We stumbled upon an open source project called Juntos completely by chance. Right away the project struck us as technically solid, but what really caught our attention was its human side. So we started exchanging with the developer and it immediately became obvious that this had to be shared as an interview.

Juntos is a decentralized community that allows members of the LGBT community to connect safely. But the most powerful part of the story is that this network is compatible with both ActivityPub and AT Protocol. Which means Juntos is building bridges at a time when everyone else tends to barricade themselves in. In the end, it’s all these good reasons that make this project truly interesting.

NovaMag: Hi Johanna! Who are you, and what is Project Falcon?

Johanna: Hiii. I am a software engineer with 17 years personal coding experience. 9 years in the market professionally. Project Falcon is many things. It’s the first Java SDK for the AT Protocol in the world, fully documented. It’s a project that brings real time communities to both AT Protocol and ActivityPub. And it’s also a bridge between the two protocols. And it’s also a decentralized LGBT community called Juntos, deployed to production today. In shorter words it’s a new web protocol for what many people call web 4.

NovaMag: OK, first, huge respect for trying to unite AT Protocol and ActivityPub, that’s something the whole decentralized web has been dreaming about. But most people pick a side between these two options. So how does it actually work? And why did you decide to connect them instead of choosing?

Johanna: It’s kinda simple. You have one server in pure Java for AT Protocol DID resolution and cryptography. You have one server in Rust speaking ActivityPub. Then you have a bridge that maps AT things like DID resolution, in the case of Falcon channels (custom lexicon), to ActivityPub language like actors etc. Two-way translation between AT Protocol and ActivityPub. Stateful identity mapping (DID to Actor). Live relaying with cryptographic HTTP Signatures. DID Resolution (did:plc, did:web). Falcon has some custom lexicons on the AT side like the idea of channels and messages. The bridge API translates the Java AT world to the Rust ActivityPub world. It’s very ambitious and crazy. You also have to understand I was the first person to implement the native JVM AT Protocol implementation in the world. Hard problems are simply not scary for me.

NovaMag: Java, Rust, custom lexicons, cryptographic signatures, a bridge between two protocols… that’s a massive amount of work for a solo developer. What keeps you going? What made you start this in the first place?

Johanna: Not being taken seriously in my 9 to 5. My project got taken away from me because they said I was too junior. That was the whole motivation. Very sexist work environment.

NovaMag: That’s a powerful motivation. Having your work taken away from you in a sexist environment… that leaves a mark. Do you think that experience shaped the way you think about sovereignty, decentralization, and building spaces where people can’t be erased?

Johanna: That was the whole idea. I had some ideas about building my own Discord after being banned from multiple Discords due to cyber bullying and harassment campaigns. I was building some video call tech already for a recovery app. I shared this with a friend. And this friend was like, we have a mutual friend that has some tech ideas. Don’t want to say their name but they asked me: do you know the AT Protocol? I looked at the docs and knew. This is the missing piece for my Discord idea. Not the video tech I was building. The decentralized nature means I could be safe. So I stopped talking with this friend, let’s call them J. Three weeks later I had Juntos deployed. The first Java native AT Protocol communities ever. I could not stop working on this, still can’t. It’s still a big obsession for me. Juntos was my calling. Java backend. Full AT Protocol LGBT communities. Juntos means together in Portuguese. The ActivityPub and bridge ideas came later. To clarify, J knows about Juntos now, I just needed space to work on it.

NovaMag: If I understand correctly, Falcon and Juntos were born partly because platforms don’t do enough to protect the most vulnerable communities. Is that right? And if so, have you faced the same problems on open platforms like Mastodon or Lemmy?

Johanna: I’m not very active but haven’t had issues. People are supportive and haven’t had any attacks due to my gender. Legacy platforms like Reddit and Discord have been the real issues.

NovaMag: That’s no surprise coming from commercial platforms. But here’s what’s interesting: on one side you’re building Juntos as a safe space, and on the other you’re opening it up to two public protocols. How do you manage that equation?

Johanna: There’s no perfect way to moderate. Decentralized protocols use moderation layers. With Falcon and Juntos there’s also a time transient trust score. Imagine a graph node where trust evolves over time. The issue is malicious actors can exploit the trust. That’s why I worked on a lot of essentially cybersecurity measures and algorithms to alleviate bots and attacks. That said, no system is perfect. All the math and the code don’t account for humans doing whatever. No moderation is perfect, even in Mastodon, even in Bluesky. The role of the systems engineer is not to be perfect, it’s to try her best and I feel I did. So the real answer is we do our best systems-wise but it’s impossible to fully account for the full spectrum of human behavior. No system ever is perfect or flawless or bulletproof.

NovaMag: Moderation is an incredibly hard problem, especially proactive moderation, catching harmful content at submission time, before it gets distributed across the network. On your GitHub you mention using a decentralized AI inference mesh, which is technically fascinating. Can you tell us more about that? Does it run on a local AI model or does it rely on third-party APIs like GPT or Gemini?

Johanna: It doesn’t. I trained my own model. It’s called Monarch and it runs on Mistral but I fine tuned it myself on my GPU. I could not do Falcon or Juntos and not have data privacy. Mistral local model, not cloud. I also built my own AI CLI called Crystalis. So Monarch is a butterfly. Crystalis is the cocoon. It goes back to trans identity and becoming a butterfly with transition.

