#InternetGovernance#InternetStandards#PoliticalEconomy#Decentralization#OpenWeb: "Standards development is one of those esoteric, hugely important activities that almost no one knows anything about. Good standards are key to an open, free internet, and as governments around the world grapple with Big Tech monopolies, their plans often include a block that basically reads "insert good standard here."
As exciting as the EU's Digital Markets Act and US proposals like the ACCESS Act are, the "insert good standard here" stuff is wildly underspecified and undertheorized. Making a good standard – one that is robust, flexible and secure – is hard enough even under competitive competitions where the SDO can play independent referee, more powerful than the participants. But making good standards under monopolistic conditions is really hard.
And yet, it happens! Look at the Fediverse, powered by Mastodon and its adaptation of a W3C standard called ActivityPub. The Fediverse has done more for an interoperable, decentralized web than all the other projects of the past decade combined:"
#Apple#iOS#Cellphones#MobilePhones#WalledGardens#GateKeeping#OpenWeb: "Mobile applications are shaping information sharing, cultural expression, and social engagement. Employing a walkthrough methodology, this study examines the handling of user requests to access Web content via hyperlinks within 27 mobile apps operating in the Apple iOS ecosystem. The research reveals notable distinctions: traditional news media apps like CNN and BBC facilitate users’ direct access to Web content through their preferred mobile browsers with a single click, whereas many social media platforms confine users to in-app browsers. Tech giants like Alphabet and Microsoft trigger banner advertisements for their browsers when users click on a hyperlink within their e-mail apps. This approach allows them to capitalize on their dominant positions in one market to drive the visibility and adoption of products in adjacent markets. Moreover, emerging social media apps like TikTok adopt a policy of rendering hyperlinks unclickable, indicating a broader trend toward tightened control over information dissemination. These gatekeeping choices have far-reaching implications for user privacy, the equitable distribution of value between content creators and app administrators, and the future of the open Web."
This by @thisisaaronland is the type of inspirational #openweb post that tech bloggers of a certain vintage used to pin up on their sidebar (see bottom-right of screenshot). Wonder how you can do that in 2023...but regardless, read this great article by Aaron Straup Cope: https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2023/11/11/therapy/
Today in the NGI Forum 2023. At 11.10am CET a plenary session "**Decentralised Social Media and Fediverse: from niche to scale". **Registration to watch this discussion is free! Later this afternoon there's a workshop on 'activity pub software', details in first reply to this post.
Today in the NGI Forum 2023. At 14.00pm CET a workshop on "**Hands-on ActivityPub software workshop for ex-Twitter users". **Registration to take part is free!
So yesterday's fun experiment with the Lynx browser really drove home that unless you have access to logs of things in transit you have absolutely no idea what is happening to some of your users-none, zilch, zero. Your origin server isn't gonna see anything & your JS script isn't in page so a user may just quietly go boom in the darkness of cyberspace.
Cloudflare sites did pretty well, other things not so much. Ex: things hosted on Wp Engine = #fail
Last week, I sent out the first issue of Own Your Web, my new newsletter about designing, building, creating, and publishing on the Web – and the power of personal sites.
The openclective is the funding side of the #OMN and
campaign openworlds info? is an instances that is a part of this wider #openweb activist project #OMN
@aral@feedle Thank you so much 🙏 Feedle is a side project I help a small team from Germany develop, maintain, and spread the word about. #RSS has been our passion since its very inception in the early 2000s, and we have taken it as our mission to help promote it and the #OpenWeb with every means possible.
As you'll see, Feedle is not perfect - there are a few rough edges we are still working around. Not every blog post is as easy to find there as we want it to be, but we are working on it! 💪
@rooftopaxx the problem is the is nothing kollectiva as well, its a problem with the coding of this #openweb reboot, its fading as it goes #mainstreaming this is not a surprise thus the thinking about shutting down, only have so much focus.
Then the project is going to fail as the bitcoin lot is a very dysfunctional community to base a #openweb project from. This would be bad as the tech itself is OK
The problem we face on the #fediverse is the "shouting into the void" that the #mainstreaming brings with it. This is affecting all new social networks, the signal to noise is degrading everyone's #openweb experience. I think in part this is a failure of copying #dotcons that we need to move past soon #OMN#OGB#makeinghistory#indymediaback
@badlogic There are also many people who would love their posts to be openly readable - communicators of science, emergency info, & many more. This was the case with Twitter pre-Musk: anyone could read all posts using a profile or hashtag URL. Seeing many of these posts disappear to walled gardens is a shame/ scary, but many are uncomfortable here & value WYSIWYG ease-of-use... can we read their #Bluesky posts in original format? #RSS?
@trishgreenhalgh fyi! RSS works very well with blogposts, not so well suited here with all the replies... better than nothing but I'd much rather you continue to post here on the #Fediverse, where everyone can read, at least for substantive messages?
Two screenshots to compare the RSS feed from the Bluesky walled garden (via Bluestream) with the more useful one from Mastodon. One issue is how the feed describes each post (could this be improved?). The bigger one is that the web link for a Mastodon post may be viewed by anyone, to see context of thread and replies, without registration... whereas the web link for a Bluesky post hits the wall.
They've reportedly fired half of the staff at #Bandcamp, that sucks absolute ass.
Do not, my friends, become addicted to VC money, for it will forever leave you open to being fucked over either by them directly or by whomever you get bought out by.
Sadly normal bait and switch, they are all #dotcons in the end. We do need to stop feeding this mess and feed the #openweb instead, it's basic change and challenge #fluffy activism and kinda "common sense" #KISS