Fediverse

For federated networks, distributed web, mesh networks and federated social media

Mastodon instances

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  post.lurk.org, "an instance for discussions around cultural freedom, experimental, new media art, net and computational culture." Run by LURK; close to Varia. Wider announcement. OC.

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  tldr.nettime is "an instance for artists, researchers, and activists interested in exploring the intersections of technology, culture, and politics. It has grown out of nettime-l." Announcement, [1] [2] [3]. Discussion, [4]

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  Hcommons.social is "a microblogging network supporting scholars and practitioners across the humanities and around the world." Affiliated with Humanities Commons. [5]

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  Social.coop, "a Fediverse instance for people interested in cooperative and collective projects. ... Arose out of the buytwitter.org campaign." About. Loomio. OC.

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  Mastodon.ART, "friendly home on the fediverse for all things creative, all on a platform that is community-owned and ad-free. NO CRYPTOART / NFTs ALLOWED."

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  SDF.ORG "began life as a StatusNet instance in 2010 and was converted to Mastodon in May 2017. A few of our members are artists/DJs and have shows on aNONradio.net"

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  assemblag.es, "a Mastodon instance for people interested in thinking creatively and critically about technology, in the broadest sense."

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  Mamot.fr est "un serveur Mastodon francophone, géré par La Quadrature du Net."

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  chaos.social, "a Fediverse instance for & by the Chaos community", affiliated with Chaos Computer Club.

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  Black Twitter, "Remember when you first heard about Black twitter and thought it was actually a separate website? Was that just me?"

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  digipres.club, an instance for those "involved in digital preservation - either professionally or on an amateur/volunteer basis."

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  Zirk.us, "literature, philosophy, film, music, culture, politics, history, architecture: join the circus of the arts and humanities. For readers, writers, academics or anyone wanting to follow the conversation."

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  Kolektiva, "an anti-colonial anarchist collective that offers federated social media to anarchist collectives and individuals in the fediverse. For the social movements and liberation!"

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  Framapiaf, an instance run by Framasoft, "a not-for-profit popular educational organization."

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  Scholar Social, "a microblogging platform for researchers, grad students, librarians, archivists, undergrads, academically inclined high schoolers, educators of all levels, journal editors, research assistants, professors, administrators—anyone involved in academia who is willing to engage with others respectfully."

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  tilde.zone, "a community that exists on a linux server"

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  Merveilles.town. "Revel in the marvels of the universe." OC.

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  Saturation, "a small group of people who remember when social media was more social, and less media."

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  Sunbeam City, "an anticapitalist, antifascist solarpunk instance that is run collectively." OC.

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  mastodon.social, "server run by the main developers of the project Mastodon. It is not focused on any particular niche interest."

• ... vis.social (SciArt, SciComm, data, visualization, creative coding), systerserver.town, Queer Haus (queer, sex work), glammr.us (galleries, libraries, archives, museums, memory work, records), Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR) (independent, community-rooted AI), Infosec Exchange (info/cyber security), Fosstodon (free & open source software), openbiblio.social (libraries) , friend.camp, weirder.earth, Union Place (unions, organizations), hci.social (human-computer interaction), genart.social (generative, AI, and glitch artists), SoNoMu (Sound Noise Music), Hackers.town, Game Making Social, Free Radical (infosec, privacy), Mathstodon (maths, with LaTeX rendering), oldbytes.space (retrocomputing), Historians.social , spore.social (climate justice and action; affiliated with Project Mushroom), ieji.de (focused on user privacy), ...
• Monoskop pages linked to Mastodon accounts
• Collectively owned instances
• Trunk: follow people based on topic, also available in Dutch, Spanish, French
• Listing by Artists and Hackers on Twitter
• Thematic list of Mastodon instances on Fediverse.party

Software

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  Fed Up!, chronological diagram of federated social web projects, by Lídia Pereira, Artemis Gryllaki and Bohye Woo, Jan 2020. [6] [7]

