Seize The Means of Communication!

George Peretz makes a very sensible suggestion as to how the Labour Government, and others, should respond to Musk:

[T]here is an obvious thing that government could do now and that requires no legislation and costs no money: government could simply shift all the material it currently puts out on X to another platform or platforms

He goes on to mention both BlueSky and Mastodon as obvious contenders.

I certainly agree that governments — and any organisation that values its reputation, for that matter — should be moving away from X, but simply moving to another platform amounts to a sticking-plaster solution at best.

The problem with being on someone else’s platform is that you are giving that someone else control over which messages you see and which of your messages are seen. Indeed, the EU’s Digital Services Act recognises this by identifying Very Large Online Platforms, and imposing additional requirements on them around areas such as transparency and disinformation.

Federated technologies, such as Mastodon (and many others exist) resolve the problem of ownership far more effectively by allowing you install and run your own instance. Many governments — and even the European Commission — already use these solutions, thus putting themselves in control of their own communication and ensuring that individuals can access these communications without putting themselves at the mercy of commercial priorities.

Obviously, there are both costs and challenges associated with running your own instance, but none of these are insurmountable and if organisations truly want to ensure that their communications remain free (as in speech) they really should be investing in the already existing infrastructure that allows them to do so.

Any organisation should be taking steps to protect the integrity of it’s communication. This is especially true in the case of governments, political parties and campaigners, for whom free and open discussions are essential.

#Fediverse

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the notion that governments can do more to secure their own online voices by owning and operating their own Fediverse instances (Mastodon, as an example).

I am by no means the only blogger to propose that this is a good way to avoid being locked-in or censored by commercial “Big Tech” or other interests. It turns out that George Peretz had posted something along the same lines as me only a few days earlier (How the Labour Government, and others, should respond to Musk); I was unaware of that post until I ran into it via Seize The Means Of Communication!¹ on the Lightly Seared blog much more recently.

Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz went on to cover my post on their For Immediate Release podcast, and in particular Neville asked for me to share more about what I know in relation to existing government or state owned-and-operated Mastodon instances. I’m happy to do so!

Proof of value

One of the more visible examples of governments embracing the Fediverse is case of the European Union. Initially running EU Voice (Mastodon) and EU Video (PeerTube) as pilots, these were evaluated for 2 years, and then closed in May. However, this year the European Commission formally joined the Fediverse with a Mastodon instance (supported by Mastodon gGmbH).

Beyond that, but still in the European continent: France, Germany and the Netherlands (more on the Dutch instance via the excellent Fediverse Report) have prominent presences in the Fediverse.

The government of #France 🇫🇷 now has an official Fediverse server 🥳

(All accounts in French unless otherwise noted)

➡️ @cnes – France's space agency

➡️ @ambnum – French ambassador for digital affairs (in English)

➡️ @sup_recherche – Ministry of Higher Education & Research

➡️ @astroIAP – Astrophysics Institute of Paris

➡️ @cnrs – CNRS, the French National Centre for Scientific Research

➡️ @umrGeoazur – Geology/geophysics research unit for Côte d'Azur Univ, CNRS, Côte d'Azur Observatory

🧵 1/4

— FediFollows (@FediFollows) 2024-02-05T14:20:03.369Z

Hallo Fediverse 🙂

Für die vielen neuen Menschen hier gibt es nochmal ein paar aktualisierte Informationen von uns, die wir anheften können:

1. Eine Übersicht über alle Accounts unserer Instanz gibt es unter: social.bund.de/directory (Filtereinstellungen nicht vergessen)
2. Pixis gibt es kostenlos hier: bfdi.bund.de/DE/Service/Publik…
3. Merch verlosen wir immer mal wieder hier oder verteilen es auf Veranstaltungen.

/ ÖA

— BfDI (@bfdi) 2022-12-19T10:30:54.149Z

In addition, the Swiss Government launched an instance in September 2023 as a pilot which was due to last for one year; I’ll be curious to watch how that is evaluated.

Taking a step beyond central government, I’ve read that various federal states in Germany have their own instances.

There are also good reasons for broadcasters to run their own Fediverse instances (the BBC has had a pilot here, for example); universities and academics; and more.

I’m curious to learn of more of these, let me know in the comments if you are aware of others.

If you are interested in managed support for this kind of instance, the team at Mastodon gGmbH would be happy to hear from you to discuss how we can help.

A case for Brazil

Finally, I want to talk briefly (but, only because I must) about X.

We talked about the events of the end of last week, when Brazil’s courts chose to block access to X in that country, on episode 3.19 of the TechGrumps podcast that was recorded this weekend, and should be released any moment.

Along with Musk’s direct personal attacks on the UK Prime Minister and his efforts to spread dangerous misinformation, this is yet another example of Musk, specifically, demonstrating his untrustworthiness, and lack of willingness to be bound by the rule of law – national or international. According to the media, there has been a swift take-up of Bluesky by many Brazilian users; it is difficult to measure Mastodon or other Fediverse instance signups because there are many individual instances that comprise the network, but we know that there was a significant surge of interest at the end of last week.

