I have the impression the term "Open Social Web" for what we are all working on has won.
Instead of "decentralized social" or other terms that have been floating around over the years.
We've been leaning into it for some years now with #FediForum since I realized that some members of the press had been using it, instead of something more techie.
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Johannes Ernst
@j12t@j12t.social
mastodon 4.5.18Engineer, founder, organizer.
Let's put people back in control of their technology. The Open Social Web is a good start. Also wondering aloud where we are taking this planet.
Check out my home page for more info and links.
tfr
1972 Followers
1011 Following
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Joined July 31, 2024
Home page with more info and links:
FediForum, the unconference for the Open Social Web:
Dazzle Labs Inc.:
Pronouns:
He/him/any
Wow. I don't think the US tech industry has quite grasped how big this is.
https://www.techpolicy.press/almost-two-thirds-of-europeans-back-replacing-us-tech-poll-finds/
The EFF has a cool post about Bridgy Fed!
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/04/bridge-somewhere-how-link-your-mastodon-bluesky-or-other-federated-accounts
#mastodon #blueksy #activitypub #atproto #eff
I want to applaud @rose.bsky.team and @mellifluousbox@mastodon.social for appearing on stage together and expressing a desire to cooperate. As I've said for a long time, #Bluesky and #Mastodon, #ActivityPub and #ATProtocol should not be fighting each other. The real opposition are the oligarch-controlled, enshittified, manipulating major commercial platforms. We have no chance of making a dent into their dominance if the revolution fights itself instead.
There are about 170 million registered voters in the US. Trump says they found 250,000 non citizens registered to vote. Even if these numbers were true — and given where they come from, I would not trust them — that’s about 0.15% and that sounds minimal. We should be so lucky as to measure anything with as complex a system as federal voting with a precision that’s better than that.
If you are not an engineer, but would like a glimpse of what real engineering looks like in practice, here is a slightly mindboggling writeup on how they reduced operating cost of Bridgy Fed, which bridges #AtProto and #ActivityPub. By A New Social CTO @snarfed.org
https://blog.anew.social/bridging-on-a-budget/?ref=a-new-social-newsletter
I am having a lot of fun in #FediForum sessions this time. That's because we now have a real community here, built over some years, people who now know each other, have good personal relationships so there is a lot of banter in the middle of all the high-bandwidth, high-competence discussion. It's a great combination.
Congratulations to the #mastodon team for getting a substantial grant from the #sovereigntechagency !
https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2026/04/sovereign-tech-agency-funding/
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The question is some variation of: is it possible to construct an organization that can pay its employees well, that can raise money that wants a financial return, that reliably delivers an innovative open social web application to lots of happy users, and is structurally incapable of enshittifying or screwing its users down the road? Even if private equity makes a takeover bid or the key people in the organization turn evil? 2/3
I was blown away by the intensity and quality of the follow-up discussion on "Growing the Open Social Web" at a #FediForum session yesterday. And the sheer number of people who showed up! Somehow this must be an important topic to a lot of people!! 😜
We will continue this discussion probably more regularly than twice a year at the regular FediForum.
#FediForumFriday
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Or various terrible things we don't want to happen on the Open Social Web but that happen in Big Tech all the time.
The answer may be No. But I'm not convinced of that. The answer is not Yes either, at least not yet, because I don't think we have a blueprint for how to do that. But imagine if we figured it out ... we'd solve sooo many problems in our community, and for the world. So I want to see whether we can make some progress on thinking through this ...
3/3
Defederation. Not defenestration. Don't mix those up, people.
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@julian You think we should link to it from activitypub.rocks? Would be useful! File an issue?
Another nugget from a FediForum discussion:
"things are hard cause they are better :0" (by @wjmaggos@liberal.city)
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@HolosSocial@mastodon.social Hear, hear!!
I've been advocating that it should be possible to use the same identity on all websites for -- checking notes -- 22 years now. All users get it. Developers are often strangely reluctant, like in the Fediverse today.
Would be nice if that became part of an ActivityPub 2.0. We could use more people speaking up about this in the W3C, consider joining the conversation there.
Of course.
Attempting to create a screw thread with OpenSCAD and ChatGPT. ChatGPT only proposes things that do not work, and when pointed out, mansplains that obviously the previous approach was never going to work. It gets a bit tiring after going through this for the fifth time, with the proposed solutions getting ever more convoluted. Gave up, need to do it myself.
P.S. What's the correct term instead of "mansplaining" when the machine talks down to itself from 5 minutes ago?
What a shit show.
