Leaving the City of Big Social, with Fediverse Enthusiast Chris Trottier

When you’re building an open source community you’re a part of a collective effort with a common goal. In the fediverse, there are early adopters doing a lot of the heavy lifting now. They’re the voices you want to follow to make sense of the place. One such person is Chris Trottier. Chris describes himself as a “fediverse enthusiast” (he’s also passionate about video games). He’s a sage presence who makes smart observations and has a 10,000-foot view of all the innovation happening on the open social web — not to mention a few ideas of his own. Highlights of this conversation:Why he’s rallied around ActivityPubThe promise of social and the promise of the fediverseSelf-hosting an instanceInteresting apps and products built on top of ActivityPubAdopting a survivability mindset (as VCs, developers)Services mentioned in this episode include:Friendica - https://friendi.ca/ - a decentralized social networkMisskey - https://misskey-hub.net/en/ - a microblogging platformAkkoma - https://akkoma.social/ - “sorta like the child of Twitter and email”Macstodon - https://github.com/smallsco/macstodon - a Mastodon client for Classic Mac OSDOStodon - https://github.com/SuperIlu/DOStodon - a Mastodon client for MS-DOSAmidon - https://github.com/BlitterStudio/amidon - a Mastodon client for Amiga computersSora - https://mszpro.com/sorasns - a futuristic iOS app for Mastodon, Bluesky, Misskey; uses local machine learning to rank posts and feature contents to youBluesky Firehose - https://firesky.tv/ - republishes every new post/reply from the Bluesky firehose in real-timeCastling Club -  https://castling.club/ - chess game built on top of ActivityPub🔎 You can find Chris in the fediverse at @[email protected]✚ You can connect with Mike McCue on Mastodon at @[email protected] or via his Flipboard federated account, where you can see what he’s curating on Flipboard in the fediverse, at @[email protected]💰 Mastodon is a non-profit that runs on donations from the community. You can help Mastodon succeed by supporting the organization via Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mastodon