Social Media on Tim Chambers

My 2026 Open Social Web Predictions

Tue, 23 Dec 2025 10:50:49 -0400

I just finished reviewing my 2025 predictions (how do you think I did grading myself?) www.timothychambers.net/2024/12/2…

Now it’s time to make some bets for 2026. I do this not to prove how great my prognostication muscles are, but to shine a spotlight on trends I think are vital, spur discussions, and give some attention to projects that have earned it. As always, I try to make these as quantifiable, verifiable and crisp as I can. Here goes:

🌱 MILD

Safe bets — would be surprising if these DON’T happen.

▶️ Bluesky will cross 60 million registered users in 2026. Growth will slow from 2024’s explosive pace but remain steady, driven by continued X dissatisfaction and improved features.

▶️ The ActivityPub Fediverse (excluding Threads) will cross 15 million registered users, monthly active users (excluding will plateau around 2-3 million. Another good year in terms of stable base, but no big waves of new users. Both Bluesky and Fediverse growth won’t come from big waves of migration this year.

▶️ Any smaller waves from X/Twitter or from a newly bought TikTok will benefit Meta (Threads/IG), BlueSky, and Fediverse in that order. I see nothing that would change that prediction that was true last year, too.

▶️ Threads will pass 500 million monthly active users and remain the largest ActivityPub-adjacent platform by a wide margin. But see the next prediction:

▶️ Threads federation will remain partial, and opt-in through all of 2026. Full two-way federation will NOT ship in 2026 but may move from about 90 percent there, to 95 percent done, inching forward but not finalized and prioritized as a feature. As Manton wrote, that’s better than fully closed, and better than them stripping it out. (which they might do but I’m predicting not) My bet: the status quo continues. www.manton.org/2025/12/1…

▶️ Ghost’s ActivityPub integration will bring 75,000+ new federated accounts to the Fediverse and Ghost will finish 2026 in the top 10 Fediverse server software by MAU.

▶️ WordPress-based federated accounts will cross 50,000 as measured by FediDB. Currently at approximately 26,000 accounts across 12,700 servers, the WordPress-to-Fediverse pipeline becomes a meaningful growth contributor.

🔥 MEDIUM-SPICEY Plausible bets — could go either way, but evidence points toward yes.

▶️ BridgyFed will shift to “opt-out” for Bluesky users bridging to ActivityPub — and the discourse will be far less contentious than the 2024 debates predicted. Cross-protocol interoperability quietly normalizes.

▶️ At least one fully independent ATProto stack — PDS, Relay, and AppView operating without dependency on Bluesky PBC infrastructure — will achieve viability in 2026, meaning it has paying customers or sustainable funding. This will be the year ATProto proves (or fails to prove) it can exist beyond Bluesky-the-company.

▶️ Mastodon gGmbH will hit key sustainability milestones in 2026. Their hosting revenue model will exceed internal targets, the new organizational structure will unlock additional grant funding (beyond NGI/NLnet), and the pace of Mastodon development will noticeably accelerate — shipping more significant features in 2026 than in the previous two years combined.

▶️ Bluesky PBC will raise another round of funding in 2026 and announce more details on a proposed business model. Following their $15M Series A (October 2024), the company will close a larger round to extend runway. The announced business model will NOT be advertising-based. I’d expect subscriptions, marketplace fees, or enterprise services.

▶️ The first “ATProto-native” social app that is NOT microblogging will cross 100,000 users. Whether it’s Frontpage (link aggregation), Leaflet (long-form), Smoke Signal, or something new — the ATmosphere diversifies beyond Bluesky-the-app.

▶️ Flipboard’s Surf app will launch its 1.0 version in 2026 and cross 1 million downloads across iOS and Android by year end, with 100,000+ monthly active users. It will become the most-downloaded dedicated Open Social Web client, surpassing Mastodon’s official app and Graysky.

▶️ Fedify will power the federation layer for at least one mid-sized social platform (500K+ users) that adds ActivityPub support in 2026. The “build vs. buy” calculation for federation shifts decisively toward “just use Fedify.”

▶️ Fediscovery will ship in a stable Mastodon release in 2026, moving from behind feature flags to production-ready. The specifications for pluggable discovery providers — covering account search, follow recommendations, and trends — will reach 1.0 status, and at least one public Fediscovery-compatible provider will launch for general use. Small instance operators will finally have a real option to improve discovery without running their own infrastructure.

▶️ The new “ActivityRank” algorithm in Loops will prove that ethical recommendations and decentralization can coexist. Dan Supernault’s approach — where each instance trains its own algorithm while surfacing content across the ActivityPub network — will be recognized as a breakthrough in solving the fediverse’s discoverability problem. By the end of 2026, the pattern will be studied or adopted by at least two other ActivityPub platforms.

▶️ ATProto will advance from Internet Drafts to an official IETF Working Group in 2026. Following the September 2025 submission of initial specifications, Bluesky will secure enough support and independent implementers to form a dedicated Working Group — moving from “proposal being discussed” to “standard being formally developed.”

🌶️ SPICY Hot takes - a bit more risky - but I’m calling my shot.

▶️ A well-known digital-native media publication (10M+ monthly visitors) will federate via ActivityPub in 2026 and publicly share positive results. Whether through Ghost, WordPress, or custom implementation, this outlet will report that federated followers drove meaningful engagement — making the business case for federation legible to other publishers for the first time. By year end, at least two additional publications will announce federation plans, citing this pioneer as proof of concept.

▶️ At least one major news organization (top 50 US by traffic) will announce it is leaving X/Twitter entirely and making Bluesky or the Fediverse its primary social distribution channel. The “institutional exodus” begins.

▶️ At least one major national government or major city will launch an official presence on BOTH Bluesky AND the ActivityPub Fediverse in 2026 — and it will be a European government. Expect surprising additional early adopters after this from Latin America, Asia-Pacific, or Africa to follow that lead and make moves that year to do the same. This is the year the move to “digital sovereignty" from US tech will benefit the open social web. Eurosky will inch along with some promise.

▶️ Nostr ↔ ATProto ↔ ActivityPub three-way bridging becomes functional via BridgyFed or another service by end of 2026. The “protocol wars” narrative collapses into “just pick your client.”

▶️ AltStore will be live with Federation features in at least 5 countries by end of 2026 (currently EU + Japan, with Brazil, Australia, UK announced). AltStore is an independent iOS app marketplace created by Riley Testut and Shane Gill — the first major alternative to Apple’s App Store, made possible by the EU’s Digital Markets Act. The federated app marketplace model will prove viable outside Europe, challenging Apple’s App Store dominance in multiple regulatory regimes simultaneously. Their ActivityPub integration — where app updates flow to Mastodon, Threads, and Bluesky — will become the most compelling non-social-media use case for decentrlized social features, proving definitively that such protocols extends beyond microblogging.

▶️ Loops will become the third most-used Fediverse software by MAU by end of 2026, trailing only Mastodon and Pixelfed. The short-form video platform will cross 100,000 monthly active users, with Loops-originated content generating significant federated engagement from non-Loops clients — proving that ActivityPub can power video-centric social experiences.

▶️ PieFed will emerge as the most feature-rich Threadiverse platform by end of 2026, surpassing Lemmy and Mbin in moderation tools, user experience, and federation capabilities. The platform will cross 10,000 monthly active users and its rapid development pace — shipping major features weekly — will make it the default recommendation for anyone starting a new Reddit-style community in the fediverse.

▶️ More laws akin to Utah’s Digital Choice Act will pass or advance - sparking first steps towards interoperability to mainstream US discourse. The Utah law takes effect July 1, 2026, and several other states will pass similar ones, requiring social media platforms to enable data portability and interoperability. At least one major platform will announce ActivityPub or AT Protocol support to comply. The “Digital Choice” framing will prove more politically viable than “antitrust” for breaking Big Tech’s lock-in.

What did I miss? What did I get wrong? Let me know — and I’ll see you in December 2026 to grade these.

The Seven Deadly Fediverse UX Sins Part 2: The Road To Redemption

Tue, 24 Jun 2025 14:16:49 -0400

So you made it through the first fiery sermon in this series. Trust me—I didn’t enjoy preaching it any more than you enjoyed reading it. But every word came from a place of love—for the Fediverse, and for what it still could become.

But fear not, dear reader: as the preacher once said, salvation is within your reach.

And to reward you for slogging through that earlier wall of hard truths, here’s your moment of grace. We’re keeping the cute animal theme going, so here you go:

(insert animal pic, obviously)

The grim part’s over. Truly. From here on out, it’s all hope and possibility. Not even kidding.

