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Well put: it’s a reminder of the social media we once glimpsed & seems so far away now. But we can build it back. “I never expected to find my news from strangers on a federated social network that half the internet has never heard of. I never expected a lot of things. But there’s something quietly beautiful about a place where people share what they know. No brand deals, no engagement metrics, no algorithm nudging you toward rage.
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Yes. Given the givens, Democrats should do all of this. California should do another round & I do bet Maryland residents fire the one state senator that was holding things up this time. AND they should do the push for a national ban on gerrymandering, too. www.axios.com/2026/05/0…
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We are going to run out of sites for our training data pretty soon at this rate.
“Researchers working with data from the Internet Archive have discovered that a third of websites created since 2022 are AI-generated. The team of researchers—which includes people from Stanford, the Imperial College London, and the Internet Archive—published their findings online in a paper titled “The Impact of AI-Generated Text on the Internet.”
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This is very welcome, and I referenced it in my recent article on Fediverse progress: “Decentralized social media platform Mastodon plans on adopting its own end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for private messages.
Mastodon announced the upcoming feature in a blog post about receiving €614,000 ($724,000) from the Sovereign Tech Fund, an effort backed by the German government to support open-source software. "
I do wonder if or how this could work in concert with other open E2EE messaging, I’m thinking of #DeltaChat or #Matrix protocols or Dan new Sup messaging effort.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/mastodon-plans-end-to-end-encryption-for-private-messages
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More from Luis I really like, this time on #RSS:
“Let’s talk about the best way to access all these feeds. My preferred and recommended approach is using a feed reader.
When subscribing to content on the open web, feed readers are your secret weapon.
RSS might seem like it’s dead (it’s not—yet). In fact, it’s the reason you often hear the phrase, “Wherever you get your podcasts.” But RSS goes beyond podcasts. It’s widely supported by blogs, newsletters, and even social platforms like the Fediverse (Mastodon, PeerTube, etc.) and BlueSky. It’s also how I’m able to compile my starter packs.
I’ve written more about RSS in Rediscovering the RSS Protocol, but the short version is this: when you build on open standards like RSS and OPML, you’re building on freedom. Freedom to use the tools that work best for you. Freedom to own your experience. And freedom to support a healthier, more independent web.”
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A conversation spinning out of #Fediforum. I like this from Luis…
I do think there is a “there, there” on the “agentic web” and the “open social web.” Frankly I think the Open Social Web may be the first and best place to explore the web and agentic web interactions and how to make them more human-serving.
“That feels like exactly the kind of problem the open social web community is well positioned to think about. If agents are going to act on behalf of people, transact, coordinate, or make claims in shared spaces, then identity, transparency, governance, and trust cannot be afterthoughts…If open social web builders do not help shape this kind of infrastructure, my guess is that centralized AI platforms will. And if that happens, these systems will probably become less open, less resilient, and less interoperable over time.”
https://lqdev.me/posts/mycelium-fediforum-ai-agents-open-social-infrastructure-04-2026/
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Via Connected Places Newsletter, very worth applying for this if you are doing good work on the Open Social Web:
“…Applications are open for the first Open Social Awards, and I want to make sure they’re on your radar. The awards, presented by New_ Public, PublicSpaces, and Waag Futurelab, are looking for projects built on open social protocols that are past the prototype stage and in active use. That includes applications, shared infrastructure, and tools built on any federation or interoperability protocol. The awards will grant €10,000 to a grand prize winner and €5,000 to two excellence award winners, sponsored by ZDF and Bluesky. If you’re building something on the open social web, or you know someone who is, this is worth applying for. The jury includes Audrey Tang, Mike Masnick, Johannes Ernst, Melanie Bartos, Robin Berjon, and myself. Applications are due by May 1st, and winners will be announced at the PublicSpaces Conference in Amsterdam on June 5th. You can apply here:
https://newpublic.org/OSA " -
Good luck everyone doing demos at tomorrow’s #Fediforum. As a reminder you can follow the #Surffeed for it even if you aren’t in the surf app beta here:
https://surf.social/feed/surf%2Fcustom%2F01jvprse7ptd6b9gccy3m9g547
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This feels wise for the #EU:
“We don’t need a “European [add US social media platform]” – that would be just a different kind of centralised trap – we need a commitment to open protocols for our digital infrastructure. By moving our digital hangouts and town squares to decentralised protocols we ensure that no single entity – be it either governments and/or a volatile billionaires – can pull the plug on our democratic discourse and exchanges.”
