This post alleging extortion from CloudFlare¹ is plausible/cautionary. Market monopolies/tech mono-cultures suck so it's tempting to just be outraged at CF.
However, we allow this when we cede control to third parties (not just cloud) without mitigation plans, by NOT:
Donate to your and your friends' admins, and all the developers actively building the fediverse and the apps and other tools that make it better. See if you can volunteer. Help spread the word.
I had such a great chat with @mike on his Dot Social podcast, where we talked about the future of the web and why I'm a web optimist, why everyone should be a blogger, digital ownership, and decentralized social media.
@molly0xfff@mike Watching/listening to this episode now. So far it is great. Molly, I had no idea about your reading lists! I'm so jealous I wish I had an archive like this on my site. Swoon.
What to call this internet that we should move to. I use #openweb as this is what it is, or #web1.5 for more geeky conversations. Then fall back to #Fediverse for insiders and just #mastodon for the #mainstreaming normal people.
“The simplicity of HTML and CSS now feels like a radical act. To build a website with just these tools is a small protest against platform capitalism: a way to assert sustainability, independence, longevity.” — Jarrett Fuller
#Ghost#ActivityPub#Decentralization#OpenWeb: "They say the best way to predict the future is to create it, so two weeks ago we shared our intention to connect Ghost with the ActivityPub Network to bring back the open web. We were delighted when our ideas managed to spread even further and wider than we'd imagined, and that so many of you signed up to be a part of the journey."
"In 2024, for the first time, it finally feels like we have a critical mass of people and platforms who are interested in rewilding the internet to bring back what we lost, and create something new. ... There's a palpable feeling that this just might be the year of the open web."
@molly0xfff In my case, it's not hope but defiance. I don't believe my website counts for much, or that independent operators alone can break the spell of network effects and liberate people who prefer their digital chains, but the power of Satan compels me to press on regardless; every day my website stays up is itself a small victory.
#OpenWeb#BigTech#Interoperability#Splinternet: "If we’re make a serious case for a splinternet, the central plank should be the elimination of massive global platforms like we’ve gotten used to over the past couple decades. Governments will have to use regulatory and legal tools to erode the power and influence of those firms, squeezing their business models by restricting the ways they can use and collect data and enforcing much stronger rules on their operations. Higher taxes wouldn’t hurt either — something the US has been holding up globally for years. Regulation of global firms can be hard when undertaken by a single state on the national level, which is why it’s so important to start building an alliance of states that refuse the binary choice being offered by the United States — and rein in both US and Chinese tech giants with sectoral rules.
At the same time as regulatory pressures escalate, governments will need to think about what alternatives look like. This is where forced interoperability and open protocols come in, as long as they’re paired with regulatory measures and efforts to build public technology. Users will still want to communicate and share things with people they know from around the globe, and they should still be able to do that. But access to those federated services should instead happen through platforms conceived of and developed on the regional, national, or even local level. That will allow governments and communities to exert much more power over how they work and what they deem acceptable on them — instead of leaving it to a global monopoly or a tech-savvy group that has technical skill few other people hold — and given the different rules and cultural contexts of different countries, the choices they make may differ."