Vladimir Putin's Forkiverse

Nine months ago, three podcasters attempted to build a better internet. Today -- they confront foreign adversaries on a digital battlefield. Watch the Machine Gods trailer https://www.npr.org/2026/09/16/nx-s1-5971815/welcome-to-machine-gods. Instructions https://docs.google.com/document/d/18ux_KzIkoTQz_gAcEzwlro59gkSIdOA_ysdwz9VMz68/edit?tab=t.0 for moving your Forkiverse account to a different server. Become a premium member! https://searchengine.supercast.com/

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Toyota. Buy smart, drive for less and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it all starts with a great deal from your local Toyota dealer. Make a smart buy on an all-wheel-drive Camry Corolla Cross, or get a Corolla sedan packed with the latest features, advanced tech and head-turning style. Take a test drive in two of Toyota's most popular SUVs, the spacious, family-friendly Grand Highlander and adventure-ready RAV4. And with so many hybrid and plug-in hybrid models available across the lineup, plus efficient all-electrics like the BZ, BZ Woodland and all-wheel-drive CHR, you can drive your way and skip the pump. And long after you leave the lot, your Toyota keeps delivering with legendary resale value

• 0:43Speaker 00

  built on a reputation for quality and reliability. So when it's time for your next Toyota, you can trade in for more. From a great deal today to a great value tomorrow, a Toyota is right for you. Shop toyota.com for deals and details, or stop by your local Toyota dealer today. Toyota, let's go places.

• 1:04Speaker 00

  This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Quince. When you invest in high-quality basics, dressing well becomes second nature, and nobody delivers better staples than Quince. They craft timeless, durable clothes using top-tier materials like merino wool, organic cotton and pure Mongolian cashmere. I grabbed their lightweight down jacket in matte black, which I wore on a windy night out. The warmth-to-weight ratio totally exceeded my expectations. By partnering straight with ethical factories and eliminating middleman markups, Quince keeps prices 50% to 80% lower than traditional luxury stores. That same incredible value extends to home products from hotel-style bedding and plush bath towels to elegant furniture. Find your next fall favorites at Quince.

• 1:46Speaker 00

  Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, let them know it was Search Engine. It's the best way to support the show.

• 2:31Speaker 00

  Hello, fellow moguls.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  What's up, legends?

• 2:36Speaker 02

  What's the opposite of moguls? I feel like that's what we are and are here to talk about.

• 2:42Speaker 00

  Minions?

• 2:45Speaker 02

  Like a mogul who just absolutely fails, like a WeWork situation.

• 2:50Speaker 00

  Look, it's easy to criticize when you're not in the arena.

• 2:56Speaker 02

  I would like to get out of the arena. Please get me out of the arena.

• 3:03Speaker 00

  At the beginning of this year, Search Engine launched with fellow podcasters Casey Newton and Kevin Roos, our own social media network. And now, something fairly unfortunate had happened there. Before we get to that unfortunate thing, which is also pretty funny, I want to refresh your memory about how we got here at all. In January, in a moment of unmitigated optimism, we'd designed our network, starting with its name.

• 3:27Speaker 02

  We could call it the Forkiverse. I mean, I tried to do a blended name and came up with Search Fork or Hard Engine. Hard Engine. Hard Engine sounds like it belongs on a different internet.

• 3:40Speaker 02

  That's on Casey's incognito tab.

• 3:46Speaker 00

  Why did we do that? Well, not so long ago, people were very upset about Elon Musk's takeover of what was once Twitter. Everybody was fed up with billionaires and the way they'd made social media addictive and polarized with their fiendish algorithms. I mean, people are still mad about those things. But a year ago, people were talking about solutions. And one solution that was floated that I found very intriguing was that social media might be better if instead of being concentrated, like just a few platforms owned by moguls, if instead it was really widely distributed. Like you had all these little platforms that were operated by anybody who wanted to run them. But those platforms could be interconnected with each other through something called federation, a federated internet, a Fediverse. This seemed like a long shot,

• 4:29Speaker 00

  but not entirely impossible, plan for an actual better internet. And so Kevin, Casey and I wanted to try it. We wanted to build our own little piece of the Fediverse. And so on January 9th, we'd opened the Forkiverse up to any internet stranger who wanted to join. And then we'd waited.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  It's kind of cool to see an unfilled universe. It's so beautiful to just see it without any misinformation, any sort of toxic hate speech or bullying.

• 4:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, many people are saying this is the ideal social network.

• 5:01Speaker 01

  It really is. It's very zen.

• 5:04Speaker 00

  All of this was documented in the Search Engine episode called "The Fediverse Experiment." There's a link to it in our show notes. But what happened was almost 10,000 people joined right away. And they did what people do on social media. Chitter-chattered, shared links, made friends. It was a bigger success than any of us had imagined. But the reason we were meeting last week was to discuss a grave situation that had since transpired in our dear Forkiverse. Kevin was the one bringing the news and also catching us up to speed about the events between launch and now.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  We spent a glorious couple of weeks receiving posts from people, participating in the discussion there. And then a few things happened. One was we ran out of room on our Mastodon hosting plan.

