Free Our Feeds with Bluesky and AT Protocol. But not Mastodon, ActivityPub?

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Free Our Feeds with Bluesky and AT Protocol. But not Mastodon, ActivityPub?

17 January 2025

The Free Our Feeds project launched a few days, prompted in part by changes to fact checking and content moderation policies across Meta properties, including Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. The goal of Free Our Feeds seems admirable, to prevent one person/entity having full control of a social media platform:

Bluesky is an opportunity to shake up the status quo. They have built scaffolding for a new kind of social web. One where we all have more say, choice and control.

Is this desirable. While it remains to be seen what the actual outcome of the changes at Meta will be exactly, members of their social media platforms, plus those of other companies, have been ceding ever more autonomy over their user experience in recent years. But is Free Our Feeds, who seem intent only devoting resources to Bluesky, the solution?

But it will take independent funding and governance to turn Bluesky’s underlying tech — the AT Protocol — into something more powerful than a single app. We want to create an entire ecosystem of interconnected apps and different companies that have people’s interests at heart.

The AT (Authenticated Transfer) Protocol was created by the Bluesky Public Benefit Corporation, just for Bluesky. Mastodon, on the other hand, is built on ActivityPub, a protocol allowing different, separate, social media channels to “talk to”, and share information with each other. And unlike AT Protocol, ActivityPub is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation.

Free Our Feeds is hoping to raise thirty-million (US) dollars over the next three years to fund further development of AT Protocol. So, should you contribute? You might want to do your homework first. Jürgen Geuter, AKA tante, is concerned about the lack of details:

It feels weird to go to the community asking for so much money without any specifics. Just vibes. Sure, Bluesky is hot-ish right now, but asking for that kind of cash should maybe come with a bit more details and plan? Thoughts about how that new entity will be governed. What the actual mission is (and “outsourcing ATProto development so Bluesky no longer has to pay for it” shouldn’t be it).

Ruben Schade, meanwhile, points to the elephant in the room:

Why is there no mention of ActivityPub, or Mastodon, at all? You know, the protocol that isn’t tied to one app? At best, this reads like not-invented-here syndrome. At worst, it’s obfuscation.

Mastodon, and ActivityPub, are mentioned by Free Our Feeds, but you have open the concealed notes at the foot of their webpage to see this.

Talking of Mastodon though, a few days ago CEO Eugen Rochko announced the transfer of “key Mastodon ecosystem and platform components to a new nonprofit organization.” This, says Rochko, will ensure the decentralised micro-blogging platform is never under the control of any single person or entity.

It could be Mastodon is the place to stay for the time being.

Prolonged use of social media may make you short tempered

13 January 2025

Research from Massachusetts General Hospital, I believe, in the United States, possibly underscores what many of us already suspect: that prolonged use of social media may not be the best:

This kind of study cannot prove that your hours of doomscrolling is directly making you Tik’d off, but in light of known associations of irritability and mental health issues, maybe we should put down our phones just a little more.

While I have a few social media accounts, I’m no power user, as some of you may know. Does that not make me short tempered? Maybe that’s not for me to say…

Meta announces major changes to content moderation polices

9 January 2025

Justine Calma, writing for The Verge:

Meta is essentially shifting responsibility to users to weed out lies on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp, raising fears that it’ll be easier to spread misleading information about climate change, clean energy, public health risks, and communities often targeted with violence.

The policy revision seemed surprising initially, but less so as I read more. I wonder why they’ve decided to make these changes, at, of all times, now?

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also says he wants to allow more political discussion, although he refers to it as civic content, on the company’s platforms, while working to keep the communities friendly and positive. Does this mean political discourse, between people on opposing ends of the political spectrum, will be courteous and respectful?