A lot of people who are up in arms over Brazil banning Xitter aren’t acknowledging the fact that the country cast off a military dictatorship in 1985 and Elon’s openly allied with the neofascist who tried to restore it, with help from Elon Social, just two years ago. Pretty unique situation.

That judge may well have a beef with Musk because of his intransigence but the stakes are much higher than that.

#elonmusk #brazil #twitter #bolsonaro #fascism

— Joshua Holland (@JoshuaHolland) 2024-09-01T13:08:57.793Z

Whichever directions users migrate, the important thing is that more people must leave X as a platform, and disempower Musk’s efforts to disrupt the law.

As I typed this blog entry, my friend Evan Prodromou posted

So, who is in the Free/Open Source software community in Brazil, advising the government on how to move to the Fediverse? And how can I help you?

— Evan Prodromou (@evan) 2024-09-02T15:43:26.988Z

I don’t speak Portuguese, but add my name and voice to this offer of support!

@evan I am somehow surprised that the actual Brazilian government still doesn't have an instance of some software compatible with activity pub.

Before leaving Brazil, I was part of a group engaged in open government data and civic hacking. I really hope these groups are still strong as they were a few years ago!

By the way, in 2011, I was advocating the City Council of São Paulo to have an identi.ca server, instead of Twitter. This didn't work, but at least I could open up some government data.

Post in Portuguese social.vivaldi.net/@everton137…

#activitypub #OpenSource #softwarelivre #Brasil #opendata

— everton137 (@everton137) 2024-09-02T15:53:31.668Z

1. … a title which is delightfully reminiscent of Cory Doctorow’s book The Internet Con, subtitled How To Seize The Means Of Computation, which I think about a lot. And obviously, as an historian, I’m very aware of the original quotation from which both of these derive. ↩︎

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#100DaysToOffload #brazil #communications #europe #europeanCommission #europeanUnion #federal #fediverse #german #government #legal #netherlands #socialMedia #switzerland #Technology

Lightly Seared on the Reality Grill

2024-08-28 06:30:00

Seize The Means of Communication!

George Peretz makes a very sensible suggestion as to how the Labour Government, and others, should respond to Musk:

[T]here is an obvious thing that government could do now and that requires no legislation and costs no money: government could simply shift all the material it currently puts out on X to another platform or platforms

He goes on to mention both BlueSky and Mastodon as obvious contenders.

I certainly agree that governments — and any organisation that values its reputation, for that matter — should be moving away from X, but simply moving to another platform amounts to a sticking-plaster solution at best.

The problem with being on someone else’s platform is that you are giving that someone else control over which messages you see and which of your messages are seen. Indeed, the EU’s Digital Services Act recognises this by identifying Very Large Online Platforms, and imposing additional requirements on them around areas such as transparency and disinformation.

Federated technologies, such as Mastodon (and many others exist) resolve the problem of ownership far more effectively by allowing you install and run your own instance. Many governments — and even the European Commission — already use these solutions, thus putting themselves in control of their own communication and ensuring that individuals can access these communications without putting themselves at the mercy of commercial priorities.

Obviously, there are both costs and challenges associated with running your own instance, but none of these are insurmountable and if organisations truly want to ensure that their communications remain free (as in speech) they really should be investing in the already existing infrastructure that allows them to do so.

Any organisation should be taking steps to protect the integrity of it’s communication. This is especially true in the case of governments, political parties and campaigners, for whom free and open discussions are essential.

#Fediverse

How the Labour Government, and others, should respond to Musk

Elon Musk's use of his X platform to promote murderous voices of hate is unacceptable. One way of fighting back would be to try to break the co-ordination problem that underpins X's power.

^{George Peretz KC (The Political Lawyer)}

🚀 Bot Booster Club

🔄 Booster Bros

@Twig
@PNS
@TruckDriver
@Richard

⭐ Favoriting Frens

@icare4america
@TruckDriver
@Richard
@PNS

Today, I received some fun post from some lovely people in New York City.

Those in the know, may recognise these stickers as the logos of Glitch and Fastly.

I’ve been using Glitch to write and host web apps for quite a few years now – it is super helpful when working in a role like developer relations, needing to rapidly spin up demos, examples, or to demonstrate new features. A couple of years ago, Glitch came together with Fastly, and in the past couple of months their new developer platform vision really started to come together.

If you haven’t been keeping up with what they have been up to, and were not able to be at their recent special developer event in NYC (don’t worry, I couldn’t get there either), there’s a helpful ~6 minute video that summarises the announcements. I’m particularly interested and excited about this because I know and respect the folks involved – Anil Dash, Jenn Schiffer, Hannah Aubry, many others across their teams – and I know that they get and they care about developer experience, Open Source, and the free and open web. I’m talking about the big stuff, the infrastructure, the stuff that needs to invisibly just work in order for the web to run; and also the smaller things, the quirky indie little pieces, the fun and new experiences, helping people to learn to code and to be creative. It’s no exaggeration to say that Fastly’s Fast Forward program is a massive supporter of Open Source, open standards and the Fediverse. All of these things are reasons why I love Glitch & Fastly.

I’ve been running my main profile links page on Glitch in Bio for several years now (it’s a bit like a Linktree/link in bio page, but better than one of those closed platforms). Beyond that, I also host some Fediverse examples such as my own Postmarks instance, and a gallery of examples of Mastodon embeds; and also pages that add resources to my recent talks. With Fastly, I can also run things on my own domains, and make sure that things are cached and perform well.

