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And now, something fairly unfortunate had happened there. Before we get to that unfortunate thing, which is also pretty funny, I want to refresh your memory about how we got here and all. In January, in a moment of unmitigated optimism, we designed our network, starting with its name. We could call it the Forkermers. I mean, I tried to do a blended name and came up with Search Fork or Heart Engine. Heart Engine sounds like it belongs on a different internet. That's a Casey Zincognito tab. Why did we do that? Well, not so long ago, people were very upset about Elon Musk's takeover of what was one's Twitter. Everybody was set up with billionaires, the way they'd made social media addictive and polarized with their fiendish algorithms. I mean, people are still mad at those things. But a year ago, people were talking about solutions. And one solution that was floated that I found very intriguing was that social media might be better if instead of being concentrated, like just a few platforms owned by moguls, if instead it was really widely distributed, like you had all these little platforms that were operated by anybody who wanted to run them, but those platforms could be interconnected with each other through something called Federation, a federated internet, a Fediverse. This seemed like a long shot, but not entirely impossible plan for an actual better internet. And so Kevin, Casey and I wanted to try it. We wanted to build our own little piece of the Fediverse. And so on January 9th, we'd opened the Forkiverse app to any internet stranger who wanted to join, and then we'd wait it. It's kind of cool to see an unfilled universe. It's so beautiful to just see it without any misinformation, any sort of toxic hate speech or bullying. Yeah, many people are saying this is the ideal social network. Really? It's very sad. All of this was documented in the search engine episode called the Fediverse experiment. There's a link to it in our show notes. But what happened was almost 10,000 people joined right away. And they did what people do on social media, chitter chatter, shared links, made friends. It was a bigger success than any of us had imagined. But the reason we were meeting last week was to discuss a grave situation that had since transpired in our dear Forkiverse. Kevin was the one bringing the news and also catching us up to speed about the events between launch and now. We spent a glorious couple of weeks receiving posts from people participating in the discussion there. And then a few things happened. One was we ran out of room on our Mastodon hosting plan. We were victim of our own success. We're a victim of our own success. I forget how many gigabytes of storage we had got exceeded by people posting their photos of Forks, which is one of the classic Forkiverse activity that everyone loves. People would also post photos of just where they were when they were listening to our shows. And that all took up some space. And so we have exceeded the limits of our Mastodon hosting plan, which is good. No problems, but champagne problems, but still problems, especially because I have not yet built you guys for your portion of this. So I'm just eating this cost on my personal credit card, which does not feel great. I thought this was cheap. I was like, this is not going to end. I mean, it's not like I am still feeding my family to be clear. Yeah, but that is really a problem. Yeah, it's not the juice has not been worth the squeeze for me in terms of bringing enough joy to my life to justify the expenses I'm laying out for this thing. So that was strike one. Strike two was I would say just a sort of decline in engagement on my part. And I think both of your parts too, where I just found myself like, I'm not checking this thing every day or even every week. I have no idea what's going on there. It's just kind of turning into a ghost town. I can sort of see the tumbleweeds from here. And by the way, I would say that Kevin's participation in the Forkiverse declined precipitously after the announcement or rather after the publication of our episode announcing the Forkiverse. It was sort of like once it had been created, Kevin said, this feels like the right place to say goodbye. It just felt like another feed to me. You know, it's like I spend my life just juggling between these feeds that I have to sort of maintain a regular posting cadence on. And it was just one more feed. PJ, how did you feel? Like I think I may have fought like longer than you, but it was a similar feeling where it's kind of like my complaint about social media is it is addictive. I don't like how I feel about it. At the end of it, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, blah, blah, blah. But it turns out if you make an unaddictive, pro social, nicey, nice social media feed, it's kind of hard for it to compete with the other ones. Like I'd still rather go like read, bile on X or a book. I felt like the idea of kind of the more vegetabley social media didn't totally work. I feel bad describing our social media network as vegetabley, but it felt like something I ought to do rather than something I wanted to do. Well, you know, something that I want to acknowledge that I think was really nice about the Forkiverse because I do think that I probably contributed more to the actual posting on it than either of you two clowns. So what I noticed when I would be there is that mostly it was just people who are kind enough to listen to our podcast just coming on to be like, hi, I would like to say something nice to you. Here is a picture of where I listen to your podcast, either as a picture of a fort. You inspired me to create a project that I would now like to share with you. This was lovely. And so I would say for like a nice, you know, three or four weeks, I was getting a lot of value out of just sort of showing up and it was a little bit of show and tell and it was a little bit of an ego boost. So that part of it was really lovely. But to think that Casey, how come you found yourself trailing off from it? Because I can only take so many compliments, PJ, before I say, I need to go back to Blue Sky and have somebody tell me to kill myself there. You have to, yeah, you have to take the bad with the good. It starts to feel a little authentic when you're online and people are only saying nice things to you. It's a bit of a sort of like sick, a fanic chatbot situation where you're like, I'm not sure where this is leading me. I don't want to start, you know, believing my own press. So strike two was that us three founders waned in our excitement and participation in the Forkiverse, a very small strike like Strike One. Were the third strike of the same magnitude? The Forkiverse would undoubtedly have rained for a thousand years. But Strike Three, the one Kevin was about to unveil, was the doozy. A strike so big I realized our listeners needed to hear some ants before we revealed it. After the break, portal combat.
