Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech

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...

Challenges: Trivial, Grand, and Whitehead

Introducing the Protocol Institute Challenges program

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 Government Guide to Open Protocols

Public sector teams must go beyond the in-house or off-the-shelf dichotomy to take advantage of open protocols, which offer a unique way to manage both software costs and geopolitical exposure

Introducing the Protocol Institute

Building a field and community to steward the planetary-scale process of protocolization

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.

Governing Online Speech: From 'Posts-As-Trumps' to Proportionality and Probability

Online speech governance stands at an inflexion point. Platforms are emerging from the state of emergency invoked during the pandemic and lawmakers are poised t

"The protocol world has been trying to solve the problem of how to leave, and the next step is working on how we can stay together."

It's not enough to be free. We also need to be in community

The politics of ‘platforms’

Online content providers such as YouTube are carefully positioning themselves to users, clients, advertisers and policymakers, making strategic claims for what they do and do not do, and how their place in the information landscape should be understood. One term in particular, ‘platform’, reveals the contours of this discursive work. The term has been deployed in both their populist appeals and their marketing pitches, sometimes as technical ‘platforms’, sometimes as ‘platforms’ from which to speak, sometimes as ‘platforms’ of opportunity. Whatever tensions exist in serving all of these constituencies are carefully elided. The term also fits their efforts to shape information policy, where they seek protection for facilitating user expression, yet also seek limited liability for what those users say. As these providers become the curators of public discourse, we must examine the roles they aim to play, and the terms by which they hope to be judged.

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."

AT Protocol builder manifesto - WIP, comments wanted!

working title: "Why AT Protocol Will Win: A Manifesto for Building in the Atmosphere"

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