I’ve seen it again and again: A group gets started, gets working on something good an important, and then falls apart because some internal conflict arises. During the early days of Covid-19, mutual aid projects appeared in many towns and neighborhoods to help people help each other through a difficult time. It was inspiring. But in the years since, I have kept hearing stories of how what I then came to pass. When the initial excitement wore off, or when donations declined, little and big disagreements tore most of those groups apart.

Because of the lockdowns, many of those communities relied heavily on online tools to communicate. There, shooting off an insult or pressing “unfollow” are easier to do than their face-to-face equivalents. Further, starting with the earliest online communities in the 1970s and 1980s, a design pattern of “implicit feudalism” took hold. From Facebook Groups to group chats, social-media software assumes that there should be an all-powerful admin or moderator; the primary tools for problem-solving are digital censorship or exile.

By and large, that is, online platforms are not well designed for communities to self-govern. The usual methods for group governance offline—explicit bylaws, boards of directors, Robert’s Rules of Order, and so forth—are almost nowhere to be found online. Our online spaces still have yet to catch up to the lessons learned from offline ones. If we want to build for our communities, we need to be intentional about it. The software won’t do it for us.

In what follows, I’ll suggest a series of steps for how online communities can set themselves up for healthy problem-solving. This is not a complete program or a universal script, but it can serve as a checklist of questions that you can apply to your particular context. You should decide what is most relevant.

Codes of Conduct: What are the basic expectations?

For years, software developer Coraline Ada Ehmke the conferences she attended to adopt clear codes of conduct. At first they refused, claiming that such rules were unnecessary. But Ehmke, as a trans woman, knew how toxic those spaces could be for marginalized participants, and she helped more people raise their voices, too. Now, the she created has become a widespread norm in tech communities.

When a code of conduct is in place, it is easier for leaders to enforce basic expectations of decency. A code of conduct reduces the gray area and the temptation to tolerate toxic behavior.

When you’re setting up a community space, adopt a battle-tested code like the Contributor Covenant. What I often do—at the start of a class or the first meeting of a new group—is share the Contributor Covenant and invite participants to edit it. Based on their ideas, we create our own version attuned to our needs.

Rules: How does power flow?

There are important questions a code of conduct doesn’t answer: Who has the right to implement the rules and change them? If there are specific leaders, how are they accountable to others in the group?

Offline organizations often answer these questions in their bylaws—a document written in formal legalese, with off-putting jargon and turns of phrase. When MEDLab started building a platform to help mutual-aid groups self-govern, we called it , inspired by how some monasteries call their ancient bylaws simply a “.” Online communities don’t need legalese, usually. They just need some basic protocols in place for how decision-making works and how their norms should evolve.

Disputes: How do you resolve conflicts?

Even when there is a code and a rule in place, ambiguities will arise. People will feel harmed by others, and they will disagree about how and why. In the rule or elsewhere, plan ahead for how the community will resolve disputes. What does a legitimate resolution look like?

I have taken a lot of inspiration on this point from for “”—efforts to address harm in more holistic ways than resorting to policing and incarceration. But work is needed to make these processes accessible, especially for online contexts. This is something MEDLab plans to focus on in the coming year.

Economies: What resources and rewards are needed?

In many online communities, the underlying economies are hidden from view. Someone may be in a position of managing the community because they are paid to do it by their job, or because they have a job that affords them the time to do it outside of paid work. A community might seem almost magical when economies are hidden, because it creates an experience of a gift economy, of pure voluntarism. But over time such systems often leave people without access to the economic flows feeling .

Try to make the economies at work in your community explicit. If they don’t seem fair, talk about how to make them fairer. The platform is designed for communities that want to make their financial transactions transparent; hard conversations may be easier if there is a shared source of truth. If your community creates content, be sure to decide on the terms for sharing it, such as by adopting or licenses.

Stacks: Who controls your tools?

Ultimately, self-governance in online spaces should involve some ability to govern the tools we rely on. Even platforms like Reddit and Discord, which give admins wide latitude to customize their spaces, can always change the tools on you or pull the plug. The dominant online economy does not make it easy for communities to control their own tools. Any little bit of control you can get, at least, is a step in the right direction.

Here at MEDLab, a set of open-source collaboration tools together thanks to platforms such as , , and . We can do this at relatively low cost and without tech support—just a willingness to try things, endure mistakes, and learn. New_Public has a handle full of examples of things you can try. Even if you don’t have the skills for managing a server, keep asking: How could we self-govern our tools a bit more fully?