Will Australian social media users need ID to prove their age? Maybe not

9 December 2024

At some point in 2025, Australians under the age of sixteen will no longer be able to operate social media accounts. I thought up to high school age, about thirteen, seemed sensible, but lawmakers decided otherwise. Anyway, I imagine the new regulations will require, eventually, those of us sixteen or over, to verify, or certify, that we are of the correct age.

With Instagram (IG), I’ve been a member since 2011. So unless I joined up when up when I was four years old, age verification seems pointless for long standing accounts. But not necessarily. There are situations where accounts may have changed hands. A page — or more specifically, a username — once established by a person of adult age, may now belong to someone under the age of sixteen.

I don’t know how often it happens, but social media usernames or accounts, probably change ownership on at least some of semi-regular basis. I’m talking about personal pages here, not accounts run on behalf of a business or organisation. These would most likely change stewardship when the person, maybe a social media manager, previously looking after the page, leaves that role.

I receive a couple of requests per year from people asking if I could “transfer” my personal IG page to them. They probably like the account name. I politely decline the polite requests (I’ve had a couple of not so courteous… demands before). I can only imagine the pressure people with IG handles, such as, well John, must be under to relinquish their usernames, but I digress.

To prove though we are the right age to be using social media in Australia, will we need to scan our driver’s licenses, or passports, into an app? A sometimes, cumbersome, awkward process. Please try retaking the photo of your passport in a better lit setting. Hopefully not. Instead, writes Stilgherrian, at The Weekly Cybers, everything we need may already be on our smartphones:

According to The Mandarin, tests of Australia’s Digital Trust Service (DTS), run by driver registry peak body Austroads, have shown that the credentials already in digital wallets can be used to verify proof-of-age at point-of-sale transactions without needing additional personal data.

Threads to allow users to select following feed as their default

29 November 2024

This to finally spare us the time-wasting, sometimes totally irrelevant, tyranny of the “for you” tab. Chris Welch, writing for The Verge, says Meta has started testing a feature allowing users to select their preferred feed, be it “for you”, “following”, or even one custom made, as the stream they’ll see all the time. It can’t happen soon enough.

If you’re in the test, here’s how to set your default feed: open the Threads app and tap and hold on any feed at the top. From there, choose “edit feeds,” and that’s where you’ll be able to reorder them. Whichever feed you put in the first slot will appear whenever you open Threads.

I’m obviously not part of the test, as I couldn’t set my following feed as the default, but I did take time to setup a custom feed. They seem to be a little like the list feature Twitter has (or had), whereby you can read someone’s account without having to follow them. It’s a great way to set up feeds with a particular focus, without having the same accounts clutter your following feed.

I’m hoping the “test” proves successful, and the ability to select one feed or another as the default, is made available to all Threads members.

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social media, social networks, Threads

Is the grass greener on the Bluesky side of the fence?

21 November 2024

Twitter-like microblogging social network Bluesky is having its moment in the sun. We’ve all seen the multiple headlines of late heralding the arrival of another several million new members, most of whom have migrated from Twitter.

The buzz is similar to that surrounding Mastodon about two years ago. Even if Mastodon’s decentralised structure confused many people. But it’s really not that puzzling. Ignore the decentralised talk — even though that sort of setup is probably a good thing — and just join.

If you’re in Australia, or want to interact in an Australian environment, and looking for somewhere you can discuss pretty much whatever you want (within reason) try Aus Social. For the most part, you’ll still be able to interact with people you know, even if they’re on a different instance (server).

I think if what has happened at Twitter has taught us anything, that’s not to keep your social network eggs in the same basket. Presently, I’m on three networks, Threads, Mastodon, and Bluesky. I’m hardly an active participant on any, but Mastodon is where I see the most response to something I post. Bluesky might be next, while I see the least amount on Threads, which to me, sometimes feels like a daytime soap opera.

But maintaining three social network pages isn’t particularly hard work, as I largely cross-post the same content across them all, as a write once, publish multiple times, strategy. There are apps, such as Croissant, that will do the same thing, if you’re prepared to pay a subscription.