Because here’s the good news:

Each of the Seven Deadly UX Sins is fixable—not through divine fiat, but through thoughtful, realistic iteration. And probably by far fewer developers than you’d expect. Many of them are already out there fighting the good fight (though they could always use more encouragement—and dare I say it, a little Patreon love).

What follows is the path to redemption.

A roadmap of what could be—if we want it badly enough.

If you’re building any of these fixes: reach out. I’m happy to offer free, detailed suggestions—no patents, no strings, no license required. Just one ask: drop a little nod in a JavaScript comment or server-side file somewhere so I can brag about it to nobody in particular. I’m a simple man.

And if you’ve got better ideas than mine? Even better. Especially if they’re practical, near-term, and close to ship-ready. My DMs are open. Let’s make this thing work.

Let’s dig in. Get a coffee as this may be a long-ish read.

Rather than the status quo across much of the Fediverse’s onboarding UX—asking new users to choose from 8,000 server names they don’t understand—what about this wild idea:

Offer just one default, trustworthy, well-run server community to start. Which, honestly, is what most people are looking for.

Yes—just one. Not a wizard. Not a choose-your-own-server adventure that most newbies abandon a third of the way through.

One. Am I clear?

For most people joining the Fediverse, simply offer them a single, well-maintained, general-purpose on-ramp to their new social home.

Make it dead simple onboarding—with as few steps as needed to get them going - and not a single click more.

Localized to the user’s preferred language. Seamless. Thoughtful.

Pair that with a short, clear explanation of why it’s the recommended path, and what makes it a good place to begin and links to the friendly local admin. And sure—add a clearly marked, clearly optional toggle: “Choose a different community server,” for the curious and confident.

And please—for the love of onboarding UX: Drop the engineering-speak. Swap “instance” for server community. Make the copy human. Friendly. Clear. Onboarding should take 60 seconds, not 60 decisions.

Yes, Mastodon’s official mobile apps mostly do this already—inspired by Mammoth app, RIP.

Now cue the predictable guy in the back row who rightly asks:

“How does this not just re-centralize the beloved decentralized Fediverse we’re fighting for?”

Simple.

Under the hood, the magic stays decentralized.

Unbeknownst to new users, the onboarding software quietly runs a curated round robin of trustworthy servers—offering just one at random to each new user.

We gave some ideas on how one could choose this trusted set servers for the Mastodon platform here but similar metrics could be created for any Fediverse platform.

Maybe that means the software is choosing from between three trusted community servers in the round robin. Maybe it means dozens. But the user never sees that. That random round robin is being done under the hood.

Users see just one served up to them to join —and that’s the point.

The key: no single server gets favored. New users get distributed, not funneled into a single mothership.

🟨 Decentralization: preserved. 🟨 Friction: dramatically reduced.

Plenty of time to educate folks on the joys of migrating to other community servers later should they choose to. It’s not rocket science. Friends and I proposed this years ago. Still waiting on someone to take it across the finish line.

Pixelfed. Mastodon. Bonfire. Friendica. Misskey. PeerTube. Bookwyrm. Patchwork. Warfn. Snort. Bleeb. (Just made up those last two to see if you were still paying attention)

But to that whole crew above and others… Let’s make it a race. Let’s see who nails this first—and shows the rest of the web how it’s done.

And if you’re running a non-general purpose server, say, a cool, niche-focused server community like the affore mentioned Jazztodon? Or other fun topic focused ones? You’re not out in the cold on this fix. It already exists for Mastodon just to share a link like this - rather than sending them to some more global sign up.

It already uses the same model: a clean, direct onboarding flow with just one server—yours. Invite your people, your way.

No dropdown menus. No guesswork. Just:

“Join our space. Let’s go.”

2️⃣ Redemption for UX Sin Two: One Feed To Rule Them All (at First).

Let’s be honest: per UX Sin Two: most users—especially new ones—don’t care or are abjectly confused about the metaphysical distinctions between Home, Local, and Federated feeds. Mashing them together under a “Live Feeds” menu isn’t the solution IMHO.

So here’s crazy talk: don’t confuse them and upon first arrival, only feature ONE feed. Just one feed. Simple. Personal. Familiar.

Call it Home. Just the people you follow. Just what you asked for. That’s what every user expects—and what feels safe, legible, and human.

If they’re not following many folks yet? Nudge them gently: “Here are some great active accounts to get you started.” Different Fediverse platforms do this to mixed results, all can do better.

Once they’re settled, expand the horizon—progressively:

A few days in, they see this on their home feed from their friendly local admin account:

“Want to check out what is trending people nearby on your server are talking about?”

A week later from same:

“Curious about the chatter across the Fediverse? (Warning: it gets weird—in a good way.)”

You get it. This is called progressive disclosure—a fancy UX term for “don’t drop the entire buffet on someone who just asked for toast.”

Game designers do it, allowing characters to “level up” as they go. We should too. And when you do introduce content or users from the Local and Federated views, make them feel like power-ups, not puzzles.

Let people toggle. Let them filter. Let them filter, and sort with easy tools as they explore. But start with clarity, not complexity.

As with Redemption #1, this fix doesn’t require much complex backend wizardry. No protocol overhauls needed. Just frontend compassion. The equivalent of a cron script and some solid user experience design dust.

Honestly? Elk, Phanpy, or Patchwork could probably ship a beta v1 of this idea before you finish reading this post.

3️⃣ Redemption for UX Sin Three: Remote Actions Redeemed

You know the sin already. We covered it in Sin #3: Remote Interaction Purgatory back in Part 1 of this series. So let’s skip the anatomy of the pain and get straight to the path out of this hell.

And yes—apps like Ivory, Mona, and Ice Cubes? They largely sidestep this sin. Good for them. But the Open Social Web is, you know, about the web.

And for the millions of people trying to explore the Fediverse in a plain ol’ browser, this is one of the worst and thorniest of UX offenses.

I’ll spare the gory details, but it boils down to one thing: Browsers support a standard called “protocol handlers.” Or more accurately, how some browsers don’t.

If you’ve ever clicked a mailto: link and your email app just opens, that’s a protocol handler. In a perfect Open Web, it would be just as easy:

Set your home server once (prompted to do so during onboarding – or at worst when you engage on another server).
From then on? Follows, replies, boosts—across any server—just work.

Folks (myself included) have been hashing over what magical incantation should be used to actually make this work:

“Use web+ap!” “No, fedi+ap!” “Wait, what about activity+magic?”

Germanic feuding tribes settled things faster than this.

And yes, browser support used to be completely hot garbage. But here’s the twist: it’s not nearly as bad anymore. As of now, almost 90% of users from desktop browsers but still sadly with almost zero mobile browser support.

When you look at users of Mastodon as an example, that maths out to about half of all users could use this solution now.

That is enough for making this far better for so many today, and with a bit of JavaScript fallback, we can cover everyone else.

We’re not waiting on a miracle. We just need to create and ship. Here’s the redemption arc for this UX sin in two steps.

When a user first interacts with a remote server (a post, a profile, anything), the code will prompt them once to confirm this Fediverse protocol handler.

✅ One click.

✅ One prompt.

✅ Done. Forever done.

Guy in the back, raising hand, rightly: “But what about all the browsers that don’t support handlers?”

Relax. We got them too. Just drop in a lightweight JavaScript snippet on that server that:

Asks (once) what the user’s home server is. And at worst only gets one more ask form their home server “are you sure?”

Then it does the following in the background under the hood:

Rewrites all remote follow/reply/engagement links in the background automagically.
And then for every user and every post on that server —✨it just works✨ forevermore.

No more “open in your instance” dead ends. No more copy-paste drama.

Are you the kind of masochist who wants the gory details of this idea? No kink-shaming here. Dig in (including code you can steal):

👉 The Remote Fedi UX Protocol Handler Plan™

OK so I think that solution is pretty good - at least a ton better – but what if we know that we could count on server code to do some of the lifting? Could we go even better from a UX perspective?

That might take more time to do: but if Mastodon, or Pixelfed, or Peertube servers got in on the act and added some custom code there - I think we might be able to make that JavaScript failover code actually be ZERO prompts. See the later more exploratory “Option C” part of this proposal - FediDev’s and JavaScript folks and see if I got that wrong. Or if my crazy talk for Option C might work. I haven’t seen a show-stopper yet.

But all options of what I am proposing above should be able to work on any fediverse platform.

And yes—to the true believers out there, rightly working on the true end goal of getting a single protocol handler as a canonical standard adopted by all browser vendors: thank you. You are doing the Lord’s work.