[ if you’re curious about the sorts of things I’ve been building or working on from a code and web perspective, I’ve also spruced up my GitHub bio, and I have a more general gallery page on GitHub that has links to the source and deployments of different projects – some of which are links to those Glitch apps above ]

Thank you for the stickerage, Glitch friends! And, congratulations on the new Fastly Developer Platform! I’m looking forward to continuing to use your cool technologies 👍🏻

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#100DaysToOffload #Coding #developerExperience #developerRelations #devrel #fastly #glitch #stickers #Technology #webapps

Part of the Rebel Alliance

I made a simple site so that you can grab some stickers to celebrate your support for the open internet and Fediverse. Be a part of the Rebel Alliance! #FediverseForFreedom

andypiper.co.uk/2025/06/14/par…

Andy Piper

2025-06-14 21:15:56

I’m accidentally becoming a #FediMerch guy.

Shiny stickers

Last year, I wrote a blog post, Fediverse for Freedom – which was about the importance of a free and open Fediverse, and how and why public institutions can support it. Since then, I’ve referred to this blog post in many of my talks and in conversations, and started to use the hashtag #FediverseForFreedom.

Ahead of FOSDEM back in February, I created some stickers to share – a Fediverse logo, overlaid with the text “I Am Part Of The Rebel Alliance #FediverseForFreedom”. They were quite a hit at the time, and since then I’ve used the same image in presentations. When people have seen them, I’ve quite often been asked where they came from.

Last week, Elena Rossini – writer of the fantastic The Future is Federated blog/newsletter, talented filmmaker and photographer, and (perhaps) the Fediverse’s Number One Fan – released a great, four minute video that both explains and promotes the Fediverse and open platforms not owned by billionaires¹

videos.elenarossini.com/videos…

One of the stickers shows up in several shots of the the video, and once again, I heard that people would like to be able to get some for themselves.

A simple site

I’ve been wanting to make the stickers available for a while, but the release of the video finally pushed me into getting this done!

I’d recently bought some stickers myself, from the talented Robb Knight, and he mentioned that he used Stripe Payment Links for his site. I already had a Stripe account, so thought I’d try the same thing.

So: now you can visit fediverseforfreedom.org (.com points to .org), and click on a link to to get a handful of stickers shipped in your direction! You can also easily just tell your friends, “oh yeah, I got them from Fediverse For Freedom dot org”. Nice and straightforward.
A small pile of I Am Part Of The Rebel Alliance stickers
There’s a bit more information about it all on that simple site, but I thought it might be interesting to write down a bit more about how I made it.

The site is running on Codeberg Pages. Previously I’ve put these kinds of one-off, single page sites up on GitHub Pages, or on Glitch. I’m feeling increasingly less comfortable about having all of my stuff on GitHub and hosted in the US; and, unfortunately, Glitch is going away soon (more on this in a future post). So in this case I chose Codeberg Pages, although I’m aware that they are themselves a platform that is currently in maintenance mode. I’m open to suggestions for similar sites, as I’ll need to migrate some Glitch apps somewhere very soon!

Apart from that: the whole operation is very low tech. Stripe Payment Links are convenient – Stripe itself can handle a huge variety of payment types – but, on the backend… it does not do much. No order acknowledgement emails, order management tools, or anything like that. All I get is a basic dashboard with information about the orders. I whipped up some simple Python that uses the Stripe API to grab the postal addresses of orders, and then creates SVG address labels for printing. The same code also grabs the email addresses so that I can send an email thanking the customer for the order.

In terms of shipping, that’s also a manual process – no “drop-shipping” here, I’m getting the stickers from my regular supplier (StickerApp), putting them in envelopes, and posting them out myself. That also means that delivery times will vary – although I had enough in stock to cover all of the initial orders, I’ve also been in Amsterdam for the past 3 days, so the first batch will go out on Monday.

One more thing I’m experimenting with here is GoatCounter, just to get a sense of traffic and interest. I didn’t want to put a load of invasive Google Analytics onto such a basic page, and I’ve had GoatCounter recommended to me a few times now – like Mastodon, it has also benefited from NLNet funding from the European Union in the past, and I wanted to see what was possible. It seems to do just what I wanted, whilst also being unintrusive.

What’s next?

Look… I don’t intend to become some kind of merch magnate, but I do know that some people share my own desire to display our commitment to the Fediverse and related causes, and if I can help folks to do so, then I will (did you know we already made a t-shirt? Elena has asked me for more in the same vein!).

If you want to look for other ways to show your support in public, and to give back to people or projects that work on tools that you use, take a look at the Awesome Fediverse Merch list that Jeff Sikes is curating. Plenty of options for everyone.

Finally – remember to support the creators of your favourite sites, services, and open source software directly, whenever you can!

