely related family of platforms; Technical rigor and in-depth investigation of how computing technologies work; An awareness of and discussion of how computing platforms exist in a context of culture and society, being developed based on cultural concepts and then contributing to culture in a variety of ways — for instance, by affecting how people perceive computing.

Willow - Protocols for an uncertain future (FOSDEM'26)

Centralised systems were designed with the best of intentions, but were turned against us anyway. And peer-to-peer systems will be exactly the same. How do we make the next generation of protocols ...