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  David Revoy, Let's leave planet GAFAM NATU BATX, May 2022. [8] [9]

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• Beaker, experimental peer-to-peer Web browser (Hypercore), *2016.
• Bookwyrm, federated platform for reading and reviewing (Activitypub), *2021. Instances
• Castopod, podcast self-hosting with Fediverse interaction.
• Conversations, open source XMPP/Jabber client for Android, *2014.
• Delta Chat, chat app that sends messages via e-mails, encrypted if possible, with Autocrypt
• Diaspora, self-hosted social networking service (diaspora), *2010.
• Distributed Press, open source publishing tool for the World Wide Web and DWeb; automates publishing and hosting content to the WWW that it seeds to Hypercore and IPFS, *2021.
• dokieli, clientside editor for decentralised article publishing, annotations and social interactions (Solid, Linked Data, ActivityPub), *2015. Paper. #semanticweb #linkeddata
• Epicyon, federated social network suitable for low power systems.
• Friendica, decentralized social network, formerly Mistpark (diaspora, OStatus, pump.io, ActivityPub), *2010.
• Funkwhale, decentralised audio platform (ActivityPub), *2019.
• Gathio, self-destructing, shareable, no-registration event pages (ActivityPub), *2019. Toot.
• Hubzilla, communication platform, formerly RedMatrix (Zot, ActivityPub, diaspora, OStatus), *2015. Review.
• Hypercore/Dat apps
• IPFS, protocol and p2p network for storing and sharing data in a distributed file system, *2015.
• Lemmy, forums and link aggregation (ActivityPub). Instances. Lemmy.ml communities. Docs.
• Mastodon, self-hosted social networking service (ActivityPub), *2016. Instances. Fork: Hometown. How to mastodon.
• Matrix apps: Element, ...
• Misskey, decentralized microblogging service (ActivityPub), *2014.
• Mobilizon, tool for finding, creating and organizing events, *2018.
• PeerTube, federated video platform powered by ActivityPub and WebTorrent, *2018. Instances: lumbung.space, Rhizome, PublicSpaces, more.
• PixelFed, image sharing platform (ActivityPub), *2018. Servers
• Pleroma, social networking software (ActivityPub), *2019.
• Scuttlebutt, decentralised secure gossip platform (gossip protocol), *2018.
• Socialhome, federated personal profile with social networking functionality (ActivityPub, diaspora), *2016.
• Solid apps
• WriteFreely, open source platform for building a writing space on the web (ActivityPub).
• YaCy, distributed search engine, *2016.

Protocols: ActivityPub (W3C recommendation, *2018), Solid (*2016), Hypercore (formerly Dat Protocol), Zot (evolved from DFRN, *2015), Matrix (*2014), Pump.io (evolved from OStatus, *2011), Diaspora (*2010), OStatus (formerly OpenMicroBlogging, *2008), XMPP (formerly Jabber, *1999).

More projects and context: Fediverse.party, Wikipedia.

Note: Matrix, Solid, IPFS, Hypercore and YaCy have a distributed architecture, but may not be part of the Fediverse in the strict sense because they are not compatible with any of its integral protocols such as ActivityPub, Zot, Diaspora, and OStatus, although a server running ActivityPub could theoretically be bridged to, for example, Matrix and vice versa. cf.

Resources, art projects

• Alternative Internet, a collection of networks, tools and devices aiming at decentralisation.
• Dat Zine Library, by Zach Manderville.
• Distributed Web of Care, an art project by Taeyoon Choi, 2018ff. [10]
• Founder Interviews, video interviews with developers of decentralization projects, by Irina Bolychevsky, 2013ff.
• Homebrewserver.club, a monthly gathering in Rotterdam for self-hosted services.
• P2P Forever, humble hub of peer to peer web resources, by Laurel Schwulst. (archived)
• Careful Networks, p2p exhibition, produced by Mateus Domingos.
• The Federation, gathers statistics about nodes in the fediverse.
• Fediverse Network, gathers statistics of ActivityPub/oStatus fediverse.