---

1. Remember, as I heard in a keynote at the PublicSpaces conference this week: “the Internet is currently controlled by four or five fucked up right wing white men” – it’s time to rewild the internet, and take ownership of our data and choices. ↩︎

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#100DaysToOffload #FediMerch #fediverse #FediverseForFreedom #merch #sticker #stripe #swag #webApp

📺 Introducing the Fediverse: a New Era of Social Media

A 4 minute video that aims to introduce the Fediverse to people not familiar with it

^{Elena Rossini}

I use a lot of apps, and, I love my iPhone.

BUT

I really love the Web.

A few things lately reminded me of what a great and – so far – durable, open set of of technologies the Web is based on.

You can build such cool stuff on the Web! There are whole sites dedicated to collecting together other sites of cool things you can do with the web – see Single Serving Sites, or Neal.fun. And remember, there is no page fold. If you’re itching to build, I wrote about Glitch a few weeks ago, if you want somewhere to try new things.

The writing trigger today was largely prompted by reading the latest edition of Tedium, specifically, commenting on the Patreon situation with the App Store.

[…] it is also reflective of a mistake the company made many years ago: To allow people to support patrons directly through its app. Patreon did not need to do this. It was just a website at first, and for all the good things that can be said about the company, fact is they built on shaky land. To go to my earlier metaphor: They built their foundation on quicksand, perhaps without realizing it, though the broken glass wasn’t thrown in just yet. […] That shaky land isn’t the web, and if Patreon had stayed there, this would not be an issue. It’s the mobile app ecosystem, which honestly treats everyone poorly whether they want to admit it or not.

Ernie @ Tedium

In turn, Ernie links to John Gruber’s assessment of the situation, which is also worth reading.

Look at that – hyperlinks between content published freely on open platforms, that can be read, studied, accessed around the world, and discussed, all within minutes and hours of publication. Mind blowing! Thank you, Sir Tim Berners-Lee!

I spend a bunch on apps, and in apps, and with Apple, directly and indirectly. They have a good ecosystem, it is all convenient (but spendy) to me as a consumer… but, I don’t think this whole situation with them milking creators and creatives is OK at all. The trouble is, that the lines are all kinds of blurry here – if they carved out a new category and set of rules around apps that sell subscriptions for creators that had, say, a zero or just a lower fee than other categories, then you’ll get into situations where others try to find ways into that category to avoid the higher fees.

Plus, of course, with the state of capitalism and big tech, we increasingly don’t own what we buy (per Kelly Gallagher Sims’ excellent Ownership in the Rental Age post; I also again highly recommend Cory Doctorow’s books, Chokepoint Capitalism, and The Internet Con)

I use closed platforms, and I use open platforms.

The closed ones make me increasingly sad and frustrated.

The open ones can take more tinkering and effort, but I get a lot back from them. They need sustaining. They don’t come for free. They need us to contribute, and to find ways to pay to support the creators and makers and builders and engineers.

If you like creative, quirky online sites, you should subscribe to Naive Weekly. I’m still enjoying things I found in it last month.

Now, I’m off to continue exploring… everything.

Long live The Web!

PS the winners of the Tiny Awards 2024 are announced at the weekend… 👀

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#Blaugust2024 #100DaysToOffload #appStores #Apple #capitalism #chokepointCapitalism #coryDoctorow #enshittification #openSource #openTechnology #rentSeeking #Technology #web

Andy Piper

2024-07-24 18:12:13

Today, I received some fun post from some lovely people in New York City.

Those in the know, may recognise these stickers as the logos of Glitch and Fastly.

I’ve been using Glitch to write and host web apps for quite a few years now – it is super helpful when working in a role like developer relations, needing to rapidly spin up demos, examples, or to demonstrate new features. A couple of years ago, Glitch came together with Fastly, and in the past couple of months their new developer platform vision really started to come together.

If you haven’t been keeping up with what they have been up to, and were not able to be at their recent special developer event in NYC (don’t worry, I couldn’t get there either), there’s a helpful ~6 minute video that summarises the announcements. I’m particularly interested and excited about this because I know and respect the folks involved – Anil Dash, Jenn Schiffer, Hannah Aubry, many others across their teams – and I know that they get and they care about developer experience, Open Source, and the free and open web. I’m talking about the big stuff, the infrastructure, the stuff that needs to invisibly just work in order for the web to run; and also the smaller things, the quirky indie little pieces, the fun and new experiences, helping people to learn to code and to be creative. It’s no exaggeration to say that Fastly’s Fast Forward program is a massive supporter of Open Source, open standards and the Fediverse. All of these things are reasons why I love Glitch & Fastly.

I’ve been running my main profile links page on Glitch in Bio for several years now (it’s a bit like a Linktree/link in bio page, but better than one of those closed platforms). Beyond that, I also host some Fediverse examples such as my own Postmarks instance, and a gallery of examples of Mastodon embeds; and also pages that add resources to my recent talks. With Fastly, I can also run things on my own domains, and make sure that things are cached and perform well.

[ if you’re curious about the sorts of things I’ve been building or working on from a code and web perspective, I’ve also spruced up my GitHub bio, and I have a more general gallery page on GitHub that has links to the source and deployments of different projects – some of which are links to those Glitch apps above ]

Thank you for the stickerage, Glitch friends! And, congratulations on the new Fastly Developer Platform! I’m looking forward to continuing to use your cool technologies 👍🏻

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#100DaysToOffload #Coding #developerExperience #developerRelations #devrel #fastly #glitch #stickers #Technology #webapps

Talk Resources - Where is the Art?

