'Social media should be built on protocols, not platforms,' according to Mastodon's CEO
Today on Equity, Rebecca Bellan caught up with Eugen Rochko, the CEO of Mastodon, to explore Meta's recent and controversial content moderation policy update. They dive into what these changes mean for users and how decentralized social media platforms like Mastodon could offer a viable alternative to mainstream giants like Meta.
Equity · TechCrunch, Rebecca Bellan, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, Sean O'Kane, Theresa Loconsolo
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Show Notes
Last week, Meta announced changes to its content moderation policy, including the removal of third-party fact-checking across its apps in favor of a crowdsourced community notes feature, similar to X.
Today on Equity, Rebecca Bellan caught up with Eugen Rochko, CEO of Mastodon, to explore what these changes mean for users and how decentralized social media platforms like Mastodon could offer a viable alternative to mainstream giants like Meta.
Listen to the full episode to hear more about:
- Mastodon’s decision to transition to a non-profit in Europe
- The challenges of implementing interoperability with platforms like TikTok -- which is set to “go dark” in the US over the weekend -- and the importance of user choice.
- Which other decentralized platforms we should keep an eye on. (Hint: Pixelfed is in the mix.)
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Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. We'd also like to thank TechCrunch’s audience development team.
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