A new European ruling on algorithmic amplification determines if an operator controls how content spreads on a platform. But applying it to open social networks turns out to be a problem.
Social media algorithms can be redesigned to bridge divides — here’s how
"It falls to both the tech companies that built these systems and an engaged public to create technologies designed for social cohesion."
AI, Agency and Protocols_ Power and Governance in Open Social Networks.pdf
Overview
What is Blacksky? Blacksky Algorithms is building the future of self-governable online communities with tools that make complex infrastructure simple to deploy. Most social platforms control what users see, how communities operate, and who gets to feel safe online. Blacksky changes that by providing one-click infrastructure for independent, self-governed digital spaces. Our platform lets communities […]
🔭🖤🚀 Social media’s next evolution: decentralized, open-source, and scalable
How Blacksky grew to millions of users without spending a dollar
Quit social media that won't tell you their algorithm
Opaque feeds shape what you believe and you can never check whether they are working for you. We should insist on auditable algorithms, and support the platforms willing to build them.
From Feeds to Trails
To design the future of social media, rethink the interface before the algorithm.
Community by Design
Social media empower distributed content creation by algorithmically harnessing "the social fabric" (explicit and implicit signals of association) to serve this content. While this overcomes the bottlenecks and biases of traditional gatekeepers, many believe it has unsustainably eroded the very social fabric it depends on by maximizing engagement for advertising revenue. This paper participates in open and ongoing considerations to translate social and political values and conventions, specifically social cohesion, into platform design. We propose an alternative platform model that includes the social fabric an explicit output as well as input. Citizens are members of communities defined by explicit affiliation or clusters of shared attitudes. Both have internal divisions, as citizens are members of intersecting communities, which are themselves internally diverse. Each is understood to value content that bridge (viz. achieve consensus across) and balance (viz. represent fairly) this internal diversity, consistent with the principles of the Hutchins Commission (1947). Content is labeled with social provenance, indicating for which community or citizen it is bridging or balancing. Subscription payments allow citizens and communities to increase the algorithmic weight on the content they value in the content serving algorithm. Advertisers may, with consent of citizen or community counterparties, target them in exchange for payment or increase in that party's algorithmic weight. Underserved and emerging communities and citizens are optimally subsidized/supported to develop into paying participants. Content creators and communities that curate content are rewarded for their contributions with algorithmic weight and/or revenue. We discuss applications to productivity (e.g. LinkedIn), political (e.g. X), and cultural (e.g. TikTok) platforms.
W-Social: What does sovereignty mean for social media? – Open Future
The European Commission’s move to W-Social frames it as a European alternative to X, but its closed-source code and reliance on Bluesky’s infrastructure show that sovereign social media requires open infrastructure—not European ownership alone.
✨🙌 AI that helps communities thrive on their own terms
Open protocols + AI-enabled coding = building what we need for ourselves
New_ Public | After the Feed
What happens after the social media feed? A presentation on the future of conversation, community, and social connection, and how AI will affect the everyday lives of billions.
Blacksky
Decentralized social media built for community power, culture, and collective freedom.
After the feed with Eli Pariser, Ben Smith, and Jasmine Sun
Eurosky is collaborating with SPRIND to test a non-toxic algorithm for the first time - Eurosky
Eurosky is a European initiative to build and operate sovereign social web infrastructure
Bridging Systems: Open Problems for Countering Destructive Divisiveness across Ranking, Recommenders, and Governance
Divisiveness appears to be increasing in much of the world, leading to concern about political violence and a decreasing capacity to collaboratively address large-scale societal challenges. In this working paper we aim to articulate an interdisciplinary research and practice area focused on what we call bridging systems: systems which increase mutual understanding and trust across divides, creating space for productive conflict, deliberation, or cooperation. We give examples of bridging systems across three domains: recommender systems on social media, collective response systems, and human-facilitated group deliberation. We argue that these examples can be more meaningfully understood as processes for attention-allocation (as opposed to "content distribution" or "amplification") and develop a corresponding framework to explore similarities - and opportunities for bridging - across these seemingly disparate domains. We focus particularly on the potential of bridging-based ranking to bring the benefits of offline bridging into spaces which are already governed by algorithms. Throughout, we suggest research directions that could improve our capacity to incorporate bridging into a world increasingly mediated by algorithms and artificial intelligence.
The Paradox of Open
Numerous organisations and initiatives have been launched with a belief in openness and free knowledge. Their proponents placed their bets on the combined power of networked information services and new governance models for the production and sharing of content and data. We – as members of this broad movement – were among those who believed it possible to leverage this combination of power and opportunity to build a more democratic society, unleashing the power of the internet to create universal access to knowledge and culture. For us, such openness meant not only freedom, but also presented a path to justice and equality.