John O’Nolan, the founder and CEO of Ghost, calls himself “the inverse Peter Thiel.” That’s because he wants to build a tech company that bucks the usual narratives, with as few monopolies as possible. His open-source publishing platform is structured as a nonprofit and is integrating with the ActivityPub protocol, giving creators digital sovereignty. No longer do writers have to perform for an algorithm to succeed or get stuck inside closed systems that monetize off their backs.

Does this scenario seem too good to be true? As you’ll hear in this conversation with Flipboard CEO Mike McCue, John doesn’t think so. There’s still a lot to be figured out, but both entrepreneurs are here for whatever this next phase of the internet brings.

1:03 Federating over ActivityPub — why?
3:55 Platformer’s switch to Ghost
4:40 Talking to creators about ActivityPub
6:37 Discovery mechanisms on Ghost and ActivityPub effect
8:44 Google search algorithm leak
9:31 Creator concern about discovery and ActivityPub establishing human connection
10:52 ActivityPub is about a two-way connection; being a part of a network, not just pushing to a network
12:03 Product problem he thinks about the most
18:23 Account model behind the scenes
20:00 Flipboard as a gateway to read ActvityPub
22:17 No longer one algorithm fits all
23:43 Organic thinking about discovery mechanisms; ActivityPub browser?
24:53 Dismantling old gatekeepers and boundary pushing
29:55 Parallels to early internet work, Netscape era
34:30 “No one has won this space”
35:29 The case for “as few monopolies as possible”
38:51 The most under-appreciated thing right now: the scale of fediverse
42:40 Companies will need to specialize
44:05 What is unique to Ghost, independent of ActivityPub
45:08 “To have journalism with integrity, you have to have technology with integrity”
46:55 Ghost as a nonprofit, “true independence”
48:40 Enabling payment model; business model
51:51 “1000 true fans” can be sustainable; be on a topic that people care about
52:51 Federating the subscription button
55:11 Optimizing to algorithms; getting to diversity of algorithms
59:59 Micropayments
1:02:00 Bundling models
1:03:00 “The fit is perfect for what we want to do”

Mentioned in this episode:
kagi.com/ - paid search engine

🔎 You can find John at john.onolan.org/

✚ You can connect with Mike McCue on Mastodon at @mike@flipboard.social or via his Flipboard federated account, where you can see what he’s curating on Flipboard in the fediverse, at @mike@flipboard.com

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