Johannes Ernst

Engineer, founder, organizer.

Let's put people back in control of their technology. The Open Social Web is a good start. Also wondering aloud where we are taking this planet.

Check out my home page for more info and links.

tfr

Home page with more info and links: https://j12t.org
FediForum, the unconference for the Open Social Web: https://fediforum.org
Dazzle Labs Inc.: https://dazzlelabs.net
Pronouns: He/him/any

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npub1dvxen088frng5agcza8av2twvmd64xzwctsctgsywc6txyqa788sjygems

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsxkrvehnn53e52w5vpwn7k99hxdka2np8v9cv95gz8vd9nzqwlrncprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0d4hhxarj9ecxjmnt9fmdjw

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relay.momostr.pink

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npub1dvxen088frng5agcza8av2twvmd64xzwctsctgsywc6txyqa788sjygems

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Last Notes

2026-04-23 17:56:11 UTC

Great top-level question from [@LaurensHof](https://fediversereport.com/author/laurenshof/ ) in his newsletter
"What will be the shape of the organisations that will actually build the future of the social internet?"
Would make a great conversation at #FediForum next week.
https://connectedplaces.online/reports/fr160-everyone-wants-servers-and-nobody-wants-servers/

2026-04-20 23:54:08 UTC

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But the idea is still valid IMHO, even if it gets us out of our comfort zones.
Maybe I should run a session about this next week at #FediForum. Would anybody here join such a session? https://fediforum.org
2/2

2026-04-20 23:54:01 UTC

If the #fediverse (or the #atmosphere, same problem) were a startup and I had any say in it, I would make a list of all things that make it hard for it to have larger impact on the world than it currently has, and insist that we systematically work them down.
Because I don't think we are.
Of course, it's not a startup and should not be. It needs to be many projects, none of them dominant, otherwise we'd end up right where we wanted to get away from: centralized social overlords.
1/2

2026-04-17 17:45:23 UTC

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People take a while to understand different architectures. What's important right now is that public statement that cooperation is good and we should applaud that.

2026-04-17 17:42:14 UTC

I want to applaud [@rose.bsky.team](https://bsky.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/rose.bsky.team ) and @npub10gc…0m2k for appearing on stage together and expressing a desire to cooperate. As I've said for a long time, #Bluesky and #Mastodon, #ActivityPub and #ATProtocol should not be fighting each other. The real opposition are the oligarch-controlled, enshittified, manipulating major commercial platforms. We have no chance of making a dent into their dominance if the revolution fights itself instead.

2026-04-17 17:23:08 UTC

Now look at this!!
https://bsky.app/profile/rose.bsky.team/post/3mjonpuy2ok2i
#mastodon #bluesky

2026-03-31 16:49:06 UTC

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So the value you'd highlight is that you can get your content in a modality not easily supported where you have the most followers in front of those many followers.
That sounds ... complicated. Do people relate to that? Or do they say "why doesn't your Mastodon thingy implement the Pixelfed features in the first place?"

2026-03-31 16:00:46 UTC

If you wanted to give a software demo of the #Fediverse, emphasizing of the value that this heterogeneous network provides to its people across platforms and applications, how would you demo this?
Has anybody ever done this? (well?) Ideas and pointers appreciated!

2026-03-29 00:44:42 UTC

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there are many people here who are entirely unrelated to any form of VC. Example: Blacksky.

2026-03-28 21:26:20 UTC

I’m unfortunately out of the country, but I’m there in spirit with all of you #nokings people on the streets.
But #ATmosphereConf is a bit related: contributing to a non-fascist media and news environment.

2026-03-06 18:32:25 UTC

So happy to see that #Mastodon has become a member of the W3C and is now coming to the renewed #ActivityPub standardization activity.
From today's notes: https://hackmd.io/PaXqEd7-T7CLULV9Y4nwcA?view

2026-02-16 00:04:41 UTC

Writing my own position statement for the upcoming Open Social Web un-workshop.
A main reason I ever started #FediForum is that I wanted to attend an event like it! And sometimes you have to create things yourself if they don't exist yet.

