What has the BBC learned so far from its experiments in the Fediverse? Hear from its R&D Lab’s Senior Firestarter, Ian Forrester, whose job it is to “bring ideas forward” for the public service broadcaster.
We’re on the precipice of a new wave of innovation in the Fediverse, and it’s important that even established organizations listen up and see what’s unfolding.
One person watching closely is the BBC’s Ian Forrester. As the Senior Firestarter in the broadcaster’s R&D Lab, Ian susses out new technologies and opportunities so that the public service broadcaster can stay current and true to its values. Among those values is trust, so the chance to verify its own journalists and run a social media server according to its own rules is a big reason for the BBC to even swim in these waters.
What has the BBC learned so far from its experiments in the Fediverse? What will decentralized systems unlock for innovation? And how is all this like the early days of the Internet?
Highlights from this conversation include:
🔎 You can follow Ian on his Website and Mastodon.
✚ You can connect with Mike McCue on Mastodon.
💡 To learn more about what Flipboard's doing in the Fediverse, sign up here: http://about.flipboard.com/a-new-wave
This transcript was generated by AI, which may affect its accuracy. As such, we apologize for any errors in the transcript or confusion in the dialogue.
It's normal to see Mastodon as merely a Twitter alternative, a lot of people do. But actually, Mastodon is emblematic of so much more. We're on the precipice of another wave of innovation on the internet. And it's important for even established organizations to listen up and see what's unfolding.
Welcome to Dot Social, the first podcast to explore the world of decentralized social media, also known as the Fediverse. Each episode host Mike McCue talks to a leader in this movement. Someone who sees the Fediverse has tremendous potential, and understands that this could be the internet's next significant shift.
One person who believes fervently in this future is the BBC is Ian Forrester. As the senior Firestarter in the organization's R&D lab, Ian sussed out new technologies and opportunities, so that the public service broadcaster can stay current and true to its values. Among its values is trust, so the chance to verify its own journalists and run a social media server according to its own rules, is a big reason for the BBC to even swim in these waters. We hope you enjoy this conversation.
Mike McCue:
Ian, welcome to the podcast.
Ian Forrester:
Hey, thank you very much for having me.
Mike McCue:
I am curious about your title, Senior Firestarter? I think that's that is a title that I would love to have. How tell me more about that. What, what do you do as senior Firestarter at the BBC?
Ian Forrester:
You know, colleagues in the past have really do not like that title. But ultimately, there was a decision made in BBC R&D, because a lot of people complained about the titles and they didn't really match what they did. And so the head of R&D at the time said, hey, you know what, call yourself whatever you want. And so I call myself the senior five star. And, and most of my colleagues kind of just went, I'll just stick with the title that I've been given, why just kind of went, you know what, I'm sticking with this, this, this, this makes sense for me. So I guess my my main role in the R&D is to like, kind of bring ideas forwards, but not just the idea, but like, actually develop the idea. Moving forwards, build prototypes, work on prototypes, collaborate with others. And I think the key thing for why see the firestarter, there's actually a book called a fire stars, which is well worth reading, is about kind of starting the idea, moving it to a point where someone else takes it on, rather than you follow it all the way through. Because once you follow all the way through, then another idea or another opportunity comes up and you don't have the resource and time to do that. So it suits certain people over other people. Some people like to follow a project or a through some people like to kind of manage a project once it's going right to the end. I like the bit where it's kind of the, the inception of the idea, right through to the point of right. Okay, now I've handed it over for somebody else who wants to kind of take it on and sees the benefit of it.
Mike McCue:
That sounds like a fantastic job. How long have you been doing this?