• 5:52Speaker 00

  We were a victim of our own success.

• 5:54Speaker 02

  We're a victim of our own success. Our, I forget how many gigabytes of storage we had, got exceeded by people posting their photos of forks, which is one of the--

• 6:04Speaker 01

  It was a classic Forkiverse activity that everyone loved.

• 6:09Speaker 02

  People would also post photos of just where they were when they were listening to our shows. And that all took up some space. And so we have exceeded the limits of our Mastodon hosting plan.

• 6:20Speaker 00

  Which is good.

• 6:21Speaker 02

  Good problems, but champagne problems, but still problems, especially because I have not yet billed you guys for your portion of this. So I'm just eating this cost on my personal credit card, which does not feel great.

• 6:36Speaker 00

  I thought this was cheap.

• 6:39Speaker 00

  This is not killing Zerded.

• 6:41Speaker 02

  I mean, it's not like I'm still feeding my family, to be clear.

• 6:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, but that is really a problem.

• 6:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's not, the juice has not been worth the squeeze for me in terms of bringing enough joy to my life to justify the expenses I'm laying out for this thing. So that was strike one. Strike two was, I would say, just a sort of decline in engagement on my part, and I think both of your parts, too, where I just found myself like, I'm not checking this thing every day or even every week. I have no idea what's going on there. It's just kind of turning into a ghost town. I can sort of see the tumbleweeds from here.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  And by the way, I would say that Kevin's participation in the Forkiverse declined precipitously after the announcement, or rather, after the publication of our episode announcing the Forkiverse. It was sort of like, once it had been created, Kevin said, "This feels like the right place to say goodbye."

• 7:35Speaker 02

  It just felt like another feed to me. You know, it's like I spend my life just juggling between these feeds that I have to sort of maintain a regular posting cadence on. And it was just one more feed. PJ, how did you feel?

• 7:47Speaker 00

  I think I may have fought longer than you, but it was a similar feeling where it's kind of like, my complaint about social media is it is addictive. I don't like how I feel when I'm at the end of it. Yada, yada, yada, blah, blah, blah. But it turns out if you make an unaddictive, pro-social, nicey-nice social media feed, it's kind of hard for it to compete with the other ones. Like, I'd still rather go like read bile on X or a book. But like the idea of kind of the more vegetable-y social media didn't totally work. I feel bad describing our social media network as vegetable-y, but it felt like something I ought to do rather than something I wanted to do.

• 8:29Speaker 01

  Well, you know, something that I want to acknowledge that I think was really nice about the Forkiverse, because I do think that I probably contributed more to the actual posting on it than either of you two clowns. And what I noticed when I would be there is that mostly it was just people who are kind enough to listen to our podcasts just coming on to be like, "Hi, I would like to say something nice to you. Here is a picture of where I listen to your podcast. Here is a picture of a fork. You inspired me to create a project that I would now like to share with you." This was lovely. And so I would say for like a nice, you know, three or four weeks, I was getting a lot of value out of just sort of showing up. And it was a little bit of show and tell, and it was a little bit of an ego boost.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  So that part of it was really lovely.

• 9:17Speaker 00

  But then, Casey, how come you found yourself trailing off from it?

• 9:21Speaker 01

  Because I can only take so many compliments, PJ, before I say, "I need to go back to Blue Sky and have somebody tell me to kill myself." You have to, yeah. You have to take the bad with the good. It starts to feel a little inauthentic when you're online and people are only saying nice things to you. It's a bit of a sort of like sycophantic chatbot situation where you're like, "I'm not sure where this is leading me. I don't want to start believing my own press."

• 9:49Speaker 00

  So strike two was that us three founders waned in our excitement and participation in the Forkiverse, a very small strike like strike one. Were the third strike of the same magnitude, the Forkiverse would undoubtedly have rained for 1,000 years. But strike three, the one Kevin was about to unveil, was the doozy. A strike so big, I realized our listeners needed to hear some ads before we revealed it. After the break, Portal Combat.

• 11:01Speaker 00

  This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Odoo. Ever feel like you need one app for sales, another for inventory, another for accounting, and the list never ends? If your software stack feels more like a source of constant daily stress than actual success, it's time to modernize your workflow with Odoo. Odoo is truly the only business software you'll ever need because it consolidates your entire operation into a single seamless ecosystem. Think about the hours lost to copying data between platforms, managing mismatched logins, and troubleshooting broken integrations. Odoo eliminates all of that by linking your CRM, e-commerce, human resources, and financial tracking in real time. Not only does it make your daily routine massively more efficient, but it also replaces

• 11:43Speaker 00

  multiple expensive, single-use tools, saving you a small fortune every single month. It's flexible, user-friendly, and built to adapt as your company evolves. Thousands of businesses have already made the switch. Why not you? Try Odoo for free today at Odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com.

