The social publishing and reading app Flipboard is embracing interoperability with the fediverse.
The fediverse, a system of decentralized social networking services that includes Mastodon and video sharing software PeerTube, lets users of independently run social hubs see and interact with each other’s content. A common standardized protocol called ActivityPub lets independently owned servers in the fediverse talk to one another, similar to how industry standards make it possible to send email from one provider to another or link from one website to another.
As of this week, 25 publishers and creators on Flipboard—including outlets Fast Company and the Christian Science Monitor, and activist Erin Brockovich—will become accessible across the fediverse. And in January, anyone in the fediverse, including account holders on different Mastodon systems, should be able to follow anyone who’s publicly sharing content on Flipboard. They’ll also have the ability to comment and reply to Flipboard posts. By April, Flipboard intends to let any of its users, in turn, follow anyone elsewhere on the fediverse. In essence, Flipboard is gaining broader social media functionality—maybe at the expense of the existing social media giants.
The fediverse, and systems like Mastodon that interconnect through it, are often seen as an alternative to proprietary social networks like Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and X. Flipboard CEO Mike McCue, who says he first thought more seriously about fediverse technology after growing tired of Elon Musk’s leadership of X (formerly Twitter).
Speaking to Fast Company, McCue compares the growth of the technology to the early days of the World Wide Web, which came to supplant walled-off online services like AOL. “The more I dug in, the more I realized that this was going to be absolutely revolutionary,” he says.
Flipboard allows users to build virtual magazines and storyboards of content they find interesting. Founded in 2010, the site initially integrated closely with external social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, but essentially built its own social ecosystem as those sites began restricting third-party access. But, McCue acknowledges, it’s historically been isolated from its social rivals. “That social layer is yet another walled garden,” he says.
Still, tearing down those walls doesn’t mean an end to moderation. Fediverse users still can generally create accounts on servers that share their values or focus on their interests—there are more than 9,000 Mastodon servers available—and server operators like Flipboard can generally choose what content to recommend or block. One potential advantage, as the fediverse grows, is that server operators can share tips on problematic content or users, or servers that prove to be hubs for unsavory material.
In January, when public Flipboard content is accessible from elsewhere in the fediverse, a new version of the company’s app will let users block problematic commenters from other servers, and Flipboard will monitor blocking trends to see if it should take global action to filter certain outside users or servers.
Flipboard isn’t the only existing social company looking to enter the fediverse. Threads, often seen as Meta’s answer to X, has indicated plans to join with the fediverse ecosystem, as has Tumblr, which is now owned by WordPress parent Automattic. It seems likely that these moves won’t be without controversy in the existing fediverse, much as an influx of users from AOL and other big internet providers into the early federated discussion system Usenet famously shifted the existing culture.
McCue says Flipboard intends to take steps to respect existing communities. And ultimately, he says, it’s likely that, as in the early days of the web, walled-off social networks will have no choice but to integrate in order to stay relevant.
“It’s going to be like 1994 all over again,” he says.
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