Ian Forrester:
Oh, geez. You know, I've been at the BBC, coming up to 20 years, which is, wow scares me. It absolutely scares me because I'm actually quite young. But I've been in R&D for I think, about 13 years. So I've never started an R&D. I used to run a project called BBC backstage, which was a developer network for the BBC, which is, which will probably get a little bit you'll understand why I've got to get this technical knowledge, even though I'm actually trans designer, believe it or not. So I kind of bring both sides together. As we go, I just kind of that's kind of that interested in the technology, but also learn standard about people, a bit of psychology, but also the design of how this actually fits into people's lives, is the kind of more of a kind of service designer I guess, if you use his old words are probably out of date now. But that whole thing is the way I think,
Mike McCue:
Well, that's that kind of design, I think is incredibly important. A lot of people I think, don't realize that great design has a lot more to do than you know how something looks. It's really about the whole system and how it fits in and I think that that point you mentioned, that lens that you bring when you look at the work that you're doing in on the Fediverse and with Mastodon when you When you look at the experiments you've done so far with the BBC, and your, your team, what have you learned so far?
Ian Forrester:
So I'll just be very clear that, yeah, I'm one of many people who in R&D, I mean, in the wider BBC to be fair, which I've been always kind of interested in, in kind of decentralized, kind of standard based, kind of social networks and other other kind of networks around this stuff. But, um, so I would say that one of the things that kind of, really, yeah, we all kind of experienced this right is when we were using Twitter for a long time, and we still use Twitter, or so x Twitter, so I now call it or we use other social networks, as well. But it became very clear that the algorithms and the systems that are in place, tend to drive certain content, and drive certain opinions. And, you know, and it's not even like one opinion, it's also it's very much like, depends on who the people are, you know. And so, from a public service point of view, it becomes very difficult to, to work with those platforms. So, you know, let's just take something like tick tock tick, tock has its own algorithm, right. So if you start putting stuff on tick tock, it might get to your people, it might not, it might kind of be right next to a bunch of content, which is not, you know, just kind of almost like the very much the opposite of what the BBC is all about. So it made sense that, you know, so in the past has always been very much like, have your own platform, which we do. But also, or use, go to where the people are. And so the decentralize your standard base, activity, pub Fediverse, these kinds of systems allowed us to have a third place. And it's a third place that we're still exploring is still very, it's still kind of like, quite raw. We're still picking things up. But it makes sense that we can reach people, but it's still under our kind of rules or our rules, or kind of our values. I would say, and I think that's really important. That's something that we're exploring.
Mike McCue:
And you've created an instance, as part of this. And when you look at that, you know, do you think that at some point, it might make sense to have the journalists at the BBC on that instance? Is that part of the thinking?
Ian Forrester:
So I think that's something that we've talked about. The are some of the accounts are run by some of the journalists. It originally was kind of like, we could just post what we would post on X Twitter, onto Mastodon. But there's, there's an appetite now that actually we could do much more. We there's a lot more characters that we can play with. But also, the responses we're getting. And I think that's a really surprising thing is the responses we're getting are, are just incredible in comparison to what we were getting on. I'm using next Twitter, because it's an easy comparison right now. But on other platforms as well, we're getting really powerful responses. So you're, the journalists would like to respond. But there is there's some difficulty with that. And that's something that we are kind of thinking about and how that works, and how to do that in an effective and sustainable way. Which, but the ambition is that yeah, ultimately, you can expect a lot more of our journalists and other organizations to realize we're talking to a worldwide audience. And BBC is very known for news, but we do a lot more than news. And so you know, there'll be a lot more that we could do through this medium. But the the amazing thing for us was always that they're all verified. They're all coming from the BBC. They're not coming from an organization where they're like, Oh, you need to pay us for your checkmark, you know, these are these are automatically verified because it came from the BBC domain. That is something that is just unbelievable and to think about, there hasn't been much of that before going back. So that kind of you over on their platform or on your own platform, you know? Yeah,
Mike McCue:
I think that's such a powerful point, you know, the the opportunity to have the BBC verify their journalists, right. And that is, you know, it's independent, that transform errs, it's transcendent button above any other platform, right? It's not, it is not a platform specific thing that you have to do with each and every platform. And that I think, is a really great opportunity, the sense of identity in, you know, in the social web, right? Who is this person? Really?