The main reason I suggest having a presence on Mastodon, is because it’s decentralised and independent. No one can stage a complete buy-out, as they did with Twitter, because no one person, or entity, has total control. Every Mastodon instance, which makes up its decentralised network, is administered by different people. And anyone who feels so compelled, can setup their own instance, if they want to.

Bluesky, despite claiming to be decentralised, isn’t really, as Can Olcer explains. This puzzled me when I joined. I envisaged a sign-up process similar to Mastodon, where I had to find an instance I liked, and join through that.

Instead, I signed up at the Bluesky website, and that was it. There were no questions about whether I preferred to be on an Australian instance, a social instance, nothing. None of this is necessarily a problem though, but it does leave open the possibility that Bluesky, as a commercial, potentially profiting making entity, may one day follow in the footsteps of Twitter.

Hardcover, a Goodreads-like online social catalogue for books

11 October 2024

I’ve been trying out Hardcover, a social catalogue for book readers, founded by Adam Fortuna in April 2021. Like a few people I think, he was looking for an alternative to Goodreads (GR), which at the time was probably the big name in book social cataloguing. StoryGraph is one option, but Fortuna wanted to make something himself:

Hardcover was started in May 2021 after Goodreads announced they were discontinuing their API. At the time, I (hi 👋, I’m Adam!) was using that API to show what books I’d recently read on my blog. It would automatically update just by using GR. It worked great!

But when they announced the API was going away, that lit a fire under me to find (or make) a replacement. After some research and forming a team, we’ve been working to create an Amazon-free alternative ever since!

I’ve been a Goodreads member since June 2018, and while it’s a useful resource, I find it a bit clunky to use sometimes. If you’re a book reader, like I try to be sometimes, you can track me down at Hardcover if you wish, username the same as this website.

When is the social web not the social web? When it is THE social web

27 September 2024

A few days ago, a group called the Social Web Foundation was launched. A coming together of “leaders of the open social networking movement“, the foundation aims to make “connections between social platforms with the open standard protocol ActivityPub.” Rather than me reinventing the wheel, here’s the Wikipedia definition of ActivityPub:

ActivityPub is a protocol and open standard for decentralized social networking. It provides a client-to-server (shortened to C2S) API for creating and modifying content, as well as a federated server-to-server (S2S) protocol for delivering notifications and content to other servers. ActivityPub has become the main standard used in the fediverse, a popular network used for social networking that consists of software such as Mastodon, Pixelfed and PeerTube.

In short, ActivityPub allows individual, separate, decentralised social networking platforms, to “talk” to each other. Therefore someone on, say, Threads can (in theory) interact with another person on Mastodon. Threads and Mastodon are two different entities. The ActivityPub protocol means the Threads member does not need a Mastodon account, and vice versa. The Threads member will be able to interact with the Mastodon member, almost as if they were on the same platform.

Here’s the Social Web Foundation’s wording of what I just said:

The “social web”, also called the “Fediverse”, is a network of independent social platforms connected with the open standard protocol ActivityPub. Users on any platform can follow their friends, family, influencers, or brands on any other participating network.

The foundation, in the same sentence, is also proposing that the fediverse, the current conglomeration of independent social platforms, be referred to as the social web. Perhaps by now you’re saying to yourself: “remind me again; who are these Social Web Foundation people?”

You wouldn’t be the only one. When I first heard about the foundation, it reminded me of a group (I think) of people calling themselves fediverse.info. About a month ago, they proposed the use of a typographic symbol, an asterism, as a symbol of none other than the fediverse. I had no problems with the suggestion, but I wondered what sort of mandate they had to make such a proposal.

As I wrote then, there was very little information on the fediverse.info website as to who they were, and why they thought they were in a position to make the suggestion in the first place. The fediverse.info group may be made up of some of the most respected people in the fediverse, but you’d never know that from their webpage.