• 12:04Speaker 00

  This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Mubi. If you're tired of endlessly scrolling through streaming algorithms designed for passive background noise, you need to check out Mubi. Mubi is a global film company, bringing great cinema to the world, curating and elevating visionary filmmaking that's handpicked always. It's the kind of platform for movies you'll actually watch, fall in love with, and keep thinking and talking about long after the credits roll. One of their newest exclusive titles is Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, directed by visionary writer-director Jane Schoenbrun, who you might know from I Saw the TV Glow. It's a world-expanding, genre-bending wonder starring Hanna Einbinder and Gillian Anderson.

• 12:45Speaker 00

  This story follows a young director trying to resurrect the faded Camp Miasma slasher franchise, but when she visits the original reclusive star, they spiral into this blood-soaked world of desire, fear, and sheer delirium. You can try Mubi free for 30 days at Mubi.com/searchengine. That's M-U-B-I dot com slash search engine for a whole month of great cinema for free.

• 13:24Speaker 00

  Welcome back to the show. Without further ado, Strike Three.

• 13:30Speaker 02

  Then came Strike Three, which was an email earlier this month from Jas Michael King. Jas Michael King is, of course, the very kind Mastodon expert who has been sort of emailing us tips since we started this thing, various things like, you know, here's how you create a denial list for kicking people off your server. Just like, he's the executive director of this thing called IfTAS, which is a federation, federated internet, what is it?

• 14:06Speaker 01

  It's probably, I'm gonna guess, the International Federation of

• 14:12Speaker 02

  Trust and Safety.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  Trust and Safety.

• 14:15Speaker 02

  So anyway, Jas Michael King, who's the executive director of IfTAS, sent an email, and I'll just read it.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 14:25Speaker 02

  "Just a heads up, in case you're not monitoring your Forkiverse Mastodon accounts, you have had your first Portal Combat accounts created on Forkiverse." Now, do either of you remember what Portal Combat is from our early coverage of this?

• 14:40Speaker 01

  No. I believe it's a Russian influence operation.

• 14:44Speaker 02

  It sure is. It is the name given to a Russian propaganda operation that's more widely known as the Pravda Network. This is a series of websites and social media accounts built to push pro-Russian news stories that dates back to 2013. It's a very old, very sprawling Russian social media operation.

• 15:09Speaker 01

  An ancient evil that predates the Fediverse.

• 15:12Speaker 02

  Exactly. So Jas sort of gives me some information about the initial account that appears to be connected on the Forkiverse with Portal Combat. Have either of you heard from an account known as YXOGYZOGEK?

• 15:32Speaker 01

  Now, that's the one that led the attack on Hugging Face?

• 15:37Speaker 02

  No, this is, this is the password for the wifi at the Airbnb that you're checking into tomorrow. So this unpronounceable Forkiverse account has been flagged by the Trust and Safety folks as being part of this sort of network of Russian disinformation operators. And I just wanna share my screen with you so that you can see what this thing is posting because I found it very interesting.

• 16:05Speaker 00

  I'm so curious.

• 16:06Speaker 02

  Okay. So here we have the profile for our Russian disinformation agent.

• 16:15Speaker 00

  Okay, so this is so straight. It's just a normal picture of like a middle-aged white guy, and they're, it looks like he's from like

• 16:22Speaker 01

  I'll say it.

• 16:23Speaker 00

  Yeah?

• 16:24Speaker 01

  I'll say it, he's handsome.

• 16:26Speaker 00

  He's handsome, he's handsome, he's unthreateningly handsome. And then his name, according to this, is Yixagi Zogek.

• 16:36Speaker 02

  Bless you.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  And his bio says he's a painter by trade and wood carving by choice.

• 16:44Speaker 00

  He's not a forced wood carver.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  By the way, that, that expression sounds much better in the original Russian.

• 16:53Speaker 02

  And then he's posted, I guess, four times. His first post, I'll just read it out loud, "Guard bail against have."

• 17:01Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 17:02Speaker 02

  Second post, "Curiosity unlocked."

• 17:05Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  Third post, "1993, I love monochrome." Oh, this is a repost, this is a

• 17:12Speaker 00

  It's a repost of some guy's post about an art exhibit.

• 17:16Speaker 02

  About an art exhibit, um, near the Chicago Board of Trade. And then the, the final post is, is a boost of someone else's post about a restaurant in Ohio.

• 17:28Speaker 00

  But, so how's this guy a problem? When's he, like, I don't understand this part of Portal Combat, he's just being kind of boring.