Events

Portland, OR

• Federated Social Web Summit 2010, Leftbank Projects, Portland, OR, 18 Jul 2010. Organised by W3C Federated Social Web Community Group.

• IndieWebCamp, Portland, OR, 25-26 Jun 2011. IndieWebCamp, Geoloqi, Portland, OR, 30 Jun-1 Jul 2012. IndieWebCamp, Elemental Technologies, Portland, OR, 22-23 Jun 2013. IndieWebCamp 2014, Esri R&D Center, Portland, OR, 28-29 Jun 2014. IndieWebCamp 2015, Esri R&D Center, Portland, OR, 11-12 Jul 2015. 6th IndieWeb Summit, Vadio, Portland, OR, 4-5 Jun 2016. 7th IndieWeb Summit, Mozilla, Portland, OR, 24-25 Jun 2017. 8th IndieWeb Summit, Eliot Center, Portland, OR, 26-27 Jun 2018. 9nd IndieWeb Summit, Mozilla, Portland, OR, 29-30 Jun 2019.

Berlin

• Federated Social Web Europe, Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, Berlin, 3-5 Jun 2011. Open event on Social Web interoperability, standards and privacy. Supported and co-organised by World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and by the EU FP7 PrimeLife project. The local organization was done under the label “d-cent” and by the independent institute PerGlobal.

• GETDecentralized (GETD), Agora Collective, Berlin-Neukölln, 17-19 Sep 2014. Reports: Joachim Lohkamp, Alex Corbi.

• IndieWebCamp Berlin 2016, Mozilla Berlin, 5-6 Nov 2016. IndieWebCamp Berlin 2017, Contentful GmbH, 4-5 Nov 2017. IndieWebCamp Berlin 2018, Mozilla Berlin, 3-4 Nov 2018. IndieWebCamp Berlin, Mozilla Berlin, 4-5 May 2019. IndieWebCamp Berlin2, Mozilla Berlin, 23-24 Nov 2019. IndieWebCamp Berlin, Thoughtworks, Berlin, 3-4 Sep 2022, [11].

• Peer-to-Peer Web / Berlin, series of talks, Trust, Berlin, 10 Feb 2018. Peer-to-Peer Web / Berlin, series of talks, Trust, Berlin, 5 May 2018.

• Radical Networks conference, Spektrum, Berlin, 19-21 Oct 2018. Organised by Sarah Grant and Erica Kermani. Fourth edition.

• Deplatformization and the Ethics of Exclusion, symposium session, part of transmediale festival, Volksbühne - Großes Haus, Berlin, 1 Feb 2020. VIDEO

Brighton

• IndieWebCampUK, The Skiff, Brighton, UK, 9 Sep 2012. IndieWebCampUK, Lighthouse, Brighton, 7-8 Sep 2013. IndieWebCampUK, Clearleft, Brighton, UK, 6-7 Sep 2014. IndieWebCamp Brighton 2015, 68 Middle Street, Brighton, 11-12 Jul 2015. IndieWebCamp Brighton 2016, 68 Middle Street, Brighton, 24-25 Sep 2016. IndieWebCamp Brighton 2019, 68 Middle Street, Brighton, 19-20 Oct 2019.

Bay Area

• Federated Social Web Summit 2012, Say Media, San Francisco, 26 Oct 2012. Organised by W3C Federated Social Web Community Group.

• IndieWebCampSF 2014, Embassy Network, San Francisco, 7-8 Mar 2014. IndieWebCampSF 2015, Mozilla SF, San Francisco, 3 Dec 2015. IndieWebCamp SF / Decentralized Web Hackers Day 2018, Mozilla SF, San Francisco, 31 Jul 2018. IndieWebCampSF 2019, Mozilla SF, San Francisco, 7-8 Dec 2019.