(upbeat music) - Welcome back to the show, without further ado, Strike 3. Then came Strike 3, which was an e-mail earlier this month for the first time in a year or so. Then came Strike 3, which was an e-mail earlier this month from Jazz Michael King. Jazz Michael King is, of course, the very kind, mastodon expert, who has been sort of e-mailing us tips since we started this thing, various things like, here's how you create a denialist for kicking people off your server. Just like, he's the executive director of this thing called IFTAS, which is a federation, federated internet. What is it, the, it's probably, I'm gonna guess the international federation trust and safety. Trust and safety. So anyway, Jazz Michael King, who's the executive director of IFTAS, sent an e-mail and I'll just read it. - Okay. - Just a heads up, in case you're not monitoring your fork-averse mastodon accounts, you have had your first portal combat accounts created on fork-averse. Now to either of you remember, what portal combat is from our early coverage of this. Now, is it, I believe it's a Russian influence operation. (laughing) Sure is. It is the name given to a Russian propaganda operation that's more widely known as the Provden Network. This is a series of websites and social media accounts built to push pro-Russian news stories that dates back to 2013. It's a very old, very sprawling Russian social media operation. - An ancient evil that pre-dates the Fediverse. (laughing) - Exactly. So Jazz sort of gives me some information about the initial account that appears to be connected on the fork-averse with portal combat. Have you, there have you heard from an account known as Y-X-O-G-Y-Z-O-G-E-K? - No, that's the one that led the attack on hugging face. (laughing) - No, this is the password for the Wi-Fi at the Airbnb that you're checking into tomorrow. So this unpronounceable fork-averse account has been flagged by the trust and safety folks as being part of this sort of network of Russian disinformation operators. And I just wanna share my screen with you so that you can see what this thing is posting because I found it very interesting. - I'm so curious. - Okay, so here we have the profile for our Russian disinformation agent. - Okay, so this is so straight. It's just a normal picture of like a middle-aged white guy and they're, it looks like he's really stuck. - Yeah. - I'll say it, he's handsome. He's handsome, he's handsome. He's a unthreateningly handsome. And then his name according to this is Yikzagi Zogek. - Bless you. - And his bio says he's a painter by trade and woodcarving by choice. - Woodcarving by choice. (laughing) - He's not a forced woodcarver. - By the way, that expression sounds much better in the original Russian. (laughing) - And then he's posted I guess four times. His first post, I'll just read it out loud. Guard bail against have. - Okay. - Second post, curiosity unlocked. - Okay. - Third post, 1993, I love Monochrome. Oh, this is a repost. This is a boost post. - It's a repost of some guy's post about an art exhibit. - About an art exhibit near the Chicago board of trade. And then the final post is a boost of someone else's post about a restaurant in Ohio. - But, so how's this guy a problem? I don't understand his part of Porto Comet. He's just being kind of boring. - So, Jaz Michael King says that this is what's known as the base account in this scheme. And he says that the methods that this actor uses include establishing an initial account as our friend Wigoxi Zogak that then invites hundreds more accounts that can sort of bypass the usual new account approval path. And he points to one of these apparent follow-up accounts, these sort of accounts that were invited by this initial portal combat account. - 'Cause can I just say, if I'm honest, here was my plan up until this conversation for the