Open Social Protocols! (Farcaster, Nostr, lens, etc.)
Open Social protocols:
It's like if Open Source and Social Media had a baby.
You've certainly heard of closed social (Linkedin, X, Instagram, etc). These platforms suck today & keep getting worse. Open Social protocols are the answer. They give builders (us!) the flexibility to solve hard problems and invent the future of online community.
Other benefits include:
meaningfully own your social graph
LLMs + open protocols = happy marriage
composable moderation! Choose or create your own algorithm
open social is small/cozy right now, so disproportionately full of excellent builders/forward thinking people
gain bedrock-level understanding of social media as a technical problem (rather than memorizing shady folk-wisdom about the black-box instagram algorithm (that keeps changing))
Examples: Nostr, Farcaster, lens, atproto, Base, ActivityPub, ENS, indieWeb, XMPP, Signal, Matrix, RSS, Substack (b/c at least they let you leave with your email list), Ghost, DarkForest OS and so many more.
WHAT TO EXPECT:
38 minute talk on Open Social by Jake Simonds ( founder of jklb.social, a multi-protocol open social media client + award-winning comedian & juggler).
2 minute juggling performance (totally unrelated to open social but...I have been practicing at NS and want to show off lol (and social media is a kind of performance!)).
20 minute Open Social onboarding. Bring your computer (phone will work, too) & Jake will give lay-of-the-land for Open Social in 2026, with specific instructions on how to get started on Open Social. Also a chance to connect with people in the room.
On the fence? Read these: Nature's Many Attempts to Evolve A Nostr (great architecture overview, fun article too) https://newsletter.squishy.computer/p/natures-many-attempts-to-evolve-a
Protocols Not Platforms (OG 2019 article that inspired a lot of open social builders) https://knightcolumbia.org/content/protocols-not-platforms-a-technological-approach-to-free-speech
Open Social ( blog post that open-social-pilled me, by React developer Dan Abramov) https://overreacted.io/open-social/