Move Slowly and Build Bridges tells the story of activists, software developers, artists, and everyday people who have built the fediverse -- a large, noncentralized, alternative social media system. In contrast to big tech corporations like Meta, TikTok, or X, the fediverse is comprised of thousands of small, independent communities who use a powerful internet protocol to communicate with one another. These small communities can govern themselves and moderate content at the human scale -- in stark contrast to the global and advertiser-friendly interests of Meta or X. The Mastodon network is perhaps the most notable and successful platform in the fediverse. Founded in 2016, Mastodon has positioned itself as an alternative to Twitter -- one that can be completely under the control of its members, from it to its daily operations to it underlying software.
Making a noncentralized, ethically-run social media system is no easy task. The people building the fediverse have faced burnout, bigotry, angry debates, and death threats. And they face constant, nagging doubts: can we really do this? Can noncentralized social media survive? Can we -- all of us -- have our own social media? In this thoroughly researched book, Robert W. Gehl argues that the answer is yes -- but it won't be easy.
Introduction: On Alternative Social Media Chapter 1: Critical Reverse Engineering: How Mastodon Became a Twitter Alternative Chapter 2: Techlash: How to Vaporize Elon Musk Chapter 3: The Non-Standard Standard: When ActivityPub met Mastodon Chapter 4: Codes of Conduct Chapter 5: Rage and Joy: Playvicious, #Fediblock, the BadSpace, and the Politics of Defederation Chapter 6: Paying for It: The Fediverse's Alternative Economies Chapter 7: To Finity and Before: Environmentalist Experiments on the Fediverse Chapter 8: Threads Conclusion: Caring for it: Putting the Ethics in Ethical Social Media Epilogue: On Godmonsters, or Looking Backward and Forward at Social Media Appendix: Research Note Bibliography Index
Robert W. Gehl (@rwg@aoir.social) is the Ontario Research Chair of Digital Governance for Social Justice at York University in Toronto. He is the author of several books, including Weaving the Dark Web (MIT 2018) and Social Engineering (MIT 2022, co-authored with Sean Lawson).