2026-02-10 02:10:52 UTC

Trying to decide what my own position statement is on how to grow the Open Social Web, for our un-workshop. I have so many things to say!
But, the entirely unreasonable organizer (also me) insists that position statements must be concise enough that they can be stated in less than 5 minutes.
A good exercise, even if self-inflicted :-) If I can't say the important things in a few minutes, and in a way that people remember, I better work on it some more before inflicting my opinions on others.

2026-01-04 18:51:09 UTC

I had missed that interview. Interesting!!
https://coywolf.com/news/social-media/mastodon-creator-shares-what-went-wrong-with-threads-and-ponders-the-future-of-the-fediverse/

2026-01-01 16:24:21 UTC

It’s a very compelling pitch: tear down anti circumvention laws and reap billions for your economies, while at the same time also becoming digitally sovereign.
Now do European, or other, politicianshave the guts to do it?
From: @npub1fdr…lvhs
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/115819402267996681

2025-12-26 23:17:35 UTC

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The first thing that needs to happen is that somebody with industry clout says this is a possibility. Enter @npub1fdr…lvhs and his Wired piece.
The second thing is that somebody who knows how to shape the political conversation in the right places hears about it and picks it up. Which is why I cc'd @npub12wd…aatc (who probably saw the piece anyway).
The third thing is that the public clearly backs up their elected politicians. Which is where we can all help.

2025-12-26 20:41:03 UTC

Not just to respond to the Trump tariffs: if one wanted to get to digital sovereignty, the repeal of anti-circumvention laws is practically required, or the network effects likely will turn out to be insurmountable.
/cc @npub1fdr…lvhs @npub12wd…aatc
https://www.wired.com/story/us-trade-dominance-will-begin-to-crack/

2025-12-23 19:35:58 UTC

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Missing context ... what is "this"?

2025-12-19 17:18:17 UTC

Threads’ Fediverse integration now is “in maintenance mode”.
https://www.theverge.com/column/847806/head-of-threads-interview
#fediforumfriday #threads

2025-11-19 14:47:19 UTC

@rose.bsky.team from Bluesky: We started with 90% of users being posters, now we are at 30%, but compare this with 1% on some commercial platforms. Conversations are happening again.

2025-10-10 18:46:56 UTC

OH: ASCII Imperialism.
Not wrong. Still funny.

2025-09-27 22:30:35 UTC

Totally agree with Cory. Today’s “AI” may or may not be useful to you or your company, but there is no way that it is financially sustainable. And giving the sheer outrageous magnitude of money involved, when the crash comes — and it will — it will likely be worse than any other crash we’ve ever seen.
From: @npub1fdr…lvhs
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/115277162069992407

2025-09-02 02:10:09 UTC

Learned a new word: Enshittocene.
@npub1fdr…lvhs what have you done.
https://cybercultural.com/enshittocene/

2025-08-30 21:06:42 UTC

I'm fascinated to (re-?)discover that the core #ActivityPub deliverable was the C2S API, not the S3S federation protocol.
Was the underlying assumption that servers were boring, one/few implementations could handle all cases, and innovation was going to be centered around clients?

2025-08-27 23:45:08 UTC

From Enshittification to Disenshittification. The words keep coming to @npub1fdr…lvhs !
http://disenshittification.org/

2025-08-27 15:30:06 UTC

I have no words. Maybe I should have words, but I don't.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-administration-weighs-sanctions-officials-implementing-eu-tech-law-sources-2025-08-26/
#europe #dsa

2025-08-25 17:10:04 UTC

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They charge EUR 1/month? That would be in the same ballpark as the Meta and Twitter numbers ...
@npub1t3g…qqds