But for the rest of us? We don’t have to wait. Even the basic version of the idea here takes a few paragraphs of code, not divine intervention.

It’s just… basic UX hygiene. Who’s going to dig in, proof case this, and ship it first?

Once one of you does—and the sky doesn’t fall—the rest will follow like dominoes.

4️⃣ Redemption for UX Sin 4: Direct Messages that Aren’t a Death Trap

As I wrote in Sin 4 in the previous blog post: sending a DM in the fediverse are confusing UX experience, that basically are a panic attack waiting to happen.

So let’s fix it. Developers:

Build a real DM composer. Not a slightly tweaked post box. Not “just set visibility to Direct.” A separate space. Different UI. And make it glaringly visually different - no subtle mild color difference or tiny visual flare. Make it as obvious a purpose as a Chernobyl button to empty out fuel.
Slap a giant banner across the top if encryption isn’t available. If it’s not secure, say so—loudly.
Throw a confirmation modal any time someone flips visibility to or from “Direct.” Yes, every time. One bad toggle should never equal public humiliation.
Color-code visibility tiers like your reputation depends on it:

🔓 Public. 👀 Followers-only. 🙈 Unlisted. 🔒 DM.

You know—something humans can actually see and understand.

And for the love of privacy, label every DM with “Not Encrypted” right in the message window. Not in the fine print. Not in the docs. Right there. Every time. Forever.

Because this isn’t overkill. This is respecting boundaries. This is basic UX dignity.

⚡️ And in case you think this is all pie in the sky—guess what?

Chee Aun at Phanpy already did nearly all of this.

Separate composer, clear dramatically, unmissable different visual distinctions for DM’s, safer flows. They moved private messages into their own tab by itself, away from the others and away from the Main Feed. It’s thoughtful, it’s sane, and it’s live.

Here is another great example from an upcoming Newsmast and Channels App UX:

The rest of you: copy their homework. The answers are right there.

5️⃣ Redemption for Sin 5: Search Without Surveillance

Search shouldn’t feel like shouting into the void—or worse, like you’re being punished just for asking.

To be fair, Mastodon’s search system on paper rocks. PixelFed and PeerTube’s federated search? Same.

But here’s the problem: for these—and many other federated platforms—search is opt-out by default per user, and that opt-in option for users to turn on if they choose is buried.

Meanwhile, other fediverse platforms like Misskey, Frendica, Lemmy and Hubzilla made different choices: making it so all public posts on those spaces are by default searchable. In essence defaulting to opt-in for search unless users individually opt-out. That worked for them.

But across Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, and others?

Search is locked behind obscure settings and rarely explained consent screens. Most users don’t even know search opt-in is a thing.

Right now, federated search is like a power tool buried in a locked cabinet,

down a hallway, behind a curtain labeled: “Don’t Worry About It.”

Here’s the good news: We don’t need to replicate Big Social’s surveillance dragnet to make discovery delightful. We can do this while also respecting user consent and privacy. The backend tech? Mostly done from a tech point of view.

The real challenge now? UX. This is an opt-in problem—and we already have the tools to fix it.

Here’s the better path forward:

✅ Nudge users early. And often. Make the choice to opt-in to search unmissable during onboarding. Then reinforce it gently and re-prompt users to opt in - every time a user tries to search.

Give them clear, kind, privacy-respecting language:

“Search helps others find your public posts. It never touches your private ones. Want in?”

Let them decline, sure. Let them silence future prompts. But always give them the why.

✅ Enrich search NOW with these great hand-chosen feeds.

Curated topic feeds? Already out there. Newsmast, Flipboard, Surf, and others are curating hundreds of quality feed lists right now.

Let’s plug these in like power cables into a server rack—directly into federated search engines of today and into Fediscovery search as it launches - and into all key relay servers to boot. Make 100% sure these are all findable, and featured, beyond just being “public” as they are now. Let the good, human-curated stuff shine inside search.

✅Nudge admins to help, too.

If a server’s opt-in rate is low, send a prompt to encourage the admin to reach out to their users. Give them a clean, pre-written nudge. Include a one-tap opt-in button to opt-in they can share. Most folks just need to know it’s an option and a simple way to say yes.

🛠️ Mid-Term Fixes Worth Considering

🟨 Consider building into future search features that let server admins choose the default search opt-in state appropriate for their community - and that might be defaulting new users to opt-in for some. where it fits their needs.

This one might be controversial, but I just put on my fireproof gear and am ready - it’s worth a serious look.

Every server has its own culture. So let the server set appropriate call for their community: Opt-in by default, or Opt-out by default. But in all cases, the user has final say. As long as consent is respected, flexibility is strength in my book. Far better than a divine fiat across the whole Fediverse.

🟨 Watch this space: Federated Auxiliary Services Providers (FASP- a tech acronym that just rolls off the tongue doesn’t it?) But the first FASP based offering to go live will be Search - is coming soon! Early tests are in sight!

This project will launch a unified, cross-platform search layer—exactly what the fediverse ecosystem needs. That promises to be a game changer. Here’s hoping.

But while we wait?

Most of the groundwork is already laid. Most of the wins are low lift. We have what we need to make federated search feel like a superpower.

We just need to unlock it—for everyone.

Let’s get to the point where people say:

“Wait… why didn’t I turn this on sooner?”

5️⃣ Redemption for Sin 5: Filling in the Blanks of Ghost Conversations

The bad news: this one’s not just a superficial fix. It needs real backend plumbing—deeper stuff that most Fediverse mortals can’t DIY.

(Though it is not rocket science level - users like this have shown how it’s done in miniature form)

The good news: it’s already underway at Mastodon. And not in the “quote-posts-have-been-in-the-works-since-2019” sense of being underway. We’re talking real commits. Real work. This year.

➡️ When a user opens a post, their server begins fetching the surrounding context—replies, parent posts, and profiles—automagically. The UX then should immediately let users know - fetching posts is underway…so don’t panic, wait a second and all will be well.

Want to peek under the hood? The dev threads on GitHub are alive with it. Feature merged into Mastodon upcoming release. See for yourself:

🔧 Thread fetching on Mastodon GitHub

Merged in and closed. On the runway for a near term Mastodon release.

Some other Fediverse platforms are also working on this problem for their platforms —most notably NodeBB, Discourse, Wordpress, Frequency, Mitra and Streams. Everyone else: please take notes from what works. Fork it. Build it. Improve it. Help other to do the same.

This one fix could massively reduce confusion, dead-end threads, and ghost replies.

Meanwhile, for client apps:

Elk, Phanpy, IceCubes, Ivory, Mona, Newsmast Mobile —can you lend a hand here? Even while we wait for the full back-end fix, you can improve the experience with a few thoughtful touches:

If a reply or profile can’t be fetched, show a friendly, clear placeholder:

“👻 *Reply not federated here yet. Want us to try to get it updated?”
Let users tap to fetch it manually, if needed. But make it clear what is up.
Show when a profile is incomplete and offer to sync to the latest and greatest.
Consider a simple age warning: “Heads up: this might be old or partial. Click here to refresh and update.

Even these little affordances make a big difference. They tell users:

“No, you’re not crazy. The Fediverse just hasn’t pulled this in yet.”

And for anyone out there grumbling that Mastodon (or any platform) isn’t moving fast enough—maybe skip the subtweets and fund them.

(And here are a few helpful links in this regard.)

A few dollars a month moves roadmaps more than a thousand hot takes.

Oh, and speaking of hot takes, here is one: If you are a coder, maybe roll up your sleeves and pitch in. Perfect example: The initial contribution for the Mastodon fix for fixing and filling in ghost conversations came from Jonny - neuromatch.social/@jonny Who was a new Ruby coder at the time but didn’t let that hold them back - and they sparked this crucial addition.

Give them some thanks and netfame online!

6️⃣ Redemption for Sin 6: Make Great Content Unmissable

Let’s be honest: even outside of search, the Fediverse still fumbles content discovery (See Sin 6) But buck up: There are a thousand ways we could help users find the posts, people, and conversations they actually care about—without building a surveillance dragnet or rage-bait machine.

It’s time to bring back and scale up old fashioned human editorial discovery.*

(Remember “blog rings”? OK, most folks under 50 don’t—but trust me, they worked way better than they had any right to.)

Let’s revive human-curated content—with a Fediverse twist. The good news? We already have an embarrassment of riches just waiting to surface—if we design for it with some smart, consent-respecting UX.

So why is this stuff still so hard to find?

🟨 Federated well moderated groups from upvoting platforms like Lemmy, Piefed, and Mbin are already bubbling up top posts, voted on by real people. Why not spotlight them?