Forgoverse. I was like, 'cause we've had stuff, basically the way it was working in phase one is that there'd be like 40 requests from people who wanted to join and I'd just click 'em all. And then two weeks later somebody'd be like, oh, somebody came in and they're saying something like big and terrible. I kicked that person out. Then it led to 40 more people, whatever. And eventually I was like, if I'm not paying attention to this, as long as I don't approve any more members, we have a community of people who are treating each other well, it's fine. But this guy was saying that this boring handsome guy who's curiosity unlocked, he's got like a hack where he can let more people in without our permission. - Exactly. He has the ability to sort of see the network and then invite other people. As happened with this follow-up account, which is a photo of a woman and the user name is at Kyle Palmer. - Kyle Palmer is a very traditional Russian name. (laughs) Yes. Also a very traditional name for a woman. - Yeah. - Kyle Palmer woman. She's posted, I can see it's 59 times. Her bio says, Taylor who experiments with 3638 Bavarian Wheat Fermentation on Weekends. - Yes. - Now, does she fermenting wheat by trade or by choice? That question goes on the answer to the bio. So now if you scroll through her timeline, what she in quotation marks has been posting, this does look more like Russian propaganda. So post on September 16th, moving from the city to the countryside for the winter will not change the situation. If Russia wants to leave Ukraine without electricity in the winter, it will affect all settlements. That's apparently a quote from the head of the Office of Migration Policy, Vasily Musubonyuk. - Okay. - Then we have some videos of Vladimir Putin. We have some updates on troop movements. - It's a lot of, it's funny. It looks like, oh, there's like gruesome-ish pictures from war. - Oh yeah, that's a dead body. Okay, that's not good. - Oh no. We've got some like surveillance footage. - Oh, that's like some kind of a strike on an administrative building in Odessa, which she seems happy about. - Yep. - Okay. - Yeah, so she really has like one thing to say. And it's, this is like, it's funny. I feel like people are always talking about how Russian propagandists run the internet. And I'm always like, I don't run into them. She's totally a Russian propagandist on our internet. On your credit card. - I am subsidizing the creation of Russian propaganda. - It makes me a little sad that you guys just left The New York Times because The New York Times is Kevin Russe is paying for Russian propaganda. It's just a much better headline than The Machine God's Kevin Russe is paying for Russian propaganda. - Oh, NDR is Kevin Russe is paying for Russian propaganda. - Hey buddy. - That's where your tax dollars would have gone. - Cool. - If your tax dollars would go there. (laughing) - So anyway, we have some choices to make fellas because now apparently we are infested with these portal combat disinformation agents. - Pravda is on the Forkiverse. - Pravda is on The Forkiverse and Jaz Michael King says if we don't do anything, our local timeline will slowly be taken over by these accounts. And so we basically have to choose. We could go with option one, which is to basically shut down our server and recommend that everyone on it go to this other server, find out media, which they say has actual support and people who pay attention to moderation and things like that. Or we could keep The Forkiverse up and running but hand the administrative tasks over to newsmast and if task this trust and safety group, which could clean out the bots and either they call it mothball or just shut down The Forkiverse over a period of time. - I mean, the latter option feels better to me, right? 'Cause that way, nothing changes for our listeners.
