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shakedown.social is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
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#FOSSacademic

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Robert W. Gehl

The latest FOSS Academic post is short but very, very sweet, because it's the public reveal of the cover for my next book!

fossacademic.tech/2025/06/02/m

Academic authors don't often get much input into the covers of their books, but for Move Slowly and Build Bridges, I was lucky enough to get Oxford to buy art from @CaribenxMarciaX. Their work "Untitled no 7" is the basis of the cover.

FOSS Academic · Move Slowly and Build Bridges Cover Reveal
More from Robert W. Gehl
#FOSSAcademic#bookstodon
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Robert W. Gehl

Latest FOSS Academic:

fossacademic.tech/2025/01/18/m

In which I talk about how state regulations are affecting the development of ActivityPub and the fediverse, and how trying to make a TOS for Loops by using an online service resulted in a surveillance capitalist-friendly document.

FOSS Academic · Making Alternative Social Media in a Corporate Social Media World
More from Robert W. Gehl
#Loops#ActivityPub#Regulations
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Robert W. Gehl

I'll be blogging about this soon, but for now let me gush about MARP, a Markdown-based way to make slideshows:

marp.app/

If this works the way I think it will, I will finally be able to say goodbye to LibreOffice Impress (and yet still stay away from Google and Microsoft). YES!

marp.appMarp: Markdown Presentation EcosystemMarp (also known as the Markdown Presentation Ecosystem) provides an intuitive experience for creating beautiful slide decks. You only have to focus on writing your story in a Markdown document.
#marp#markdown#FOSSAcademic
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Robert W. Gehl

Alternative Social Media (ASM) update is back on my blog!

fossacademic.tech/2024/11/08/A

What caught my eye this week (besides that whole election thing): a history of fediblock, Mastodon is flatlining, and the Ulysses pact. Featuring posts from @CaribenxMarciaX, @jon, and @pluralistic

#FOSSacademic

[responses to this post will appear as comments on the blog]

FOSS Academic · ASM Update for November 8, 2024
More from Robert W. Gehl
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Robert W. Gehl

Latest #FOSSAcademic post: "Maven Ain't So Mavenly":

fossacademic.tech/2024/06/12/M

In which I argue that #Maven, a new social media site, is not only breaking norms of the #fediverse by #scraping without consent -- they're ironically violating their own stated reason for existing in the first place.

[Responses to this will appear as comments on my blog, unless you set privacy to followers-only or stronger. CWs will work]

FOSS Academic · Maven Ain’t So MavenlyThe ever-alert Liaizon Wakest has informed the rest of us on the ActivityPub-based fediverse of a new social media site, Maven, which has ingested millions of posts from fediverse accounts, including mine. Multiple people have pointed out how this violates consent on the fediverse. In response, the CTO of Maven, Jimmy Secretran, has explained their reasoning: We are trying to connect up to the Fediverse, to allow interaction with other ActivityPub servers. This definitely seems to me to be within the spirit of what ActivityPub enables, but of course, I don’t want to have Maven connect to anybody who doesn’t want it. [Note that I normally do not quote fediverse posts without permission, but in this case, I am making an exception, for reasons that I think will be obvious.] I replied in the thread, arguing that, no, they are not really abiding by the spirit of ActivityPub: This isn’t how this works. No one starts a fediverse (AP) server by ingesting a bunch of posts from others without their consent. They start servers and start federating with the rest of the network. Please stop ingesting posts from AoIR.social (I’m the admin, btw). and The custom is to start a server with a code of conduct, including clear moderation rules, so that the rest of us can make informed choices about federating. What you’ve done with Maven is a pretty massive violation of norms, and likely it will result in your being defederated from many other instances. It’s a poor way to start an ActivityPub implementation. To be fair to Secretran and Maven, they have since stopped scraping my posts and, I presume, those of others who have asked them to stop. Still, I eagerly await Maven’s full ActivityPub implementation so that we can block them effectively. This incident got me to thinking about norms and customs on the fediverse and how important they are.
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Robert W. Gehl

Lots of folks have comments on #Meta's #Threads integrating #ActivityPub, so I thought I'd join the fun.

Latest #FOSSAcademic post: "Thoughts on Threads, or Is Mark Zuckerberg Jesus?"

fossacademic.tech/2023/12/16/T

[replies to this post will appear as comments on the blog, unless you set privacy to followers only or DM. CWs will work]

FOSS Academic · Thoughts on Threads, or Is Mark Zuckerberg Jesus?(Sorry about the provocative title, but I just had to do it.) Today, a lot of people have thoughts on Threads, which is actively testing ActivityPub federation. The reactions range from triumphant proclamations about this making the fediverse more legitimate to abject horror that a company so reviled is attempting to join the fedi. Full disclosure: I’m more in the latter camp. As readers of this blog know, I’m working on a book about the fediverse, and part of my process is to share ideas out in the open. Since any book about the fediverse will have to talk about Threads, I figured this might be a good place to share a rough idea of how a chapter about Threads might go. Comments are welcome, of course! Away we go…
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Robert W. Gehl

Latest #FOSSAcademic post: I experimented with applied #ethics in my media ethics class, asking them to come up with a #CodeOfConduct for our experimental #Mastodon instance. The results were really good!

