Facing the imminent threat of AI, editors turn to decentralized platforms

Veteran of the technology industry, Mike McCue sees an opening for a different type of the Internet where algorithms do not call the shots. Mr. McCue, the executive director of the Internet Company Flipboard, defies the automated control of social networks in our attention, betting that humans, not machines, must cure online experiences.

Three decades ago, as Vice President of technology of the innovative Netscape technology Company, Mr. McCue helped democratize access to information through the World Wide Web. Now, he is positioning the new surf browser of his company as part of a growing community of the so -called decentralized social network options, together with emerging platforms such as Bluesky and Mastodon.

The moment could be fortuitous, since online editors fight with an old problem and a new threat. For years, they have worried that Internet intermediaries, large platforms such as facebook and Tiktok, have weakened their ties with people who read or see their material. Now the editors face another problem: new ai systems that could completely eliminate those frayed links with their audiences.

Surf offers a window to a quiet technology movement that echoes the first days of the world network. With the help of several internet technical standards that are destined to encourage the growth of a new type of social networks, McCue has created a potential path where media companies can build direct relationships with readers.

In contrast to the current social network, which is dominated by some large technology companies, the new software protocols may seem a bit unstable for now. But they make it possible for Internet users to communicate and share information without depending on a single centralized service.

One of the new technical standards is known as Activitypub. The social media platforms that use the protocol can speak with each other, allowing users of different networks to interact without problems, similar to the way the email works in different suppliers.

Activitypub was formalized in 2018 by the World Wide Web Consortium, a technological standards formulation organization. The standard initially attracted a scarce interest. But twitter's acquisition by Elon Musk, now known as x, in 2022 has created an exodus of users and editors looking for alternatives.

Surf allows telephone users, tablets and personal computers to cure food of a variety of sources in a single view similar to the board. It will also allow them to publish information collected personally.

Surf is still being proven private by Mr. McCue's small company, which plans to offer the program freely at the end of this year. However, although the open social movement is still small, it has caught attention every time there is a disruptive event such as the purchase of twitter by Mr. Musk.

Decentralized social networks obtained a significant impulse in 2023 when Meta adopted the Activitypub standard for its x competitor, threads, and then announced plans to connect with other Activitypub -based services. What Mr. McCue calls the “Open Social Web” already has more than 300 million participants, he estimated, and most of them are now users of target threads.

The shared objective of Silos leading users accelerated with the recent success of Bluesky, which the twitter co -founder Jack Dardsey launched in 2023. Although it is based on a rival standard known as the protocol, a bridge has already been built between the two protocols so that users of social media services are connected.

“Everyone has just copied the characteristics of others in the walled gardens, but now innovation is decentralized around the human connection,” McCue said in an interview.

Mr. McCue, 56, co -founded Flipboard as a digital news aggregator in 2010. He has made an early race to exploit changes in Internet technologies. The paper software began to visually show three -dimensional information in web browsers and then sold the company to Netscape for $ 20 million in 1996.

In 1999, Tellme Networks co -founded, a pioneering effort to create what had been described as a “voice browser” and make it possible to receive internet information through the phone. That company was sold to Microsoft in 2007 for rumored $ 800 million.

One of the most significant potentials of the open social network is that it will allow companies to move away from invasive advertising, McCue said. Describe the alternative as “contextual” advertising to particular interests instead of individuals. For example, ads can be published in the Web feeds focused on issues such as backpack or fashion.

“The notion of creating a audience instead of pursuing traffic is something we have been exploring,” said Nilay Patel, editor in chief of The Verge, a popular news and media website. “Activitypub could facilitate that by allowing a more direct and significant commitment to our readers.”

In addition to the goal of the goal of base threads in Actitypub, news organizations such as Bloomberg and the BBC have begun to experiment with technology, as well as blog platforms such as Medium, WordPress and Ghost.

Activitypub has also led to a wave of start -up efforts such as Mastodon, a microblogging service that now has more than 14 million accounts connected by a network of more than 14,000 Host computers, as well as new companies such as Pixed and Peertube, distributed services that offer similar characteristics to instagram and YouTube.

For several decades, Google's domain in the Internet search has been the driving force behind the creation and distribution of content. But as Google has invested in the generative summary of ai for responses to user consultations, a window of opportunity for all types of discovery tools in addition to Chatbots has made the need for alternatives more urgent.

That is far from the very early roots of the world network at Theodor M. Nelson, who, while a Harvard graduate student in 1961 noticed that the text in the first computer monitors could move and that writing was no longer necessary to be linear. He invented the concept of hypertext, which was later adopted as the underlying structure of the world network. The designers of the new open social web services believe that their alternative is a step back towards the original Internet ideals.

“It goes back to the original principles in which the Internet began as decentralized,” said Eugen Rochko, the Mastodon inventor, an open source social networks that allows users to join the servers operated independently while staying connected through a global network.

The transition from centralized to decentralized models will require a cultural change between editors and the public.

“There are significant questions of products to resolve, such as how to handle moderation and discovery of content in a decentralized environment,” said Mike Godwin, a lawyer known for his work on Internet rights and digital culture. “But these are the types of new problems that we must face, which come with a genuine innovation.”

Despite these challenges, the enthusiasm among the first users reminds some Internet pioneers from the first years of the World Wide Web.

“The energy around Actitypub reminds me of the first days of the web,” Nelson said in a recent interview, “where everything seemed possible, and innovation was in every corner.”