Rudy Fraser

As Mastodon celebrates its 10th anniversary and BlueSky surpasses 43 million users, it has become clear that the Open Social Web is here to stay. Yet while these two larger platforms continue to grow, the remarkable potential of their underlying protocols remains largely unknown to most users. Unlocking the full power of the interoperable ecosystem that the Open Social Web promises requires more apps, platforms, and products to emerge and thrive within it. This panel explores viable business cases for decentralised social media platforms, and how to reduce dependency on the ecosystem's larger players.

Following Rudy Fraser's keynote, the conversation broadens into a wider discussion on community, identity, and digital space. Lauren Challis, board member of the Internet Society Netherlands, brings expertise in open internet governance and digital rights — exploring how decentralized technology can serve underrepresented communities. Nabil Moktar, co-founder of Nightclub Garage Noord, cultural venue Kanaal40 and Stichting 40Worldwide Foundation, represents grassroots community building in the physical world. Together, the panel examines where digital and cultural spaces intersect: How do we build platforms and places where communities truly feel at home? And who gets to decide the rules?

Keynote by Rudy Fraser What does it look like when a community builds its own social media on its own terms? Rudy Fraser, technologist, community organiser, and founder of Blacksky Algorithms [https://blackskyweb.xyz/], has been doing exactly that.

A year ago, an investor asked what I'd build if I had the freedom. This is the answer: blacksky.cash for private payments and blacksky.tech for one-click infrastructure. We're just getting started.

How Blacksky grew to millions of users without spending a dollar

Blacksky Algorithms builds infrastructure for social groups to control how they show up online: how their feeds work, how harm is addressed, and how costs are covered.

Making communities a true part of the protocol will encourage others to build things for those communities, start new communities, and hopefully foster models for self-sustainability.

What I’m learning is n----s don’t like Blacksky and I’m fine with it, I’ll push the line with it

From the very beginning, the internet was antiblack.

We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, peace and people’s community control of modern technology. - Black Panther Party 10 Point Program