2025-08-25 15:30:21 UTC

What would it cost to run the #fediverse at scale? With billions instead of millions of users?
What does it cost to run a social network anyway? According to the annual reports of two companies that should know, the comparable seems to be about $1-$2 per user per month. And that's after stripping out a bunch of costs, like us not building ad tech in the fediverse.
Have better numbers? I'd love to see them!
From a recent talk of mine: https://spectra.video/w/k1rVULikPRfavCZ3WhXMgg
https://j12t.social/system/media_attachments/files/115/090/117/164/973/834/original/269f710949a1e2d5.png

2025-08-22 14:01:13 UTC

The world we have -- in social media, and more broadly in tech -- vs the world we want.
Does this look about right?
https://j12t.social/system/media_attachments/files/115/072/779/755/802/307/original/93753bdbbf8619fe.png

2025-08-21 05:22:49 UTC

“Mastodon’s developers — many of whom were queer and trans — did not enjoy the privilege of living the totally open life: they needed privacy and safety, means to protect themselves from harassment.”
Which led to particular choices that were made for #ActivityPub. Good ones imho.
1/2

2025-08-20 04:00:39 UTC

"these problems may be rooted in the very architecture of social media platforms: networks that grow through emotionally reactive sharing. If so, improving online discourse will require more than technical tweaks – it will demand rethinking the fundamental dynamics of interaction and visibility that define these environments."
Fellow social media innovators: Should we accept the challenge from this paper? https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.03385

2025-08-19 17:21:50 UTC

How big is the open social web, the #fediverse, #bluesky etc compared to the big commercial platforms? It's a bit sobering.
From my recent talk "From millions to billions -- a plausible narrative for how to grow the open social web."
https://j12t.social/system/media_attachments/files/115/056/581/686/782/306/original/7c0622d933207a5f.png

2025-08-18 20:40:00 UTC

Got the newest #Fediverse book in the mail. Looking forward to reading it!!
https://www.moveslowlybuildbridges.com

2025-08-18 03:03:08 UTC

It's a great big miracle the entire internet hasn't collapsed (more) yet.
https://e-mail.wtf

2025-08-12 21:18:36 UTC

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that competing directly with juggernauts doesn't work. (Of course you may be satisfied with relatively few people on open protocols. I respect that but I'm not!)
For alternate ideas, see my recent presentation: https://spectra.video/w/k1rVULikPRfavCZ3WhXMgg

2025-08-12 21:18:36 UTC

Meta announced today that Threads now has reached 400 million monthly active users. Starting at about the same time with a similar product, Bluesky currently is at about 6 million MAUs. Mastodon and other Fediverse projects started earlier, and their numbers are even lower ... by some margin! None of them are growing much, while Threads is.
This tells me

2025-08-04 21:15:01 UTC

The choice between a traditional social media platform or the open social web seems to boil down to "do I want to control people to only do things my way" or "do I want to thrive by enabling people to make their own choices".

2025-07-30 18:07:01 UTC

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/07/amazon-ring-cashes-techno-authoritarianism-and-mass-surveillance?utm_source=effector

2025-07-29 18:08:32 UTC

Done with the slides for my talk "From Millions to Billions -- a plausible narrative for growing the Open Social Web", to be (first?) given at #FediCon this Friday in Vancouver, BC, Canada.
I expect this to be permanent work in progress, as this community / network / market / whatever it all is evolves, and I'm sure that some people will tell me it is not plausible or could be more plausible. Which would be the best outcome ... I love learning from my "audience" because it gets better that way.

2025-07-24 21:21:33 UTC

Quite interesting conversation between @npub17lr…294v and Jack Dorsey on the history of Twitter, why Jack left Bluesky, and what he thinks is needed in terms of a social media protocol and why.
Agree or disagree, this first recorded episode in Rabble's new podcast revolution.social is worth listening to.
https://revolution.social/

2025-07-16 02:42:11 UTC

Seems to me these guys have no concept whatsoever of what science is.
https://gizmodo.com/billionaires-convince-themselves-ai-is-close-to-making-new-scientific-discoveries-2000629060

2025-07-08 21:25:39 UTC

Great piece on how we think about growth of Mastodon, Bluesky etc. and why it's (mostly) not working. By @npub1zlh…de9x
https://connectedplaces.online/growth-narratives-on-the-new-social-networks/

