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   Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Saturday, 04-Oct-2025 22:52:05 JST Evan Prodromou

   There were a few good questions for me after my #Fediday talk about cooperative social networks. I want to recapitulate them to make sure I addressed them well.

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Saturday, 04-Oct-2025 22:53:55 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     The first was, everybody knows you for ActivityPub, and where was the part about ActivityPub in this talk? It's a fair question! But I have more involvement in the Fediverse than just in the protocol; in my role at SWF I also get involved in the social and economic layer of the Fediverse.

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Saturday, 04-Oct-2025 22:55:58 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     Another question was why the links I gave for national cooperative organisations to help with forming a cooperative did not have information about forming Fediverse coops. I think there needs to be more information about forming Fediverse coops, and I think that's something we want to do at the SWF.

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Saturday, 04-Oct-2025 23:00:36 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     A third question (actually, I think two questions) was about protocols for democratic participation in coops. We have occasionally used polls for getting the temperature of the membership on CoSocialCa, and I know that social.coop uses loom.io's features for voting on some issues. But at least with CoSocial, we haven't invested too much time or effort into cryptographic, anonymising voting systems. We get most of our voting done by show of hands!

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Saturday, 04-Oct-2025 23:05:02 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     A final question, which I found really interesting, was about volunteer moderators in coop instances (and other instances -- volunteer moderators are not exclusive to coops). Namely, whether members who report moderation problems can feel safe that their reports are confidential, and will be handled professionally. It's a really good question. For CoSocialCa, we have a small team of volunteers who do moderation, and we have a pretty detailed code of conduct that guides our moderation decisions.

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Saturday, 04-Oct-2025 23:08:40 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     This was kind of a tough question for me; I'm not sure I understood it fully. I answered it incorrectly the first time and the audience member had to re-ask it later in the Q&A!

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Saturday, 04-Oct-2025 23:08:41 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     But making sure there are listed names and faces for our trust and safety team available to members, a description of how confidential reports are handled, and that members are able to appeal decisions, is all important work.

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Saturday, 04-Oct-2025 23:09:56 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • Matt Noyes

     @Matt_Noyes Some really nice folks made this guide, which I referenced in my talk:

     https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/How_to_Make_the_Fediverse_Your_Own

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     Matt Noyes (matt_noyes@social.coop)'s status on Saturday, 04-Oct-2025 23:09:58 JST Matt Noyes

     in reply to

     @evan There's an article there: how to start a cooperative social media platform. Who's in?

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Saturday, 04-Oct-2025 23:12:24 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • Matt Noyes

     @Matt_Noyes But seriously, SWF is going to host a workshop on Fediverse cooperatives and set up a site for finding or founding Fediverse coops. It would be cool to work together on this!

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Saturday, 04-Oct-2025 23:23:51 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • Matt Noyes

     @Matt_Noyes I think it would be really fun! We had a great joint book club meeting on "Governable Spaces" a few months ago. I think another meetup is in order.

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     Matt Noyes (matt_noyes@social.coop)'s status on Saturday, 04-Oct-2025 23:23:52 JST Matt Noyes

     in reply to

     @evan What about recording a video where folks from cosocial and social.coop (and others) go through that article, adding their two cents?

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Saturday, 04-Oct-2025 23:26:45 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     I originally answered the question, if a cooperative member disagrees with the moderation policies of the instance, isn't it harder for them to leave? We've done some planning for this at cosocial, although we haven't had to put it into practice, so I talked about that. But that wasn't the question-asker's question.

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     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Saturday, 04-Oct-2025 23:39:35 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • Matt Noyes

     @Matt_Noyes 😉

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     Matt Noyes (matt_noyes@social.coop)'s status on Saturday, 04-Oct-2025 23:39:37 JST Matt Noyes

     in reply to

     @evan Ha!