(Note, Piefed is already got the ball rolling with their version of feeds)

🟨 From Redemption Path Five, remember these? We already have hundreds of hand-picked thematic feeds from:

Newsmast
Flipboard’s federated magazines
Flipboard’s News Desks
Individual curators building focused feeds
Surf’s Social Feeds (soon to be federated!)

These are not theoretical. They’re already open web content. Usable right now. So let’s feature them. Pipe them into onboarding, trending views, search, suggested follows—anywhere users might want to find signal in the noise.

💡 Slightly mid-term idea:

🟨 What if the current public server directories from each community server became feed actors too? Hear me out on this one.

Most Fediverse servers already show off public profiles—and many expose each public user posts via RSS. Given that RSS can be turned into a Mastodon bot in no time, we are more than half way there.

Let’s evolve that: turn each server’s local public post stream into a followable ActivityPub actor. A single, followable automated account for all voices on a server. Make it so each admin can opt out - like some opt out of making their public feed visible now. Make it so they can configure their own ServerBot to only boost posts with certain engagement, or set filters on it and all that good moderating stuff.

I, for one, welcome our new ServerBot overlords.

These kinds of curated “boosting bots” are how Newsmast Channel feed accounts work. Could a standard protocol for feeds be better? Hells, ya. Working group folks are on that.

But until then - this works TODAY. And then notice how all such ServerBots are followable immediately. And remixable and addable into other feeds, etc. These are all lego blocks building on each other.

Browsing remote public feeds: Apps are already hacking toward this with clunky workarounds. People want this. Let’s make it work on the web, too. Smooth. Intentional.

Someone smarter than me, help prototype this one. I’ll talk you up, I promise.

All these ideas—both near-term and mid-term—are really just about one thing: curated feed accounts. Most of them already exist. They just need the spotlight.

So what now?

📍 Index them in existing search. All of them. Prepare to index them into the Fediscovery FASP once that launches. Stat.

📍 Evolve feed standards to make easier to build and make them remixable—so apps like Surf, Flipboard, Newsmast and others can feature them and and build on them.

📍 Pull them into big relay hubs to boost visibility across the network.

Done right, great public content starts to feel everywhere. No tracking. No noise. No black-box algorithms.The Fediverse is overflowing with public posts that people want to be seen.

Let’s help them be seen—while respecting server context and dramatically improving discoverability.

Let’s make great content… unmissable.

7️⃣ Redemption for User Discovery Hell: UX for People Finding

Let’s imagine a world where we’ve fixed all the other sins. Welcome to Fediverse Narnia. Content is rich. Discovery is delightful. Search is humane and powerful. Great.

But even in that better world, Sin #7 still haunts us: finding people. Not just content—people. Friends. Experts. Communities. Shared interests. It’s a related beast, but a distinct one.

So here’s how we begin to tame it—mostly with smart UX and a little coordination:

🟨 Give server profile directories a real UX overhaul.

Make them sortable and filterable and searchable:

By interest or profile tags
By post recency
By community role
And auto-hide inactive accounts unless the user asks to see them

And for Mastodon, do the same for the Explore People tab. And make the Explore Hashtags page so that each tag is foldable with one click. Other Fedi platforms: do similar tune ups.

Right now, many server directories are just flat walls with limited sorting or browsing. Let’s turn them into useful, browsable, followable entry points to the community.

🟨 Pipe local community server profiles into opt-in Fediverse-wide discovery hubs. Simply making them an ActivityPub actor alone would get you more than halfway there. Just like we suggested for public posts in Sin 6—let’s do the same with people. Let users opt in to be featured in thematic discovery feeds or server-based “people to follow” hubs. Let this be federated.

Fediscovery once it launches should be a playground to try this out - and should be an early thing to try.

But until then: Here too I’ll bet Patchwork, Pleroma, Misskey or others could do this quickly and lessons adopted by everyone else.

🟨 Fix follower/following graph federation. Once Sin 5 (the federation of follows/followers content) is fixed, you’ll actually be able to see who someone follows across instances. You find someone awesome? You can actually explore their social graph—just like you expect in every other social app. This fix is foundational. And these fixes all build on each other.

Also, wait for it:

💡 Mid-term idea: Federated Starter Packs Are Coming

Bluesky got this one mostly right: give new users a thoughtfully curated “starter pack” of people to follow. It eases onboarding, sparks connection, and gets feeds flowing fast.*

But Bluesky they left out pesky things like security - their version left out any means to get yourself off of a list you don’t care to be associated with.

Now imagine a Fediverse version that’s got a bit more privacy respect to keep you off of starter packs you don’t want to be on. It’s on its way from a few places. Here is one in the works from Mastodon, and here is another.

I’d offer some other notes: Fedi Starter Packs could live at either the user but also discoverable integrated at the server level, too.

Like Surf Social App does today with BlueSky Starter packs, they need to be remixable into other feeds by curators, Maybe in some fashion they could be shared as ActivityPub actors themselves—just like a feed. (See a pattern forming?)

✨ The goal for all of these ways of fixing account discovery? Make discovering people feel effortless, inviting, and safe.

Because the open social web isn’t just about finding content. It’s about finding each other.

🌀 OK let’s bring this two part series in for a landing:

Here’s the real punchline:

Almost none of the short term fixes I listed above require:

Rewriting the protocol - no need to wait for longer term fixes. (Though we love improved protocols, too)
They don’t need a governance working group. (But might inform them)
They don’t need VC funding.
They mostly don’t even need big backend changes beyond what is already done.

What they do need?

What they need is focus. What they need is momentum.

The willingness to say “good enough” isn’t good enough if it leaves people confused, invisible, or gone.

Most of these paths out of UX Hell are:

Mostly Frontend tweaks and updates
Smarter federation fetches - and some manual bandaids to tide us over for a few months
Rediscovered ideas from the early web implemented with the raw materials we have
And a dash of UX love

The Fediverse already has what most platforms spend billions for and can’t buy:

🫀 We have the passion. 🧭 We have the values. 👥 We have a community that actually gives a damn.

Now it just needs the polish—and a collective push to make great user experience a first-class priority.

Thus endeth the sermon. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

Let’s get to work.

This was the Final Part 2 of my two-part series on the Seven Deadly UX Sins of the Fediverse. No more sequels. This is it for the series. But will chat it up in comments.

Missed Part 1? Go read it—or send it to that friend still wondering why their cat memes don’t federate properly. And if you’re building any of these fixes: DM me. I’ve got free suggestions, zero patents, and endless opinions.

The Seven Deadly UX Sins of the Fediverse Web Experience (To Fix)

Wed, 18 Jun 2025 11:42:45 -0400

So, confession time: I was recently helping a new client get set up on the Fediverse—guiding them through their first steps into our glorious decentralized galaxy. And seeing it all again through fresh eyes?

Reader, it was brutal.

So much of what should be table stakes for any social media UX in the year of our Lord 2025 still is missing or deeply broken still. I know progress has been made and a good fight, fought. But those of us who love the Open Social Web can get blinded to the rough edges not yet fixed or not having lived with them, start to consider them not so bad. Beloved, they are that bad. Still.

Let me be crystal clear before we begin: I say all of the below with love for the fediverse.. Deep, stubborn, open-source-loving, billionaire-eschewing love. I want the Open Social Web to win. But wanting it isn’t enough. If we want this thing to thrive we have to face the user experience sins head-on—and maybe even laugh at them a little along the way.

<Caveate>I love native apps like Ivory or Mona or custom web UX like Elk or Phanpy as much or more than any of you but those are all UX bandaids over things we have needed to fix in most cases for years. That time is now.</Caveate>

So I jotted down the seven things that make my clients’ eyes cross. And no, this isn’t me dunking on one app or interface. Pixelfed—you’re not off the hook. No snickering, Friendica. These are Fediverse-wide sins.

And don’t get smug, Bluesky. You’ve got some whoppers in your closet too—and I’m saving those for another article.

So grab a cup of coffee—or maybe the nearest comfort blanket—and let’s soberly and bravely take a cathartic journey through the Deadly Sins that plague the Fediverse’s web UX.

(And any I missed in the comments to this blog post)

1️⃣ The Sin of Overwhelming Complexity: Instance Selection Paralysis

Ah yes, we start the OG sin. This one’s been haunting the Fediverse since before most people even knew the Fediverse existed.
Again see this with fresh eyes:

Imagine the moment you decide to join the Fediverse. You’re feeling a tad noble. Brave. Ready to reclaim your digital life from Big Tech’s clutches.

