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By Audrey Hingle —

Building an Open Prosocial Web

Building an Open Prosocial Web
Photo by Mourizal Zativa / Unsplash

What if online platforms were designed to strengthen our social fabric? This week, in our main story, Audrey Tang—Taiwan’s Cyber Ambassador-at-Large, first Digital Minister, and a pioneer of civic tech—and IX’s Audrey Hingle explore how federated platforms can prioritize social cohesion.

But first...

Introducing “The Stack” – Internet Exchange’s New Bookshop

This week IX launched The Stack, a place to find hand-picked reading lists on internet governance, digital rights, and the intersection of technology and society. Plus, 10% of every sale supports our newsletter. Our debut list comes from the infrastructure reading group run by critical infrastructure lab: a bi-weekly meetup that explores the politics, values, and power dynamics embedded in communication infrastructures.

We asked Niels ten Oever, researcher at the University of Amsterdam and convenor of the reading group, to spotlight a few essentials for newcomers:

Technology of Empire, Balkan Cyberia, the Closed World [not available in our shop], and Reluctant Power are my favorite books from the reading group. It isn't an accident that these are historical books about infrastructures. They analyze power dynamics in communication networks when the dust has settled. Oftentimes, it is difficult to understand contemporary issues because of all the hype and obfuscation. This reading group taught me that to understand the present, we need to read about networks and technologies from the past, and not be blinded by claims about utopic or dystopian futures. Power and infrastructures are historically deeply entangled – the present is not as new as we tend to think!

The reading group meets online every other Tuesday at 16:00 CET; anyone can join or browse the public notes. Explore the full list, grab a copy now at The Stack, and find meeting details on the lab’s site.

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Toward a Prosocial Fediverse

By Audrey Tang and Audrey Hingle

In the recent research paper Prosocial Media, E. Glen Weyl, Luke Thorburn, Emillie de Keulenaar, Jacob Mchangama, Divya Siddarth, and Audrey Tang (co-author of this piece) propose a new approach to platform design that places social cohesion at the centre of online communication. The framework challenges the way most major platforms are currently designed; specifically, how they prioritize keeping users engaged by promoting content that drives clicks, often through outrage or controversy.

The paper argues that while social media platforms draw heavily on the “social fabric”, the network of relationships, affiliations and shared beliefs that structure human communities, they also often undermine it. This is especially true for platforms driven by advertising incentives, which are designed to maximise user attention through emotionally charged, often polarizing content. In contrast, the model proposed in Prosocial Media encourages algorithmic curation based on how well content bridges divides between communities, or fairly represents diverse perspectives.

The Role of Federated Platforms

Federated systems like Mastodon and Bluesky are often cited as promising alternatives to centralized platforms. Their decentralized architecture enables greater autonomy and diversity of governance models. However, we emphasize that decentralization alone isn’t enough. Decentralization changes who controls the infrastructure, but not how that infrastructure shapes social interaction. Without intentional design choices to support dialogue across communities, federated platforms risk replicating the same social fragmentation seen in their centralized counterparts. This makes the current phase of platform development especially significant. As many federated platforms like Bluesky remain in their early stages, there is an opportunity for communities to innovate their own governance solutions, and to embed prosocial principles into their infrastructure. 

What’s Possible with a Prosocial Fediverse?

Current centralized social platforms often amplify division and lack transparency, creating a need for alternatives like "Prosocial Media" that are built in a different way, using decentralized systems that can connect and interact—but don’t rely on a central company—also known as federated principles.

This approach aims to foster understanding and societal health not by arbitrating truth, but by illuminating where people may agree and disagree. It helps make the social context of information visible to reveal "uncommon ground" and build stronger communities and collective resilience. 

There is a tension between transparency and privacy. Federated systems try to respect context, empowering individuals and communities to control what data they share and helping them gain clarity within their chosen groups (e.g., "Here is what your communities X and Y agree on"). The goal is to go beyond connecting individuals, and instead nurture real communities through interoperable technology based on open protocols, requiring careful, iterative development to weave a healthier social fabric online.

Recommendations: Building a Prosocial Fediverse

To realize the promise of a healthier, more coherent digital public space, federated platforms should actively design for prosocial outcomes that strengthen the social fabric.

  1. Highlight content that bridges communities
    Design algorithms that prioritize content supported by people from different communities or perspectives. This type of content can help reduce polarization and support shared understanding. Tools like Polis and Community Notes offer useful models for identifying and surfacing this kind of broadly supported content.
  2. Label content with social context
    Include labels or metadata that show which communities a piece of content appeals to or challenges. This kind of transparency helps users understand how content fits into broader conversations and reduces the false impression that certain views are universally accepted.
  3. Encourage cross-community interaction
    Create features that make it easier for people to encounter and engage with ideas outside their immediate circles. This could include curated feeds that show diverse viewpoints, prompts to explore related communities, or spaces for respectful dialogue across groups.
  4. Support new and underrepresented communities
    Provide tools and infrastructure that help smaller or emerging communities participate fully in the network. This might include discovery tools, moderation support, or funding models that help them grow and contribute meaningfully to the larger ecosystem.
  5. Adopt shared standards for prosocial signals
    To make these prosocial features work across the Fediverse, platforms should agree on common standards for things like content labels, community signals, and cross-platform feedback. Protocols like Spritely could help support this kind of interoperable infrastructure.

Embedding these principles into the DNA of federated platforms is a chance to reimagine the digital commons as a space where shared understanding, respectful disagreement and collective flourishing are not side effects, but core design principles. 

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