Ian Forrester:
Yeah, I completely agree. I think, identity. So I work in BBC advisory and R&D, and identity is always a consistent theme, you know, how do you know that that person who you're talking to all that person that you're getting information from, is actually from, or the person who you think they are. And that's really important, especially as we go into a world where, you know, there are billions of chat bots. So in your try and pretend to be different people, you know, and yeah, and we have got initiatives on this and misinformation, including a project called PVC, so called Project Origin, which is part of this. This thing with Microsoft, Adobe, and other partners, I think, trust is critical. And to be fair, one of the things in our values, and our charter is about trust. And so it makes sense that we want to be able to verify this definitely came from the BBC, because we're proud that they came from the BBC. Yeah.
Mike McCue:
Yeah. You know, sometimes I hear folks mention the experience that the Guardian had, and on the Fediverse, and they ultimately decided to shut it down. And the experimentation they were doing there. Now, I think the difference, though, between what the Guardian was doing, and please, please fill me in on this, versus what the BBC is experimenting with? Is the idea that, you know, you are, you're creating a place where your journalists could could post from, but you're not necessarily opening up that instance, for users to join. Is that is that do you think that's the difference?
Ian Forrester:
Yeah, I mean, so we, we have no plans to open it up to the general public, we want to be part of the ecosystem. We don't want everyone to don't want to basically build our own platform where you must come and become part of this. And I say that loosely, because there are Enstar, thoughts about how we could do that in a different way. So I think it the traditional way, and I, we follow a lot of these different stories. So I kind of forgotten what the Guardian did exactly. But one of the things that we're really interested in is that where you could almost enable an instance, which is very local. So this is some of the work that public spaces in the Netherlands have done with a thing called pub hops, but also what Ethan Zuckerman has done in amorous in, in America, just kind of very, super local, almost like replacements for Facebook groups, you know, very small groups. And that kind of thing is very powerful.
Mike McCue:
I think that you're onto something big there that that concept of creating these, like micro communities that are well managed and connected to your journalists connected to the content that you guys produce. That's a really big opportunity.
Ian Forrester:
Well, I think I mean, the other thing is just a big object. I think it's I do feel personally, that could be the way forward because for a lot of people must have this new thing. And it's not and we all know that, but it's obviously got a lot of notoriety when Twitter started to implode, you know, and, but there was a lot of questions about how do you moderate How can you moderate without, without a whole team of people moderating? Well, let's change the question. Let's not have one instance that's got everybody on it. Let's have lots of instances with different rules, different rule sets, different moderators, you know, and I don't know that cause and I remember writing about this and not only for myself publicly, but also Who says a lot of people have also helped write about Mastodon, in the early days, internally? Is that, you know, that notion of actually, you know, it's great to have this ecosystem of different servers, different instances, different rule sets, you know, so, yeah, it's very clear. Okay. This is this instance, this instance has these rules, these rules. So for example, scholar dot social has got very different rules from I kind of think of some of the kind of the wild and I'd say wild and fun kind of instances that you can get out there. But it does. It does. I do recognize and I know that they've changed it now. Where when people are faced with that many instances and have to read if I read in the terms of editions, right, I might be but I do read the Terms Conditions. Most people do not, they just want to click and go my friend this on Mastodon dot social, and if you're my son's on social is a waiting list. Yeah, this is not any good. You know, and think about oh, actually, I could be on another one. I could still talk to my friends and, and understanding Oh, make sure I'm on an instance, which actually does talk to this one. And it's quite confusing. And I think I do think that that whole process needs a design view on it. Yeah,
Mike McCue:
I couldn't agree more. So is that the kind of thing that you're thinking about? Are you looking at better ways to design this kind of multi instance experience?
