This is a big deal:
The W3C, founded in 1994 by web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, has quit X and declared the fediverse to be their primary social media channel. Follow them at: @w3c@w3c.social
The future of the open web is .. the open web.
Remote
Erik Moeller
@eloquence@social.coop
mastodon 4.5.18Personal: https://lib.reviews/ and other projects under the https://permacommons.org/ umbrella.
Professional: Programs @ Sovereign Tech Agency, Berlin. Previously Wikimedia (2008-2015), Freedom of the Press (2018-2025).
Opinions my own.
7724 Followers
2473 Following
50 Posts
Joined August 30, 2017
GitHub:
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Bluesky (only lightly active):
It's really okay to stop sharing screenshots from X dot com. That website is weird
Replying to
Expect some of the following to happen in the coming weeks:
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celebrities with huge follower counts pushing tiny community-run servers to their knees
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instance admin burnout; shutting down of servers
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big new servers that don't "vibe" with common rules or culture being widely defederated
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some notable account violating an instance code of conduct and throwing a fit
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lots of people ragequitting Mastodon for one reason or another
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etc.
It'll be a rough ride. Patience and strength, all.
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If you are in Berlin or willing & independently able to move there, and
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You have a program management (or reasonably comparable) background, and
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You have deep, technically grounded understanding of open source and free culture ...
I would really like to hear from you about this role on my team.
Both of these programs are really powerful ways to invest in the people behind the code -- and to grow the understanding of why public investment in critical open source infrastructure matters:
https://www.sovereign.tech/jobs/program-manager-fellowship-standards
if I come back as a ghost I will personally haunt every web designer who messes with the normal operation of the clipboard
Currently stranded at an airport thanks to Crowdstrike, like so many others.
What I find most infuriating about the whole thing is how many governments continue to throw billions of dollars at Microsoft, instead of jointly funding secure open source infrastructure for all.
Imagine all schools, libraries and roads were run by SchoolCorp, LibraryBiz and RoadWare. For some reason we accept that for 21st century digital infrastructure.
Replying to
It's also illustrative, of course, of the toxic nature of walled "gardens" for distributing apps, which gives platform operators like Google and Apple free rein to sell misleading ads.
IMO the most likely cause of any kind of #AI bubble pop are Chinese models breaking through. And at least in the open inference markets, that appears to be happening already:
"Since February, Chinese AI models made by groups such as DeepSeek and MiniMax have overtaken US rivals in token consumption, according to OpenRouter data"
A true SOTA model from China could send markets for a tailspin just like the original DeepSeek release did.
https://www.ft.com/content/2567877b-9acc-4cf3-a9e5-5f46c1abd13e?syn-25a6b1a6=1
New Sovereign Tech Agency job opening just went live.
If you live in Berlin or are able to independently relocate & work there, this is an opportunity to give #opensource maintainers access to deep human expertise: security audits, post-quantum encryption work, Cyber Resilience Act conformance, and more.
Alongside our direct investments in maintainers, this program focuses on paying for resources that keep projects secure & make them more maintainable over time.
Learn more about the job here:
https://www.sovereign.tech/jobs/program-manager-resilience
Feel free to DM me here if you have Qs.
#GetFediHired
Really appreciate the contextual explanation of how handles work in the fediverse; when you have a complex design constraint that's fixed, you have to make an effort to help people understand it.
The "bookmark" feature (next to the star in the web UI) may be the least loved and mentioned feature in Mastodon, but it's darn useful.
1) Hm, I might want to read this later. -> Bookmark
2) What a great picture! -> Bookmark and Fav and Boost!!11
3) Do I want to follow this account? Let me take a look later. -> Bookmark
4) I should boost this again sometime. -> Bookmark
Search (somewhat deliberately) sucks, making bookmarking essential to find stuff again. Use it liberally. :)
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@Tutanota
If it's true open source, it doesn't matter where it is developed - as long as it can be hosted where it is used in compliance with applicable law. But yes, there is a lot of sovereignty-washing going on right now.
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@karrot@fosstodon.org
You've probably seen this, but in case not - useful comparison of different open source projects' policies:
https://github.com/melissawm/open-source-ai-contribution-policies
@neuSoM@bewegung.social Gerade auf Bluesky gesehen:
Even Mark Zuckerberg's dumb ideas can't be sustained forever. Looks like his Second Life clone is finally shutting down:
https://www.wired.com/story/meta-is-shutting-down-horizon-worlds-on-meta-quest/ (https://archive.is/vE4cn)
But I'm sure he's got lots more where that came from.
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@zoran@photog.social
The US is incredibly politically polarized right now, and Musk has aligned himself very visibly with the authoritarian right-wing (to the extent of posting a homophobic Hillary Clinton conspiracy theory).
That's the sort of thing that pushes people over the edge. He seems to be using every day as another opportunity to piss off millions of users of the platform he bought, positioning it increasingly more as a "Fox News of social media".
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@virtualbri@mastodon.online
Meta, Nvidia and Google are all on the corporate supporter list, albeit at lower tiers.
https://fund.blender.org/
Google obviously does massive AI training runs similarly to Anthropic (they also own a big share of Anthropic), and has genAI products for pretty much anything (art, music, etc.). It's also heavily tied into the US mil/ind complex.
NVDA is less _directly_ engaged in frontier training (though they do have plenty of their own models) but is obviously foundational to genAI and hooked into the major players with circular deals.
And Meta is, well, Meta.
Seems it's more the size of the donation that's unusual and not the nature of the donor.
