Season 2 Episode 2: FediForum Recap
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Welcome back! This episode acts as a bookend for last week’s episode, where we reflect on the June 2025 FediForum event. Joining us is Saskia Welch from the Newsmast Foundation, here to share her perspective on how things went, and what people were talking about.
Show Notes
- The big themes of the event included the following subjects: Payments, Identity, Account Portability, Custom Feeds, Curation, and Community Management.
- FediForum will be making the video recordings of demos publicly available next week. You can find playlists of previous events here.
- Some really good keynotes are currently available: Christine Lemmer-Webber, Ian Forrester, and Cory Doctorow can be viewed from PeerTube.
- Christine Lemmer-Webber shared a lot of really interesting work going on at the Spritely Institute! It’s absolutely worth checking out.
- Ian Forrester and the BBC have been researching different ways of getting large broadcasting networks to natively use the Fediverse as a type of public good. You can read the BBC report Ian took part in here.
- Elena Rossini from The Future is Federated put together a wonderful video showcasing why people should try the Fediverse.
- If you hadn’t read about it already, we covered Bounce and Bandwagon, which both could provide some really interesting improvements to the rest of the network. Bounce is tackling data portability across networks, and Bandwagon is looking at bringing a payments and access system to the wider Fediverse.
- One interesting sea change for the network: historically, a large part of the network is influenced by American, such as the act of self-hosting, or owning your own digital connections online. The EU’s promotion of the Fediverse takes a different perspective: civic infrastructure provided for the people, as alternatives to Big Tech.
- Sports have become surprisingly accessible on the Fediverse over time. You’ve got platforms such as Flipboard federating news giants like ESPN, both Bluesky and Threads communities promoting sports content at a grassroots level, and even ActivityPub-powered Sports platforms like CollabFC presenting feeds geared towards European Football clubs.
- There’s a number of emerging platforms that aren’t simply trying to copy an existing thing, but to provide something entirely new. Bonfire and Emissary are both cited as examples where people can build all kinds of unique social experiences out of the box.
- User Advocacy is one area where the Fediverse is still not great at. Despite a constantly growing network, a real dedicated effort to reach out to people not currently on the Fediverse is needed.
- Channel.org is Newsmast’s upcoming new platform for curated streams and communities. One remarkable early experiment has involved creating Renewed Resistance, which is a continuation of the Kamala Harris fundraising effort organized in part by Tim Chambers.
