Flipboard stops tweeting, launches new podcast about decentralized social apps

Social magazine app Flipchart already had determined to join the “fediverse”” – the decentralized social web, which includes applications like Mastodon. Today, he’s doubling down on his ambitions by announcing he will stop tweeting while launching a new podcast dedicated to exploring the topic of decentralized social media.

The company confirmed today that Flipboard will suspend its activity on Twitter/X as it focuses more on the decentralized social web.

“While we have enjoyed connecting with many members of our community there, we believe it is essential to align our social presence with platforms that share our values ​​to advance trusted journalism, voices of “experts and quality information,” Flipboard announced in a press release. “This is one of the reasons we are moving away from Twitter/X and investing our energy in Mastodon and other open social platforms. We will keep our accounts updated and occasionally use them to retweet our creators and curators, but we will not actively monitor or post updates to X.”

Flipboard community And support teams will be active on Mastodon, following these changes. He only plans to keep his X accounts active in order to protect his brand. (X was solicit buyers for dormant usernames.)

In contributing to its decision, Flipboard also cited the rollback of X’s moderation policies, which led to “an increase in harmful rhetoric and hate speech,” it said, as well as other decisions by the platform that promoted “false narratives and disinformation.”

The company said these kinds of changes go against its values, which is why it’s moving toward the decentralized social web instead.

Flipboard is among the tech companies that embraced decentralized social media after Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. Of course, Flipboard itself was harmed by Musk’s changes, since Twitter cut developers off from its API and increased the price for the others, manufacturing it is untenable for many to continue working with the company.

But Flipboard didn’t just move its integration from Twitter at Mastodon and Blueskyhe also set up a Mastodon server (or for example, in fediverse jargon) and the online community, and commits to integrating its application with ActivityPub, the protocol that powers Mastodon and other decentralized social applications. This too began to organize the fediverse with editorial “offices” aimed at improving news and discovery on Mastodon.

Starting today, Flipboard CEO Mike McCue is diving deeper into the world of fediverse with a new podcast, “Social Point.” The podcast aims to explore the societal, cultural and technical aspects of the decentralized social web, the company told TechCrunch.

Dot Social’s guest list includes Mike Masnick, founder and editor-in-chief of Techdirt; Mitchell Baker, CEO of Mozilla and chair of the Mozilla Foundation; AVERAGE CEO Tony Stubblebine, whose company also launched its own Mastodon instance; Evan Prodromou, a key contributor to the ActivityPub protocol used in decentralized social networks; Ian Forrester, who is among those leading the BBC R&D experimental project into the fediverse with a Mastodon server at social.bbc; John Battelle, co-founder and author of Wired; and Tim Chambers, co-founder of Dewey Digital and creator of the X/Twitter migration report.

Before founding Flipboard, serial entrepreneur McCue co-founded voice recognition software TellMe Networks, which was sold to Microsoft in 2007. He also served on Twitter’s board of directors between 2010 and 2012 and was vice president of the technology at Netscape.

After founding Flipboard in 2010, the company focused on developing its social magazine app and, more recently, how it can connect its app to the fediverse by integrating with ActivityPub and managing a community in line as a home for its creators. McCue, who has been active in fediverse discussions lately, believes that a business model for fediverse will emerge over time. In the meantime, Flipboard aims to leverage its web management experience as it moves toward decentralized social media.

Flipboard isn’t the only tech company to adopt Mastodon. In addition to AVERAGEAutomatic brought WordPress blogs for the fediverseand planned to do the same for Tumblr. Mozilla is also betting on a future of decentralized social networks, and financially supported the Mammoth juggernaut client. Instagram’s Twitter/X rival Threads also says this will be the case integrate with ActivityPub in the future.