Erin Kissane and Darius Kazemi with the support of the Digital Infrastructure Insights Fund August 20, 2024

• [PDF version / web version]
• [Quick-Start Guide to Fediverse Governance Decisions]
• [Fediverse Governance Opportunities for Funders & Developers]

Project Introduction – We proposed this project in the fall of 2023 based on our shared sense that the Fediverse’s history of resilience and expansion positions it as one of our best chances to allow more people to maintain strong social connections online while escaping the behavioral manipulation, pervasive surveillance, and capricious governance that characterizes large-scale centralized social platforms. Initial research question: “What are the most effective governance and administration models/structures in place on medium-to-large sized Fediverse servers, and what infrastructural gaps (human and digital) persist?” Our rationale at the project’s outset: “The Fediverse’s rapid expansion brings both opportunities and multifaceted risks. Our research seeks to identify current server administrators’ most promising models for mitigating those risks and outline the biggest and most important gaps in risk mitigation, with the aim of helping the broader Fediverse level up governance quickly, safely, and collaboratively.” We were drawn to this research question because the socio-technical aspects of Fediverse governance often seem opaque from the outside—from outside any given server, and especially from outside the Fediverse. Most servers offer some documentation about their practices and a few offer extensive explanations and policies, but whole swathes of knowledge about the aspects of server management that extends beyond the more purely technical concerns of hosting, provisioning, and technical upkeep exists only as insider knowledge. Above all, we wanted to understand more about what happens behind the curtain of Fediverse server operation, and distribute this knowledge widely to help other server teams level up together—and perhaps to uncover characteristics of server governance that might be meaningful to others trying to build sustainable alternatives to centralized commercial platforms, whether on the Fediverse or elsewhere.”