Resources page for Andy Piper's talk on the history of Computer Art, pen plotters, and more. Explore further with links to exhibitions, contemporary artists, tools, and reading materials.

^{Andy Piper}

Over the past week, there’s been a noticeable shift away from X in the UK, and it feels long overdue. According to Bluesky’s PR, the platform has seen a surge in new users and activity from the UK. I’ve personally noticed more people finding my profiles on both Threads and on Bluesky, and I’ve seen a significant number of “I just deleted my X account” posts on Threads. However, due to the algorithm, these posts often appear in bursts, sometimes delayed by a day or two.

My friend Neville Hobson wrote a piece today titled “Finally, the Unravelling of X,” where he discusses this migration, the reasons behind it, and the pros and cons of choosing between Bluesky and Threads. Neville touches on the idea of a “more respectful, decentralized web,” (to quote him on the Fediverse), and even highlights something I said on Threads yesterday. In response to a question about where politicians should go in a post-X world, I suggested that governments should own their own social platforms:

I wanted to expand on what I meant by a “sovereign owned/operated Mastodon instance” for the UK Parliament, and why I believe this is important.

One of the major tensions between Big Tech and national governments over the past 15 years has revolved around platform ownership and control. The European Union has even labeled several tech companies as “gatekeepers” in the Digital Markets Act. This term is telling—these companies essentially gatekeep the digital rights, data, and access of national citizens.

If governments are concerned about the dominance of privately-owned online platforms, they have a responsibility to run and own their own. At FOSDEM in Brussels this February, we noticed growing interest in Fediverse platforms and technologies like Mastodon from several national governments and the EU itself. Many of these institutions are already running their own social media instances and actively encouraging their politicians to use them. In the EU, there’s no reason to switch to Threads since Meta has restricted the platform’s availability in the bloc. Moreover, Threads doesn’t allow users to run their own instances, unlike Mastodon or even Bluesky, which, while less common, does technically support setting up a external ATProto instance (I don’t think that’s really happening though? happy to be informed and to learn otherwise – I’ll readily admit that it has not been at the centre of my attention).

For years, governments, newsrooms, and other organisations have protested the idea that private companies should control and limit their messages. A logical response would be for these entities to run their own instances of software like Mastodon—or any Fediverse-compatible, ActivityPub-based service. This would allow them to own their content, domain, and user verification, ensuring greater control and independence.

The UK is lagging behind in this area. While the EU has embraced Mastodon, and in the US, many organisations have moved to Threads, the UK has yet to take similar steps. For example, I follow @POTUS@threads.net and @whitehouse@threads.net from my Mastodon account, because they’ve enabled Fediverse sharing. Even though Threads is owned and operated by Meta, it’s positive that their content can reach into the wider Fediverse. Ideally, Threads will eventually fully integrate with the ActivityPub network, offering a two-way interaction and allowing for account, network, and maybe content portability—hence why I said, “in principle, with federated social accounts, the location does not matter so much, as long as they can be discovered and followed.” Owning the network and identity allows for broader discoverability and avoids corporate chokeholds.

As an aside: the EU has been a strong supporter of free software, Open Source, and open standards. My colleagues in the Mastodon team have signed an open letter in support of the Next Generation Internet (NGI) programs, urging the EU not to cut these investments. I fully support this stance.

There are challenges to this approach:

• Running digital services requires consistent investment and maintenance.
• Discovery isn’t always straightforward, and organisations seek reach and measurement—areas where Fediverse platforms currently fall short.
• Deciding who qualifies for an account on a sovereign platform is tricky. While it makes sense for current MPs to have official accounts on a national Fediverse server, it’s harder to justify the inclusion of political parties or other entities on the same platform. This is an area where we need to improve data and account portability as the Fediverse grows.

These are important discussions that we need to be having. Politicians and the media should advocate for greater decentralisation and digital sovereignty to protect the freedom of democratic institutions.

Oh, and of course – these organisations should also fully embrace, invest in, and protect the open web.

Update 16/08/2024 – my friend Stefan Bohacek reminded me that he put together a useful resource on this same topic several months ago, Fediverse: an overview for government agencies. Well worth sending to your representatives, or sharing with your network if asked.

Update 27/08/2024 – the conversation continues in episode #425 of the For Immediate Release podcast (discussion starts around 13 min into the show). I appreciate Neville and Shel talking about my post here. Take a listen, if you want to hear how they expanded on and debated this idea – available wherever you get your podcasts.

Update 09/09/2024 – I wrote a second piece expanding on this and listing existing governments that are already in the Fediverse.

Update 13/09/2024 – I was reminded of this piece from IFTAS, Open Social for the Common Good, that is also excellent on this topic.

Finally – if you’re leaving X – congratulations – don’t look back.

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#Blaugust2024 #100DaysToOffload #425 #activitypub #bluesky #DMA #eu #europeanUnion #federation #fediverse #freedom #government #journalism #media #meta #NGI #parliament #press #socialMedia #socialWeb #threads #unitedKingdom #web

Andy Piper

2024-08-14 22:12:24

I use a lot of apps, and, I love my iPhone.