https://blog.gelbphoenix.de/the-architecture-of-autonomy-and-freedom/
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Josh Marshall captures this dynamic well:
“As the Iran war drags on, I wanted to share some thoughts on the proper context in which to see the conflict. Donald Trump lost this war in its very first days. Everything that has happened in recent weeks — the threats, the negotiations, the live-on-social-media breakdowns — has simply been a matter of trying to get free of that fact. This isn’t a political attack. It’s simply an accurate appraisal of what we all see. More importantly, it is the only way to understand what is happening now. Everything that’s happening today and for weeks has been focused on breaking Iran’s hold on the Strait of Hormuz, something it didn’t have before the war started. That’s the definition of failure: fighting a war and continuing a war to clean up the mess the war of choice actually created….
The Iranian leadership sees that just as clearly as everyone else. And as [trump] waits he and the global economy sustain damage. He’s stuck and since he won’t recognize that fact the conflict and the massive damage to the global economy continues, even if the scale of the fighting, for the moment, doesn’t.”
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/making-sense-of-the-iran-war
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Am a fan of both Rabble & Ben, so very much looking forward to checking this out today: “Revolution.Social podcast with Rabble talking about an alternate history of social media….” #OpenSocialWeb
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This new AI tool called Malus.sh is pretty wild, cloning open source software to sidestep ANY copyright. I bet this sort of thing will change EVERYTHING for web and native apps, not just open source code, and probably sooner than we think.
So, how do developers survive when the “product” can be cloned instantly?
I saw this exact same thing occur to the music industry and more slowly to the film industry, who thought they were in the business of selling shiny discs to consumers and got beat out in part by pirates (which was a body blow) but then later legitimately by streamers (Netflix, Spotify, AppleMusic) who understood this: You have to move from a product mindset to a service and relationship mindset to the end users.
Music. Movies. Now it is software developers turn in the barrel. And soon, not just OSS software developers.
In the digital space, and even more now in the AI incarnation of a digital space we are moving from a Functional Economy to a Relational Economy.
In this new landscape, the “moat” isn’t your features or your codebase. Those can be mirrored or cloned or pirated. The only true protection left is Community and Momentum.
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Relational Value: Users stay because they want to be part of the ecosystem, the brand, and the direct feedback loop with the creators.
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Innovation Velocity: Users trust the true developer to innovate and iterate faster than a clone can keep up.
The value of software is shifting from what it does to who is building it and who is using it beside you. The clone might have the same code, but it doesn’t have the soul, the support, or the future roadmap. Are you building a product that can be copied, or a community that can’t?
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/malus-clones-software-copyright
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Very glad to see the #HardFork and SearchEngine podcast Fediverse community server continuing to thrive. So they are at 10,000 or so registered users, and hovering at a healthy 1.4 thousand of those as monthly active users. That tracks to normal rates on social.
And the conversations are active and growing. I think I underestimated the power of focused, topic-based server communities on the fediverse. (Ironic I know as i founded one based on the #Indieweb community) Those are as important or more than big general purpose servers.
Go #Forkiverse. Power on.
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Anil Dash’s piece is a wake-up call for the #OpenWeb. The threats he outlines feel scarily accurate, a “perfect storm” that needs us all to pause and then consider how to counter them. Definitely worth your time. www.anildash.com/2026/03/2…
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Mark Qvist built #Reticulum, an open mesh protocol some call “the next internet.” It ran on nearly any network, even the most meager, for free. Then he vanished. The dev community took over, and ran with it. Great story here: nodestar.net/mark-qvis…
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I’ve long been fascinated by the #mesh network #reticulum & the #LXMF messaging protocol built atop it—especially for areas w/o reliable Internet, or where govt. blackouts occur. I strongly believe bridges from LXMF to the open social web & open messaging protocols like #DeltaChat are strategic. I’d love to connect with others sharing similar thoughts.
Links: https://reticulum.network
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This tracks. #AI
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Every day of this hurts us more than them. And they know it. Not sure Trump does. [www.nytimes.com/live/2026…)
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Great news about an mRNA vaccine for pancreatic cancer, in early trials. It looks like patients who responded are still alive 6 years later. That’s a huge deal.
Am super hopeful for MRNA cancer vacines for a hosst of our deadliest cancers. #Science
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I’m convinced that very soon, all AI model capabilities will be negligible for most users & completely commoditized & also have near zero switching costs. No “moat” for any of them. #AI timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technolog…
