Another media appearance, this time on one of my favourite tech podcasts, the Vergecast. I did a talk with David Pierce about new developments in ActivityPub, how to increase adoption, and our work at the Social Web Foundation. I hope it’s interesting for people who a) like hearing me talk (more here) and b) like … Continue reading Me on The Vergecast
fediverse
As I often do, I made a poll on the fediverse about two concepts I am interested in: Big Fedi versus Small Fedi. Although I think these are interesting topics, I couldn’t come up with exact summations of what the “Big Fedi” and “Small Fedi” positions are. So, I wanted to write down what I … Continue reading Big Fedi, Small Fedi
Examining last week’s Verge-vs-Sullivan “Google ruined the web” debate, author Elizabeth Tai writes: I don’t know any class of user more abused by SEO and Google search than the writer. Whether they’re working for their bread [and] butter or are just writing for fun, writers have to write the way Google wants them to just […]
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Recent moves by Eugen Rochko (known as Gargron on fedi),
the CEO of Mastodon-the-non-profit and
lead developer of Mastodon-the-software,
got some people worried
about the outsized
influence Mastodon (the software project and the
non-profit) has on the rest of the Fediverse.
Good. We should be worried.
Mastodon-the-software is used by far by the most people on fedi. The
biggest instance, mastodon.social, is home to over 200.000
active accounts as of this writing. This is roughly 1/10th of the whole Fediverse, on a
single instance. Worse, Mastodon-the-software is often
identified as the whole social network, obscuring the fact that
Fediverse is a much broader
system comprised of a much more diverse software.
I can’t believe I have to spell this out, but:
free/libre/open-source software developers and open web activists selflessly running independent services online are people too.
It seems this idea is especially difficult to grasp for researchers (including, apparently, whoever reviews and green-lights their studies). The latest kerfuffle with the Princeton-Radboud Study on Privacy Law Implementation shows this well.
“Not a human subject study”
The idea of that study seems simple enough: get a list of “popular” websites (according to the research-oriented Tranco list), send e-mails to e-mail addresses expected to be monitored for privacy-related requests (like privacy@example.com), and use that to assess the state of CCPA and GDPR implementation. Sounds good!