The Spinoff, perhaps New Zealand’s most popular indie website, and even it is struggling to survive in this media climate. They say that not only is ad revenue falling, but what remains of it is going to big tech: “While the current economic cycle may change, conservative estimates suggest 70% of advertising spend now goes to large, unregulated overseas technology companies.” What a bummer. How can less popular indies survive if even the popular ones can’t?
The Spinoff
Open letter 2024
Open letter 2024
On OpenAI's rumoured new web browser, NLWeb. Looks like this is serious: "OpenAI hired two key Chrome developers this year, including Ben Goodger, one of the founding members of the Chrome team." 👀 https://www.thetech.buzz/p/the-rise-of-ai-powered-web-browsers
Meanwhile on X, the elites (the accounts you see when you click the home button) are laying down the law to the plebs. Thou shalt not be your full self. image
@npub1urx3...v0z4 in a *very* detailed technical analysis of Bluesky, says that it isn't currently decentralized or federated. Instead, "...this should actually be the way Bluesky brands itself, which I believe would be more honest: an open architecture (that's fair to say!) with the possibility of credible exit."
How decentralized is Bluesky really? -- Dustycloud Brainstorms
That’s a lot of words to say: “Ok, if you insist, we’ll show you posts from the people you follow.” #Threads
Threads
Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) on Threads
We are rebalancing ranking to prioritize content from people you follow, which will mean less recommended content from accounts you don’t fo...
I love the Web. Mastodon is cool. TikTok is weird. I don’t trust Meta. I’m probably not cool enough for Bluesky. I’m too cool for Threads. I hate X. I am documenting my prime Web years in my Web 2.0 memoir, on my indie website Cybercultural.com. That is my story and it’s on the Web. It will soon be in a book, living in the Long Tail on the Web. Facebook is for family and real-world friends. Ok, go watch your 1-minute videos. Viva la read/write web, no matter which flavour you enjoy.
At what point will the big Mastodon instances withdraw federation from Threads if Meta fails to implement two-way federation? I would support that move if my instance did it. It’s beyond a joke that Meta continues to boast of being part of the fediverse, but has not yet let Threads users follow Mastodon users.
We’re now in the “Guy on Substack saying Bluesky is a rejection of Big Tech” phase of the hype. image
Reading the docs for the new @npub1f8f0...ed9x import CLI, I had to remind myself what PESOS is. It’s an #IndieWeb term meaning “Publish Elsewhere, Syndicate (to your) Own Site” (
IndieWeb
PESOS
PESOS is an acronym for Publish Elsewhere, Syndicate (to your) Own Site. It's a syndication model where publishing starts by posting to a 3rd ...
). I know POSSE is preferred by indie web, but I’ve always thought the reverse makes more sense for social. When posting on Mastodon, I’m participating in a community, so it should not be a piece of content isolated on my website. *Archiving* my Mastodon posts to my website makes more sense.
Really informative post by @npub1v7ea...v8gd about #Bluesky tech: “Bluesky is slightly more decentralized than, say, Facebook — but not by much. Yes, you can host your own data. Yes, you can scrape all of the content on the network. But you can’t do anything with it unless you’re attached to the Bluesky service. I believe this will change with time, but it will be prohibitively expensive and we’re not there yet.”
anderegg.ca
Maybe Bluesky has “won”
November has sucked so far. One upside of the terrible nonsense is that more people are fleeing X. Many are choosing Bluesky. I’ve seen a bunch o...