Content, technology, community

“Newsmast is all about content, why are you moving into technology?”

A great question from Jaz-Michael King at IFTAS. At first there was a simple answer: we developed a complex fork of Mastodon, and some of the technology looked like it could benefit the wider Fediverse.

As we’ve started to build the project, there’s a deeper answer. Let's dive in.

Prologue

Curated Content, Connections and Communities.

Our Foundation mission is “knowledge for all for good”. Using social media to share knowledge for the benefit of society.

For us that means curating content, making connections and building communities.

Three things which are at the heart of Patchwork.

Patchwork is about software for stories. Technology for tales. Protocols for people.

Here are some illustrations.

Chapter One

Organisations begin to own their social media presence through the social web.

It’s hard being a social media manager. So many platforms to manage, tailoring content for each. We’ve had a tiny taste of this at Newsmast, as we’ve ventured out to promote the social web. Patchwork is about taking a step back from the battle of the algorithms. Building a new strategy which puts your organisation in control, not the billionaire barons of the walled gardens. 

For starters, subscribe to the Social Web Information Service (something we need to create!). With amazing case studies of organisations starting out in the Fediverse. Next up, revitalise your website. Add some engaging channels of content relevant to you, and turn your blog into a social media account. Ready to go further? Try our Social Web Accelerator Programme. Swap the drudgery of daily cross-posting for the power of a Patchwork server, hosted and managed by us.

With your Patchwork server you get:

• Base level content moderation when joining the Fediverse.
• Local communities - deepening connections with local only posts.
• Curated public channels - breathe new life into your presence on the web.
• Broadcast channels - own your own social media voice.
• C0nnections to blogs, forums, podcasts and short-form video, making your own social network.

How’s that for a happy ending?

Chapter Two

Server admins turn their Fediverse server into a community.

Server admins are the unsung heroes and heroines of the Fediverse. You’ve seen mass migrations in flight in the autumn of 2022, and again in the summer of 2023. Spam waves crashing through January 2024. Users falling back to a hard core of committed enthusiasts. How about a new narrative? One which puts the fun back into Fedi, adds some versatility to the verse?

The first step is simple. Alongside your ready installed Mastodon server, upload the Patchwork dashboard and associated gems. Tiny additions to your server software. Now you can make some big changes, all at the push of a button. Helping you build your server community, deepen engagement, offer a richer experience - and make everything more sticky, so people keep coming back for more:

• Curate your server community with server-level content moderation and spam blocking.
• Build a local community with local only posts and extra local features - things like emoji reactions.
• Curate channels relevant to your users - have a community voice.
• Import channels to stimulate discovery and debate - creating a community vibe.
• Get closer to your users with email onboarding and e-newsletters.

There must be a downside - what’s the risk? Your server remains 99.9% Mastodon. We just add a few little extras, which go a long way. We’ve been building, running and testing this code for eighteen months at Newsmast, a complex Mastodon fork. And you can visit our test server and dashboard to see Patchwork in action yourself. 

Creating a new chapter for your server.

Chapter Three

Anyone on the Fediverse can get deeper into what matters to them.

There’s a myriad of communities in the Fediverse, all with their own identity and idiosyncrasies. From sheep in Wales to donkeys in California. From old school Vinyl, Film and Retrocomputing to the latest in social media and tech. Crises get covered, from Ukraine to Gaza. Memes are born and die. Silent Sunday creates a magical montage for your weekend - and Monsterdon takes you to the movies every Sunday night. That’s why Patchwork is called Patchwork.

Yet to newcomers the whole thing can be baffling. One of the biggest challenges of the Fediverse is search and discovery. Finding connections and content across servers. Most influential people in the Fediverse have done this over years - so it’s hard to imagine how difficult it is for new users. And for the existing users - what if their feed gets stale - how to get deeper connections and real conversations? Whether you just want to see new stuff, or find a new audience, discovery and reach are difficult in a decentralised network. 

Up until now, we’ve had one offering for this: Newsmast. It’s a super-hub, powered by Patchwork. You can participate in our flagship knowledge sharing communities at Newsmast - joining our app, following our feeds or discovering our channels.

Now with Patchwork there’s a new way to discover and curate channels and communities across the wider social web:

• Curate your own channels for any community of interest.
• Discover content and connections through all the Patchwork channels.
• Easily jump between different content formats for a richer experience.

That’s not just one ending. It’s a whole bunch of alternative realities.

Chapter Four

FediDevs are a community too!

We very much need vibrant technology at the heart of the Fediverse. It’s not all stories - we need software too. Patchwork opens up spaces for innovation. We’re starting with Mastodon: we’d love to roll out to other server software too.

Once we’ve created a path for plugins, anything is possible. An auto-migrator. Emoji reactions. A rainbow coloured UI. Instead of sitting on GitHub, new ideas can come to life in the Patchwork Dashboard, waiting for server admins to pick them up and put them to use.

Now we’ve shown how hubs can work, any third-party services can be created. We want to hook up with Fediverse apps - and with different content formats - blogs, forums, podcasts. And there are multiple new ways to create, curate, moderate and deliver channels - our micro-servers are just the beginning.

Patchwork isn’t just one story for developers - it’s many.

Epilogue

Building Patchwork together. 

Over the last few weeks I’ve been telling the Patchwork story, as we build it in public. Making our contribution to finishing building the Fediverse. Now Patchwork is taking shape, there are spaces for more and more people to join us.

We’d love to hear from you, whatever your talents and interests. From storytellers to software engineers, curators to coders. It's exciting!