Social networks are a ubiquitous part of our life -- about 2/3 of all Internet users use social media platforms on a regular basis. They help us connect to family and friends, meet people from around the world who share our common interests, and read and discuss local, national and global news.

But social networks have a dark side, too. Their algorithmic feeds can be psychologically addictive, and lead to anti-social behaviour that's bad for society and for our own mental health. The huge amount of data that we share with social network platforms has dubious stewardship, and is often shared with marketers to target us with ads. Most of all, the platforms are locked down, disallowing most interesting hacking, data mining, and optimization for your own use.

As hackers, when we don't like how technology works, we make our own. But in the case of social software, that's not enough -- we need to keep connected to the people who matter to us, and the politicians and thinkers who shape our world. How can we make our own social software that keeps us connected to others?

ActivityPub is an open web standard from the W3C. Patent- and royalty-free, collaboratively developed, it lets Free Software developers connect to commercial platforms and free ones alike. The network of ActivityPub-enabled services, dubbed the Fediverse, is a burgeoning coalition of social networks that interoperate with open standards.

In this talk, Evan will give a gentle introduction to using ActivityPub-enabled services to get on the Fediverse. He'll talk about the challenges and successes of open social networks, and give some insights based on his 15+ years of building and fighting for the open social web.