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@Life_is_Beautiful
99% of statistics are made-up on the spot. :) I think a clear posting on the X account about where comms can be found going forward would be more than sufficient.
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@kissane@mas.to
That's well put -- and often folks _have_ of course thought about the tradeoffs they themselves have chosen, but get "explained to" by others.
IME, many nerdy communities (especially male-dominated ones) have similar refusal of norms cultures, so for folks who've been part of such communities it may feel easier to tolerate or even normal, but it can be very offputting.
I think a culture of generosity in how we approach each other is a useful thing for any fedi community to nourish.
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@fluepke@chaos.social
As much as I'd want to agree with you, IMO we're not quite there _yet_. Too many big institutions are still having a firm foothold on X for it to truly impact brand reputation.
But every domino piece helps, and W3C is a big one. Given how many others are happily posting away in Musk's nazi bar, they get some karma points at least in my book.
I'm paying close attention (monitoring big exits), so take that for whatever you think it's worth.
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@Life_is_Beautiful
Bluesky has >25M users (up from ~3M at the beginning of 2024) and seems like a good alternative to reach "normal average users" alongside Mastodon; it looks and behaves almost exactly like Twitter and is a nice drop-in option for folks who just want convenience.
Pure fediverse, baby.
Thus spoke @davidpierce@mastodon.social:
https://www.theverge.com/23990974/social-media-2023-fediverse-mastodon-threads-activitypub
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@diffrentcolours@tech.lgbt @w3c@w3c.social
Yep. Lots of folks who really care about the open web are on the fediverse. Hopefully being truly present here will also connect the org more deeply with these concerns, alongside the inevitable lobbying from big tech & big entertainment.
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@Tibor@mastodon.social
Understood. The argument for open source is more about code auditability, which gives folks who _are_ capable of doing that more comfort in recommending the tool to others.
It's also more in line with Mastodon's philosophy -- after all, you're helping folks migrate to a network that's built entirely on open source software :)
Your call of course - just making the case for in a hopefully non-badgering way!
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@everton137@social.vivaldi.net
Anyway, I signed it, but I'd suggest revisiting the graphic, and then I can boost a bit more.
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@compost@social.coop Wonderful to see @gardenfence@sunny.garden used for this! One key component to avoiding a repeat of trackback spam and abuse is to have great blocklists in place from the get-go.
TIL there's a more modern fork of Xournal (which I use all the time for small PDF edits). Nice:
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@seachaint@hackers.town
I'm open to new terms, for sure -- especially if it's linked to an effort to build an organization that could be what the FSF never was.
But I also don't mind consciously using the phrases we already have -- reclaiming and repurposing them with context, denying their originators the power to define their legacy.
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@novabox@mastodon.gamedev.place
Thank you for making it! I also really enjoyed Along the Edge and Across the Grooves -- your games are unique contributions to the the genre <3
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@HistoPol@mastodon.social
Tusky does have the bookmark feature, FYI. It's in the menu that appears when you tap on your profile picture.
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@groms@mastodon.world It depends on the app, there are so many! In Tusky (Android), they are found under the user menu. I don't have experience with any of the other apps.
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@randomwalker@mastodon.social
It's a free world :). There are interesting forks and implementations with different behaviors, such as Hometown, which emphasizes local posting:
https://github.com/hometown-fork/hometown
Personally, I'd love the ability to temporarily turn the volume down for some frequent posters, or to have their stuff collapsed when the post velocity gets very high - that'd be enough for me at least at current scale.
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@pooterheadpharm@mastodon.energy For account search? For that I agree -- account search is kind of a nightmare right now.
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@everton137@social.vivaldi.net @Gustodon@mas.to
It's a Midjourney image. Ethics of image generators aside (I'm not in agreement that they're inherently evil), it's probably going to turn off some folks, and also just looks a bit weird/broken.
Maybe @verge@mastodon.social would give permission to use this graphic:
https://duet-cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0x0:3001x2001/640x427/filters:focal(1501x1001:1502x1002):format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24805886/STK160_X_Twitter_004.jpg
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@pooterheadpharm@mastodon.energy
There's a lot of concern about search being used as a way to target individuals who say certain things.
So for example, if I say "trans rights are human rights", a transphobic harasser might have a search running on that phrase to find folks to target.
Hence the bias towards using hashtags to make posts discoverable if and when you want them to be.
I have mixed feelings about the current approach but I think any iteration will have to take that concern into account.
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@everton137@social.vivaldi.net Poor birdie! But yeah, much better than the Midjourney image :)
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@Tibor@mastodon.social
I think the requests re: open source are because it would help to alleviate any concerns about how the tool manages/processes data.
Since a _lot_ of folks are using it now to migrate accounts this seems like a reasonably big deal and would make me personally more comfortable in recommending it.
It's true that as a hosted tool there's still a remaining element of trust, of course.
Do you have any plans in this regard or are you planning to keep it closed for the foreseeable future?
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@WenduK@mastodonapp.uk
Are you using the web UI or one of the mobile apps? I can unfortunately only speak to the web UI and the Tusky app for Android.
In the web UI, it's in the right-hand menu that also has "Home" and "Notifications".
In Tusky, it's hidden under your profile if you click your profile image.
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@yora@mastodon.gamedev.place @virtualbri@mastodon.online
Fair point, though MCP is itself an open protocol and one of the most common ways to interface with LLMs of any kind. It was started by Anthropic but is now under a Linux Foundation spinoff called the AAIF.