Newsmast have updated their website. Worthwhile reading if you are interested in the future of the #fediverse and the #opensocialweb. IMHO. https://newsmastfoundation.org/
"I find it amusing how Alexis used the term "lured"... lured to the fediverse... how subversive"
From a chat transcript of a FediForum session, @julian about @alexisbushnell@toot.wales
My planned #FediForum session 2: FediForum Connect.
You might have seen our beta at https://connect.fediforum.org which is a curated product and services directory for the Open Social Web.
We want feedback, and also answer questions on why and how, and how to get listed.
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@elgg@indieweb.social Well, we did have @ben@werd.social give a keynote at #FediForum last year! :-)
Consider coming to a future FediForum and giving a demo to get more exposure in this community.
@silverpill@mitra.social @julian @fedimtl @ozoned @reiver@mastodon.social @johannab@cosocial.ca @paige@masto.canadiancivil.com @mayel
One can learn many things at #FediForum. For example, about Rebollita, a soup from Tuscany, which is apparently @ivan's favorite food.
Does that recipe sound about right? https://www.themediterraneandish.com/ribollita-recipe/
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@evan@cosocial.ca @silverpill@mitra.social @julian @fedimtl @ozoned @reiver@mastodon.social @johannab@cosocial.ca @paige@masto.canadiancivil.com @mayel FediForum organizer here. Certainly you are very welcome at FediForum, and I could imagine it could lead to some great sessions!
Riffing off @docsearls@threads.net who said that about Linux!
$100 million for Bluesky? A year ago? What the …
https://bsky.social/about/blog/03-19-2026-series-b
Did you know there is an award for cool open social web software coming up? With actual prize money of EUR 10,000?
Deadline is May 1.
I'm told 16 submissions are in so far.
With great thanks to our friends at New Public to who have made this possible. (I'm on the jury.)
Math literacy is the kind of thing that exists on other planets, maybe?
“As the conflict with Iran intensifies, the world’s energy arteries are constricting to a point of “nonlinearity,” where every day the Strait of Hormuz remains closed doesn’t just double the economic pain — it multiplies it exponentially.”
https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/09/business/oil-iran-strait-navy-economy
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@chadkoh@indieweb.social I'm updating this page: https://fediforum.org/2026-04/ and gods of copy editing willing, I'll be done within the hour.
Mastodon is inviting community stakeholders from within and beyond Mastodon to weigh in on the future of the product in a 5 day sprint!
https://app.hi.events/event/7599/mastodon-discovery-week-2026
Hey, computer science people. Is there an established CS term for "the shape of data" or "the gestalt of data" in the context of:
I want to represent certain facts, and can do this in a variety of ways, like as relational tables, or as a tree, or normalized and not normalized and indexed every which way, but all of these are equivalent in terms of what facts they represent.
How do I ask, for example: which of those ... is the best for my application?
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@kilroy_was_here@dobbs.town If that's what it takes, I would say the answer to the question is No, it cannot be done. Because human nature being what it is ...
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@rozeboosje@masto.ai As a buyer of cloud services, what I'd do is publish the fact that you would like to buy from a European cloud service, here are the parameters, basically a public RFP, and then find lots of other buyers in the same position who say the same thing. If you aggregate enough potential orders for basically the same product, I'd be very surprised if you didn't have some product-adjacent EU provider say "we can do this".
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@rozeboosje@masto.ai step 1 if I were in charge: hire the people who built those clouds. Note they likely don’t like trump either.
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(DIdn't mention many other great people who were mentioned already on the thread. No slight intended, and I am sure I missed many important people as this is off the top of my head.)
@taylorlorenz
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@elgg@indieweb.social
Elgg doesn't show up here: https://fedidb.com/software?st=active&q=elgg
Any idea why?
@silverpill@mitra.social @julian @fedimtl @ozoned @reiver@mastodon.social @johannab@cosocial.ca @paige@masto.canadiancivil.com @mayel
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@suzannealdrich@hachyderm.io @lerxst@az.social The crypto people tried "no government". Everything got taken over by fraud and scams. I think it's a cautionary tale.
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I can't promise answers to all, but I can hopefully channel the community's current thinking. (And if you have relevant experience or opinions, please come, too, and help me answer those questions.)
2/2
I'm attempting to figure out what exactly France is banning for minors. Facebook etc? Mastodon? Bluesky? Forums? ...? I found the legal text https://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/17/textes/l17b3069_texte-adopte-commission but it references a bunch of definitions in other places which I've failed to find so far. Doesn't help I don't speak French. Help?
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@samir@m.fedica.com This is a made up issue. And badly made up! Which was kinda my point.
Apropos nothing, remember that:
Nothing is as practical as a good theory.