Then… boom. You’re confronted with a cryptic list of servers, each with a name that sounds like a cross between a startup pitch and a medieval tavern.

Wait, what? “social.town or lemmy.world? climatejustice.social or a server with a frog logo? What am I signing up for here?”
No warm hand-holding, no curated suggestion. Just a buffet of options that would make even a seasoned sysadmin’s head spin.No wonder so many people bail before they even get started. It’s like trying to join a secret club when no one will tell you the handshake.

And even our terms “Server” Or “Instance” make sense in an engineering flowchart but why in all that is holy would we foist those onto users to pretend to understand? At the very least we should talk about new folks joining a “server community” of fellow users.

And here’s the harsh truth: even offering more than one onboarding “server community” choice is often one too many.
Even the fix at JoinMastodon for the mobile app only not the web app - while admirable and going in the right direction. If your onboarding flow requires a glossary, a decision tree, and a four-part documentary on federation theory, something’s gone very wrong. A multi-step wizard isn’t going to save you—it’s just a fancier maze. We’ve seen flows that bleed 50% of users per screen. That’s not onboarding, that’s a prescription for a slow-motion rage quit.

“But what about decentralization?” someone valiantly cries from the back row.

Don’t worry: I’m not selling it out. I adore decentralization as much as you and trust me, we don’t have to throw that out to give users onboard for the first time only one server choice. I hear you audibly confused now but trust me, wait for it.

For now I think we can agree that new users to the Fedi need an onboarding experience that doesn’t feel like a grad school entrance exam. I believe a far better way is possible, and I’ll spill the beans in the next post.

Congrats, you survived the Great Instance Selection Gauntlet™. You’ve picked your server, verified your email, maybe even uploaded a profile pic. You’re finally ready to explore your new digital neighborhood.

And then—bam. Three timelines.

Not one. Not two. Three.

Home, Local, Federated—each more enigmatic than the last. The Fediverse’s multiple timelines are a beautiful idea in theory, but in practice?

Home: Hopefully your cozy friends’ chatter.
Local: Pretty much your instance’s collective brain dump.
Federated: the cosmic firehose of everything, everywhere, all at once. Many are sure to be in languages you don’t speak. Basically: digital chaos in reverse-chron order.

New users are expected to intuit the metaphysical difference between timelines, And honestly—why should new users care? What does each one do for them?

What problem is it solving? No really, I’ll wait.

3️⃣ The Sin of Remote Interaction Purgatory: Federation Gymnastics

One of the Fediverse’s great promises is universal interaction—no matter which server someone calls home, you can still follow them, reply, boost, interact. In theory? Utopian.

In practice—for web users—it’s an absolute effing mystery.

Want to boost a post from another instance?

Want to follow someone who lives on a server that’s not your own?

Brace yourself: copy, paste, search, squint at a remote profile view, and whisper a quick prayer to the federation spirits that it might work this time.

Want to reply to a post from a different corner of the Fediverse?

You’d better hope the stars align, the server’s awake, and the fediverse goblins aren’t misbehaving today. Sometimes it’s seamless. Sometimes you end up trapped in a social media escape room, having to try every door twice.

It’s social networking as performance art: awkward, elaborate, and weirdly beautiful—but absolutely not the experience most users signed up for.

And remember the golden UX rule: every extra step you give a user cuts retention in half.

That brutal law applies here too. Every clunky redirect, every extra click, every “wait, what do I do now?” moment sends more would-be users quietly packing.

4️⃣ The Sin of DM Disasters Waiting to Happen

Private messages in the Fediverse: because who doesn’t love social roulette?

And yet here we are - as on most Fediverse platforms, “Direct Messages” live right alongside public posts in the same composer, the same timeline view, sometimes even with mostly the same visual styling. You can toggle visibility to “Direct”… but will you notice you didn’t? Will you check? Will the UI save you?

Spoiler: It will not.

One wrong toggle, and your private thought becomes a public reckoning.

There’s no special UI wrapper. No bold red warning. No modal that says: “Heads up—you’re about to tell your boss what you really think, in public.”

Instead, it’s all too easy to accidentally post a private message as public—or vice versa. This isn’t just a newbie trap. It’s a UX booby trap.

And let’s be real: “Direct Message” in the Fediverse doesn’t even mean what most users think it means. It’s just a post with limited visibility, sent to a tagged user.

Worse? There’s no encryption. So it’s not just accidentally public—it’s intentionally insecure. It’s plaintext dressed up as a secret. There is some fine print warning you, But let’s be real: nobody reads fine print mid-conversation.

The result: drama, confusion, and sometimes real harm. All from a UI that treats one of the most sensitive features of a social platform like just another post flavor.

5️⃣ The Sin of Ghost Conversations and Phantom Follower Counts

Federation is the Fediverse’s secret sauce—and as implemented, its spectral curse. What should be lively, multi-user conversations often arrive with limbs missing.

Replies that clearly should be there are gone. Half the participants never materialize.

You’re reading a thread and suddenly think: Wait… who is this person even talking to?

Follower counts of remote users become carnival mirrors: someone shows “800 followers,” you see 12.

You follow a fascinating account, only to feel like you’ve stepped into a half-lit room where the conversation’s already happened—and half the guests are ghosts. Why does this happen?

Because what you see is only the part of the Fediverse that’s federated to you. Each server decides what to fetch, when to fetch it—and sometimes just… doesn’t.

There’s no guarantee your instance will pull in every reply, every participant, or even the full thread—especially if the original conversation lives on a server it barely talks to.

The result? Phantom threads. Phantom user counts.Hollow outlines of conversations happening elsewhere.

Social interaction becomes confusing swiss-cheese cutouts of themselves.

It’s enough to make you wonder:

Am I lurking… or am I the one being lurked?

6️⃣ The Sin of Invisible Discovery: The Content Mirage

The Fediverse was born to be better than Big Tech’s social media rage-bait casino—that places like X or Facebook designed to mine you for clicks, views, and your soul.

Good call to avoid that. Let’s not do that.

And yes, privacy is precious. Zero arguments here—no one’s asking for surveillance ads or algorithmic doomscrolling.

But the Fediverse takes that privacy ethos and forgets to replace it with… well… anything.

So what you get instead is discovery by divine accident: No algorithmic curation. No fediverse-wide trending topics. No “here’s what’s buzzing.”

Just you and The Void.

So new users end up wandering along, stumbling across interesting people and conversations only by sheer luck. It’s charming - but only in a 19th-century explorer way.

It’s less charming when you’re just trying to find a cat meme.

What about Mastodon Search? On paper, it’s powerful. In reality, it’s opt-in only—tucked behind an Easter egg hunt of privacy settings. Years after launch, Mastodon Search still surfaces a fraction of a fraction of users—basically just those who’ve unlocked the “I read the docs” achievement.

And hey, credit where it’s due: Eugen and team did build something. And erred on the side of caution.

Most other Fediverse platforms haven’t even really tried to tackle search yet in a meaningful way.

7️⃣ The Sin of User Discovery Hell

Search is one thing. But finding people to follow—especially if you’re new—is where the UX - beyond just search - really starts to melt down.

User discovery in the Fediverse is so decentralized, it’s basically unusable. No global directory. No “you might like.” No obvious trails to follow.

Just vibes. And maybe a dusty wiki from 2022.

(Full disclosure: I helped build some of those early directories for journalists and activists. We were literally hand-crafting Excel spreadsheets of accounts worth following. Read that again. No really.)

Want to create your own curated user list of great accounts? Go for it—just don’t expect to share it. Mastodon lists aren’t public. You can’t even make them public. So they live and die with you, like a mixtape you can’t give to anyone.

And other Fediverse platforms do not even have lists.

Some Fediverse servers maintain public list pages of their user profiles that are on that server —but good luck using them. They’re often:

Unsortable except by these vague, frustrating options:
- Recently active: OK, fine. Credit where due. Good one.
- New arrivals: (New…where? From what? And are they “New” and “Aticve” or just lookie-lous that joined then bounced away?)
- From this-server-name.com only: What? Why? (See Sin #1.)
- From known Fediverse: I’m begging you. What does that even mean to any newbie?
Unlabeled by any useful tag—even ones users have publicly applied to themselves.
Unfiltered, showing accounts that haven’t posted since Obama’s first term and giving no indication who’s worth following now.
And lastly each server’s public profiles do not flow up to any larger discovery pipeline. So even if you do find cool, active, Jazz fans found by hand from user profile section of the Jazztodon server, no other server benefits but you. Go you. But opportunity firmly lost for fediverse wide discovery.