2025-07-05 03:52:36 UTC

Tim O’Reilly: “AI has adopted colonialism as its business model”.
Strong words! But he explains: “Extract resources from others and use it to enrich yourself and your customers at the expense of those whose resources you have taken, without giving much back.”
Guilty as charged I would say.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/timo3_proud-of-the-cloudflare-team-working-to-build-activity-7345899260506271745-mlHS

2025-07-02 22:10:37 UTC

If we wanted to grow the Open Social Web by a factor of 1000 -- roughly the number of users on Meta platforms today compared to, say, Mastodon -- how would we go about it?
P.S. Obviously while keeping the good things we have here, and making them even better, rather than backsliding / enshittifying / ...

2025-06-26 17:33:03 UTC

Hi [@_elena](https://mastodon.social/@_elena ), you obviously have gotten a lot of praise for your Fediverse video, and deservedly so. Many people commented on the sheer production quality.
I want to add that your narrative is also first-class. I cannot think of anybody who has told the Fediverse story better than you have, and usually the stories being told are much worse. How did you come up with it? That's also your work, right?

2025-06-23 18:00:39 UTC

One of the big conceptual questions that's unresolved in the #Fediverse is: Just what exactly is an instance for?
Yep, it's a separate installation of server software. But what exactly does instance 1 give me compared to instance 2?
Answer A: it makes no difference except on policy: who runs it, what are their TOS, moderation policy etc. The Local feed has no significance.
Answer B: Beyond that, it defines a community. The local feed is essential.
Which should it be?

2025-06-20 19:11:37 UTC

Fascinated by @npub17m8…rsw8's renaming of the "Fediverse Report" to "Connected Places". He could have called it "Global Townsquare" but he didn't. I very much agree. This is all about connecting distinct places on the web, not mashing them all up into one.
https://connectedplaces.online

2025-06-18 17:37:36 UTC

We need to separate identity from servers in the ActivityPub world. It's time. I should be able to have a single identity and use it with lots of servers from Mastodon to Lemmy and beyond.
Then, various instances could reflect different communities with different people in them, different features and policies.
This also would elegantly solve the "instance selection paralysis" in @npub1vag…mjkp 's Deadly Fediverse UX sin #1.
Fortunately @npub17gq…8hhz is starting to assemble people to solve this.

2025-06-11 17:27:13 UTC

"They promised connection. But they delivered addiction, surveillance, and manipulation."
What a simple, powerful statement about commercial social media by [@_elena](https://mastodon.social/@_elena ) in her amazing movie.
I'm going to steal this. (With attribution of course!)
https://videos.elenarossini.com/w/64VuNCccZNrP4u9MfgbhkN

2025-05-30 01:41:31 UTC

https://www.techspot.com/news/108043-german-court-takes-stand-against-manipulative-cookie-banners.html

2025-05-26 17:18:49 UTC

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:-) I would love to find forms of social media in which the yelling could happen but also not drown out the non-yelling part. For one, I'd rather follow my congressman on Bluesky or on Mastodon via Brid.gy than only being able to follow them on X, which I haven't used in a long time.

2025-05-26 15:58:39 UTC

An unexpected obstacle to adoption. I assume Mastodon would be no different:
“I spoke with a few congressional staffers who said that they had tried using Bluesky as an alternative to Twitter after Twitter was purchased by Elon Musk, but they gave up after their bosses kept getting yelled at by Democratic users angry at their impotence.”
https://www.semafor.com/newsletter/05/25/2025/semafor-media-anti-woke-identity-crisis

2025-05-22 21:23:26 UTC

Utah is going to legally require social media interoperability and portability of the social graph.
Wow, this law has been signed and it somehow passed under my radar. IMHO It has a good change to substantially impact the open social web, in a very good way.
Thanks @npub1vag…mjkp for the tip!
https://le.utah.gov/~2025/bills/static/HB0418.html

2025-05-07 16:10:34 UTC

The #InternetArchive wants your support for this petition urging the record labels to drop their existential lawsuit. I signed.
https://chng.it/MdZM9xQXdw

2025-04-29 02:44:20 UTC

https://www.techdirt.com/2025/04/28/government-actually-threatens-wikipedias-editorial-freedom-self-proclaimed-free-speech-warriors-suddenly-have-other-plans/

2025-04-23 23:55:13 UTC

Bluesky account confirmation e-mail has the footer:
"Bluesky, the social internet."
Hmm.