Share what you learn

Building governable spaces shouldn’t require reinventing the wheel. First, draw lessons from offline practices you’re familiar with; they are often perfectly applicable to online life, with a few tweaks. When you take steps in the direction of self-governance, share your lessons and best practices so others can learn from them. On CommunityRule, there is a where users have shared their rule designs for others to copy and adapt. When you start or enter a community, try to ensure that the basics are in place—a code of conduct and at least a simple rule for decision-making and accountability.

The things I’ve discussed here are bedrocks. What really makes communities healthy is what you build on top of them. Most of the time you shouldn’t need to worry about codes of conduct and rules, because your culture should take care of itself. But having those bedrocks there, when the culture breaks down, can be the difference between survival and collapse. For all the codes, rules, and tools you adopt, remember that the art of community governance always involves treading in mystery.

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The Media Economies Design Lab (MEDLab) at ���������� Boulder has teamed up with Mask Network to launch the Open Social Incubator. This exciting new venture, made possible by a $50,000 gift from Mask Network, will be housed within ���������� Boulder's College of Media, Communication, and Information (CMCI) and aims to nurture the next generation of decentralized social media communities and drive innovation in the online economy.

A Meeting of Minds

At the helm of this initiative is Nathan Schneider, a prominent scholar and passionate advocate for economic justice in the digital realm. Schneider's work at MEDLab focuses on democratic ownership and governance in the online economy. He co-led a 2017 effort to pass a shareholder proposal at Twitter that would change the company’s ownership structure, and subsequently co-founded Social.coop, a democratic community on Mastodon, a popular open social media platform. Since Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, interest in alternative social networks has continued to grow. Now, with Mask Network's support, Schneider and MEDLab are ready to embrace a deeper focus on open social media.

"I'm looking forward to what this gift will enable us to do," Schneider said. "We'll be supporting new online communities, exploring new social media possibilities and cultivating international collaborations."

Enter Mask Network

Mask Network, the force behind this collaboration, is no stranger to pushing the boundaries of what's possible online. Its browser extension allows users to experience the benefits of Web 3.0—secure messaging, decentralized payment networks and true data ownership—within the familiarity of mainstream social media platforms.

, the non-profit arm of Mask Network, has made a significant donation to bring the Open Social Incubator to life. Established in 2023, the Academy has been making waves by funding Web3 research and storytelling at top universities and journalism programs worldwide. The gift to MEDLab was made in an unusual way—through a transfer of Mask Network’s own digital token, $MASK.

"It will take a journey to achieve the free and open internet,” said Suji Yan, founder of Mask Network and the Academy. “Decentralized social networks play a vital role in the process. We are excited to back like-minded scholars and institutions to build a bright future together."

The Open Social Incubator 

By bringing together researchers, developers and innovators, the incubator aims to create and scale decentralized social media solutions that put users in control of their online experiences. Combining Mask Network Academy's expertise in decentralized applications with MEDLab’s research and design capabilities, this collaboration aims to build a more democratic, equitable, and resilient digital future.

This partnership represents a shared commitment to advancing the ownership economy, where individuals have control over their data, attention, and digital contributions. It's a bold step toward reclaiming our digital lives from centralized platforms and building online spaces that prioritize user autonomy and community governance.

Whether you're a tech enthusiast, a social scientist, or simply someone who believes in a fairer digital world, MEDLab and Mask Network invite you to join this journey toward a more empowering online future. For updates, subscribe to MEDLab’s newsletter.

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Applications are now closed

Do the online communities and groups that you participate in use digital tools that truly serve your values? Do you want to break free from the confines of corporate platforms, but feel stuck by the limits of your own technical know-how? Social media has long been dominated by companies that operate through surveillance, censorship, and the whims of a few people in charge. Yet different possibilities are emerging: in recent years, a new crop of social networks has emerged, based on open-source software and open protocols—including Mastodon, Matrix, Bluesky and Nostr.

However, too often, would-be users of these tools are turned off by the apparent requirement of specialized technical skills. We want to help lower the barrier for skilled community-builders to take advantage of open social media. We’re looking for people with an existing track record of building community (online or off!) who want to learn about social media tools that are truly user owned and governed.

The Media Economies Design Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder is launching a 5-month process of mentorship and peer-to-peer learning, empowering veteran community builders to adopt emerging open social networks.

We’ll help participants better understand the opportunities and challenges unique to these new kinds of networks. Together, we will strive to create a space where community builders can deepen their technical knowledge and better understand how to utilize technologies that align with their values.

Participants will meet as a full group monthly and receive ongoing, 1:1 project-specific technical support as they seed and grow new communities using open social media tools of their choosing. Participation is fully remote and all sessions will be conducted in English. All participants should commit to making strides toward community-building in open social media by the end of the program. Completion of the full program, from November 2024 to April 2025, will be compensated with a stipend of $3,500 USD.

