Schedule

We will open the day with the film about the Fediverse by @_elena@mastodon.social. For the premiere, we are delighted to show you her film Introducing the Fediverse: A New Era of Social Media, with German narration. Elena is Italian and lives in Paris. She delights us with her films and works as a photographer and author.

Andy Piper @andypiper@macaw.social is Head of Communications at @Mastodon and is responsible for the communities in the Fediverse. Andy has been working in the technology industry for many years and lives in the UK.

Sandra Barthel @samvie@chaos.social is a political scientist and journalist. She lives and works in Berlin and Vienna. She is politically active in Europe in the field of digital public infrastructure, whether at local, national or European level. Among other things, Sandra is part of the Berlin Fediverse Stammtisch, a member of the Digital Society @digiges@chaos.social and C3W @c3wien@chaos.social. In her talk, she will highlight why the Fediverse is needed as a relevant part of a public welfare-oriented digital infrastructure for Europe.

Björn Staschen @bjoernsta@eimsbuettel.social is a journalist and media scientist and co-initiator of the ‘Save Social’ initiative. He wrote the book ‘In der Social Media Falle’ (In the Social Media Trap) and is committed to using technology to strengthen democracy.

Launched nine months ago as a loose initiative, ‘Save Social - Networks for Democracy’ is now a non-profit organisation: a strong voice of civil society that advocates for open, alternative networks and launches its own projects to this end. The goal for the coming months is to launch the Save Social petition across Europe. At the same time, Save Social is launching ‘Digital Independence Day’ (working title): a movement in which people turn their backs on big tech platforms on the first Sunday of every month.

Tobias Jobke from the Federal Office for Information Security @bsi@social.bund.de tries to raise awareness for cyber security in his job. His focus is on the BSI's social media strategy. He gives us an insight into the decisions behind why and with which topics the BSI is represented in the Fediverse.

Public institutions can play a central role in shaping digital infrastructures. In higher education, this is evident, among other things, in the (slow) growth in the use of Mastodon – at the University of Innsbruck, for example, embedded in the strategic concept of ‘Open Science Communication’. This input provides insights into the practical work of a communications department and invites discussion: What tasks should be demanded of public actors in the Fediverse? And how can the Fediverse's offerings for young people be expanded without imitating existing platforms?

Melanie Bartos (she/her) is a science communicator at the University of Innsbruck. She focuses on the climate crisis and social transformation and is committed to public welfare-oriented communication formats in the online sphere. Bartos heads the university's Wikipedia and Fediverse initiative based on the concept of Open Science Communication. Bartos is co-founder of the platform wissenschaftspodcasts.de, chair of the board of Freies Radio Innsbruck, Freirad, and sits on the advisory board of FediForum.

Evan Prodromou @evan@cosocial.ca is co-author of ‘ActivityPub: Programming for the Social Web’ and one of the authors of the Fediverse protocol. He is a board member of CoSocial.ca, research director of the Social Web Foundation, and director of open technology at the Open Earth Foundation (OEF).

Reflections on the future of the Fediverse
This presentation continues the reflections from last year (‘From commercial to cultural networks’) and highlights successes as well as problems facing the Fediverse. The result is a strategic toolkit that we hope will enable us to increase the impact of our projects and plans.

Never before have we had so much momentum for our ideas – keyword ‘digital sovereignty’ – but we must now act wisely so as not to squander this momentum, as has unfortunately so often been the case.

Ralf Stockmann has been an evangelist for open source, digital sovereignty and open standards in the public sector for 25 years. He initiated projects such as Kitodo, Ultraschall and Mastowall, is committed to the Fediverse with his own instance for the German library system (openbiblio.social) and advises on open infrastructures and digital transformation – including in the podcast ‘Freakshow’ with Tim Pritlove. Since 2024, he has been Director of Digital Development and Network Security at the ZLB Berlin.

Marcus Rohrmoser @mro@digitalcourage.social is a developer and founder of Seppo, which has received NL.net funding. Marcus talks about ‘Emancipated (social) web – not just for people with admin rights’.

The Fediverse is a diverse collection of many different services. In addition to long-established payloads such as microblog entries, its services have also been distributing videos, podcasts, images and much more to its users for some time now. The Flohmarkt project has set itself the goal of implementing such a service for classified ads. Flohmarkt is basically the notice board in the supermarket, only in the Fediverse and therefore also accessible from well-known platforms such as Mastodon, Iceshrimp and others.

Here you can find out how it works, how you can use it for yourself and what progress has been made in the project over the last two years. Maybe you'll soon find your next second-hand bargain on one of the Flohmarkt instances?

Grindhold does things with computers and had a very full basement in 2023. Then he wanted to sell things, but couldn't stand the phrase ‘WHAT'S THE LAST PRICE?’ anymore. Since he is a big Fediverse fan, he decided to build a classifieds platform for the Fediverse.

Paul Fuxjäger (@cypherhippie|chaos.social) conducts research in the Research Group Cooperative Systems with a focus on open, flat-hierarchical communication systems. In his keynote speech, Paul will discuss the importance of sustainable connection mechanisms between networks that use different protocol variants. The main focus will be on ActivityPub and the Authenticated Transfer Protocol – and the conflicts of interest that arise due to the different approaches. Paul is involved with Battlemesh and Funk Feuer and will give his talk in English in the interest of a broader international discussion.

Matthias Pfefferle @pfefferle@mastodon.social is responsible for the #ActivityPub plugin and several #IndieWeb (mainly #Webmentions) plugins for #WordPress! He is a web worker, blogger, podcaster, #openweb advocate and citizen of the #indieweb and the #fediverse. In his talk, Matthias will discuss the situation for microblogging in the Fediverse.

Erik Uden @ErikUden@mastodon.de is the administrator of @MastodonDE and co-founder of @AnneFrankInNorden. Erik will speak on ‘Lessons learned from the moderation history of Germany's largest Mastodon server.’

Jascha introduces us to Bookwyrm, an application that allows you to rediscover and experience reading books in a whole new way.

Despite the involuntary PR coups of tech billionaires and the spread of fascism in the United States, the Fediverse still remains a niche phenomenon. Yet this free, decentralised social network could be an alternative that strengthens and protects our democracy. The EU's digital policy mostly focuses on regulating large tech companies and curbing their most serious legal violations – and even fails to do so. The challenges facing the Fediverse are rarely considered. So far, there has also been a lack of concrete proposals on how the law could be used as a lever to help the Fediverse succeed.

This talk takes a look at the current legal and political developments affecting the Fediverse. It identifies possible levers in the law that could be used to strengthen the Fediverse. The aim is to contribute to the discussion on what demands the Fediverse community could reasonably make to influence legislative processes.

Rebecca Sieber is a fully qualified lawyer and has been committed to data protection, free software and the Fediverse for many years.