2025-04-16 17:20:33 UTC

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Scott is a great guy, never mind past titles!

2025-04-16 16:57:37 UTC

The #Mastodon team has managed to get @npub1m8t…zu6r signed up as a design advisor.
Congratulations, I can't wait to see impact on the product!
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/scottjenson_im-happy-to-share-that-im-starting-a-new-activity-7318270991174901762-Kob9

2025-04-01 23:21:40 UTC

Cory Booker just broke Strom Thurmond's record for the longest speech in the Senate of the United states at 24 hours and 19 minutes.
👏👏👏

2025-03-30 14:20:16 UTC

In the past day or so, it was pointed out that my FediForum co-organizer has made some public statements that are incompatible with the kind of community we want to bring together at FediForum, and that I personally disagree with. Accordingly, Kaliya and I have agreed that she will be transitioning out of FediForum.

2025-03-26 17:10:51 UTC

I'm thinking of running a #FediForum session next week on:
Funding the open social web
It appears to cost about $1 / month / user to run a social network, based on public company numbers. (Counting volunteer labor as a donation at market prices.)
If we want the Fediverse to go from its current user numbers to 10x or 100x, and make it possible for most of humanity to get off the toxic platforms, we need to find those 10x or 100x or 1000x resources somehow. Let's brainstorm.

2025-03-24 21:40:01 UTC

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It's just that lots of FediForum attendees come from Europe, while the number of people from your time zone and related that we know would come is fairly small. Are there any Fediverse communities / clusters in your neighborhood we could reach out to to see whether we could get critical mass?

2025-03-17 18:28:45 UTC

Ghost has made ActivityPub available to all of its Pro subscribers.
Interesting how they name and describe it:
"Social Web - y/n
Federate your site with ActivityPub to join the world's largest open network"
https://activitypub.ghost.org/content/images/size/w1600/2025/03/activitypub-beta-1.png
#Ghost #ActivityPub

2025-03-12 22:14:10 UTC

Dear weather, you are not supposed to be raining like this.
Unless the changing climate has some very nasty influence on you.
Just hit 430ppm CO2 this week for the first time in a few million years.

2025-03-10 16:02:34 UTC

A detailed comparison table of Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads and X. (In German)
https://social-media-matrix.king-consult.de

2025-03-07 04:54:09 UTC

#AI causes -96% in referral traffic according to this source. https://www.forbes.com/sites/rashishrivastava/2025/03/03/openai-perplexity-ai-search-traffic-report/

2025-03-02 04:16:36 UTC

"Intimacy gradients" for social media.
A really important concept that at least I have not seen implemented anywhere.
https://www.socialroots.io/intimacy-gradients-the-key-to-fixing-our-broken-social-media-landscape/

2025-02-26 04:27:48 UTC

Crowdsourcing ... for my talk about UX in the Fediverse and the social web, what do **you** think the biggest challenges are for user experience today?

2025-02-11 19:45:21 UTC

This sounds a bit silly but I don't think it actually is ...
What is a good definition of "social media"?
A definition that isn't inductive ("everything sort of like Facebook") but one that defines the category.
All the definitions I've come across sound quite odd-shaped. What's your definition?
It's kinda important because if we want to create a better "social media" we should be able to define quite well what that thing is we want to be better.