• 17:36Speaker 02

  So Jas Michael King says that this is what's known as the base account in this scheme, and he says that the methods that this actor uses include establishing an initial account as our friend Wogoxi Zogek, that then invites hundreds more accounts that can sort of bypass the usual new account approval path. And he points to one of these apparent follow-up accounts, these sort of accounts that were invited by this initial Portal Combat account.

• 18:13Speaker 00

  Because, because can I just say, if I, if I'm honest, here was my plan up until this conversation for the Forkiverse, I was like, because we've had stuff, basically the way it was working in Phase One is that there'd be like 40 requests from people who wanted to join, and I'd just click them all. And then two weeks later, somebody'd be like, oh, somebody came in and they're saying something like bigoted and terrible, I kick that person out, then I let in 40 more people, whatever. And eventually I was like, if I'm not paying attention to this, as long as I don't approve any more members, we have a community of people who are treating each other well, it's fine. But this guy was saying that this boring handsome guy who's curiosity unlocked, he's got like a hack where he can let more people in without our permission?

• 18:51Speaker 02

  Exactly. He has the ability to sort of seed the network and then invite other people, as happened with this follow-up account, which is a photo of a woman, and the username is @KylePalmer.

• 19:10Speaker 01

  Kyle Palmer is a very traditional Russian name.

• 19:13Speaker 02

  Yes. Also a very traditional name for a woman.

• 19:17Speaker 00

  Yeah. Kyle Palmer woman, she's posted, I guess it's 59 times. Her bio says, "Taylor who experiments with 3,006 38 Bavarian wheat fermentation on weekends."

• 19:33Speaker 02

  Yes, so

• 19:34Speaker 01

  Now, does she fermenting wheat by trade or by choice? That question goes unanswered to the bio.

• 19:38Speaker 02

  So now, if you scroll through her timeline, what she, in quotation marks, has been posting, this does look more like Russian propaganda. So post on September 16th, "Moving from the city to the countryside for the winter will not change the situation. If Russia wants to leave Ukraine without electricity in the winter, it will affect all settlements." That's apparently a quote from the head of the Office of Migration Policy, Vasiliy Vosobonyak.

• 20:08Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 20:09Speaker 02

  Then we have some videos of Vladimir Putin. We have some updates on troop movements.

• 20:17Speaker 00

  It's a lot, it's funny, it looks like, oh, there's like gruesome-ish pictures from war.

• 20:23Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, that's a, that's a dead body. Okay, that's not good.

• 20:27Speaker 00

  Oh no.

• 20:28Speaker 02

  We've got some like surveillance footage.

• 20:30Speaker 00

  Oh, that's like some kind of a strike on an administrative building in Odessa, which she seems happy about.

• 20:36Speaker 02

  Yep, okay.

• 20:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, so she really has like one thing to say, and it's, this is like, it's funny, I feel like people are always talking about how Russian propagandists are on the internet, and I'm always like, I don't run into them. She's totally a Russian propagandist on our internet, on your credit card.

• 20:54Speaker 02

  I am subsidizing the creation of Russian propaganda.

• 20:58Speaker 00

  It makes me a little sad that you guys just left the New York Times because the New York Times' Kevin Roos is paying for Russian propaganda is just a much better headline than the Machine Gods' Kevin Roos is paying for Russian propaganda. Oh, NPR's Kevin Roos is paying for Russian propaganda.

• 21:15Speaker 02

  Hey buddy.

• 21:15Speaker 00

  That's where your tax dollars would have gone if your tax dollars still went there.

• 21:23Speaker 02

  So anyway, we have some, we have some choices to make, fellas, because now, apparently, we are infested with these Portal Combat disinformation agents.

• 21:34Speaker 00

  Pravda is on the Forkiverse.

• 21:36Speaker 02

  Pravda is on the Forkiverse, and Jas Michael King says, "If, if we don't do anything, our local timeline will slowly be taken over by these accounts." And so we basically have to choose. We could go with option one, which is to basically shut down our server and recommend that everyone on it go to this other server, find out media, which they say has actual support and people who pay attention to moderation and things like that. Or we could keep the Forkiverse up and running, but hand the administrative tasks over to NewsMast and IFTEST,

• 22:21Speaker 02

  this trust and safety group, which could clean out the bots and either, they call it mothball, or just shut down the Forkiverse over a period of time.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  Hmm. I mean, the latter option feels better to me, right? Because that way, nothing changes for our listeners right away. They'll have some time. If they want to make a transition somewhere else, they can do that. And I trust IFTEST, which after all does have trust in the very name of their organization, to figure out the best way to dispose of the Forkiverse.

• 22:54Speaker 02

  I disagree. I think we should just pull the, pull the plug.

• 22:58Speaker 00

  How come?

• 22:59Speaker 02

  I don't think that, that the Forkiverse, as much as we loved it for the brief period that it was part of our lives,

• 23:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:06Speaker 02

  is sort of critical infrastructure to anyone. No one has built a small business dropshipping, you know, forks from the Forkiverse. I don't think anyone's gonna miss it, frankly.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  Do you know that? Have you, have you visited it in the last three months? You're very confident for somebody who has not actually used the Forkiverse.