• GETDecentralized! (GET-D), The Red Victorian, 1665 Haight St, San Francisco, 31 Mar-2 Apr 2015. "An evening of conversation, celebration and community-building around new ideas in decentralization." Organised by Joachim Lohkamp. Attended by about fifty participants, incl. Brewster Kahle from the Internet Archive. VIDEO [12] [13]

• Decentralized Web Summit, Internet Archive, San Francisco, 7-9 Jun 2016. Attended by about 350 participants, incl. 80 participants in the Builders Day. Juan Benet demonstrates a fully decentralized web site; Karissa McKelvey presents a browser-based implementation of the DAT protocol. Decentralized Web Summit 2018: Global Visions / Working Code, Internet Archive, San Francisco, 31 Jul-2 Aug 2018. Attended by over 1,000 participants. Incl. the Creative Track, co-organized by Mindy Seu and Sam Hart. DWeb Camp 2019, Pescadaro, CA, 18-21 Jul 2019. Attended by 450 participants. Interview. Report. [14]. DWeb Camp 2022, Camp Navarro, California, 24-28 Aug 2022.

Los Angeles

• Indie Web Camp : Hollywood 2013, The Farmhouse, Los Angeles, 3-4 Nov 2013. IndieWebCamp LA 2016, Pivotal, Santa Monica, CA, 5-6 Nov 2016.

• Peer-to-Peer Web / Los Angeles, series of talks, Los Angeles Contemporary Archive, Los Angeles, and New York (viewing party), 10 Dec 2017. Peer-to-Peer Web / Los Angeles (Edition Two), series of talks, Folder Studio, Chinatown, Los Angeles, 28 Apr 2018.

New York

• IndieWebCamp NYC 2014, The New York Times, New York, 26-27 Apr 2014. IndieWebCamp NYC 2016, Mozilla NYC, 22-24 Jan 2016. IndieWebCamp NYC2 2016, Dalberg Global Development Advisors NYC, New York, 27-28 Aug 2016. IndieWebCamp NYC 2017, Dalberg Global Development Advisors NYC, New York, 30 Sep-1 Oct 2017. IndieWebCamp NYC 2018, Siedenberg School, Pace University, 28-29 Sep 2018. IndieWebCamp NYC 2019, Siedenberg School, Pace University, 5-6 Oct 2019.

• Radical Networks, conference, Integrated Digital Media at Magnet NYU, Brooklyn, NY, 24-25 Oct 2015. Organised by Sarah Grant, Erica Kermani, and Amelia Marzec, in partnership with Eyebeam. Radical Networks, conference, Chem Creative, Brooklyn, NY, 4-6 Nov 2016. Organised by Sarah Grant, Erica Kermani, and Amelia Marzec, in partnership with Eyebeam. Exhibition photographs. Radical Networks, conference, Chem Creative, Brooklyn, NY, 19-22 Oct 2017. Organised by Sarah Grant and Erica Kermani. Radical Networks conference, Prime Produce, New York, 18-20 Oct 2019. VIDEO

• Peer-to-Peer Web / NY, series of talks, School for Poetic Computation, New York, 26 May 2018. Presented by New Computer Working Group. [15] [16]

London

• The Alternative Internet(s) – State of the Art and the Possible Future, workshop, London School of Economics, London, 15-16 Sep 2014. Organising committee: Mélanie Dulong de Rosnay (CNRS), Francesca Musiani (Mines ParisTech), Alison Powell (LSE), Panayotis Antoniadis (ETH Zürich). The workshop was followed by a series at the LSE Media Policy blog and a special issue of the Journal of Peer Production.