2025-02-07 23:41:36 UTC

There's this persistent rumor that East and West Germany were reunited some thirty-something years ago.
Here's the opinion poll map for this month's election.
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/Go9BB/2/

2025-02-01 19:45:32 UTC

Public service announcement: this is now the age where your data in the cloud is no longer safe. Offend somebody important and it is gone.
From: @npub10nd…urdx
https://mastodon.de/@ErikUden/113930176963645558

2025-02-01 16:35:10 UTC

@npub1urx…v0z4 says: "make all software social"

2025-01-31 09:45:07 UTC

It’s fascinating to me that where a variety of reactions to a post exist — like Like, Heart, Fire, Dislike etc — these reactions are all about emotions. None of them are about facts.
For example, what if I could express “I believe this to be true” or “…to be false”? Or “I agree with this statement” vs “disagree”? Or “I have first hand evidence supporting this”.
It’s almost as if social media was created as an emotional rage machine, rather than something that supports fact finding.

2025-01-31 08:57:43 UTC

What #fediverse software can express richer semantics than just “Like”? Eg Facebook as things like heart, fire, open mouth etc. One can imagine others like “I dis/agree” etc. If not, any good reasons why not?

2025-01-30 14:53:00 UTC

Frank McCourt points out the "loss of free will" as a consequence of the large tech platforms.
Unusual, but I'm not disagreeing.

2025-01-30 11:04:40 UTC

So if Threads is at over 100 million daily active users, Twitter used to have 217 million and hasn't really grown since (and perhaps fallen), Threads is now getting to the same ball park.
Compare to about 5m on Bluesky, and not sure how many daily active users in the ActivityPub world.

2025-01-29 17:51:18 UTC

I want a better social media where people getting their news only from that better social media are better informed, more correct, less likely to believe in conspiracies or somebody’s self-interested BS or propaganda. Oh, and take action based on that better understanding.
I see zero reasons why this can’t be done. We just need to build it.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/jan/29/social-media-news-consumption-civic-values-climate-change-attitudes-monash-universtiy-study

2025-01-28 20:19:49 UTC

Somebody got #venture money in the #fediverse ! Openvibe got $800k from some VCs and Automattic, the company behind WordPress and Tumblr.
https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/28/automattic-and-others-back-openvibe-an-app-thats-unifying-the-open-social-web/

2025-01-24 02:43:56 UTC

“Tech billionaires want to ‘overthrow democracy’ with social media, Spain PM Sánchez says”
A politician is understanding what’s going on here. Help, what now?
PS: what an opportunity for the #fediverse. How do we best go about this?
https://www.politico.eu/article/spain-pedro-sanchez-big-tech-billionaires-democracy-social-media/

2025-01-21 17:26:09 UTC

Are there people using the #fediverse in countries in which speech is tightly controlled? Like Russia, China, … If so, how do they do it? Use VPNs to servers outside the country? Or …?

2025-01-21 02:56:28 UTC

'I wish it need not have happened in my time,' said Frodo.
 'So do I,' said Gandalf, 'and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.'

2025-01-14 21:39:34 UTC

"The Great Decentralization". Discusses some of the real pros and cons of decentralization.
https://www.noemamag.com/the-great-decentralization

2025-01-09 18:25:03 UTC

So #bluesky is raising more money, according to Business Insider.
They say valuation is around $700m, which at, say, 10m MAU values them at $70/user. Which is about in the commercial social media platform ballpark.
It also means that every one of you/us with a Bluesky account is expected to make at least $70 in profit for the company.
https://www.businessinsider.com/x-competitor-bluesky-valuation-new-funding-round-2025-1

2025-01-06 15:42:12 UTC

Hi @npub1kdr…rhwh, I’m looking for an example setup that deploys something like mastodon via your tech stack to some suitable server. I can’t find any pointers on your site (of course I might be blind). Can you point me in the right direction? Ty.

2025-01-05 23:09:01 UTC

Umberto Eco’s 14 criteria for fascism.
https://www.openculture.com/2024/11/umberto-ecos-list-of-the-14-common-features-of-fascism.html

2024-12-31 23:45:14 UTC

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TikTok is doing fine. Arguably that's not a "social" media platform, but maybe it does not need to be?

