The Network of Alternative Social Media Researchers

Scruples, ROOST, and Conversation

Robert W. Gehl, 14 Feb 2025

Over on my FOSS Academic blog, I would regularly post “ASM Updates” – basically, my own roundup of stuff that caught my eye in the world of alternative social media. I think it’s appropriate to bring those posts here.

This week, a couple things caught my eye, and I also had an interview published.

Scruples and Two Fedis

Erin Kissane wrote a really fantastic article about controversies in fediverse development.

I read it as a more complex update to Evan Prodromou’s Big Fedi/Small Fedi post. I don’t know if Erin intended that, but the idea of “two fedis” has been floating around for quite some time.

I do think her post is likely inspired by the controversy over Roni’s “fedi firehose” project. Roni shut down his firehose project after people protested. Kissane’s observation is that we simply don’t have a good forum for developers to meet with fediverse members to work through their ideas before such heated controversies happen.

Bluesky and AI

Meanwhile, over on Bluesky, Aaron Rodericks has announced that Bluesky is partnering with ROOST for AI-based content moderation. If you look at the responses, well… people have qualms, to put it mildly. Many folks on that thread call for Bluesky to hire human moderators – and pay them well – rather than rely on machines to moderate.

The conversation

Finally, I did do a thing this week: I was interviewed by the Conversation Podcast about decentralized social media. The conversation is pretty wide-ranging – we talk Bluesky, content moderation on the fediverse, and other details I’m exploring in my forthcoming book.