• 23:28Speaker 00

  I mean, I know somebody who'd be sad if the Forkiverse ended.

• 23:32Speaker 02

  Who?

• 23:32Speaker 00

  Vladimir Putin.

• 23:39Speaker 00

  Why, can I just ask before we make a decision here? Like, why are, why, I don't think that, like, the combined Venn diagram of Search Engine and Machine Gods listeners are really that successful in Russian propaganda? Like, what, what, what are they thinking? Why are they here?

• 24:01Speaker 01

  I, I think it just has the basic logic of spam.

• 24:04Speaker 00

  Go everywhere you can get in.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  It's like, if there's a free place to post on the internet, put your propaganda there. It's very low cost to do it and potentially high upside.

• 24:14Speaker 00

  Okay, so wait, so Casey, you say, "Let's try to hand this over to another organization." Kevin, you say, "Let's just send this dog to a farm upstate."

• 24:25Speaker 02

  I think we gotta send the dog to the farm upstate. I really do. And as much as I want to continue paying $89 a month for the Galaxy Plan on Masto-host, I know, bro, I am spending more on this stupid Fediverse server than on my cellphone bill.

• 24:43Speaker 00

  I feel like we're in one of the ads on Search Engine. Like, Rocket Money would have taken care of the Forkiverse a long time ago.

• 24:52Speaker 02

  It's true. So yeah, I, look, if you guys want to keep it around for a month or two to like, let everyone sort of adjust and process the news and move to their new homes, I'm fine with that, but I would also just feel comfortable just shutting the place down.

• 25:08Speaker 01

  I mean, to be clear, I'm comfortable, like, today saying, "Jas Michael King, you run the show now." I'm just saying, like, give the people on the Forkiverse a few weeks to decide what, what they want to do before you, you know, laterally pull the plug.

• 25:22Speaker 02

  Do you feel any, do you guys feel any sense of shame?

• 25:24Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  About the, the state of the Forkiverse under our benign neglect?

• 25:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:30Speaker 02

  Like, I feel, I feel like someone has just come over to our house and like, found our hoarder collection and is just like horrified by it. And we are basically saying to them, like, "We, we can't clean this up. If you want to clean it up, it's your house now."

• 25:46Speaker 00

  First of all, something like that has happened in my life once every three years.

• 25:52Speaker 00

  And yes, I feel ashamed, period, end of sentence. And certainly, I feel ashamed about this. And I feel like one of the things that's kind of hard about the federated internet is once you join it, there's a lot of, like, I would say 90%, the nicest people you'll ever meet, like, really the nicest people you'll ever meet. And 10%, these people who are like, "Hmm, I don't think you're gonna stick around. I don't think you really love this place. I think you're gonna end up with a rat's nest filled with Russian disinformation and disappoint us once again." And

• 26:20Speaker 01

  I mean, when we launched the Fediverse, we got some angry replies from people saying, essentially, "How dare you launch this without a pre-announced plan for how you will transition us out of the Forkiverse if and when you do decide to pull the plug." And my response at the time was, "We are telling you that this is an experiment. We are not promising you that we have created a pillar of internet infrastructure that will be here until the heat death of the universe. We are just trying something." And we did try something. And it was a little bit of fun for a little bit of time. And it's okay if that ends. It, you know, you, you go to the fair and you ride the fairest wheel and then you go home. And that was what the Forkiverse was to me.

• 27:02Speaker 00

  I think you're a more psychologically healthy person.

• 27:04Speaker 02

  Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 27:09Speaker 00

  So you don't feel ashamed, Casey?

• 27:11Speaker 01

  I don't, because here's the thing, like, you have to try things. You know what I feel shame about? Probably within the next two weeks, I'm gonna start posting on X again, something I thought I would never do in my life again. But I have looked around and after making many, in my opinion, valiant efforts to try to promote other social networks, I personally lobbied Adam Misery to create threads and have posted there near daily for three years. I personally lobbied Sam Altman to his face to just create a different social network to try to move the AI conversation somewhere else. All my efforts have completely failed. The, the AI and tech and business conversation on X is thriving as never before. And so in order to have any influence over that conversation, I just do feel like I have to post stuff there,

• 27:54Speaker 01

  even though I truly never want to go there ever again. That is something I feel shame about. Having tried to create an alternative, that's actually something I'm proud of.

• 28:04Speaker 02

  Casey got mocked so hard by Elon Musk. Just absolutely, absolutely mocked. Never seen a harder mocking. How does it feel?

• 28:13Speaker 01

  Who would have guessed I would lose a fight to a trillionaire? Ah, it hurts.

• 28:18Speaker 02

  Oh, it's beautiful.