2024-12-31 20:46:26 UTC

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not a bad theory. I would add that it will transform advertising and product placement by replacing human influencers and ads with likable fictional characters that focus on you.

2024-12-20 22:26:30 UTC

What @npub17fe…w0a6 and team at @npub13fk…z5hw are doing with https://surf.social/ is really interesting. I'm checking out their beta and it's intriguing.
It's social media, for sure, but IMHO different and better: it goes far beyond the monotony of the linear feed into far more focused experiences. It's like merging Twitter, RSS Readers, and Google News into something that looks and feel prettier than any of them. And might very well be more useful.
There's a long waiting list but may be worth it.

2024-12-14 22:39:11 UTC

“Ninety-two percent of retailers plan to invest more in social commerce this holiday season”
Is there any social commerce in the #fediverse?
https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/14/business/tiktok-shop-ban/index.html

2024-12-11 18:15:58 UTC

Mozilla is sending e-mail asking for donations.
Mozilla also has become an advertising company.
You gotta decide #Mozilla, which one it is. You cannot be both.

2024-12-08 02:24:38 UTC

For those of you who have accounts on both #Mastodon and #Threads, now that following works in both directions, are you going to:

2024-12-07 01:21:25 UTC

A democracy cannot remain a democracy if one guy can inject a quarter billion dollars into an election.
Personally I think it won’t do well either if it were “merely” a quarter million.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/05/politics/elon-musk-trump-campaign-finance-filings/index.html

2024-11-24 21:23:34 UTC

Rich findings walking the dog today.
https://j12t.social/system/media_attachments/files/113/540/030/316/273/739/original/1d88a5365370b71f.jpeg

2024-11-02 17:20:54 UTC

@npub1fdr…lvhs has a strong anti-Bluesky argument:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/02/ulysses-pact/

2024-10-31 00:25:26 UTC

https://www.cjr.org/opinion/waldman-bezos-washington-post-donation-charity-goodwill-endorsements-harris-spiked.php

2024-10-20 23:34:12 UTC

404 Media's @npub1nn0…qf5k and ProPublica's @npub1lrq…pn8w are discussing how the #fediverse helps #publishers in the latest episode of @npub17fe…w0a6's #DotSocial podcast. Highly recommended.
This struck me particularly:
Ben is making the case that the Fediverse is the means by which publishers can re-take the initiative with technology instead of simply having to live with whatever the platforms decide. That is powerful stuff!
https://about.flipboard.com/fediverse/jason-koebler-and-ben-werdmuller/

2024-10-08 17:13:43 UTC

Have a dot-io domain?
Looks like you are in trouble.
https://every.to/p/the-disappearance-of-an-internet-domain

2024-10-03 18:01:43 UTC

- reply

Solid has its own problems, irrespective of identity -- I don't know many developers who'd say "if I just had a standard way of doing HTTP requests to and from RDF files my life would be so much better."
But on a high level, all of these efforts are adressing different parts of what should be the same elephant. The trouble is nobody so far has assembled the elephant in a viable way.

2024-10-03 17:23:37 UTC

Just read the transcript of @npub17fe…w0a6 's #DotSocial podcast with [@jay.bsky.team](https://bsky.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/jay.bsky.team ) .
They cover a lot of interesting use cases -- many of them dear to my heart since (embarrassingly) approx 2004:
A single identity for me on the web. Which I control and can self-host or move to different hosts. From where I can engage the world and the world can engage with me. No walled gardens. Lots of new use cases.
It's a bit harder than they make it out to be. But I obviously agree with the vision.

2024-09-24 16:04:15 UTC

The new "Social Web Foundation" is launching today, led by @npub1764…nuj0, @npub1lun…5qls and @npub1u44…3ep6
"The Social Web Foundation works to grow this new ecosystem in an open, healthy, and sustainable way—working with technologists and the public to build a new global town square that works for everyone."
Happy to be an advisor.
https://socialwebfoundation.org/2024/09/24/launch/