right away. They'll have some time if they want to make a transition somewhere else, they can do that. And I trust Iftast, which after all does have trust in the very name of their organization, to figure out the best way to dispose of the fork verse. I disagree. I think we should just pull the plug. How come? I don't think that the fork verse, as much as we loved it for the brief period that it was part of our lives, is sort of critical infrastructure to anyone. No one has built a small business, drop shipping, you know, forks from the fork of verse. I don't think anyone's going to miss it, frankly. Do you know that? Have you visited it in the last three months? You're very confident for somebody who has not actually used the fork of verse. I mean, I know somebody who'd be sad if the fork of verse ended. Glad I'm here, Putin. Why can I just ask before we make a decision here? I don't think that like the combined Venn diagram of search engine and machine gods listeners are really successful to rush and probably get it. What are they thinking? Why are they here? I think it just has the basic logic of spam. Go everywhere you can get in. It's like if there's a free place to post on the internet, put your propaganda there, it's very low cost to do it and potentially high upside. Okay, so wait, so Casey, you say, let's try to hand this over to another organization. Kevin, you say, let's just send this dog to a farm upstate. I think we've got to send the dog to the farm upstate. I really do. And as much as I want to continue paying $89 a month for the Galaxy plan on Mastro.hosts. I know, bro, I am spending more on this stupid Fediver server than on my cell phone bill. I feel like we're in one of the ads on search engine, like rocket money would have taken the care of the fork for a long time ago. It's true. So yeah, I look, if you guys want to keep it around for a month or two to like let everyone sort of adjust and process the news and move to their new homes, I'm fine with that. But I would also just feel comfortable just shutting the place down. I mean, to be clear, I'm comfortable like today saying, Jasmine, Michael King, you run the show now. I'm just saying like give the people on the fork of a few weeks to decide what they want to do before you laterally pull the plug. Do you feel any, do you guys feel any sense of shame about the state of the fork of verse under our benign neglect? Yeah. I feel like someone has just come over to our house and like found our hoarder collection and is just like horrified by it. And we are basically saying to them like, we can't clean this up. If you want to clean it up, it's your house now. First of all, something like that has happened in my life once every three years. And yes, I feel ashamed, period, end of sentence. And certainly, I feel ashamed about this. And I feel like one of the things that's kind of hard about the federated internet is once you join it, there's a lot of like, I would say 90% the nicest people you'll ever meet, like really the nicest people you'll ever meet. And 10% these people who are like, hmm, I don't think you're going to stick around. I don't think you really love this place. I think you're going to end up with a rat's nest filled with Russian disinformation and disappoint us once again. And I mean, when we launched the Fediverse, we got some angry replies from people saying essentially, how dare you launch this without a pre-announced plan for how you will transition us out of the fork of verse if and when you do decide to pull the plug. And my response at the time was we are telling you that this is an experiment. We are not promising you that we have created a pillar of internet infrastructure that will be here until the heat death of the universe. We are just trying something and we did try something and it was a little bit of fun for a little bit of time. And it's okay if that ends, you know, you go to the fair and you ride the fairs wheel and then you go home. And that was what the fork of verse was to me. I think you're more psychologically healthy person. Don't cry because it's oversmile because it happened. Exactly. So you don't feel ashamed, Casey. I don't. Because here's the thing, like you have to try things. You know what I feel ashamed about? Probably within the next two weeks, I'm going to start posting on X again. Something I thought I would never do in my life again. But I have looked around. And after making many what in my opinion, valiant efforts to try to promote other social networks, I personally lobbied out of Missouri to create threads and posted there near daily for three years. I personally lobbied Sam Altman to his face to just create a different social network to try to move the AI conversation somewhere else. All my efforts have completely failed. The AI and tech and business conversation on X is thriving as never before. And so in order to have any influence over that conversation, I just do feel like I have to post stuff there. Even though I truly never want to go there ever again, that is something I feel shame about. Having tried to create an alternative, that's actually something I'm proud of. Casey got mugs so hard by Elon Musk. Absolutely mugs. Never seen how they're mugging. How does it feel? Who would have guessed I would lose a fight to a trillionaire? It's beautiful. So in the end, the lesson, it's a slightly cynical one. The lesson is hopeful. The lesson is it's okay to try things. It's okay to have a little fun for a little bit of time. And when that doesn't work, go try something else. Okay. Well, I think I'm the tiebreaker vote here. And I vote we give it a month and then we take the dog up state. Yeah, suck