In the 1990s, we saw an acceleration from walled gardens like America Online to the open web. This marked an era of exciting innovation and meteoric growth. But, over time, we witnessed the rise of a new set of walled gardens: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, etc.

Is history about to repeat itself? Will the open social web become a mainstream alternative to the walled gardens we live in today? Will people own their online relationships, or will there always be a company that owns these?

Host Mike McCue and journalist Mike Masnick dig into questions like these. Mike Masnick founded the blog Techdirt in 1998 and wrote a seminal paper called “Protocols Not Platforms,” in which he predicted the scenario unfolding before our eyes today. Mike has long informed an influential audience of lawmakers, CEOs and activists. In fact, the New York Times called him “something of a Silicon Valley oracle.”

In this interview, Mike McCue checks in with Mike Masnick to see how things have gone since he wrote the paper. The two “Mike Ms” also discuss:

the first product that truly embraced some of these ideas
where Mike Masnick is spending time in the Fediverse
reasoning behind adoption: worthy platforms or just fleeing X?
how open standards lead to innovation
why feeds are the new Websites

🔎 You can follow Mike Masnick’s work at techdirt.com, and find him at BlueSky and Mastodon.

✚ You can connect with Mike McCue on Mastodon.

💡 To learn more about what Flipboard's doing in the fediverse, sign up here: https://about.flipboard.com/a-new-wave/

H. P. Lovecraft Book Club: Series 8: Episode 1: Letters, January-March 1932