NovaMag: Monarch runs on Mistral fine-tuned on your own GPU. That raises an obvious question: can a consumer GPU like a 4060Ti actually compete with big tech models? Is that even the goal?

Johanna: Part of my research is achieving big tech level models on consumer hardware like a 4060Ti. Local models running on consumer hardware via Ollama. Nothing exposed to the cloud or big tech. It’s already moving, that’s Monarch v2. This whole thing is about disrupting big tech too, by using technical skills and not hardware money. I don’t have their resources but I have my brain and that might be enough. Trans David vs Goliath.

NovaMag: Monarch the butterfly, Crystalis the cocoon… that’s not just a tech stack, that’s poetry. How much of Project Falcon is about technology and how much is about telling your own story?

Johanna: I think it’s both. The technology is good. One of the apps is deployed in production. Already had some trans friends testing it. But 100% it was about proving myself using technical competence and speed. Being the first ever to solve a real problem and never give up. Even now I won’t give up no matter what headaches the tech throws at me. That’s the real difference. Most people would be afraid and frustrated and stop. I use it as fuel. The difference isn’t my technical skill, it’s my mindset. I am hungry, broke, at a job that doesn’t treat me well. Nothing to lose, everything to prove.

NovaMag: You’ve already proven a lot. And it’s clear you’re someone who acts rather than just talks, which is honestly what made me reach out in the first place. That doesn’t happen often. On the topic of AI, everyone has questions right now. It’s always interesting to get a senior developer’s take. How do you see AI in the short and long term? As a danger? As an ally? We’re genuinely curious about your opinion.

Johanna: I think people are afraid. I think the same reaction that makes people hate trans people because we express gender differently is why people hate AI too. I believe any type of anger and hate is rooted in fear and insecurities. So the root of the issue is people are afraid of AI taking their jobs etc. But also people are afraid of trans people ruining gender for them in their head. So any form of anger and hate and lashing out is based on fear. I have no opinion on AI other than I mess around with it for fun. I train my own models. For me it’s more an engineering problem to fix and not a moral problem to solve. I’m not worried about it taking my job because I’m the one training the models as well. I agree with people on one thing however. It ruined the market totally for junior developers and that makes me very sad. We need more juniors in tech, please please.

NovaMag: That parallel between AI fear and transphobia is fascinating, but there’s a difference worth noting: AI raises legitimate questions about where this technology is taking us, while fear of trans people is purely irrational. Whether trans people exist or not changes nothing in anyone’s life, for better or worse. Outside of the fight for minority rights, it’s simply not a subject, the same way skin color and origin are not subjects outside of the fight against racism. So how do you personally fight back against the people who are panicking about gender? And how do you think the indie web can do more to fight transphobia?

Johanna: It’s a hard fight because Europe and the US run in a framework of gender essentialism that is a very European colonial thing. So a lot of people in society say that you can’t change your gender expression and if you do the consequence is often not just words but violence. And that’s very unfair for trans people just existing and not harming anyone. I don’t harm anyone because I have red nails and dress with pink sweaters and scarfs. MLK had a quote I will try to remember but perhaps not verbatim: I chose love, because hate was too much of a burden to bear. Bill Hicks also said in one of his more enlightened moments: it’s only a choice between fear and love, the voice of fear wants us to buy guns and get bigger locks, the voice of love sees us all as one. The answer against transphobia is pure love for humans. Love is the answer. Love is what will save us all.

NovaMag: Love is the answer, we couldn’t agree more. Before we wrap up, where are things at with Juntos right now? Is it already live? Can people join a beta? What’s the current status?

Johanna: The login and the feed work. I’m still fixing cross origin issues. It blocks a lot of the flow. That said, momentum is more important than perfection. The login being functional and the feed already proves live the first Java native AT community ever. The rest is just another victory lap when I’m able to fix it. But it’s in early early alpha right now, that’s the status.

NovaMag: Juntos is open source. Could other minority communities use it to build their own safe spaces?

Johanna: Yeah, anyone can use Juntos. I just fixed the CORS issues, it’s working live on Vercel. To answer your question it’s open source yes, I already created a Codeberg account, it will be there soon.

NovaMag: Given everything you have been through, if you could go back in time and meet your younger self at 18, what advice would you give yourself?

Johanna: Advice for me at 18: no fear, no ego, no judgement young one. Keep building without fear.

NovaMag: Where can our readers find you online? Do you have a support link like Patreon or similar? And are you looking for other developers to join the project?

Johanna: Juntos is now live and open for registrations at juntos.chat . The project is also available on Codeberg. You can support Johanna’s work on Buy Me a Coffee.

NovaMag: Any last words for our readers?

Johanna: It’s only a choice between fear and love and I chose love because for me love builds systems. Let me sow love where there is hatred in everything I do.

Thanks to Johanna and What Comes Next?

Dear reader, as you’ve understood, Juntos is not quite finished yet. But the hardest part is done and Johanna is working relentlessly to move it forward. And if you’re part of the LGBTQI+ community, you can already join the live version right now and benefit from a secure network connected to both the Fediverse and the Bluesky network. On our end, we will of course be very happy to keep following this very promising project.

Finally we warmly thank Johanna for accepting this interview. It was a great and truly fascinating conversation. For our next interview we’re going to try to step outside the open source world. We would love to connect with a FabLab. So if you have a FabLab manager in your contacts, please help us make that connection. See you soon for new adventures.