And let’s say you gave up on all of the above. But a new idea struck you:

“I know: like on every other social media platform, I can find cool folks that my friends follow and follow them.”

Yeah…no.

Thanks to federation fragmentation - Think you Sin #5 - many of their following—although every last one of them being technically public—are totally invisible to you in practice. So much for that idea.

It’s a UX turducken. One Sin nested inside another.

You didn’t just fall through the cracks—you’re living in them.

🙏 The Path to Redemption

Ok that was withering to write, let alone what it must have been to read. Time for a palate cleanser for both of us: OK here is another ray of hope:

Remember I’m writing these out of LOVE for the Open Social Web and the fediverse and to improve it.

And let’s be clear: these UX sins aren’t as the preachers say, “sins unto death.”
There is a path to redemption, each one of these is eminently fixable.

These fixed don’t require a pilgrimage to the holy land of W3C working groups or a blockchain duct-taped to the side of the server rack. We’re not waiting on divine intervention via Fediverse Enhancement Protocol v99.9b.

The path out of UX hell is paved with thoughtful design, a pinch of frontend finesse, and a few determined devs who are tired of watching newcomers bounce off of this experience back into the waiting arms of Big Tech Silos - often doing so with very good reason, and a sense of loss.

And more good news? Many folks have already started making serious strides. Now is the time to push forward.

Lastly, remember: The early open web had UX problems just as gnarly—and it worked through nearly all of them. The open social web can too.

I’ll dive into the fixes in the next article in this two-part series. Catch you on the other side.

This is Part 1 in a two-article series on the Seven Deadly UX Sins of the Fediverse Web Experience.

Part 2—our roadmap to redemption—will arrive as soon as the author can wrestle their love of the Open Social Web back into prose, ideally before the next major Mastodon fork or the collapse of another Twitter clone.

In the meantime, if you’ve spotted a UX sin I missed, drop it in the comments or send a direct message (just, you know, double-check the visibility setting first).

Indieweb.Social and the Upcoming #BlueSkyBridge

Tue, 13 Feb 2024 17:40:29 -0400

This is a brief announcement announcing Indieweb.social’s future software bridge work by BridgyFed - fed.brid.gy - will enable interoperability between ActivityPub networks and AT Protocol/BlueSky users.

Read the announcement at snarfed.org/2024-02-1…

As a server, Indieweb.social will NOT fediblock this effort; rather, to the contrary, we will assist users in understanding how to engage with BlueSky users if they choose to do so via this new offering.

This is akin to our server’s position on Threads federation as well. With both, we will moderate with extreme care and will ensure that our user’s safety is our first and utmost priority. And with both, we will adjust our position if facts require it.

At the same time, we will also assist our users who choose to opt-out by explaining how they can block particular BlueSky users or block the entire bridge and opt out by DM’ing Ryan Barnett at or entering #nobridge in their profile bio.

As the administrator of indieweb.social, I enthusiastically endorse this #BlueSkyBridge work, and I believe that individuals concerned about being “opt-out” forget that the Fediverse’s core is established on this sort of bridging and Federating as a conscious design. As @beaware rightly put it, there can be legit reasons to block this bridge for those who wish to, “but don’t disguise it as some sort ‘opt-in only stance’ because if you’re a legit Fediverse admin, you know the Fediverse as a whole is opt-out by design." indieweb.social/@tchamber…

And at the same time built into the core principles of the Fedi is that it offers you all the tools to curate your own experience and block and filter at will.

One last personal note:

I also know Ryan Barlett well and have engaged with him during this project.

This is a good-faith developer who loves the open web, respects and cares about the ethos of the Fediverse, deeply values #indieweb principles. He has put countless hours into this project as a labor of love for the open social web. He has also gone well out of his way to be transparent and a good actor at every step of this work.

He deserves all of our respect and I hope that the vast majority of Fediverse voices offer him that - even those who do not wish to take part in the bridge or who disagree with the “opt-out” nature of it.

The Fedivere needs more developers like Ryan and the vitriol from a minority of the few is not a good look. To his credit Ryan is listening even to the more shrill voices and willing to iterate while keeping to Fediverse and open web principles. fed.brid.gy/r/https:/…

I hope other voices of support - even those who disagree - reach out and make their voices heard over the more rancorous ones. The Fediverse needs to be a place of respect and community.

I’m honored that he set up a support account here on this server - indieweb.social/@snarfed - and look forward to helping support this effort as it evolves.

2024 Fediverse Predictions

Fri, 29 Dec 2023 20:45:17 -0400

These are fun and like seeing the tech predictions starting to pop up in a lot of other places. Figure I should add mine about the Fediverse.

All of these predictions are based on how FediDB will measure them in the next year:

▶️ The overall Fediverse as measured by FediDB will cross 25 million registered users, and by year’s end over 3 to 5 million monthly active users. The Fediverse will cross over 35,000 servers in 2024.

▶️ Flipboard and WordPress will both move to be at least in the top 10 Fediverse software providers by monthly active users by the end of 2024.

▶️ There will continue to be waves of users migrating to emerging social media platforms in 2024 and they will primarily be going to Threads, Mastodon, and BlueSky, roughly in that order. No new alternative social platforms emerge with any substance in 2024.

▶️ Disinformation that originates on the Fediverse will for the first time - have a role in the 2024 US Election, spreading into other centralized platforms.

▶️ BlueSky will federate out to other Bluesky servers for the first time in 2024, but users will remain primarily at the initial flagship server and others will struggle to gain adoption that year. At least one robust AT to ActivityPub bridge sees wide reach in 2024 on both sides of the BlueSky to ActiivtyPub worlds.

▶️ Threads will federate into all its users who opt-in, at least in “read-only” mode akin to what the early test users see today. This will move Threads to functionally be the second largest Federated server software in 2024, next to Mastodon.

▶️ There will be continued controversy and discussion inside the Fediverse as the Threads interoperability launches …but throughout 2024, the Fediverse works it out, and moderators will without major incidents be able to manage their servers in this new environment - and the Fediverse as a whole navigates this without any major schism forming.

▶️ There will be at least one other medium-to-large new social media platform in 2024 that will formally announce it is adopting ActivityPub and actively building out support for it….and it will not be Tumblr. Tumblr will continue experimenting in ActivtyPub, offering it to users who buy Tumblr subscription ad-free versions.

▶️ Lemmy & Kbin Fediverse servers continue to evolve their features and UX and integrate more closely with the Fediverse and will grow to 1.5 million registered users, and over 200K monthly active users in 2024.

▶️ One whole new category of software will grow to a solid foothold in the Fedivese - beyond the existing microblogging, peer-tube-like videos, longer-form blogging, and Lemmy/Kbin-style social news aggregation. I have no idea what that would be - federated storefronts? federated podcasts? Other? - but it will grow to see over 50,000 registered users.

▶️ At least one other continent becomes relevant for the Fediverse in 2024 - beyond its current concentration in North America, Europe and Asia. Expect growth in Africa and South America and elsewhere but at least one will emerge as an important new growth area for the Fediverse by the end of the year.

How to Verify your Twitter Account as Owned by You, Without Paying Twitter for #TwitterBlue or for a $12K a Month

Tue, 28 Mar 2023 23:09:35 -0400

This solution for Twitter verification without paying Elon is easy to use, adheres to web standards, and works efficiently.

First, include the following in your (or your organization’s) Twitter bio:

This account can be verified at timothychambers.net/verified/

You can also (like I did) add the key or ID emoji to your bio. Twitter will not let you add the emoji for check marks.

This URL must lead to a page you create on your own website or the official website for your organization. There, you should include the following language, which you can see on the image of my own website. It should read something akin to:

“This is my official Twitter account that I maintain and verify that I am that owner: https://twitter.com/tchambers/"

Add the machine-readable and web-standard code “rel=Me” to the HTML of that page to earn bonus points. This is not essential, however, it will be handy for utilizing this page to verify you on Mastodon and other services in the future.

That’s all! This establishes that your Twitter account is owned and confirmed by the same entity as your Official Website. Any fake Twitter impersonators that don’t have this, aren’t you.

This is possible to do on any website, personal blog, the official bio page of any organization’s website, or even any Gravatar profile, or similar pages.

To view a live illustration of this, please visit my Twitter account at twitter.com/tchambers…

Indieweb.Social: on the Fediverse - Looking for New Patreon Support

Sat, 01 Oct 2022 22:38:28 -0400

So for several years, I’ve been running Indieweb.Social - It is a Mastodon instance/community that unites the interests of developers working on the “#Indieweb,” “#Distributed social,” and “#Fediverse” worlds.

