How the Fediverse Found Parts for Its Platforms

McGuire talks to Christine Lemmer-Webber, co-author of ActivityPub and Executive Director of the Spritely Institute, and Ivan Minutillo & Mayel de Borniol of the community platform Bonfire. When Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022, researchers realized their professional lives were housed on a platform they no longer trusted. One of its two core contributors, Ivan Minutillo, saw the science community move from Twitter presence to Twitter activism: working to replace the platform and preserve their work. Sciety, an open evaluation service, is one result: Each article page houses direct conversations about preprints and peer reviews, which become citable objects, so the conversation about a paper’s production becomes part of the scholarly record. The software underneath the alternative was, in part, paid for by the public: more than 70 projects working with ActivityPub have been funded through NGI Zero programs, themselves made possible with financial support of the European Commission and an allocation of public funds. NGI Zero is made possible with financial support from the European Commission's Next Generation Internet programme, under the aegis of DG Communications Networks, Content and Technology.