• 28:22Speaker 00

  So in the end, the lesson, it's a slightly cynical one?

• 28:28Speaker 01

  The lesson is hopeful. The lesson is it's okay to try things. It's okay to have a little fun for a little bit of time. And when that doesn't work, go try something else.

• 28:37Speaker 00

  Okay. Well, I'm, I think I'm the tiebreaker vote here, and I vote,

• 28:41Speaker 01

  You are.

• 28:42Speaker 00

  we give it a month and then we take the dog upstate.

• 28:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, suck it, Rus.

• 28:50Speaker 02

  Oh, it's fine, it's fine.

• 28:52Speaker 00

  But we should announce it. We should let people know. I would want to know. They should get to spend some time.

• 28:58Speaker 02

  Search Engine is paying for the extra $89 a month of hosting.

• 29:02Speaker 00

  I can't believe it's been on your credit card. We are happy to pay the $89.

• 29:07Speaker 02

  I think I spent like $1,000 on this stupid thing.

• 29:10Speaker 00

  That's crazy.

• 29:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, so before anybody comes into our replies and is like, "How, Jerry, guys?" And it's just say, like, "Did you spend $1,000 to create an alternative platform and rescue us from the hell that we're in? Because until you've spent one large, we don't want to hear it."

• 29:23Speaker 02

  And I, like, I planned to expense this to the New York Times before I quit, but then I forgot.

• 29:30Speaker 01

  You, you still should.

• 29:32Speaker 02

  I don't have access to the, the, like, expense software anymore.

• 29:35Speaker 00

  AG, if you're listening. Kevin, you want to say your Venmo?

• 29:42Speaker 02

  I also take Cash App.

• 29:44Speaker 01

  Kevin's Venmo is at Kyle Palmer.

• 29:49Speaker 02

  I'm a Bavarian wheat farmer, but only on the weekends.

• 29:52Speaker 00

  A woodcarver by choice. Okay, you know what? I feel good.

• 29:56Speaker 02

  I feel, can I just say, that is so fucking funny to me. Like, these people have not updated their tactics since 2015. Like, if you go back and you read the first, like, Russian disinformation stories about like, these weird, like, things posing as Americans are like, appearing on social media, it was all this, like, super, like, weird approximations of what American hobbies would be. It would be like, you know, "I like my farm and my truck, and I like to brew beer in my bathtub. I'm a real American." It's like, they're still doing exactly the same thing.

• 30:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, they're like ironic mustache millennials who have come from the past to try to influence the present.

• 30:33Speaker 01

  I mean, that's what happens when you ban the entire internet, which is what Russia has basically done since the start of the war in Ukraine. Like, these people are not able to access post-2017 memes.

• 30:42Speaker 02

  They're still watching Gimp Jav videos over there.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 30:48Speaker 00

  They're just waiting in long lines for new memes.

• 30:53Speaker 02

  Please.

• 30:55Speaker 02

  Oh, please, Sergey, this month's meme ration.

• 31:04Speaker 00

  That's Kevin Rus and Casey Newton. They have a new show that premieres October 19th on NPR. It's called Machine Gods. I highly recommend you subscribe. Their feed is already live. The trailer's up. You can find Machine Gods wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube. Machine Gods music is from our very own Armin Bazarian.

• 31:29Speaker 00

  I had to have one more conversation about all this. One that I was actually slightly avoiding. Before the Forkiverse had started, I'd been greatly aided in understanding the Fediverse by one of its builders, a lovely man named Evan Perdromo. And now I had to call him to tell him that we were leaving his vision of a better internet. I was nervous about this, the way you get nervous about breaking up with your therapist or telling your friend that you're moving very far away.

• 31:54Speaker 00

  That conversation is after these ads. An exit interview.

• 32:26Speaker 00

  This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by LabCorp. As we roll into October and the craziness of the upcoming holiday season starts ramping up, it's easy to put ourselves on the back burner. But knowing your body and taking stock of your health is an ongoing journey that really pays off in the long run. This October, if you're ready to make health testing a ritual, LabCorp On Demand is an easy and convenient way to start. Simply visit their website and choose from a suite of more than 100 health tests, from hormone and sexual health to micronutrient and fitness. Purchase your test, then visit the LabCorp location closest to you for testing. Within just days, you'll receive results that are accurate, easy to understand, and coming from a lab doctor's trust. It's an incredible tool to help you stay proactive, ask the right questions, and make

• 33:10Speaker 00

  better decisions all year round. If you're ready to make knowing yourself a habit every October, visit ondemand.labcorp.com/searchengine and use code SEARCH to save up to 25% on select tests for a limited time. Know yourself. That's ondemand.labcorp.com/searchengine and use code SEARCH. This episode of Search Engine is brought to you by Framer. We've all seen a quick landing page idea turn into weeks of back-and-forth tickets and painful handoffs. But Framer completely changes how teams build for the web. Framer is the AI website builder that helps creators, teams, and businesses ship production-ready sites faster than ever while getting every detail right.