We created a space where supporters of each endeavor could communicate and exchange information as they are all linked initiatives with comparable objectives.

It’s now the 6th largest of all Tech #Mastodon instances. It is the main host for emerging platforms like [Bonfire] (https://indieweb.social/@bonfire) and others. Good discussions on future implementation of Indieweb standards on Mastodon go on here.

My server costs going up 5X shortly by my managed Mastodon host. This is not unreasonable given the size this instance has grown to. This is a labor of love for me & I’m very willing to do at a financial loss; and am very thankful for the 13 Patreon donors we have.

But would likely need about 9 more at a similar scale to be at a sustainable loss for me.

Do pledge here if you can:

[https://www.patreon.com/indiewebsocial] (https://www.patreon.com/indiewebsocial)

Also posted to: #indienews

Newsletters and Podcasts as new Open Content Platforms

Sun, 15 Nov 2020 16:02:03 -0400

I agree, Podcasts and Newsletters (functionaly blogs) give me great hope and are some of the best digital content I find these days. Main comerical social networks remain wastelands.

From the Creator of Ruby on Rails, Founder & CTO at Basecamp & HEY:

“There’s something incredibly beautiful about the rise of both podcasts and newsletters in an age dominated by the walled gardens of big tech. Two basic forms of distribution that rely not on proprietary platforms, but on free and open standards, devoid of corporate lock-in "

threadreaderapp.com/thread/13…

Email as a Key Element of the Open Web -- And Hey! Review

Wed, 17 Jun 2020 01:39:10 -0400

I agree with this: email is a key function of the #openweb. Very important that we keep it so. Looking forward to trying out Hey.com….

Email is the rare open platform that works for everyone. But it’s changing. Three companies — Google, Microsoft and Verizon (which owns Yahoo and AOL) — control the overwhelming majority of the email universe. Google is particularly powerful, growing as the others slowly fade. Jacob Bank, Gmail’s product manager, told me in 2017 that Gmail was already powerful enough to be able to set standards in a supposedly open ecosystem, and that power has only increased since then. If the current trend continues, email could effectively become another in a long list of Google messaging apps. And email users would be held captive by the data-collecting, ad-targeting machines on the other end.

www.protocol.com/hey-email

Filtering Social Feeds: and Unwanted Content as a Feature or Bug

Thu, 19 Dec 2019 23:47:52 -0400

Filtering social feeds. And Unwanted Content as a Feature or a Bug

Just a note on filtering out your social feed for unwanted things - like I tried to do to avoid spoilers of Star Wars.

I just wanted to temporarily mute posts from friends, etc, that used the words “Star Wars” or “Skywalker” for 24 hours. So that was a test for the various social nets.

Of course: the open source Mastodon Social network gave users the most control to filter out posts with certain key words, and for how long to block them. In my case two days.

Twitter gave OK permissions to “mute” but just basics, and only two settings – on or off.

And of course Facebook and YouTube gave me zero control whatsoever.

Social networks that are basically thinly disguised advertising engines simply have fundamentally different interests that their users do in things like filtering out unwanted content/noise etc.

The unwanted content in their eyes is a feature not a bug.

Thu, 19 Dec 2019 17:24:00 -0400

Feels way too true. Let’s rebuild a better web.

“Alienated, Alone And Angry: What The Digital Revolution Really Did To Us…We were promised community, civics, and convenience. Instead, we found ourselves dislocated, distrustful, and disengaged.” www.buzzfeednews.com/article/j…

Agreed: Problems from Faceook and the others Can Be tweaked but ultimate solution is much bigger....

Wed, 06 Nov 2019 13:52:50 -0400

Agreed: this won’t change until we build the web we want.

“Platforms that have as many problems as Facebook does can always be improved, but by design they can never be good enough because their size alone is one of the problems….

The good news: it’s up to us. We can choose to reject these platforms and move to a more distributed web of indie microblogs. We can choose to reject the attention power-grab of the algorithmic timeline. We can choose to build the web we deserve… but it’s not going to happen if you keep feeding photos into Instagram.”

www.manton.org/2019/11/0…

Interoperablity and Social Silos: Access Act Thinking the Right Way

Sun, 27 Oct 2019 20:53:54 -0400

Interoperability - not just data portability but set API’s for communication by different accounts across social media silos would make a huge difference. For the better.

www.theverge.com/2019/10/2…

Yahoo Groups Shutting Down: All Content from 115 Million Groups to be Permantently Deleted Dec 14th

Sun, 20 Oct 2019 13:26:57 -0400

Why owning your own content and syndicating it to external platforms is key.

“Yahoo has made the decision to no longer allow users to upload content to the Yahoo Groups site,” the company said in a notice to users. “Beginning October 28, you won’t be able to upload any more content to the site, and as of December 14 all previously posted content on the site will be permanently removed.”

arstechnica.com/informati…

A Good Review of Zuck's Speech

Fri, 18 Oct 2019 16:34:12 -0400

Agree completely:

“The speech began with a major tactical and factual error, in which Zuckerberg attempted to awkwardly retcon the founding of Facebook into a story about giving students a voice during the Iraq war. (“I remember feeling that if more people had a voice to share their experiences, maybe things would have gone differently.”) All previous reporting on the subject suggests that the truth was much, much hornier, and the fact that Zuckerberg’s speech began so disingenuously caused lots of the folks I read to tune out the rest…

Zuckerberg’s talk focuses exclusively on the right of speech, when the far more consequential question is the right of reach.

What spreads, and by what means, and to what effect? These are all questions Facebook avoided today….

There is something untenable about a massive corporation / quasi-state that sets global speech policies but never has to answer for them, outside the odd Congressional hearing or public-relations crisis. It’s easy to stand firmly on the side of free speech when the only negative consequence you suffer as a result is more speech.”

www.getrevue.co/profile/c…

How to Have Your Twitter Username Extorted From You

Tue, 10 Sep 2019 11:24:59 -0400

Crazy story:

“My $50,000 Twitter Username Was Stolen Thanks to PayPal and GoDaddy. I had a rare Twitter username, @N. Yep, just one letter. I’ve been offered as much as $50,000 for it. People have tried to steal it. Password reset instructions are a regular sight in my email inbox. As of today, I no longer control @N. I was extorted into giving it up.”

medium.com/@N/how-i-…

How do you communicate when the government censors the internet? You route around it.

Sat, 07 Sep 2019 20:38:51 -0400

Hong Kong Protesors going “Mesh Network” to communicate & circumvent the government: “60K installations in just the past seven days, most of them from Hong Kong.” www.forbes.com/sites/joh…

Launching a New Mastdodon Instance Focused on the OpenWeb

Mon, 02 Sep 2019 18:19:00 -0400

So with a few friends, just launched this new instance:

INDIEWEB.SOCIAL is a home for those who build, study, promote - or are just fascinated by - a wide variety of #openweb, #indieweb, #federated and #humanetech practices and technologies.

We seek to promote innovation and shared evolution and promotion of such technologies as well as to offer this instance itself as a platform to experiment with integration and early implementations…

indieweb.social/about/mor…

Gizmodo on NetNewsWire's Relaunch: "One of the Best RSS Readers Is Back"

Tue, 27 Aug 2019 12:10:22 -0400

Great Gizmodo write up on the relaunch of #NewNewsWire:

“Despite what companies like Apple and Facebook claim, you don’t need a giant corporation telling you what news stories you should read every morning. Nearly every website (worth reading) still operates an RSS feed. And now one of the oldest and most robust RSS readers, NetNewsWire, is back from the dead and worth your consideration again.”

gizmodo.com/one-of-th…

"Why Freedom of Thought Requires Attention"

Sun, 25 Aug 2019 23:45:57 -0400

He opens with “Freedom of thought requries media that don’t listen to and watch and survielle us as we use them…media that consumes us, in the end consumes freedom of thought.”