We encourage applications from individuals or teams who wish to build or are presently embedded in communities that could benefit from improved access to open-source, self-owned tech tools, especially:

• Solidarity economy and bio-regional sustainability projects
• Journalists, newsrooms, and public-interest media
• Activist and social-change communities
• Cross-border networks
• Artists and arts organizations
• Communities at risk of being shut out of proprietary infrastructure

Anyone can apply, regardless of institutional affiliation. No prior technical experience is expected or required—just a desire to learn. by October 4, 2024.

The Open Social Incubator is organized by the Media Economies Design Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder, made possible by generous gifts from Colorado ReWild and Mask Network Academy. The illustration, , is licensed through Stocksy, a cooperative stock platform.

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On August 8, 2023, approximately fifty people from across the Rocky Mountain Front Range convened at the University Memorial Center at the University of Colorado in Boulder. They came for “Local Tech Ecologies,” a regional conference celebrating technology designed to empower local communities. After MEDLab director Nathan Schneider opened up the conference, Mayor Aaron Brockett of Boulder gave a brief talk about the work happening in local tech and community building across Boulder and the surrounding communities.

Following Mayor Brockett was Dr. Fernanda R. Rosa from Virginia Tech. She gave the first keynote address, which raised critical questions about the “local,” including its colonial implications and its relationship to the “global.” In the process, she shared the voices of various projects around the world attempting to build local tech ecologies. There were some technical issues during Dr. Rosa’s talk, which led to more discussion with the audience while the tech crew worked. Unfortunately, due to these issues, we were unable to capture recordings of the mayor's introduction or Dr. Rosa's outstanding lecture.

Dr. Rosa offered a powerful reminder to think critically about what we mean when we discuss the local, who is left out of those conversations, and how to bring those people to the forefront when discussing technological solutions. For instance, her talk included a video, "," an important opportunity to hear about a local tech project in the participants' own voices.

With that, we moved into the lightning talks. The goal of this session was to showcase a diverse range of locally focused tech projects underway in Colorado. Each project had seven minutes to present. During the session we had folks share all sorts of projects, startups, and community-building ventures including , , the , , , the , , the , and . LeeLee James of Slay the Runway also had difficulties with multimedia; see her materials at and .

What came from the lightning talks was more than just sharing what is going on across Colorado. Technology can become a very tiring and dark subject to explore. Many global solutions and tech communities have done a great deal of harm across the world. The lightning talks inspired many in the room, offering a reminder that more community-based technologies really are possible.

There was a break following the lightning talks where much of this excitement was shared throughout the conference. As people settled back down for the lunch keynote, Dr. Ted Striphas of the University of Colorado Boulder gave a reflection on the lightning talks that, among other things, called into question the intrinsic value of the local.

Our lunch keynote speaker was Ethan Zuckerman of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His talk examined the relationship between misinformation and democracy, going back to the founding of the United States, while drawing lessons from that history for today. By the time of his talk, he had already posted to his blog about and the .

After Dr. Zuckerman’s charismatic analysis, we moved onto the final planned session of the day, the panels. These divided the conference into breakout rooms to discuss three topics: gaming, journalism, and crisis.

The gaming panel hosted Anne Marie and Taylor Clark from ���������� Gaming and Griffin Opp from CSU gaming to discuss the difficulties in cultivating local communities in the vast and global world of online gaming and esports.

The journalism panel heard from three local journalists Stacey Feldman from the Boulder Reporting Lab, Rossana Longo from the Colorado News Collaborative, and Linda Shapley from Colorado Community Media. All three of them discussed the importance of local tech and community in both reporting and news entrepreneurship.

The crisis panel focused on how technologies could better serve local communities in the context of crises such as natural disasters. Dr. Nabil Echchaibi of ���������� Boulder opened the panel, followed by talks from Dr. Leysia Palen of ���������� Boulder and independent documentary filmmaker Saleh Khaled Ibrahim.

The conference concluded with a reception where participants discussed their projects with individuals, shared laughs, and enjoyed the warm Colorado sun beaming in through the windows of the conference room.

The Local Tech Ecologies conference did more than just showcase ideas on what it means to build community and local technology networks, it was a living embodiment of its goals. People who may have never engaged with one another otherwise were able to come together in one space to discuss the trials and promise of what a local tech future could bring. Importantly, something that touched me was the openness of the space, the warm inviting wonder many had in sharing their ideas. We seek to build a brighter and more hopeful idea of technology than the dominant narrative of global tech companies today.

