Ben Werdmuller helps leaders at newsrooms, non-profits, and mission-driven organizations to navigate their biggest technology challenges.
Notable links
[Mike Masnick at MSNBC] As Mike Masnick points out here, the hypocrisy from Elon Musk about collusion between tech and government is staggering: "Before, we were told that White House officials’ merely reaching out to social media companies about election misinformation was a democracy-ending threat. Now, the world’
Fediverse
[Christine Lemmer-Webber] Christine Lemmer-Webber has written a superb post that sets out to ask how decentralized Bluesky is but goes far deeper into the different models at play in decentralized social networking. It's required reading for anyone who cares about the space. "What many users
Culture
[Annalee Newitz at The Believer] Boots Riley is a national treasure. I loved this interview with him in The Believer: "BLVR: Do you think that all expression is propaganda? BR: The word propaganda got popularized in different ways at different times. But our generation knows it as a derogatory
In the Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin discusses my workplace, the journalism it undertakes, and why it's important (gift link). I lead technology, and while I sit on the business side of the operation, it's an absolute privilege to support these journalists. This is on point: “The
Fediverse
[Oxford Martin School] The Oxford Martin School is a multidisciplinary research institution at the University of Oxford focused on tackling global challenges and shaping a sustainable future through innovation and collaboration. It ran a study on the societal implications of decentralized social media and found that "such platforms offer
Technology
[Dan Milmo at The Guardian] The Department of Justice has filed its proposed remedies to Google's illegal monopoly over search services: "The proposals filed to a Washington federal court include the forced sale of the Chrome browser and a five-year ban from entering the browser market;
Education
[Massachusetts Institute of Technology] Changes to financial aid at MIT: "Undergraduates with family income below $200,000 can expect to attend MIT tuition-free starting next fall, thanks to newly expanded financial aid. Eighty percent of American households meet this income threshold." If your family makes less than
Fediverse
[Julia Angwin at The New York Times] In an op-ed for The New York Times, Julia Angwin makes a strong argument for the open social web: "If we want a quality information environment, we have to build a new one beyond the walls of the existing Big Tech
Media
[Lucinda Jordaan at Global Investigative Journalism Network] I'd missed this story from back in July. Rappler is building its own end-to-end encrypted, decentralized communities on the Matrix protocol. "Built on the open source, secure, decentralized Matrix protocol, the app has the potential to become a
Technology
[Khadija Alam and Russell Brandom at Rest of World] Mobile internet subscriber growth is significantly slowing globally: "From 2015 to 2021, the survey consistently found over 200 million coming online through mobile devices around the world each year. But in the last two years, that number has dropped to
Media
[Anil Dash] Anil Dash on Substack's attempt to brand "writing in a newsletter": "We constrain our imaginations when we subordinate our creations to names owned by fascist tycoons. Imagine the author of a book telling people to "read my Amazon". A great director
Culture
[Jillian D'Onfro at The San Francisco Standard] On one level, this piece about tech workers leaving the industry behind and doing something more culturally meaningful is quite nice: "Andrew Wasilewski, who managed to live “very frugally” on his layoff package while launching the Faight Collective, a music