fossacademic.tech/2023/11/22/E

[replies to this post will appear as comments on my blog, unless you set privacy to friends only or DM]

FOSS Academic · Ethics and Codes of Conduct on MastodonYesterday, I taught one of the final meetings of my undergrad “Ethics and the Media” course at York. We’re using Charle Ess’s Digital Media Ethics (3rd edition) as our textbook, and so we’ve had a good guide to ethical theories, such as virtue ethics, deontology, utilitarianism, and feminist ethics of care. (I also supplement Ess with readings and ideas from Shannon Vallor, Kwame Gyekye, Carissa Veliz, Michael Zimmer, and others). Much of the course has been about learning the ethical theories and then discussing case studies. It’s been quite an enjoyable course to teach, particularly because I’ve seen the students go from the vague and intellectually unsatisfying statement “Ethics is a subjective, personal thing” to the more robust “Let me lay out how a virtue ethicist would think about this.” But I wanted to have at least one day of the course dedicated to applied ethics. Instead of looking at a case that happened in the past, I wanted the students to apply the ethical theories to a concrete situation. And these days, we have a great situation in digital media ethics to consider: what to do when we start up a Mastodon server? In this post, I’ll write up what we did in the class, in case anyone out there wants to try something similar.
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Robert W. Gehl

Happy to announce that my next book, tentatively titled "Move Slowly and Build Bridges: Mastodon, the Fediverse, and the Struggle for Democratic Social Media" will be published by Oxford University Press!

Read more about it, and my process of writing the book, here on #FOSSacademic

fossacademic.tech/2023/08/17/O

[Replies to this post will appear as comments on my blog if they are set to public]

FOSS Academic · Move Slowly and Build Bridges to be published by Oxford University PressI am very excited to announce that my next book, Move Slowly and Building Bridges: Mastodon, the Fediverse, and the Struggle for Democratic Social Media will be published by Oxford University Press. Earlier this year, I sent a proposal (a short synopsis of the book, audience considerations, and two sample chapters) to Oxford. They moved fast. They recruited two peer reviewers who turned around reviews very quickly, and then Oxford’s editorial board reviewed the project. I just received a contract based on these reviews. The word I got from Oxford is that they are excited about the project – and about the fediverse. That’s really good news, because the normal advice an author would get is to promote one’s work on corporate social media. But I think that any book about the fediverse has to be talked about on the fediverse. Maybe this project can help other academic authors break away from Twitter/X and Facebook/Meta. So, fediverse, watch for posts about this book from me on Mastodon. I’m also committing to sharing details about the book here on this blog.
#books#fediverse
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Robert W. Gehl

Update on possible #AoIR (Association of Internet Researchers)-hosted instance of Mastodon/Hometown.

I met with the Executive Committee and they let me document our meeting in my blog:

fossacademic.tech/2022/12/11/A

TL;DR version is: they're asking the right questions about what it means for an academic organization to run an instance. I wrote this post to share with the fediverse since there may be questions about what internet researchers may intend towards the fedi.

FOSS AcademicAOIR.social?Elon Musk has crazy timing. He completed his purchase of Twitter right before the annual meeting of the Association of Internet Researchers, held in Dublin in November of this year. Coincidence? I think not. The Musk takeover of Twitter prompted a conversation at AOIR’s meeting in Dublin in early November: should AOIR start a Mastodon (specifically, a Hometown) instance? As someone who has been advocating for alternative social media for years, I was all about this. Internet researchers have been among the first to recognize the perils of corporate social media. But of course, AOIR members often deeply engage online, which means using those systems for their pleasures and professional opportunities. As the old commercial says, there’s got to be a better way: a way to do social media but to do it on our terms. If the Musk takeover is the catalyst that pushes AOIR to adopt the fediverse, then as disturbing as things have gotten, at least there will be a positive outcome. Spurred on by Aram Sinnreich, we started having informal discussions at AOIR’s 2022 meeting about starting up our own social media. What would it entail? How would we do it? The informal discussion involved some of my favorite AOIR folks: Nik John, Adrienne Massanari, Nick Couldry, Pat Aufderheide, and Esther Hammelburg (if I left anyone out, please let me know). The conversation went well but we all knew there was a lot of work ahead. Last week, I met with the AOIR Executive Committee to continue the work. They’ve agreed to my posting about this process to this blog. This post is meant to do two things. First, it documents how an academic association deliberates over whether and how to establish a presence on the fediverse. That ought to be useful for other organizations considering doing the same. I know there are quite a few. Second, my hope is that by sharing AOIR’s deliberations, the rest of the fediverse can have some insight into our decision to proceed (should it come to that). Given that AOIR members engage in Internet Research, there may be trepidation about AOIR joining the fediverse – would AOIR come to the fedi to study it? To turn its users into objects of research? Put another way, will AOIR be a good organizational citizen of the fediverse? Will it host a well-moderated instance? Will it respect fediverse cultures and norms? Please read on, fedifriends. I hope that it’s clear AOIR is going to do it right – otherwise, AOIR is not going to do it at all.
#FOSSAcademic
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