it, Ruth. Oh, it's fine. It's fine. But we should announce it. We should let people know I would want to know they should get to spend some time. So attention is paying for the extra $89 month of posting. I can't believe it's been on your credit card. We are happy to pay $89. I think it's been like $1,000 on this stupid thing. That's crazy. Yeah, so before anybody comes into our replies and it's like, how do you guys end this? Just say, like, did you spend $1,000 to create an alternative platform and rescue us from the hell that we're in? Because until you've spent one large, we don't want to hear it. And I, like, I planned to expense this to the New York Times before I quit, but then I forgot. You, you still should. I don't have access to the, like, expense software anymore. A.G. If you're listening. Kevin, you want to say your Venmo? I also take cash out. Kevin's Venmo is at Kyle Palmer. I'm a very in wheat farmer, but only on the weekends. Oh, wood cover by choice. Okay, you know what? I don't know guys. I feel like, can I just say, that is so fucking funny to me. Like, these people have not updated their tactics since 2015. Like, if you go back and you read the first, like, Russian disinformation stories about, like, these weird, like, things posing as Americans are, like, appearing on social media, it was all this, like, super, like, weird approximations of what American hobbies would be. It would be like, you know, like, my farm and my truck. And I like to brew beer and my bathtub. I'm a real American. It's like, they're still doing exactly the same thing. Yeah, they're, like, ironic mustache millennials. I've come from the past to try to influence the present. I mean, that's what happens when you ban the entire internet, which is what Russia has basically done since the start of the war in Ukraine. Like, these people are not able to access post-2017 meme. They're still watching jib-jab videos over there. They're just waiting in long lines for new memes. Please. Oh, please, sir gay. This month's meme ration. That's Kevin Rus and Casey Newton. They have a new show that premieres October 19th on NPR. It's called "Machine Gods." I have to recommend you subscribe. Their feed is already live. The trailer's up. You can find machine gods wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube. Machine gods music is from our very own Armin Bazarian. I had to have one more conversation about all this. One that was actually slightly avoiding. Before the Forkiverse had started, I'd been greatly aided in understanding the Thetiverse by one of its builders, a lovely man named Evan Petromo. And now I had to call him to tell him that we were leaving his vision of a better internet. I was nervous about this. We get nervous about breaking up with your therapist or telling your friend that you're moving very far away. That conversation is after these ads. An exit interview. [Music] Welcome back to the show.
Can you introduce yourself? Sure. My name is Evan Padromo. I'm the Research Director at the Social Web Foundation. I'm probably best known as one of the authors of Activity Pub and one of the instigators of the Thetaverse. Instigator is such a good way to put it. I had first talked to Evan back when we were thinking about starting the Forkiverse. He'd been essential behind the scenes. And now I found myself talking to him about ending it. As part of the process, I sent him a recording of the segment you just heard. I'm curious, like, what did you feel like listening to me and Casey Kim? What did you feel listening to that segment? You know, I'm disappointed. I was really hoping that this was going to be a great experience for you. I am sorry to see the Forkiverse go, but you know, trying to smile because it happened and not cry because it's gone. I feel a little bit sad. I mean, I don't want to overstate it. Like, there's a lot of things happen in the world. But I just feel sad because I think that I keep wanting a version of the Internet or a version of my own relationship to the Internet that maybe is just not something to want anymore. And I felt like there were people who the Forkiverse was their doorway into other parts of the Veterated Internet. And for them, it showed them their places on the Internet that could function differently. Then they could build in a more active way than maybe the Internet that they're used to encountering. I think we gave people some of that. And then I think our attention drifted off. And then I would feel bad because there would also be like everyone. So I'll agree for a racist running a mock. And I was like, you're responsible for this thing. Like, I don't know, even though it's just an experiment. One of the things I really love about search engine more than, or additional to, we tried to do great journalism here. We tried to make an entertainment show. I was like, I'm like, we make a space that when you show up, the space feels a certain way. And it really bothered me that I didn't think I was making our community. I wasn't attending to it the way I wanted to be attending to it. Yeah, yeah. I guess, well, one thing I want to make sure that you know is that like your experience is not atypical at all. I've only got some limited data. But as far as I can tell, about 60% of the sites that are set up on the Fediverse don't continue. And I guess one thing I'm worried about is that, you know, you tried to make a change. And it didn't work out in the way that you wanted to. Are you feeling dispirited or discouraged or? That's a great question. You should do my job. It is what I've been thinking about a lot. Yeah, I feel both sides of that question. I do feel dispirited and