Welcome to the Patchwork. Developed and maintained by The Newsmast Foundation.
Patchwork brings new layers and services to the social web, opening up new spaces in ActivityPub networks for innovation. For full details of the project, see the Wiki pages, here.
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Fundamentally, Patchwork offers:
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Control - A space under your control and networked with the wider social web.
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Features - A rich, sophisticated social experience for your people whoever they are - teams, collaborators, subscribers, supporters, readers, volunteers, activists, and more.
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Community - Tools to cultivate and grow community connections both on your server and in the wider social web.
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Fine tuning - Advanced controls to fine tune and manage your server, including what66
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Discovery - Make content streams from your server highly discoverable on Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads and beyond, while allowing your people to explore the network with ease.
Support is always available. Patchwork goes hand in hand with channel.org, a social web accelerator programme run by the Newsmast Foundation, helping organisations to discover, understand and get the most out of the social web. Check out the wiki page on channe.org for more detail.
Simply get in touch with us at [email protected] or through our LinkedIn or Mastodon profiles.
For now, Patchwork will only work in conjunction with a Mastodon server but our ambition is to be platform agnostic.
The full version of Patchwork supports our flagship service, Newsmast.
To see all Patchwork has to offer, get Newsmast as a mobile app on iOS & Android. Or go to newsmast.org for the web experience. You can also get Newsmast for desktop by installing it through the web app.
Patchwork began with Newsmast and much of what is on offer in Patchwork was developed and tested through Newsmast.
Patchwork supports and enhances the running of existing base level server software, such as Mastodon, as well as user facing platforms and apps built on top of them. It delivers new features and tools in the form of easy to use plug-ins, cloud based servers and micro-servers.
The Dashboard is the framework which supports all aspects of Patchwork. By itself, it delivers easy configuration of your server through a user friendly dashboard where Server Admins can manage their server with ease, including creating dedicated spaces, known as Channels, in your server which can then be broadcast to the wider social web.
The Dashboard also lets you install additional plug-ins to enable more features.
Some Gems give you access to Hubs which provide off-server services that are shared with the wider network of Patchwork enhanced servers and evolve collectively with the participation of other admins.
Connect your Channels hosted on your server with the wider social web and bring more people into the conversation. Patchwork introduces mechanisms to connect local Channels with users on other servers, 3rd party apps and beyond. You can also import Channels to your server from the wider network as extra timelines.
End-users on Patchwork servers are supported with a full suite of apps for desktop, web, iOS & Android straight out of the box. These are built with Patchwork in mind, offering the fullest experience - celebrating connections and communities, and dropping addictive algorithms and engagement hunting.
Hooks are small code changes that can be made to any Fediverse app which will allow them to process and render the unique features of a Patchwork enhanced server. This means end-users can still get the benefits of Patchwork features from their favourite app.
Patchwork is a little like a classic lego kit - a lot of pieces that can be arranged in various ways to produce unique outcomes. But there are themes throughout all the technology - community, connectivity & safety.
Patchwork can be deployed by anyone - organisations, groups or individuals - if they’re new to the Fediverse or old hands.
The system was built with organisations in mind, especially socially beneficial organisations like news publishers, academic institutions and NGOs.
We have outlined how Patchwork might be configured based on whether you are:
- An organisation
- Running a Mastodon or Fediverse server for others
- Running a Mastodon or Fediverse server just for me
Find full instructions on how to install Patchwork on your Mastodon server here.
Patchwork is a framework to add a suite of plug-ins to a Mastodon server, creating layers between the underlying plumbing of Mastodon and the frontend app used by a user to access it (usually also Mastodon).
Before running Patchwork, please ensure you have set up a Mastodon server and it is running properly.
You can find the instructions to set up a Mastodon server here
Once your Mastodon server is up and running, please begin with this repository to set up the Patchwork Dashboard. Please find the full installation guide in the Dashboard wiki, linked above.
Once the Dashboard is installed, you can introduce new features to make your server more powerful, and install additional Patchwork plug-ins with ease.
Our mission is to change social media for good. We’re a UK based registered charity, diverse, democratic and committed to making social media work by building safe, committed knowledge-sharing networks. We have a unique opportunity to seize the social internet from Big Tech and put it in service of users and society.
We publish and maintain Newsmast and Patchwork, projects built with ActivityPub and networked with the social web (aka the Fediverse). We also run channel.org, a membership based social web accelerator programme for socially beneficial organisations to discover, understand & get the most out of the social web.
We champion the work of journalists, academics, charities and NGOs – together with diverse voices, marginalised communities and people on the ground. Pooling facts, knowledge and ideas to tackle the biggest challenges worldwide.
You can find more information about us & our mission on our website.
The social web is a decentralised network of platforms, servers, apps and more. The emergence of the social web has created a unique opportunity to seize the social internet from Big Tech and put it in service of users and society.
At its core are values:
- Safety - kept free of harassment, spam, hate speech & illegal activity.
- Openness - connect across platforms and move your account if you choose.
- Freedom - you’re in control of your space & your data.
- Trustworthiness - transparent and accountable with published code.
It encompasses everything bedroom projects & charities like us, to tech behemoths like Threads and Wordpress. Its an exciting new chapter in the internet's evolution.
Stay tuned - we will update our contributions policy soon.
Patchwork is an open source project, licensed under AGPL-3.0. Have fun!