Ian Forrester:
Um, I would say, not at this moment, but it's something that that keeps coming back again, and again, you know, I mean, let's just say, this is not happening, it's very clear. Because the rd does not have the resources to do this. But imagine to now you've got this kind of this client, right? This client device that you have complete control over, right, you could write a client, and I mean, the app, you know, that it's very, very weird a word but simple, and allows people to just be able to do them, the major things that they need, as far as they're concerned, they click it, it authenticates. That's the rest is done. You know, it's those kinds of things, a lot of the clients right now are still quite complicated, because they have a lot, they've included a lot of the features. But there's, you know, there's a possibility that you could write a client, which is a lot more simple, as well as you could write very advanced clients. And I did like what, for example, what castling club are doing where they are able to, they use an activity pub, but they're rendering it differently, isn't really see the kind of the, the kind of social, you see some parts of the social, but not, not the whole thing. I think this, there's we're just opening that door. And I guess, it's just the kind of stuff that you're doing right? With Flipboard, you're kind of like, hey, this, we could now do things that we've always been doing. But now we can do it in a standard way. And we can have loads and loads of people on it, rather than having to force them on to ar, ar, ar AR is that service.
Mike McCue:
Exactly. I think that the opportunity to bring these disparate servers together these different kinds of communities that somebody has decided to join, give them one place to experience those communities to be able to dive in when they want to in that community, but also be able to get kind of an overview of what's happening across those communities. You know, this is definitely I think, a solvable problem. You know, Discord does this, of course, now, you know, there's their experiences, like what we've built at Flipboard. And I think that the opportunity with the open API's that Mastodon has with the activity, pub, you know, infrastructure, is that we're gonna see some incredible new ways to make this happen. Right. The innovation itself has been decentralized, right? And so that I think is incredibly exciting to see.
Ian Forrester:
Yeah, I think I do and one of the things when I was up backstage was watch out for like, standard API's standard feed, stuff like that. Then you start to see the innovation, the innovation is at the edge and not the other side of the site. And I think even after your your demo, at fed, fed forum, and we're actually Oh, maybe I cuz I looked at Flipboard a long time ago. Yeah. But now I'm Uh oh, now it's using standard protocols. And I'm much more interested. And I can see how it kind of much more integrates into, into the, you know, the range of different applications that are used and stuff like that. So you might have a customer at some point, you know, not that as persuading me. But I do think that that the things that you're doing on top of the protocol is very powerful. And, and I can see more of that happening. I mean, there's that service that I think Darius talked about, where he took a, an event site, I kept the name of it now. And, and he just basically added activitypub to it. And I started using it, I'm like, I'm actually having a cheese and cocktail party at my place. And I was like, This is great. Now, no one needs to like, sign up on Facebook, or, you know, or have to, like, send loser emails, it's just like, here's all the information, it goes out to you. You know, it's just like, this is, this is pretty much the dream. I would also just add, and this is, this is definitely FIRFER. Outside of, of BBC R&D, but we're talking about the kind of the things that you could do, but it's something that we're, we're interested in, because we've seen it before. But when we're done watching it, and I always I'm watching it is stuff like you know, it was a whole bunch of systems that were built on top of Twitter. So So example there was a thing called bubble Leno, but made by a guy in Liverpool, which is the next city along. And so you tweet, bubble, Leno, and it will blow some bubbles. Very simple, right. But you'll you'll imagine, you know, other services like that, which are now built on activity pub, or the other one that always gets me is a really good friend of mine. Who's Who's I mean, she's just amazing. Alex, Duchamp Soncino, she created a thing called The Good night lamp, there's the IoT. Pillar lamp, it's got your two of them that we got, you got one big one. And then you have a number of smaller houses, then lamps really. And you put the kind of the, the house in one, you put the kind of house lamp the main lamp in the house where you were born, right, or where your parents still are. And then you take the other lamps to college, for example, or elsewhere. And so you can almost kind of like do is kind of, you know, when they, when they're like the lamps go out, the lights go off in the house. And it's like, it's such a simple and easy thing. But, you know, she was like struggling to do it. How would you do that over and it's there without some proprietary activity? I would do that. And I didn't you know, it just like, so I've imagined activity pop tied to two devices, and IoT devices is, is probably going to be something that will become much more interesting. In in times going forward. That's a guest from me, not guests. It's a educated guess from me.
