What is decentralized social media? What is the Fediverse? What is BlackSky? In this event co-hosted with heuristic instruments, our panelists discuss their vision for the future of the Black web experience.

Catt Small is a game maker, and developer. She has worked with companies of all sizes including Asana, Etsy, and SoundCloud. She started programming interactive games around the age of 10 and has been going ever since. In her spare time, Catt makes awkward video games, writes, and draws artwork of all kinds. You can view her work at cattsmall.com.

Ra'il I'Nasah Kiam is an activist, artist and independent scholar from Atlanta who was one of the first people that identified the growing online threat of white nationalism and hate organizing in online spaces. They continue this work in the fediverse.

Rudy Fraser is a technologist, community organizer, and founder of Blacksky Algorithms, where he builds decentralized social media infrastructure that prioritizes community-driven safety, data ownership, and interoperability. As a Fellow at the Applied Social Media Lab at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, he advances research and development on technology that empowers marginalized communities, particularly Black users.

Roland X. Pulliam (moderator) is a creative technologist with over 20 years of professional graphic design and web development experience that he has used to create experiences for clients like BMW, Toyota and the University of Belize. After founding Play Vicious in 2017, he discovered a need for more robust safety and moderation tools for independent social media platforms and created Fipamo and The Bad Space to help protect marginalized communities.