• 33:52Speaker 00

  Prompt, inspect, edit, and publish in one place at a whole new pace. AI agents and humans work in tandem here. Agents bring speed and scale, while your team brings the taste, judgment, and design control. You can use agents to streamline real-time collaboration, generate custom code components, manage CMS content, optimize SEO, and audit your design before hitting launch. Plus, it's an enterprise-level platform with 99.99% uptime, SLAs, and top-tier security, which why brands like Perplexity and Miro trust Framer to power their web presence. Learn how you can get more out of your site from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at framer.com/search for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's framer.com/search.

• 34:34Speaker 00

  Rules and restrictions may apply. This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Dell Alienware. Start your Alienware journey with the streamlined Alienware 15. They designed this machine to refine the essentials, creating a more focused gaming laptop for players who demand quality without the clutter. They engineered a brilliant 15.3-inch 165 Hz display seamlessly into a portable 15-inch body. You get a larger immersive window into your game that still travels easily wherever your mission takes you. Step into the future of gaming with up to Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 laptop GPUs. Designed to push boundaries, the RTX 50 series with Nvidia Max Q delivers jaw-dropping graphics while optimizing battery life.

• 35:19Speaker 00

  This is the Alienware experience distilled into one iconic machine. Visit alienware.com/15 today. Welcome back to the show. Can you just introduce yourself?

• 35:46Speaker 03

  Sure. My name is Evan Podromo. I'm the Research Director at the Social Web Foundation. I'm probably best known as one of the authors of Activity Pub and one of the instigators of the Fediverse.

• 36:02Speaker 00

  Instigator is such a good way to put it. I had first talked to Evan back when we were thinking about starting The Forkaverse. He'd been essential behind the scenes. And now I found myself talking to him about ending it. As part of the process, I sent him a recording of the segment you just heard. I'm curious, like, what did you feel like listening to me and Casey and Kevin? What did you feel listening to that segment?

• 36:22Speaker 03

  You know, I'm disappointed. I was really hoping that this was going to be a great experience for you. I am sorry to see The Forkiverse go, but, you know, trying to smile because it happened and not cry because it's gone.

• 36:40Speaker 00

  I feel a little bit sad. I mean, I don't want to overstate it. Like, there's a lot, a lot of things happen in the world. But I just feel sad because I think that I keep wanting a version of the internet or a version of my own relationship to the internet that maybe is just not something to want anymore. And I felt like there were people who, The Forkiverse was their doorway into other parts of the federated internet, and for them, it showed them there are places on the internet that could function differently, that they could build in a more active way than maybe the internet that they're used to encountering. I think we gave people some of that, and then I think our attention drifted off.

• 37:21Speaker 00

  And then I would feel bad because there would also be, like, every once in a while, a creep or a racist running amok. And I was like, you're responsible for this thing. Like, I don't know, even though it's just an experiment, like, one of the things I really love about Search Engine more than, or additional to, we try to do great journalism here, we try to make an entertaining show, is like, I'm like, we make a space that when you show up, the space feels a certain way. And it really bothered me that I didn't think I was making our community, I wasn't attending to it the way I wanted to be attending to it.

• 37:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. I guess, well, one thing I want to make sure that you know is that, like, your experience is not atypical at all. I've only got some limited data, but as far as I can tell, about 60% of the sites that are set up on the Fediverse don't continue, right? And I guess one thing I'm worried about is that, you know, you tried to make a change and it didn't work out in the way that you wanted to. Are you feeling dispirited or discouraged or?

• 38:30Speaker 00

  That's a great ques-- you should do my job. It is what I've been thinking about a lot. I, yeah, I feel both sides of that question. I do feel dispirited and discouraged. And I feel like, I feel also that part of what drew me to thinking about The Fediverse and The Forkiverse was that there was a kind of moment of a minor pre-Cambrian explosion after Elon Musk took over Twitter where lots of different ideas for social media were being tried. And with this sort of larger sites like Blue Sky, Threads, et cetera, microblogging

• 39:08Speaker 00

  sites, I feel like none of those ended up places where I found what I'm looking for. And so, yeah, in terms of finding online community, the thing that social media offered me for a while was that it was this funny room where the people I knew and celebrities I would never meet and strangers I might like and all these other people gathered together. And the anarchy of it was enjoyable and exciting, but like, you never knew when you might have a conversation like you really wouldn't expect with somebody you wouldn't expect to meet. And there's a great energy to that. And that time in my life or that experience of the internet, I still look for it, but

• 39:50Speaker 00

  like, I think this is a year where I feel more dismayed about the prospect of finding it again. Like, the best conversations I have on my phone are text messages and group chats. They're not in these sort of private-public spaces. But the desire for, like, community and community where ideas move and people help each other and unexpected things happen, I think I'll look for that my whole life. And I think this year, I've looked for it more in the real world because I struggle to find it on the internet. But the way I am is like, I'll look for it in the real world for a while, and then when that starts to feel frustrating, I'll look for it on the internet again.