• Redecentralize Conference - Taking Back the Net, unconference, ThoughtWorks, London, 17-18 Oct 2015. Organised by Ira Bolychevsky, a.o. Report. VIDEO. Redecentralize London meetup, 12 Apr 2017. Redecentralize Party, Newspeak House, London, 29 Oct 2018. Redecentralize Meetup, London, 6 Dec 2018. Review. Redecentralize Conference 2019, unconference, 4th Floor Studios, London, 25 Oct 2019. Sponsored by Dat Foundation and Matrix. VIDEO

Toronto

• State of Our Networks 2017, conference, Claude T. Bissell building, Toronto, 14 Jan 2017. Organised by Toronto Mesh. Our Networks: State of Our Networks: Beyond DIY: Do It With Others, Mozilla Community Space, Toronto, 13-18 Jul 2018. Our Networks: RE: Infrastructures of, Toronto Media Arts Centre, Toronto, 20-22 Sep 2019. Our Networks: Growing Our Networks in Uncertain Times<-->Places, online, based out of Toronto, 8-13 Sep 2020. Our Networks 2047: Redistributing the Future, online, 14-17 Nov 2022.

• Local Area Network, workshop, InterAccess, Toronto, 24-26 Aug 2018.

Rotterdam, Brussels, Antwerp, Amsterdam

• Relearn : Relearn 2017, Poortgebouw, Rotterdam, 29 Aug-2 Sep 2017. Documentation (2019). Welcome to the Federation, Varia, Rotterdam, Jun-Dec 2018. Relearn 2019, Varia, Rotterdam, 7-9 Jun 2019; Hacktiris, Brussels, 21-22 Jun 2019; La Générale, Paris, 6-8 Sep 2019.

• Reclaim the Web, Kop! (Smart/CoopCity), Brussels, 1 Dec 2018. Organised by iMAL.

• Networks with an Attitude, worksession, Antwerp, 7-13 Apr 2019. Developed by Constant in collaboration with ooooo, Varia and amongst others Samenschool, City harbour, Wireless Antwerp.

• Public Spaces, conference, Amsterdam, 17-18 May 2022. Organised by a coalition of public organizations in the Netherlands that aims to promote a healthier online environment. Mastodon. Castopod (podcasts). VIDEO

online (only)

• #SummerSchool 2020, 26 Jul-8 Aug 2020. Online, interdisciplinary conference for the Fediverse, informally hosted by the instance @scholar.social. #SummerSchool 2021, 26 Jul-6 Aug 2021. #SummerSchool 2022, 25 Jul-6 Aug 2022.

• Dat Conference 2020, online, 30-31 Jul 2020. Virtual peer to peer event about local-first tech and meetup space for those interested in the decentralized web.

Prague

• De-platform-ization, Ethics and Alternative Social Media, Display, Prague, & online, 25-26 Sep 2020. Symposium and workshop. VIDEO

Basque

• THX, Ozaraine, Basque country, 10-20 Jul 2022.

Philly

• An introduction to Mastodon & the fediverse, Iffy Books, Philadelphia, 19 Nov 2022. VIDEO

more

• IndieWebCamps, 2011 ff.

Publications

Feminist Server Manifesto 0.01, 2014

Theses on Fediverse and FLOSS, 2020

Fedizine, Anarchist Introduction to Federated Social Media, 2022

• Feminist Server Summit, "A Feminist Server Manifesto 0.01", 29 May 2014.

• Relearn, "A Feminist Net/work How-to", in Portable Relearn Archive, Jul 2014. Material from the 2014 edition of Relearn, held at Variable, a collectively run F/LOSS Arts Lab in Brussels.

• Sean Tilley, "We Distribute", Medium, Sep 2014-Sep 2018. Reporting series about decentralization and the free web. Part 0, Part 1. [17]

• Mélanie Dulong de Rosnay, et al., "Alternative Internet(s)", series of blog posts, Media@LSE, London: London School of Economics, Nov 2014-Jan 2015 ff. Sparked by the 2014 workshop.

• Brewster Kahle, "Lock the Web Open", 11 Feb 2015. Talk at the Ford Foundation "NetGain" event.

• Brewster Kahle, "Locking the Web Open", Internet Archive, 1 Apr 2015, 28 min. Video; talk given at the GETDecentralized unconference, San Francisco.

• Robert W. Gehl, "The Case for Alternative Social Media", Social Media + Society 1:2, Sep 2015.

