Panel description: As online experiences become more fractured and dispersed, interoperability across services is an important mechanism for bridging gaps and ensuring that people can find and build communities. But interoperability creates complexity, particularly for privacy. As people communicate across different services, they may encounter different policies, standards, norms, and accountability mechanisms, all of which can create confusion and even risk for people. We need to ensure shared principles, norms, rules, and procedures for interoperable systems that center user privacy.

This United Nations Internet Governance Forum 2025 workshop will use the “fediverse” as an example of how an interoperable system can approach these privacy challenges. The fediverse is the name used to refer to the growing decentralized network of interconnected social media platforms using the open standard ActivityPub. The number of federated services continues to grow into the dozens, with tens of millions of users embracing the open, federated social web.

Speakers: