Changes at Twitter and Reddit in 2023 caused millions people to rebuild their online communities on new platforms. Many chose products like Mastodon, Pixelfed, and Lemmy that were built on the Web platform’s social APIs. Instead of a single company controlling everything, thousands of independently managed communities joined together to create a social web.

Digital creators can now own their social network presences, distribution, and relationships with their audiences. It’s a significant change from a few billionaires dictating what billions of people globally can and cannot do online. The next big power shift will be changing the primary form of content monetization online from privacy-invasive advertising to direct fan-support. This change will be even bigger and bring economic opportunity to more people than ever before.

This session will cover the financial aspects of the creator economy and demonstrate how Interledger’s global payment network works within federated social network apps.