Mike McCue:
Yeah, the opportunity for innovation when you start connecting people to each other, and people to content and other other sources via an open standard. And making that actually those connections, part of the web is just mind blowing. To me, I think about my early days at Netscape. And, you know, we one of the things that we worked on, was RSS, right, which was really, I still use. Yeah, RSS is amazing. And I think of activity pub sometimes as like to weigh RSS. Right. And and, and I think critically important, very important difference is that the connection is between a person's profile, and a publisher, let's say versus a client and RSS client and an app publisher, right? Because as soon as you change clients, you lose that connection. The beauty of the actual person being connected to that publisher, for as long as they want to stay connected to that to that publisher is is absolutely amazing. And we really I think if we had built that, you know, 15 years ago, or 20 years ago, I think that we would be in a very different world right now. In terms of publishers and their their business models and their relationships with their audiences. So, you know, it's a little bit of a do over in some ways.
Ian Forrester:
Yeah, no, I, I, I agree. You're talking to someone who's I trust myself as a declarative developer? Which developer? Yeah, XML XSLT. RSS, all of these things are like speaking my language. I was taught that design information design was like, XML was like the core of that, but I don't no one else agrees with me. But I do think that you're, you're right. And I, I think that push back to kind of standards, is quite powerful. And I do get these questions all the time. In other parts of of, of the BBC and elsewhere, is that, you know, well, you must answer they got a certain number of people, you know, is it really gonna go anywhere? And I'm kind of like, well, you know, does it matter so much when the level of engagement, the, the ability to be able to, you know, trust? Sadly, that's not word, but yeah, I'm going to use that word for now the ability to like, on in time with the person what the person wants, rather than, like, engaging them constantly, constantly. But like, it's much more of a kind of nice conversation, or a good conversation. You know, I feel like that's something that we will see more of, in the future, because I think more and more people are backing off from this kind of like, I want it all right, now, I want you, I'm going to give up all my stuff. And I'm going to just let me let you contact me whenever you want.
Mike McCue:
When you so I'm curious to hear how you're a day in your life goes at the BBC, from this research lab that you're in and the experimentation you're doing? Are you are you communicating with, you know, the business folks, the journalists, you know, the other folks in in at BBC, and what's their reaction been to this experimentation that you guys have been doing?
Ian Forrester:
So yeah, so this, and this is where I definitely include all my colleagues. So there's, there's definitely one person who's probably the sysadmin of it, or which is, Jack, who's amazing. Yeah, he's done a great job. We also have Tristan, who, you know, you've been talking to, but who's been kind of writing the kind of like, the business cases and stuff like that. I think people like myself are just kind of like, champion in it, but also kind of like, doing stuff like this, you know, because they've done very busy, and they're very focused on what they're doing. But I think, you know, I mean, Tristan is very good about reaching out to people internally. But sometimes, we need to also reach out beyond because one of the things we definitely recognize, I think, if we did this, a long time ago, when it first happened, we might have ended up doing some of the stuff some of the mistakes that other organizations did, I don't think we would have ever opened it up. But we would have made some mistakes, I feel we're learning from the mistakes. And so we're talking to them. But also there's other organizations like Zed DF in Germany, the European, European Commission, there's a bunch of other instances, and we're learning from them, and we're talking with them. And we're Yeah, I know that there's a jackpot of a there's kind of like a mastodon instance, kind of like inner circle where they all talk about different things. But I think it's also worth reach now, and, and like, learn about, oh, what are you doing with this problem? Or, oh, have you faced this problem before? It's kind of like, we really want to be transparent about that. And that does require time and effort and requires someone to do that and to think about that and think strategically about, okay, great. Well, yes, we've done the whole, we're here we're doing this, but what's our next step, you know, is our next steps fitting with with others, you know, what, what have they learned? You know, what are they doing about about the next step? Those kind of things are also important.