• Robert W. Gehl, "Building a Better Twitter: A Study of the Twitter Alternatives GNU social, Quitter, rstat.us, and Twister Free to read", Fibreculture Journal 26: "Entanglements: Activism and Technology", Open Humanities Press, Dec 2015.

• hbsc & friends, "Have You Considered the Alternative?", HomebrewServer.Club, 9 Mar 2017. Discusses XMPP federation.

• Eugen Rochko, "Welcome to Mastodon", Medium, 31 Mar 2017. [18]

• Danyl Strype, "A Brief History of the GNU Social Fediverse and ‘The Federation’", Disintermedia, 1 Apr 2017, with updates.

• Christine Lemmer-Webber, Jessica Tallon, Erin Shepherd, Amy Guy, Evan Prodromou, "ActivityPub. W3C Recommendation", eds. Christine Lemmer-Webber and Jessica Tallon, W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), 23 Jan 2018, Git. Recommended standard for decentralized social networking protocol, developed by the W3C Social Web Working Group. Main website. Announcement. Tweet. @socialwebwg@twitter.

• Networks of Ones Own 1: "Etherbox", eds. Michael Murtaugh, An Mertens, Roel Roscam Abbing, and Femke Snelting, Brussels: Constant, Sep 2018. Collaboration between Constant, Relearn, Varia and XPUB.

• Darius Kazemi, "Run your own social: How to run a small social network site for your friends", 8 Jul 2019, with updates.

• Pervasive Labour Union 13: "Fed Up!", ed. Lídia Pereira, Rotterdam, Sep 2019, [30] pp, PDF.

• Greta Byrum, "Building the People’s Internet", Urban Omnibus, New York: Architectural League of New York, Oct 2019.

• Networks of Ones Own 2: "Three Takes on Taking Care", Rotterdam: Varia, Oct 2019, PDF.

• Telecommunications Reclaimed: A Hands-On Guide to Networking Communities, eds. Mélanie Dulong de Rosnay and Félix Tréguer, Internet Society, Dec 2019, 255 pp, PDF. [19]

• Aymeric Mansoux, Roel Roscam Abbing, "Seven Theses on the Fediverse and the Becoming of FLOSS", in The Eternal Network: The Ends and Becomings of Network Culture, eds. Kristoffer Gansing and Inga Luchs, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, and Berlin: transmediale e.V., Feb 2020, pp 124-140, HTML.
  • "Sieben Thesen zum Fediverse und zur Weiterentwicklung von FLOSS", in The Eternal Network. Vom Enden und Werden der Netzkultur, eds. Kristoffer Gansing and Inga Luchs, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, and Berlin: transmediale e.V., 2020, pp 136-154. (German)
  • "Sept Thèses sur le Fédiverse et le devenir du logiciel libre", trans. Framalang, Framablog, 26 Jan 2021. (French)

• Mai Ishikawa Sutton, John Conor Ryan, et al., "DWeb Principles", Mar 2020ff. [20]

• Evgeny Ponomarev, "Decentralized Web Developer Report 2020", Fluence Labs, 8 Jun 2020. [21]

• Eileen Wagner, Karissa McKelvey, Kelsie Nabben, Decentralization Off The Shelf: 7 Maxims, 2020, 32 pp. Research report. [22]

• Compost, eds. Mai Sutton et al., since Mar 2021. Magazine about the digital commons.

• Fedizine: An Anarchist Introduction to Federated Social Media, Aug 2022, 16 pp, PDF. Released for the Montréal Anarchist Bookfair. Toot.

• Literally, Matt Noyes, Nathan Schneider, "How To Make The Fediverse Your Own", social.coop wiki, Dec 2022. Toot.

• Stefan Laser, Anne Pasek, Estrid Sørensen, Mél Hogan, Mace Ojala, Jens Fehrenbacher, Maximilian Gregor Hepach, Leman Çelik, Koushik Ravi Kumar, "The environmental footprint of social media hosting: Tinkering with Mastodon", EASST Review 41:3, Maastricht, Dec 2022. Toot.

See also VIDEO recordings and websites of events.