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August 8, 2023
9 a.m. - 5 p.m. (in-person)
9 a.m. - 1 p.m. (live-streamed)
University Memorial Center room 235
University of Colorado Boulder

When the devastating Marshall Fire spread across Boulder County in on December 30, 2021, many of us turned to our phones and our networks. They helped us make sense of the crisis and keep each other safe. We relied on information from local organizations and governments, as well as global platforms not designed for a moment like that, and not designed for our community.

What if we valued local technology the way we value local food and local businesses?

This event explores opportunities and challenges for building healthy tech ecosystems that are focused on the needs of local communities—with a focus on projects active across Colorado's Front Range. What kinds of social media could bring people together rather than driving them apart? What kinds of gig platforms could put workers and small businesses above global monopolies? How can regional journalists develop tools truly suited to their needs? The event will make space to introduce projects already cultivating local tech ecologies in Colorado and beyond, and we will discuss strategies for more intentionally developing those ecologies in the future.

Schedule

9:00-10:00am
Room 235

Welcome
Aaron Brockett (Mayor of Boulder)
Nathan Schneider, Assistant Professor at ���������� Boulder and MEDLab Director

Morning Keynote
Fernanda R. Rosa (Virginia Tech)

10:15-11:45am
Room 235

Lightning Talks
Josh Ritzer (Nigh)
Caroline Savery (Bloom Network)
Nikhil Mankekar (Colorado Venture Capital Authority)
Becks Boone and Jamie Anderson (Rootable)
Pat Kelly (Colorado ReWild)
libi striegl (Media Archaeology Lab)
LeeLee James (Slay The Runway)
Erika Ianco and Trish Uvenferth (Rocky Mountain Employee Ownership Center)
Mike Perhats (Nosh)

12:00-1:30pm
Room 235

Lunch and Lunch Keynote
Ted Striphas (���������� Boulder)
Ethan Zuckerman (UMass Amherst)

1:30-2:30pm

Room 235
Panel: Crisis
Nabil Echchaibi (���������� Boulder)
Saleh Khaled Ibrahim
Leysia Palen (���������� Boulder)

Room 245
Panel: Journalism
Stacy Feldman (Boulder Reporting Lab)
Rossana Longo (Colorado News Collaborative)
Linda Shapley (Colorado Community Media)

Room 247
Panel: Gaming
Ann Marie (RemainNA) (���������� Gaming)
Taylor (MustardSauce) Clark (���������� Gaming)
Griffin Opp (CSU Gaming)

3:30-4:30pm
Room 235

Unconference

4:30-5:30pm
Room 235

Reception

Lunch will be served, along with snacks and a reception at the end. This is a free event, but please consider to support our work.

Organized by the Media Economies Design Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder and made possible by a generous gift from Colorado ReWild.

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July 5, 2023
9-10:30 a.m. Mountain Time
Free webinar

Nonprofits perform essential work in our contemporary world, whether fighting for human rights or defending the ecosystems we rely on. Now, with the rise of open social media platforms like Mastodon and Bluesky, nonprofits have new opportunities to develop close conversations with the communities they seek to support. Many of these open social media platforms are also better aligned with nonprofits' values than major tech companies have been.

What are the best ways for non-profits to get involved? How do nonprofits navigate this emerging space in an already dense social media landscape? In this webinar, we will hear from nonprofit leaders and technologies on how the emerging social networks related to their organizations' goals.

Speakers:

• (Founder and Director, Distribute Aid)
• (Director of Open Technology, Open Earth Foundation)
• (Head of Community Initiatives, New_ Public)

Facilitated by Nathan Schneider, Skylar Hew, and Reily McGee.

The Open Social Media event series is organized by the Media Economies Design Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder, made possible by a generous gift from Colorado ReWild. The illustration above, , is licensed through Stocksy, a cooperative stock platform.

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June 13, 2023
3-4:30 p.m. Mountain Time
Free webinar

In the aftermath of a chaotic Twitter takeover, many people have moved away from centralized social media platforms to a new set of social platforms that are open-source, decentralized, and user-centered—like Bluesky, Mastodon, and Nostr. This shift highlights a pressing need for more trustworthy civic spaces. But civic-minded social platforms are nothing new. The advent of Open Social Media has been many years in the making.

This webinar presents some of Open Social Media's origin stories from speakers who have been involved in the development, culture, and communities of their platforms. We will explore how queer experiences and activist movements, for instance, have played a vital role in shaping the design and direction of emerging platforms.

Speakers:

• (co-editor, ActivityPub)

• (founder, Nos)

• (early participant, Bluesky)

Facilitated by Nathan Schneider, Skylar Hew, and Reily McGee.

The Open Social Media event series is organized by the Media Economies Design Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder, made possible by a generous gift from Colorado ReWild. The illustration above, , is licensed through Stocksy, a cooperative stock platform.

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