Mike McCue:
Yeah, you know, that. It does feel like we're all part of the same team sometimes to me, right? Like we're all working together, collectively sharing information, advancing different parts of the metaverse and Um, it feels like we're on the same team.
Ian Forrester:
Yeah, I was gonna say, because this is this is what I find interesting is I will say, we're a public service organization. Right? And you're a commercial company. Yeah. So how does that feel for you? Because it kind of is a bit like, well, we need to get more people using flip boards, right? And you're doing a great job. But I'm just like, that sharing of information tends to be, you know, very well, we want to keep that proprietary information to ourselves. Yeah, it was, but it feels like maybe what I'm what I'm kind of thinking about is this. This is always like, the early days of the Internet, where it was all very kind of, like sharing and, and kind of caring. Yeah, I think I think that it will continue. But I'm wondering, from your point of view, how that works. And, and are you worried about that? So I'm, like, turn the interview on you. Sorry? Well, I,
Mike McCue:
I think I you know, I think that the the idea of being a walled garden, is coming to a gradual end. And, you know, if you think back to like, the early days of the web, you had AOL CompuServe. You know, though, if you wanted to be online, you had to go do a business development deal with AOL, right? They owned everything. And they controlled all the innovation, the world of online, really only advanced based on how much engineering and design resources, they applied to different areas, right. But when the web happened, all that innovation got decentralized. And and you saw if companies, you know, come together, they're worth billions and billions of dollars, I mean, trillions of dollars of value created, we now have an infrastructure that, I think is an amazing blend of companies, you know, public interest organizations, you know, researchers, universities, all now as part of the same collective web. And I think that, you know, the challenge with social is that it really rebuilt these walls, these proprietary experiences, very similar to what we saw with AOL. So and, and it really hampered a lot of innovation. And I think by tearing down these walls, by setting up a way where the social graph isn't a proprietary thing that a company owns anymore, it's not a moat, it's not a competitive moat anymore. It is just part of the web. And now anyone who can innovate, and come up with a creative, well designed experience can win. And that's a way better way to compete. And so I think that's, you know, you have to be you have to as a, as a company, you have to be willing to tear down the walls and be vulnerable, and compete on the merits of your design and your product work, and build something that's truly valuable. And that's, I think, you know, easier for companies that are smaller than companies that are bigger. I think that it also can be a little scary. For organizations. It's also unknown, the technology is still, you know, new, relatively speaking. So I do think that this is an area that, you know, the the pioneers of this area are going to create something amazing. And, Mike.
Ian Forrester:
Mike, I think what you're saying is is absolutely correct. I think we're not correct. I think it's amazing, because I think, I mean, like, the thing about Flipboard was always the design the the user interface, the all of these things. And, you know, it's it stands out as being like that from day one, you know, and then now, yeah, being kind of shoved into a corner by all these other networks, having to like, work within their kind of proprietary rules and algorithms just didn't suit what you're doing. And so now you're kind of like, well, now we can do whatever we want to do, which, which benefits us, rather than then try and squeeze into the space alongside a bunch of people doing whatever they're doing, I think, I think you have the right attitude. And I think this is why, once again, having someone like myself going out, and kind of relaying that back internally, it's something which is important, because, you know, even though we're a public service organization, we do have our own properties, such as AI player such as sounds, all these things. It's like, okay, well, you know, look, this is what Mike's doing at Flipboard. You know, you know, this could be a really good use case of what we should be doing or what we should be thinking about. And I think, you know, what's getting that leads to, when I do talks and elsewhere then, hey, have you checked out what Flipboard is doing? and listen to elegant design. And now they can have the freedom to do what they've always wanted to do. And also to, like, reach out to serving more users than having to be having to pay or whoever to like this tiny, tiny chunk of the pie. This is a long conversation about the importance of, of innovation on an open platform. Right. And I