BUT

I really love the Web.

A few things lately reminded me of what a great and – so far – durable, open set of of technologies the Web is based on.

You can build such cool stuff on the Web! There are whole sites dedicated to collecting together other sites of cool things you can do with the web – see Single Serving Sites, or Neal.fun. And remember, there is no page fold. If you’re itching to build, I wrote about Glitch a few weeks ago, if you want somewhere to try new things.

The writing trigger today was largely prompted by reading the latest edition of Tedium, specifically, commenting on the Patreon situation with the App Store.

[…] it is also reflective of a mistake the company made many years ago: To allow people to support patrons directly through its app. Patreon did not need to do this. It was just a website at first, and for all the good things that can be said about the company, fact is they built on shaky land. To go to my earlier metaphor: They built their foundation on quicksand, perhaps without realizing it, though the broken glass wasn’t thrown in just yet. […] That shaky land isn’t the web, and if Patreon had stayed there, this would not be an issue. It’s the mobile app ecosystem, which honestly treats everyone poorly whether they want to admit it or not.

Ernie @ Tedium

In turn, Ernie links to John Gruber’s assessment of the situation, which is also worth reading.

Look at that – hyperlinks between content published freely on open platforms, that can be read, studied, accessed around the world, and discussed, all within minutes and hours of publication. Mind blowing! Thank you, Sir Tim Berners-Lee!

I spend a bunch on apps, and in apps, and with Apple, directly and indirectly. They have a good ecosystem, it is all convenient (but spendy) to me as a consumer… but, I don’t think this whole situation with them milking creators and creatives is OK at all. The trouble is, that the lines are all kinds of blurry here – if they carved out a new category and set of rules around apps that sell subscriptions for creators that had, say, a zero or just a lower fee than other categories, then you’ll get into situations where others try to find ways into that category to avoid the higher fees.

Plus, of course, with the state of capitalism and big tech, we increasingly don’t own what we buy (per Kelly Gallagher Sims’ excellent Ownership in the Rental Age post; I also again highly recommend Cory Doctorow’s books, Chokepoint Capitalism, and The Internet Con)

I use closed platforms, and I use open platforms.

The closed ones make me increasingly sad and frustrated.

The open ones can take more tinkering and effort, but I get a lot back from them. They need sustaining. They don’t come for free. They need us to contribute, and to find ways to pay to support the creators and makers and builders and engineers.

If you like creative, quirky online sites, you should subscribe to Naive Weekly. I’m still enjoying things I found in it last month.

Now, I’m off to continue exploring… everything.

Long live The Web!

---

PS the winners of the Tiny Awards 2024 are announced at the weekend… 👀

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andypiper.co.uk/2024/08/14/i-l…

#Blaugust2024 #100DaysToOffload #appStores #Apple #capitalism #chokepointCapitalism #coryDoctorow #enshittification #openSource #openTechnology #rentSeeking #Technology #web

Better Call a Website

Internet Phone Book, Crawl Space, PBS of the Internet and more :)

^{Kristoffer (Naive Weekly)}

I’m accidentally becoming a #FediMerch guy.

Shiny stickers

Last year, I wrote a blog post, Fediverse for Freedom – which was about the importance of a free and open Fediverse, and how and why public institutions can support it. Since then, I’ve referred to this blog post in many of my talks and in conversations, and started to use the hashtag #FediverseForFreedom.

Ahead of FOSDEM back in February, I created some stickers to share – a Fediverse logo, overlaid with the text “I Am Part Of The Rebel Alliance #FediverseForFreedom”. They were quite a hit at the time, and since then I’ve used the same image in presentations. When people have seen them, I’ve quite often been asked where they came from.

Last week, Elena Rossini – writer of the fantastic The Future is Federated blog/newsletter, talented filmmaker and photographer, and (perhaps) the Fediverse’s Number One Fan – released a great, four minute video that both explains and promotes the Fediverse and open platforms not owned by billionaires¹

videos.elenarossini.com/videos…

One of the stickers shows up in several shots of the the video, and once again, I heard that people would like to be able to get some for themselves.

A simple site

I’ve been wanting to make the stickers available for a while, but the release of the video finally pushed me into getting this done!

I’d recently bought some stickers myself, from the talented Robb Knight, and he mentioned that he used Stripe Payment Links for his site. I already had a Stripe account, so thought I’d try the same thing.

So: now you can visit fediverseforfreedom.org (.com points to .org), and click on a link to to get a handful of stickers shipped in your direction! You can also easily just tell your friends, “oh yeah, I got them from Fediverse For Freedom dot org”. Nice and straightforward.
A small pile of I Am Part Of The Rebel Alliance stickers
There’s a bit more information about it all on that simple site, but I thought it might be interesting to write down a bit more about how I made it.

The site is running on Codeberg Pages. Previously I’ve put these kinds of one-off, single page sites up on GitHub Pages, or on Glitch. I’m feeling increasingly less comfortable about having all of my stuff on GitHub and hosted in the US; and, unfortunately, Glitch is going away soon (more on this in a future post). So in this case I chose Codeberg Pages, although I’m aware that they are themselves a platform that is currently in maintenance mode. I’m open to suggestions for similar sites, as I’ll need to migrate some Glitch apps somewhere very soon!