A friend’s review: “I really liked his point that it’s not required to invent new stuff to fix what’s wrong today but “just” to undo stuff that went wrong in last years. Aligned very well with the idea of #indieweb and the fediverse.”

youtu.be/1SKpRbvnx…

"It’s Time to End ‘Trending'"

Mon, 12 Aug 2019 22:22:45 -0400

Why it is good – as #Mastodon and #Microdotblog does – to still keep human admins in the mix on surfacing “trending” items:

“The first problem with [FB and Twitter] “trending” is that it selects and highlights content with no eye toward accuracy, or quality. Automated trending systems are not equipped to make judgments; they can determine if things are being shared, but they cannot determine whether that content should be shared further.”

nymag.com/intellige…

Indieweb, Fediverse and Commerical Silos

Sun, 11 Aug 2019 23:54:42 -0400

The more time I spend on the #Indieweb, #Matodon and other #Fediverse apps, the more I notice when I go back to Twitter and FB how much is pushed at me: recommended users, posts, promoted tweets, recommended apps, requests for reviews of places I just had been near, but never checked into. Sometimes you only really see it there when you have seen the alternative. #fediverse

Sat, 03 Aug 2019 11:03:38 -0400

Love this: “It’s pleasantly ironic that some of the internet’s oldest open protocols are shining through, with email newsletters and podcasting standing tall… a channel they own and control.” www.niemanlab.org/2018/12/p…

"Will California’s New Bot Law Strengthen Democracy?"

Thu, 11 Jul 2019 15:27:15 -0400

This law is a start, and should be implemented in every US state:

“On July 1st, California became the first state in the nation to try to reduce the power of bots by requiring that they reveal their “artificial identity” when they are used to sell a product or influence a voter. Violators could face fines under state statutes related to unfair competition. Just as pharmaceutical companies must disclose that the happy people who say a new drug has miraculously improved their lives are paid actors, bots in California—or rather, the people who deploy them—will have to level with their audience.”

www.newyorker.com/tech/anna…

Thu, 28 Mar 2019 19:08:15 -0400

These seem like just common sense things Facebook and Google should do in opening up thier ad archive to an API for researchers, and for transparency: blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019…

Building in "Web Stuff" and Micro.blog

Wed, 20 Mar 2019 20:13:47 -0400

This is a great quote on #indieweb publishing and #microblog in specific…. Build in “web stuff” if you want it to last:

“Micro.blog is not an alternative silo: instead, it’s what you build when you believe that the web itself is the great social network. That’s the important part: even if Micro.blog doesn’t last (though I believe it will), the idea — that the web itself is where we are and where we talk to each other — will continue. And: Micro.blog could be just one of thousands of similar services. And those services would all work together, because they’re made of web-stuff."<

http://inessential.com/2018/02/01/why_micro_blog_is_not_another_app_net

Wed, 13 Mar 2019 20:35:43 -0400

#Facebook decieded we all were giving up FB for Lent today. Suddently a more decentralized, federated social platform seeming a bit better.

www.bbc.com/news/tech…

Small Shifts Back to the Web's Roots

Tue, 05 Mar 2019 17:57:26 -0400

Another story I’m watching on how do “slow media” - from this blogger. Will be fun to watch his efforts and compare notes:

“I’m optimistic that the movement away from social media is good for the Open Web. Since I scaled back my use of social media a year ago, I blogged more, re-subscribed to many RSS feeds, and grew increasingly interested in the IndieWeb — all small shifts back to the Open Web’s roots."<

dri.es/pulling-t…

Not quitting Social Media: But Going Back to an "the Artisanal internet."

Sun, 03 Mar 2019 23:05:22 -0400

This article from #wired, also got me relooking at #indieweb and Micro.blog. In essence, don’t quit social all together, but “curate your way to a better social media” diet. Key quote:

This vision of decentralization is more back-to-the-land than blockchain. If portals to the digital world are so exploitative, it asks, why not curate our own? For consumers, this means forgoing convenience to control your ingredients: Read newsletters instead of News Feeds. Fall back to private group chats. Put the person back in personalization. Revert to reverse chron. Avoid virality. Buy your own server. Start a blog. Embrace anonymity. Own your own domain. Spend time on federated social networks rather than centralized ones. And when a big story breaks, consider saving your appetite for the slow-cooked, room-temp take.<

www.wired.com/story/soo…

Who Owns the Digital You (Part 1 of 3)

Sat, 02 Mar 2019 15:02:53 -0400

“Twenties and Thirties it was the role of government, Fifties and Sixties it was civil rights. The next two decades it’s gonna be privacy. I’m talking about the Internet. I’m talking about cell phones. I’m talking about health records and who’s gay and who’s not. And moreover, in a country born on the will to be free, what could be more fundamental than this?” — Sam Seaborne, The West Wing (Season 1, Episode 9, 1999)<

This could be your day:

…You read an article online that the average web user has hundreds, if not thousands, of web tracking files (called “cookies”) watching you browse from site-to-site and reporting back to god-knows-where. Adding insult to injury, the site where you read this article adds another cookie to your browser…

…You log into Facebook and discover that somehow, without your approval, you are now a member of NAMBLA’s Facebook group, the result of your friends’ poor idea of a joke and the new “feature” in groups that Facebook management added thinking it would be okay to allow friends to do this without your say so…

…From the window of your home office you see a vehicle that looks like the “fun, wacky” Google Street View truck pass by and you wonder, “Did they just get access to my WiFi passwords?”…

…You read about how those who run the companies that know the most about you online are saying to “get over” the loss of privacy, or that if you want to be acting anonymously online “maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”…

With all that, you’d be forgiven for thinking, as Andrew Sullivan wrote, that online privacy is dead, and that maybe if “you don’t tense up,” over the loss, “it will hurt less.” You are not alone.

You may also think you have a “privacy problem,” but technically you have a bigger issue — an identity problem. A true “online identity crisis,” as it were, as online privacy is a subset of “online identity.” See: I believe you can boil down the entire multifaceted online privacy issue to a single nine-word statement and a single five-word question.

Here is the statement: There is a “real-you” and a “digital-you.”

The “digital-you,” this digital doppelganger of yours, deeply, deeply affects the “real-you” (and will almost certainly outlive the “real-you” by many generations at least).

This “digital-you” may consist of little more than a nine-digit social security number, a wisp of an existence, but it’s there on one of various digital networks. But for most of us our digital selves are much more substantial and fleshed out. Enough to fill five or six hard disc drives at least. And if you are under 18, chances are your “digital-you” is even more substantial: certainly terabytes, maybe petabytes, of images, thoughts, writings, emails, facts, idle thoughts, blog posts, political rants, religious inklings, musical tastes, sexual fantasies, and more. Fears, hopes, and dental records all lumped together in one hard-to-imagine digital approximation of the human being you are, or were. It’s a digital echo that we all leave behind us. For some of us, the aggregate may be the truest portrait of ourselves that will ever exist.

And the fate of your “digital-you” and “real-you” couldn’t be more intertwined.

This begs the key question I promised earlier, which is: “Who owns the digital-you?”

For some while, there is a quiet “identity war” going on for this ownership of the “digital-you.” A battle for your likes and your links — your interests, your passions, your information, everything about the “digital-you” that is public or that the combatants in this war help make public. And the spoils of this war are great: the central business model of most of the information marketplace right now is about offering you “free” services in exchange for information, giving up what was formerly nobody’s business but your own.

What was “nobody’s business” is now big, big business.

Jack Shafer got it when he wrote:

“…The privacy problem is really one of our own making. We’re the ones who surrender the privacy of the contents of our e-mail, calendars, and contacts to Gmail, which then sells ads against those contents. We give the mapping services our home addresses and our destinations… We share our comings and goings by checking in on Foursquare. We let iTunes catalog our music libraries in exchange for its “Genius” recommendations. We submit volumes of personal information to Facebook for Mark Zuckerberg to monetize. None of these exploitations should come as a surprise. They weren’t forced on us. If we read the voluminous “terms of service” agreements that we check yes to in return for these free services, we’d see that the providers of “free” services were very candid about how they’d use our personal information.”<

And in their battle by omission or co-mission a troubling pattern forms: privacy is treated in a cavalier way, boundaries get pushed back, there is a public outcry, and then the offending company pulls their privacy standards back up, but NOT as far as they were previously. And then wash, rinse, repeat.

The Kenyan aphorism applies: “When elephants fight, it’s the grass that suffers.” In this case, it’s our identity and our privacy that does.

The combatants in the identity war over the “digital-you” want you to cede them control and stewardship of it. They want you to trust that they can navigate and avoid “the creepy line” of intrusion for you, even if they “walk right up to it.”

So who owns the Digital-You?

I’ll explore who should in the next post in this series, but here are spoilers: not them. Or anyone like them.

Giving Micro.Blog a Whirl

Tue, 19 Feb 2019 11:23:51 -0400

Giving Micro.blog a whirl. After trying it out in beta, now am giving the lastest version a whirl as a possible “POSSE” solution - “publish once, syndicate everywhere.” Have been always looking for a solution to own your own digital identity, and syndicate out to the other giant social big guns. Before now not found anything that hit the right spot on the Venn diagram of easy but full featured enough. We’ll see. Will post here how this goes.