mean, this is this is kind of what we're thinking about. We're not focused purely on Mastodon. We're also looking at the others. Yeah, we're not looking. We're not saying we're not looking at lemme when levies are interesting, but, but there are offers, like, like pixel fed, as I said, but even stuff like, you know, I was a quarter bookworm. Yeah, you know, doesn't get much love. But can you imagine a small reading group, or small reading groups, which physically meet in libraries across the UK, or across the world, and their status of their reading, goes into bookworm that's only shared with the people in that circle. That's something that, you know, could be really powerful for a public service organization, who is encouraging people to, to look into or to read more and to explore the world more. And I think it's those kind of things that we're interested in. We have got an discourteous like turn on the so we have this kind of like this thing called human values, which is also an R&D project. And it's 14 values, and I've got the cards in front of me, why won't get them out, but it's all open source. But one of the values is very much about helping people to explore the world. So it's not about just kind of like, go in and, and kind of like, posting stuff on bookworm, but also then share it with others in the smaller group of like, this is how I feel about this. And in writing stuff that you do write reviews, which only that group can see, unless you then make it public, you know, stuff. It's stuff like that, that you could do. But it would make sense, make more sense as a public service organization, to enable. Yeah, and to help with, I feel that that's the kind of thing that we're looking at more, not that we're going to do that. But just it's just those kinds of more public service activities, which match and can be now possible.
Mike McCue:
That's incredibly exciting. What is your advice to other organizations like yours, other publishers, you know, people that are creating content? What's your advice to them in terms of if they haven't started to get involved with the Fediverse? Yet? How, what do you what do you tell them when they ask you, Hey, what should I do here?
Ian Forrester:
I'll get back to when I first started talking about I started with Mastodon, right. Yeah, I joined Mastodon in, I think, was 2017. I was kind of an earlier one. I had some, I had some accounts on master, not social. But I think the first thing is definitely to kind of put people on it. So they can experience it. But then the next really important thing is to follow up and say, this is enabled by activity pub. This isn't Mastodon is not the Fediverse. Right? It's a it's a big part of the Fediverse. Yeah, I've lost track of how many numbers. It's a big part. But this is now about activity pub, and that, that ability to federate. And that's quite powerful. And that enables these kind of applications. And I think once again, you need that kind of design, or kind of like a need to think about these opportunities, and see them and explore them. Even in just words, because then it gets people thinking, Oh, I thought it was just a kind of something that could replace Twitter, which is what a lot of people and a lot the mainstream press where we're pushing. This is just This is like the the Twitter alternative, like TechCrunch and all the others were saying that they still do to be fair, and yes, it could be but it's not. It's more than that. So I think what is sat down and actually talk to people about the possibility of the Fediverse, which has a lot of other applications. But also activity pub, as the Yeah, just said, it's a two way, kind of RSS. You know, suddenly it was like, Oh, okay. Now I can see some possibilities. I can now see, I think your thing that you demonstrated perfectly is that kind of rather than, like, you know, please circle after more, you know, kind of like to all the big social networks, this is kind of like, completely threw them out the other side around them. This, this could literally mean that, you know, I know, well, I assumed the reason why Fred's now will support activity pub and, and federate with them with the rest of the Fediverse. If they like it or not, I don't know, and I'll get into that argument is, is because the EU have kind of gone, you know, and this also really, also explains why they probably don't want to do news. But I do think that that this, this other call it stack for now, of like, Federation, activity pub at the base, will basically almost break up a lot of the the kind of monoliths in the social media platforms.
Mike McCue:
Yeah. It's encouraging to hear someone from your vantage point saying that, that that has been the dream for the folks who've created activity pub. And you know, Eugene has created Mastodon. And to hear you know, you saying that is, I think, incredibly exciting. I agree with you, I think this is this is the beginning of something really special. It's sort of the next major revolution for the web.
