Public Nodes

Social media play a major role in politics, public debate and social interaction. Unlike traditional media such as newspapers and magazines, major technology companies like Meta and X use opaque algorithms to determine what users see—without editorial responsibility or transparency.

Criticism of these platforms is growing, especially as they begin to express political preferences and attempt to influence or bypass legislation. This increases the urgency for digital services that safeguard autonomy and sovereignty, drive innovation, and contribute to a resilient digital landscape.

In recent years, the creative industry has developed decentralised social media alternatives such as Mastodon, PeerTube and Pixelfed. These initiatives are based on the fediverse—a global network of applications that use open, distributed protocols. For various reasons, these alternatives have not yet achieved widespread success.

This is the context in which Public Nodes was launched. In this project, Waag Futurelab and its partners investigate the conditions and success factors for transitioning from mainstream platforms to the fediverse. The central question is: what must happen for users, governments and civil society organisations to move away from Big Tech platforms and adopt alternative technologies?

The project applies the Multi-Level Perspective (MLP) to examine this transition, and explores governance and business models to manage decentralised platforms as commons. A toolkit is being developed to support sustainable business models for decentralised social media. This will be tested and refined through Living Labs, in collaboration with private partner ProcoliX. The project will also result in a transition strategy and roadmap.

The project

Public Nodes explores the transition to decentralised social media based on real-world experience in Living Labs. The project delivers a validated toolkit and roadmap to support designers, developers and other stakeholders in creating alternatives to current social media platforms.

€249.998,- Will be used as a PPP program grant.