I'm applauding every effort to compete with the big players, but I also hope that anyone who spend time trying to solve these problems builds interoperable systems (open protocols etc).

What I really like about the ActivityPub protocol (though it is not perfect), is the way it makes permissionless innovation a thing again. People can build tools and communities to their liking and at the same time be a part of a much larger ecosystem. One example is a rather fresh project based on this protocol, trying to recreate reddit/HN's functionality, only federated: https://dev.narwhal.city/ (https://git.sr.ht/~vpzom/lotide)

Yeah we will be open sourcing it, mostly the governance/economic model will be built on parity substrate so anyone can deploy or upgrade that system. I think solving the ad driven business model is much more important than decentralizing the content servers, hard to meet the UI/UX standards most people have when you go this route also.

This is surprising to me. I didn't think that platforms that leverage network effects were typically well-suited to open sourcing unless it was something federated. Are you worried about the system being gamed or usurped by someone willing to be more exploitative?

I think proof of stake/liquidity providers with lockup creates enough incentive to keep the network effects within one system. Open sourcing the application side is a bit trickier.