Communities are not fungible

There's a default assumption baked into how Silicon Valley builds products, and it tracks against how urban planners redesign neighbourhoods: that communities are interchangeable, and if you "lose" one, you can manufacture a replacement; that the value of a group of people who share space and history can be captured

Why Community Matters: Groups as the Next Step for the Fediverse

Federated groups in Bonfire will be spaces where communities gather to organise, care, and coordinate across the fediverse. They'll live next to your personal feed, but each group having a specific purpose: a study circle, a lab team, an activist collective, a local mutual aid crew, a project team. Inside you’ll find posts, conversations, calendars, shared resources, and more. Crucially, groups will be portable and interoperable.

npmx: converging communities

The story of the many people and communities that converged to build npmx together

⁂ community, collaboration, co-existence | Are.na

for building a collective future

Call for Participation: AT Protocol Ecosystem Action Research - Ecosystem Action

A pilot program to facilitate cooperative, research-led innovation in the AT Protocol ecosystem.

Call for Participation: AT Protocol Ecosystem Action Research - Ecosystem Action

A pilot program to facilitate cooperative, research-led innovation in the AT Protocol ecosystem.

Landslide / Holdfast

Notes on what’s happening to our ability to collectively know things, and a look ahead to what this community is especially well positioned to do to support and revitalize our info ecosystems and the humans inside them.

👋 Introducing Roundabout: built for neighbors, with neighbors

New_ Public’s app for local communities enters closed beta in five pilot communities

👋 Introducing Roundabout: built for neighbors, with neighbors

New_ Public’s app for local communities enters closed beta in five pilot communities

Where Does Community Live?

ActivityPub and ATProto both promise to rebuild social life online, but they answer the question of where community actually forms in fundamentally different ways. Protocol design is institutional design, and right now those institutions are being built.

Composable Trust, Part 3: 1 Community, 3 Sovereigns, No Landlords - Eclectic Corvine Muses

An architectural model to yield members, Rosters, and Venues sovereignty over their own domains, and none over each other’s.

Composable Trust, Part 3: 1 Community, 3 Sovereigns, No Landlords - Eclectic Corvine Muses

An architectural model to yield members, Rosters, and Venues sovereignty over their own domains, and none over each other’s.

Composable Trust, Part 1: Communities Without Credible Exit - Eclectic Corvine Muses

We guarantee that users aren’t subject to platforms. Yet communities are still subject to their stewards. Can we fix this?

Root Systems: towards a decentralized internet at Dweb Camp

This July, I spent an amazing five days at DWeb Camp, a gathering at a former Stasi holdout in Germany’s Brandenburger forest, that has been repurposed by the Alte Hölle collective striving towards sustainable and equitable futures. The event, organised by the Internet Archive Dweb-community and the