Ian Forrester:
It's yeah, I, I'm really, really glad because I remember, I've been part of the indie web for quite a while, and those guys have been like, scratching over niches for ages and ages. I also have their Tantek forever. A lot of low tide G's throughout 2007 or something. And I remember them showing up, it was tagged at the showed, join this kind of hack day in the Mozilla offices in Berlin. This kind of like, diagram where you could kind of like micro pop and then do something else. And, and I was like, if this if this actually could work? This could be like, why would anyone use anything else? Yeah. You know, and obviously, it didn't quite turn out away, but you need those people. Yeah, this five stars forward the idea and others people to go right. Yeah, actually, like yourself, but we got this. Yeah, we know what we're doing. We've also had the struggle of like, having to fight for time and attention on these, these kind of bloated platforms. So why don't we just do our own thing? Do it really well. And we just kind of like don't have to, you know, pay the platform owners anything, you know? Yeah.
Mike McCue:
Yeah. And I love I love the the idea that these are all fire starters, all these folks. Right? And this is this is super exciting. You see, you know, how should people follow the work that you're doing, you know, as you continue to start these fires and feed these fires what are the best ways for people to follow you and that work?
Ian Forrester:
So so they will follow me personally, I'm pretty much cubic garden on almost everything, I do have a must on account of obviously, which is cubic garden@mas.to. I also am on Black Twitter and twit.tv and a twit dot social survey and scholar dot social and I never ever once but if you literally get to my my website, my blog, keep a garden you'll find most of the stuff. I haven't blogged as much recently because I'm be so busy just like doing lots of stuff like this, but I do think that you should definitely join or follow sorry. A lot of the the accounts on on BBC social. And also the when the R&D has an account and the R&D account, it's it's kind of like it's pumping out some really interesting stuff it also Yeah, we have a blog that also goes into a bit more detail has linked to the blogs and stuff like that. But that's there's someone actually right in there. though it makes sense that as R&D as R&D department, we would probably put more weight behind what we put out, you know,
Mike McCue:
I hope you do some more blog posts in the future, because they're very insightful. They're very, I think they get at that idea of building something for humans designing across the board systematically. And I think some of the posts that you've had on there that I've been reading are just absolutely fantastic insights for any kind of product builder, any sort of designer.
Ian Forrester:
So yeah, I really, I think, well, I encourage people to check out that blog and follow us on Mastodon, there's a project which, by time you listen to this, it'll be public. Call it that to podcasting. Which is, which is, which will be open source. And it's, once again, it's I now thinking about again, and going, Oh, how would this work? If it was if it was infused with activity pub? You know, but because it's gonna be open source under Apache license, what I'd love for someone's to pick it up and start running with it. It does use RSS.
Mike McCue:
That's fantastic.
Ian Forrester:
So yes, I would love to see what people do with it. So that will also be on our blog that will be shared on on Mastodon, and, and also the other platforms as well. But yeah, that's definitely that you should definitely follow BBC R&D.
Mike McCue:
Fantastic. Well, Ian, thank you so much for spending time talking about this with us. It's It's really exciting work that you're doing and have been doing for years now. And it was a it was a pleasure to get to know you and hear about all that work. Well,
Ian Forrester:
Thank you, Michael. It was a pleasure. I look forward to to joining you on Flipboard really soon.
Mike McCue:
It's exciting to get a chance to talk to you about all of this and I'm looking forward to working with you in the in the months ahead as we continue to advance the Fediverse together.
Ian Forrester:
Yeah, I think we can do it with with the others as well. I just feel that it's gonna be an unstoppable force. And in a few years time, people will go oh, well, we used to use these kind of proprietary social networks I had to use their client. Yeah. Oh dear.
Well, thanks so much for listening. As Ian said, you can follow him as “cubic garden” in pretty much all places, including his website at cubicgarden.com.
Big thanks to our editors, Rosanna Caban, and Anh Le.
To learn more about what Flipboard is doing in the Fediverse sign up via the link in this episode's description. You can also follow Mike McCue on Mastodon at Mike at Flipboard dot social. See you in the Fediverse!