Beginnings

I don’t know exactly what this project is, but I can start with some stories about how I started thinking about it.

I have arrived at a half-formed research question: What does a federated model of networks (social networks primarily, but perhaps other networks as well) offer? A federated social network (or “distributed social network”) is “an Internet social networking service that is decentralized and distributed across distinct providers.” In the simplest terms, instead of sending data through servers owned by Facebook or some other company, groups can run their own social networking servers. But it’s not just a collection of “silos” (or echo chambers, or filter bubbles), because each of these smaller networks can link to one another, should they choose to do so.

In general terms, I am interested in what this kind of model offers our current situations, digital and otherwise. However, I’m interested in federated networks not just as a niche, technical solution to social networking software, one that we can implement with software like Mastodon, but also as a theory for working through our existing network infrastructure. I want to argue two things at once: we should push toward more federated networks, and we participate in a number of them already. Group texts, for instance, are something like a federated network. While the data itself is housed somewhere on a corporate server, there is at least some control over who is part of the conversation and how that conversation might invite others in (or not). This is stretching the notion of federated networks, but I’m interested in what that stretching might achieve.

My first real exposure to federated networks came through Darius Kazemi’s project, “Run your own social: How to run a small social network site for your friends.” I’ll return to Darius’ work in future posts, since it continues to shape my thinking about federated networks. Briefly, Darius is interested in giving people the theoretical and technical tools for creating their own small social networking site, one that does not rely on large corporations for infrastructure and that also does not sell off data in a Faustian bargain. Darius’ key insight, as I see it, is that setting up such a network does not really mean being a technical wiz but is instead “social first and technical second.” You have to learn how to create a community that agrees on norms and a code of conduct, which is much harder than learning the technical intricacies of social networking software like Mastodon.

Soon after reading Darius’ essay, I invited him to run a “Run your own social” workshop at the R-CADE Symposium we host each year at DiSC. The pandemic meant that R-CADE was postponed, but the project stuck with me. I used some of its insights to build a small social networking site for a class I taught this past semester (more on that in future posts as well).

I am interested in how a federated model might present a middle way between massive, corporate, standardized networks like Facebook and the smaller networks that some worry will turn into “echo chambers.” Like others, I’m suspicious of the argument that echo chambers or filter bubbles are “the problem” to be solved. Instead, I think the bigger problem isn’t that we won’t connect to others who disagree but that we currently have few options for deliberating collectively about whether and how we connect to others. The value of a federated model is that it allows a smallish group to determine how they want to connect to one another and to other networks. Instead of kneeling at the alter of connectivity, insisting that it is good to connect with everyone always, the federated model calls for a community actually think through how connectivity would happen.

This project, whatever it is, will try to figure out what a federated model looks like, what its roots are, how we are already using it already (if at all), how we might use it in the future, and more.