• 40:33Speaker 00

  And like, I can describe myself as a person who's given up on it, but every time someone says that that feeling might exist again somewhere, I can't help but look for it, you know?

• 40:44Speaker 03

  I think that maybe the one thing I'd, I'd say is like, there's nothing wrong with, like, keep looking for that, right? I don't think you have to give up on that, that hope and, and desire just because you tried one thing and it didn't work out, right? I want to ask, are you on Blue Sky or Threads or one of the other Fediverse-connected big networks?

• 41:07Speaker 00

  I'm on Blue Sky and Threads.

• 41:09Speaker 03

  So you're still on the Fediverse, right? You have to do a little tweaking, and I can send you some instructions on, on tweaking them. We can stay connected. You may not be running your own service, but at least you can have a foothold in the Fediverse.

• 41:23Speaker 00

  That feels ideal to me because it feels ideal to, to have something that I can, every once in a while, kind of bop in and see how the party's going if I want to hang out there. But without feeling like, oh my God, all the ice has melted, a bunch of weirdos got in the door, and the bouncer's like punching somebody for no reason.

• 41:44Speaker 03

  Exactly, exactly.

• 41:46Speaker 00

  Well, thank you so much for being, you really are such an ambassador of the world of it. Because like, the way you are, which is like civic, curious, open, like, the way you are in this conversation is the spirit of the internet I'm looking for. And I think it's part of what made me want to try and like, glad that I experimented with my time in The Forkiverse. It's like, this conversation is how I remember things being. And usually when I open my phone, it's not how things are. But I'm glad that I got to meet you through this.

• 42:22Speaker 03

  PJ, thank you so much. That's a really kind thing to say. I'm glad the internet still has people like you who want it to be the right kind of place for them. So keep looking, keep, keep searching.

• 42:33Speaker 00

  Thank you. Keep searching indeed. Okay, so if you are a current denizen of The Forkiverse, we are sharing a link to a Google Doc in our show notes with instructions about porting your account to a new server, should you want to. You have until December 31st, 2026. On December 31st, New Year's Eve, the rapture will take place. The plug will be pulled on The Forkiverse. If you do not move your account by then, you'll lose your posts, your messages. So if you want to save them, please, you've got 90-ish days, fiancés. After that, this particular dream of a better internet will die. Thanks, Vladimir Putin.

• 43:33Speaker 00

  Search Engine is a presentation of Odyssey. It was created by me, PJ Vogt, and Shruti Pennaneni, who's also our show's editor. Garrett Graham is our senior producer. Emily Malteer is our producer. Theme, original composition and mixing by Armin Bazarian. Fact checking this week by Annika Robbins. Our production intern is Piper Dumont. Special thanks this week to Jas Michael King at IFTOS, which, by the way, stands, of course, for independent, federated trust and safety. You can learn more about their mission at iftos.org. Our executive producer is Leah Reese Dennis. Thanks to the rest of the team at Odyssey, Rob Morandi, Craig Cox, Eric Donnelly, Colin Gaynor, Mark Curran, Josefina Francis, Kirk Courtney, and Hillary Schuff. If you have a business and would like to advertise on our show, please email us,

• 44:16Speaker 00

  [email protected], subject line "advertising." That is also where we take your questions. We are always looking for more questions. If you have one, please send it in. If you're a listener who would like to hear a version of the show without ads, you can sign up for incognito mode. It's our paid feed. You get ad-free episodes, you get bonus episodes. You can find a link to subscribe in our show notes. Your contributions there would help us keep this running. Also, if you would like to support our show in a cheaper way, please consider rating and reviewing us on Apple Podcasts or following us on Spotify. The algorithms reward those behaviors for their own mysterious reasons. Thank you, as always, for listening. We'll see you next week.

• 45:10Speaker 00

  This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Vistaprint. As a small business owner, running a podcast, I'm always looking for authentic ways to connect with listeners, which makes Vistaprint such a valued expert partner for us. I was on their site the other day brainstorming new things we could make for our show, and the creative momentum took over. I ended up designing search engine stickers, and I tried to make a sign for our office. When your physical branding looks this sharp and professional, it immediately communicates credibility and shows your audience that you mean business. Vistaprint truly helps every dollar go further, delivering premium quality and design support that make your company look established without breaking the bank. Whether you need your design tweaked or a total rebrand, Vistaprint has you covered with the expert service small businesses deserve.

• 45:55Speaker 00

  That's why over 17 million businesses trust them every day to bring their ideas to life. Vistaprint, print your possible. Right now, new customers get 20% off with code NEW20 at vista print.com. That's 20% off at vista print.com using code NEW20.