Apart from that: the whole operation is very low tech. Stripe Payment Links are convenient – Stripe itself can handle a huge variety of payment types – but, on the backend… it does not do much. No order acknowledgement emails, order management tools, or anything like that. All I get is a basic dashboard with information about the orders. I whipped up some simple Python that uses the Stripe API to grab the postal addresses of orders, and then creates SVG address labels for printing. The same code also grabs the email addresses so that I can send an email thanking the customer for the order.

In terms of shipping, that’s also a manual process – no “drop-shipping” here, I’m getting the stickers from my regular supplier (StickerApp), putting them in envelopes, and posting them out myself. That also means that delivery times will vary – although I had enough in stock to cover all of the initial orders, I’ve also been in Amsterdam for the past 3 days, so the first batch will go out on Monday.

One more thing I’m experimenting with here is GoatCounter, just to get a sense of traffic and interest. I didn’t want to put a load of invasive Google Analytics onto such a basic page, and I’ve had GoatCounter recommended to me a few times now – like Mastodon, it has also benefited from NLNet funding from the European Union in the past, and I wanted to see what was possible. It seems to do just what I wanted, whilst also being unintrusive.

What’s next?

Look… I don’t intend to become some kind of merch magnate, but I do know that some people share my own desire to display our commitment to the Fediverse and related causes, and if I can help folks to do so, then I will (did you know we already made a t-shirt? Elena has asked me for more in the same vein!).

If you want to look for other ways to show your support in public, and to give back to people or projects that work on tools that you use, take a look at the Awesome Fediverse Merch list that Jeff Sikes is curating. Plenty of options for everyone.

Finally – remember to support the creators of your favourite sites, services, and open source software directly, whenever you can!

1. Remember, as I heard in a keynote at the PublicSpaces conference this week: “the Internet is currently controlled by four or five fucked up right wing white men” – it’s time to rewild the internet, and take ownership of our data and choices. ↩︎

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#100DaysToOffload #FediMerch #fediverse #FediverseForFreedom #merch #sticker #stripe #swag #webApp

Andy Piper

2024-08-15 22:28:40

Over the past week, there’s been a noticeable shift away from X in the UK, and it feels long overdue. According to Bluesky’s PR, the platform has seen a surge in new users and activity from the UK. I’ve personally noticed more people finding my profiles on both Threads and on Bluesky, and I’ve seen a significant number of “I just deleted my X account” posts on Threads. However, due to the algorithm, these posts often appear in bursts, sometimes delayed by a day or two.

My friend Neville Hobson wrote a piece today titled “Finally, the Unravelling of X,” where he discusses this migration, the reasons behind it, and the pros and cons of choosing between Bluesky and Threads. Neville touches on the idea of a “more respectful, decentralized web,” (to quote him on the Fediverse), and even highlights something I said on Threads yesterday. In response to a question about where politicians should go in a post-X world, I suggested that governments should own their own social platforms:

I wanted to expand on what I meant by a “sovereign owned/operated Mastodon instance” for the UK Parliament, and why I believe this is important.

One of the major tensions between Big Tech and national governments over the past 15 years has revolved around platform ownership and control. The European Union has even labeled several tech companies as “gatekeepers” in the Digital Markets Act. This term is telling—these companies essentially gatekeep the digital rights, data, and access of national citizens.

If governments are concerned about the dominance of privately-owned online platforms, they have a responsibility to run and own their own. At FOSDEM in Brussels this February, we noticed growing interest in Fediverse platforms and technologies like Mastodon from several national governments and the EU itself. Many of these institutions are already running their own social media instances and actively encouraging their politicians to use them. In the EU, there’s no reason to switch to Threads since Meta has restricted the platform’s availability in the bloc. Moreover, Threads doesn’t allow users to run their own instances, unlike Mastodon or even Bluesky, which, while less common, does technically support setting up a external ATProto instance (I don’t think that’s really happening though? happy to be informed and to learn otherwise – I’ll readily admit that it has not been at the centre of my attention).

For years, governments, newsrooms, and other organisations have protested the idea that private companies should control and limit their messages. A logical response would be for these entities to run their own instances of software like Mastodon—or any Fediverse-compatible, ActivityPub-based service. This would allow them to own their content, domain, and user verification, ensuring greater control and independence.

The UK is lagging behind in this area. While the EU has embraced Mastodon, and in the US, many organisations have moved to Threads, the UK has yet to take similar steps. For example, I follow @POTUS@threads.net and @whitehouse@threads.net from my Mastodon account, because they’ve enabled Fediverse sharing. Even though Threads is owned and operated by Meta, it’s positive that their content can reach into the wider Fediverse. Ideally, Threads will eventually fully integrate with the ActivityPub network, offering a two-way interaction and allowing for account, network, and maybe content portability—hence why I said, “in principle, with federated social accounts, the location does not matter so much, as long as they can be discovered and followed.” Owning the network and identity allows for broader discoverability and avoids corporate chokeholds.

As an aside: the EU has been a strong supporter of free software, Open Source, and open standards. My colleagues in the Mastodon team have signed an open letter in support of the Next Generation Internet (NGI) programs, urging the EU not to cut these investments. I fully support this stance.