The foundation, on the other hand, is a little more transparent. At least in terms of membership. Their team page identifies Evan Prodromou, Mallory Knodel, and Tom Coates, as core members. What’s not so clear, is why they think they’re in a position to suggest the fediverse be renamed the social web. Unless you accept this rather dubious, and astonishing claim, about Prodromou:

Evan [Prodromou] made the first-ever post on the social web in May 2008.

Prodromou’s background is impressive. Not only did he co-write the ActivityPub protocol, he once worked for Microsoft, and in 2003 founded Wikitravel, a now defunct a web-based collaborative travel guide. He’s doubtless scored a few firsts during his career, but the first-ever social web post claim is problematic. Twitter, for instance, was founded two years earlier in 2006. If Twitter then is not a social web platform, what is?

Actually, there are a number of answers to that question, says fLaMEd, webmaster (a title often used in the nineties, by people who operated and published websites, in the absence of the yet to be devised term blogger) and writer, at fLaMEd fury:

Have you heard of blogs, guestbooks, forums, instant messaging, email?

Email has been around since the early 1970’s. Almost forty years before 2008. And if having a social exchange via email isn’t an instance of the social web, what is? Of course, email isn’t social in the same way that, say, a public, there for all to see, Twitter/X feed is.

Enter then some of the earliest websites, of which fLaMEd fury, online since 1996, is among. And this website, disassociated, online since 1997. I’ve written about my own experiences of this social web.

During the late 1990’s, I made the acquaintance of numerous webmasters, designers, and writers. Some were overseas, but many were in Australia. We communicated in a number of ways. Through the online journals of our personal websites, where we referenced each other, in true IndieWeb style. Or by writing in each other’s guestbooks.

Before long, about eight of us had established an email group, and in 1999, our “social web” interactions culminated in the establishment of the (now off-line) Australian Infront, a group of web creatives working to elevate the perception of Australian web design. Through the Infront’s discussion forums, and face-to-face social gatherings, we brought potentially thousands of local, and international, designers together. Try telling anyone involved that wasn’t social web, because something called ActivityPub didn’t then exist.

There’s nothing new about the social web, it’s been there almost as long as the internet has. But I suspect the Social Web Foundation is going to stay the course, and press ahead with its efforts to rename the fediverse the social web.

But Prodromou has one other claim to fame. In 2007, he founded a company called Control Yourself, which developed Identi.ca, a Twitter/X like microblogging platform. I was an Identi.ca member for a short time in 2008. Was Identi.ca, I wonder, the “social web” platform that Prodromou made this purported “first-ever” post from?

If so, then I think clarification is in order. Instead of saying “Evan made the first-ever post on the social web in May 2008”, perhaps it is more accurate to say he “made the first-ever post on the Identi.ca platform in 2008.”

LinkedIn is collecting user data for AI training

20 September 2024

Professional social network (assuming there’s such a thing) LinkedIn has started collecting user data to train its own AI bot.

No surprise there.

They’ve apparently auto opted all members in, whether they like it or not.

No surprise there.

Rachel Tobac, CEO of SocialProof Security, has posted instructions on how to opt-out, on X/Twitter.

I deactivated my LinkedIn account — after my then GP, of all people, invited me to join — well over ten years ago.

Sweden wants to curb screen time for children under two

19 September 2024

Amelia Nierenberg, writing for The New York Times:

The intention of Sweden’s policy — and others like it — is to cut down on distractions, promote healthy development and help preserve the innocence of childhood. But some experts wonder if the guidance — however well-intentioned — may be too unrealistic and too judgmental to stick.

These are guidelines, not dictates, or bans, and Swedish health authorities are aiming for zero hours screen time for children under two years of age. I’m not sure what value, say, a one-year old child derives from any screen time at all, but the perspective of a parent of a child close to two years of age, may be different. Being able to temporarily distract a child with a game or cartoon show, may be a boon for any time-poor parent.

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