This is the kind of stuff that finally made me quit Threads, just as I have X. Also see my recent post about the various ways Threads fails to federate at even the most basic level:
"As mainstream culture is imploding in on itself and can feel like a stitch up, new ways of being are bubbling up at the edges. It's more off-line - or at the very least in private online spaces. It's smaller, DIY in sensibility, and it's a safer space for its participants. Fundamentally it's unsurveilled." @npub1fdq8...4maa
“Mr. Prince said he was “deeply concerned that the incentives for content creation are dead.”” This definitely resonates with me. Sometimes I wonder why I bother spending so much of my time writing articles that fewer and fewer people read. Yes, AI is to blame, altho I also put a lot of blame on ‘traffic-throttling’ social media like X, LinkedIn, Facebook/Threads. The open web is, sadly, almost devoid of incentives for creators. This is a challenge for fediverse too.
Threads is allegedly part of the fediverse, yet I'm nowhere near the point of being able to ask Threads users to follow my Mastodon profile. Attached is how my Mastodon profile looks over there. Some of the issues: 1. Threads users can follow Mastodon Me *only if* they themselves have turned on fediverse sharing (an arbitrary hurdle). 2. They have to exactly type my Mastodon handle. 3. You can like but not reply. 4. "Some posts may not be visible" (why?!) 5. There's no bio! Any other hurdles? image
The web is not thriving for indie publishers. We can only hope Google doesn’t lose sight of small indie websites, and how *they* can earn a living in the AI era. That was the beauty of the Web 2.0 era — there were opportunities for *everyone* to thrive. I see Google, AI companies and big publishers like Reddit thriving in this era…but surely Google knows that isn’t enough for the broader web ecosystem to thrive. Ref: Google’s “from our point of view the web is thriving."
Looks like Threads has been hacked… image
We are aliens from another planet. “This is certainly the most visible fediverse content has ever been inside of Threads, but the world of ActivityPub is still not a first-class citizen inside of Threads. You still have to opt-in to sharing your posts, you still have to have a separate account to connect to, and you’ll still have to go to the dedicated feed to see what’s new. (If you post something and get fediverse replies, those are still separate too.)”
What do you call your personal website these days? (if none of these options, please comment)
Updated my Tumblr (velvetsfan.com) for the first time in months…was listening to some music and wanted to post about it somewhere. I miss soup.io, which was a smaller, quirkier version of Tumblr, and where I used to post artsy-fartsy stuff that didn’t fit into my tech blogging world. Tumblr was the one that survived, but now it’s owned by one of the self-important crazy Tech Lords and so I am not so keen on using it. Is there a fedi version of Tumblr with some traction? #AskingForAFriend
I watched Mountainhead over the past 2 nights (couldn’t get through it in one night, it made me too anxious!). It was ok entertainment in the end, but a bit too over-the-top for my liking. Of course you recognize the All-In Podcast crew, Musk, Altman and the rest of that lot in the 4 main characters. Maybe too close to the bone for many of us who work in tech? I enjoyed Succession a lot more, because it didn’t try so hard to be a parody. It kind of felt like sitting thru an All-In episode. image