There are challenges to this approach:

• Running digital services requires consistent investment and maintenance.
• Discovery isn’t always straightforward, and organisations seek reach and measurement—areas where Fediverse platforms currently fall short.
• Deciding who qualifies for an account on a sovereign platform is tricky. While it makes sense for current MPs to have official accounts on a national Fediverse server, it’s harder to justify the inclusion of political parties or other entities on the same platform. This is an area where we need to improve data and account portability as the Fediverse grows.

These are important discussions that we need to be having. Politicians and the media should advocate for greater decentralisation and digital sovereignty to protect the freedom of democratic institutions.

Oh, and of course – these organisations should also fully embrace, invest in, and protect the open web.

---

Update 16/08/2024 – my friend Stefan Bohacek reminded me that he put together a useful resource on this same topic several months ago, Fediverse: an overview for government agencies. Well worth sending to your representatives, or sharing with your network if asked.

Update 27/08/2024 – the conversation continues in episode #425 of the For Immediate Release podcast (discussion starts around 13 min into the show). I appreciate Neville and Shel talking about my post here. Take a listen, if you want to hear how they expanded on and debated this idea – available wherever you get your podcasts.

Update 09/09/2024 – I wrote a second piece expanding on this and listing existing governments that are already in the Fediverse.

Update 13/09/2024 – I was reminded of this piece from IFTAS, Open Social for the Common Good, that is also excellent on this topic.

---

Finally – if you’re leaving X – congratulations – don’t look back.

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#Blaugust2024 #100DaysToOffload #425 #activitypub #bluesky #DMA #eu #europeanUnion #federation #fediverse #freedom #government #journalism #media #meta #NGI #parliament #press #socialMedia #socialWeb #threads #unitedKingdom #web

FIR #425: Stand Up, Stand Out, or Shut Down? - FIR Podcast Network

The desire to stand out has declined significantly over the last 20 years, according to a new study. That has serious implications for society, business, and communicators.

^{Neville Hobson (FIR Podcast Network)}

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun expressed deep concern over Israel's attack on Iran's nuclear facilities and the resulting escalation of military conflict.
Guo urged all parties to de-escalate the situation and prevent further instability in the region.

globaltimes.cn/page/202506/133…

#china #iran #geopolitics

China is deeply concerned about Israel’s attack on Iran that has led to a sudden escalation of military conflict: FM

^{www.globaltimes.cn}

Sensitive content Reveal/hide

Female nudity, erotics, cute and sexy

#nsfw #sexy #ero #erotic

x.com/i/status/193434623949709…

MORE PLEASE!

💥 Contra la precarietat del lleure!

Aquest dimecres la CGT a AESE Serveis, monitores de menjador escolar en vaga, convoca concentració per exigir unes condicions dignes al lleure
📌 18/6, 10h Metro Fabra i Puig

🚨 #Israel bombed the Iranian state TV

I didn't know journalists were considered militants.

Moment of Gratitude: CloudFlare

CloudFlare saved the Internet Archive servers from DDOS attack yesterday

The max rate of this DDOS attack was 525 Gbps (44.93 Mpps) of a "TCP flood."

The Internet Archive does not have enough bandwidth to fend off that kind of attack.

Thank you #cloudflare or we would have had a very bad Saturday at the @internetarchive

DDOS attacks are coming more frequently.

Honestly I think I’ve found the most hilariously effective #ADHD anxiety fix ever.

When I find my brain starting a worry spiral, I take the topic that’s causing it, and write it on a dedicated to-do list.

The ADHD then takes care of that by never, ever thinking about it again.

It's official.

I'm renaming my Sour Blurple strain, after 13 years of breeding it, to Mint Berry Zoomer.

It's minty, berry, and sour in taste 😅😋

I've heard crazier strain names.

34 Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers near aid site @palestine

thenational.scot/news/25242148…

34 Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers near aid site

At least 34 Palestinians have been shot dead by Israeli soldiers on Monday near food distribution centres in the south of the Gaza Strip

^{Lucy Jackson (The National)}

Israeli attack on the Iranian Radio and Television Corporation building.

#Israel #Palestine #Food #USA #Gaza #KhanYunis #Humanity #War #HumanRights #Hypocrites #Germany #Genocide #Journalism #Press

Diese Begeisterung für das Militär ist unappetitlich.

Und Klingbeil weigert sich weiterhin die Realität zur Kenntnis zu nehmen.

»Vizekanzler Lars Klingbeil hält es für möglich, dass Deutschland Israel im Kampf gegen den Iran auch weiterhin mit Waffenlieferungen unterstützt, wie er im ZDF sagte. Er halte es aber auch für richtig zu prüfen, ob die israelischen Angriffe vom Völkerrecht gedeckt seien.«

fr.de/politik/israels-wunderwa…

Israels Wunderwaffe im Nahost-Krieg: Deutsche Fregatte fängt Iran-Raketen ab

Mit deutscher Technik wehrt Israel iranische Drohnen ab. Das Abwehrsystem „Barak Magen“ zeigt seine Stärke. Waffenexporte nach Israel sind umstritten.

^www.fr.de