discouraged. And I feel like, I feel also that part of what drew me to thinking about the Fediverse and the Forkiverse was that there was a kind of moment of a minor pre-cambrane explosion after Elon Musk took over Twitter where lots of different ideas for social media were being tried. And with this sort of larger sites like Blue Sky Threads, et cetera, micro-blogging sites. I feel like none of those ended up places where I found what I'm looking for. And so, yeah, in terms of finding online community, the thing that social media offered me for a while was that it was this funny room where the people I knew and celebrities I would never meet and strangers I might like. And all these other people gathered together and the anarchy of it was enjoyable and exciting. But like, you never knew when you might have a conversation like you really wouldn't expect with somebody you wouldn't expect to meet. And there's a great energy to that. And that time in my life or that experience that I still look for it. But like, I think this is a year where I feel more dismayed about the prospect of finding it again. Like, the best conversations I have on my phone are text messages and group chats. They're not in these sort of private public spaces. But the desire for community and community where ideas move and people help each other and unexpected things happen. I think I'll look for that my whole life. And I think this year, I've looked for it more in the real world because I struggled to find it on the internet. But the way I am is like, I'll look for it in the real world for a while. And then when that starts to feel frustrating, I'll look for it on the internet again. I can describe myself as a person who's given up on it. But every time someone says that that feeling might exist again somewhere, I can't help but look for it. I think that maybe the one thing I'd say is like, there's nothing wrong with like, keep looking for that. I don't think you have to give up on that hope and desire just because you tried one thing and it didn't work out. I want to ask, are you one blue sky or threads or one of the other Fediverse connected big networks? I'm on blue sky and threads. So you're still on the Fediverse, right? You have to do a little tweaking and I can send you some instructions on tweaking them. We can stay connected. You may not be running your own service, but at least you can have a foot hold in the Fediverse. That feels ideal to me because it feels ideal to have something that I can every once in a while kind of pop in and see how the party is going if I want to hang out there. But without feeling like, oh my god, all the ice is melted. A bunch of weirdos got in the door and the bouncers like punching somebody for no reason. Exactly. Exactly. Well, thank you so much for being, you really are such an ambassador of the world of it because like the way you are, which is like civic, curious, open, like the way you are in this conversation is the spirit of the internet I'm looking for. And I think it's part of what made me want to try and like glad that I experimented with my time in the fork versus like this conversation is how I remember things being. And usually when I open my phone, it's not how things are, but I'm glad that I got to meet you through this. PJ, thank you so much. This is a really kind thing to say. I'm glad the internet still has people like you who want it to be the right kind of place for them. So keep looking, keep searching. Thank you. Keep searching indeed. Okay, so if you are current Denizen of the Forkiverse, we are sharing a link to a Google Doc in our show notes with instructions about porting your account to a new server should you want to. You have until December 31st, 2026, on December 31st, New Year's Eve, the rapture will take place. The pug will be pulled on the Forkiverse. If you do not move your account by then, you'll lose your posts, your messages. So if you want to save them, please, you've got 90ish days, fiancés. After that, this particular dream of a better internet will die. Thanks, Vladimir Putin. Search Engine is a presentation of Odyssey. It was created by me, PJ vote, and Shruti Pinanini, who's also our show's editor. Garrett Graham is our senior producer, Emily Maltaire is our producer. Theme, original composition, and mixing by Armand Bazarian, fact-shaking this week by Anika Robbins. Our production intern is Piper Dumont. Special thanks this week to Jazz Michael King at Iftoss, which, by the way, stands, of course, for independent federated trust and safety. You can learn more about their mission at iftoss.org. Our executive producer is Leah Reese-Dennis. Thanks to the rest of the team at Odyssey, Rob Merandi, Craig Cox, Eric Donnelly, Colin Gaynor, Morker, and Josephina Francis, Kirk Courtney, and Hillary Schuff. If you have a business and would like to advertise on our show, please email us. PJ vote
[email protected], subject line advertising. That is also where we take your questions. We are always looking for more questions if you have one please send it in. If you're a listener who would like to hear a version of this show without ads, you can sign up for in Cognitoma, to our paid feed. You get ad free episodes, you get bonus episodes, you can find a link to subscribe in our show notes. Your contributions there are what help us keep this running. Also, if you would like to support our show in a cheaper way, please consider rating and reviewing us on Apple podcasts or following us on Spotify. The algorithms reward those behaviors for their own mysterious reasons. Thank you as always for listening. We'll see you next week.
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