Strypey
activity timestamp 4 days ago
Fortunately, plenty of people in the establishment seem to understand the threats it poses to fundamental rights (like freedom of expression). So it doesn't seem likely to pass.

But it could be an opportunity to campaign for regulation of corporate DataFarming that is technically practical, and addresses the real problems.

(2/2)
Strypey
activity timestamp 4 days ago
This is not the first wave of calls for age verification for online services. Here's an article from 2006 about My Space grappling with it, along with other social media platforms popular at the time;

https://www.wired.com/2006/07/myspace-faces-age-old-web-problem/

#SocialMedia#AgeVerification
Strypey
activity timestamp 4 days ago

"When asked, users repeatedly cite 'Nazis' as a problem they would like Twitter to address. After leaving Twitter, writer Lindy West retorted, 'Get back to me when your website isn’t a roiling rat-king of Nazis'.”

, 2017

vice.com/en/article/mastodon-i

Melon Husk's weak moderation is a return to the mean, not a break with it. Funny how nostalgic dysphoria has made pre-Husk Titter a fash-free zone that it never really was. At least not for most of its existence.
Strypey
activity timestamp 6 days ago
What are the useful functions of social media? Why are we trying to replace DataFarming with decentralised networks like the fediverse, ATmosphere and Nostr-space, rather than withdrawing from the medium altogether and doing something totally different? What do we want to get out of the time and resources we put into using decentralised social services, or running infrastructure to support them?

(1/2)

#SocialMedia#SocialExperience
Ben Werdmuller
activity timestamp last week
I’ve written before about what I’d do if I ran Bluesky or Mastodon. But what if I started from scratch? What would it look like to build a new open social platform - one that's private-by-default, human-centered, and sustainable from day one?

Here’s the blueprint I’d follow: https://werd.io/2025/if-i-started-fresh

#Fediverse #opensource #socialmedia
Strypey
activity timestamp last week

Around the 1:38:00 mark, Pat and Chewie have an intriguing chat about the practical challenges they see in trying to get off corporate social media platforms;

creators.spotify.com/pod/profi

Challenge accepted! I'm planning a blog post about what they can try out right now, and what we could build if regulation forced corporate platforms to interop with services/ apps offered by smaller competitors and not-for-profit groups.

Suggestions and perspectives welcome.
Strypey
activity timestamp last week
"The documentation suggests that [ZuckerBorg and SandBorg] were willing to run FaceBook in China as a government surveillance network. That they would give the Chinese government access to user's data."

#AnnaRawhitiConnell, 2025

https://thespinoff.co.nz/media/01-04-2025/the-fold-careless-people-adolescence-and-where-meta-is-at

Why wouldn't they? As many of us always suspected and Edward Snowdon's leaks confirmed, that's exactly what they do for the US government.

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/june-5/edward-snowden-discloses-u-s-government-operations

#privacy #surveillance#MassSurveillance#SocialMedia#FaceBook#China#USA

Strypey boosted
Anders Thoresson
activity timestamp 2 weeks ago
I continue to think about decentralized networks. And I'm wondering, among other things, if we need squares or courtyards, and why good metaphors play a role in wise decisions.

#mastodon #fediverse #activitypub #socialmedia #socialnetworks #selfhosted

https://anders.thoresson.se/post/2025/05/town-squares-backyards-better-metaphors-and-decentralised-networks/
Open Risk
activity timestamp 2 weeks ago
@smallcircles

the way I think about #activitypub is as a placeholder for the natural evolution of the Web. Much bigger than "social" in the current narrow sense of "social media" and really about the shape of digital society.

Currently lots of complaints about it (imho quite deserved) but when focusing on the most important dimensions we need to average over the long arc.

If anything ever replaces it in a future of even more connectivity it will be a more "real time" protocol.
small circle 🕊 in calmness
activity timestamp 2 weeks ago
@openrisk

Exactly! The conceptual design offers us "Actors exchange Activities". So granular that it can model about anything.

Yet we somehow ended up modeling only existing #SocialMedia esp. #Microblogging. That is weird.

My definition of #SocialNetworking:

- Any direct or indirect human interaction between people.

So *both* offline and online. And where that happens seamlessly is where I envision this as a #Peopleverse (sociosphere). Runs on the fediverse installed base (technosphere).