Werd I/O

I’ve never done a holiday gift guide in any of my spaces before, but this year I was inspired by Kottke and a few other bloggers to create my own. As I write this, it’s literally December 13th; you’ve probably bought most of your gifts already. Still, these are out there, and everything I’ve listed should ship in time for December 25th (again, at the time of writing).

This is stuff I love that your loved ones might love too. (Say that three times fast.)

1. Let’s start here: if your loved ones are as worried about the upcoming year as I am, it may help to support real journalism that will genuinely speak truth to power. Consider ProPublica, The 19th, The Markup, Grist, Reveal at the Center for Investigative Reporting in addition to names you probably already think of like your local NPR station. And then consider which non-profits might support vital services that could be under attack over the next four years, like reproductive health, equitable criminal justice, and medical services for vulnerable populations.

2. I started making personalized calendars for my mother when my parents moved back to California and I was still in the UK as a way of sharing photos of things she’d missed. It became a holiday tradition. We unfortunately said goodbye to her three years ago, but I still make the calendars, which these days feature my son, and recipients seem to really love them. Over the years, I’ve found that Shutterfly gives me the best results.

3. A colleague turned me on to Sugimoto Tea this year and I’m a convert. I’m particularly a fan of the sencha and the hojicha, but I tried a few varieties and they’re all great. Sugimoto sells fresh, farm-direct loose leaf tea, grown in Japan, at reasonable prices. I have a few cups a day at least.

4. Julia by Sandra Newman was one of the best books I read this year: a novel that doesn’t just add a new dimension to George Orwell’s classic 1984 but reframes it entirely, deepening it in the process. That doesn’t sound like a possible task, but here this novel is, making it look effortless.

5. Curious Reading Club sends hand-picked non-fiction to your door every month and then backs it up with intimate Zoom calls with authors and experts. It’s all beautifully chosen and you get pristine hardback editions. In truth, I haven’t always made it to the calls, but I’ve loved the selections. This month’s was Kyle Chayka’s Filterworld, about the effect of algorithms on culture.

6. Is your loved one more of an audiobook person? You can’t go wrong with a Libro.fm subscription. The service works as well as other audiobook services you can think of, but proceeds support local bookstores. With my subscription, I choose to support Harriett’s Bookshop, named after Harriett Tubman, which celebrates women authors, artists, and activists. Honestly, I’ve stopped listening to podcasts and burn through my monthly audiobook credits instead. It’s great.

7. Daily-use kitchen gadgets that are also great: the Zojiruchi Neuro Fuzzy Rice Cooker, the 8-cup Bodum French press, the one-cup Aeropress coffee maker, the Thermapen ONE digital thermometer. And, okay, this was an extravagance, but this year I bought Peugeot pepper and salt mills, and it’s hard to describe how much better they are than any other mill I’ve ever used. Peugeot made mills before they made carsand their expertise really shows.

8. The Tuneshine is a fun addition to my bookshelf. It connects to your wifi and your music services, and displays the album cover of whatever you’re listening to as you stream. It’s quite lovely.

9. Creative Action Network’s See America posters are lovely. Each one is by a different independent artist, and proceeds help support Earthjustice. I have framed posters for Yosemite, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the Cape Cod National Seashore hanging in my entryway. Creative Action Network has a few other poster campaigns; I particularly like What Makes America Great (hint: it’s immigration) and Recovering the Classics.

10. Some of our favorite tableware is by Heath Ceramics. Pass the Plate sells them secondhand at a more affordable price.

11. Another book! Infinite Detail by Tim Maughan was published a few years ago but was new to me this year. It’s about what happens when the Internet goes away, and also something much more than that: the exploration of humanity as content between advertising, the questions about what happens next post-revolution, the overlapping mysticism and open-source pragmatism, the breathing, beating characters, the class politics woven throughout. I loved every glowing, gripping word. It may have been written pre-pandemic, but it’s got a lot to say about our current moment.

12. Uncle Goose alphabet blocks are the best blocks. Like, absurdly nice. These are luxury children’s blocks. Our little one loves them. We love them. Love all round.

13. Speaking of absurdly nice kids’ toys, our little one was gifted this Montessori Wooden Switch Boardand he’s obsessed with it. Turning on each light is a challenge: different switches, dials, a key, and a wire connector. The only trick is to go back and turn all the lights off again once he’s done with it.

14. We have an Ooni pizza oven and love it a lot. Ours is a gas-fired Koda 12, but friends have mentioned that they love their various models. Making your own pizza this way is a lot of fun, and we usually turn it into a family activity: everyone gets to choose their own toppings. (The thermometer accessory is a must.)

15. If I could wave a magic wand, I’d bring back the Electric Company Magazine my parents subscribed me to (shipping it all the way to the UK!). Failing that, Highlights is pretty cool; we’ve been getting Helloand will upgrade to High Five. Similarly, I was delighted to see that the publishers of Cricket are still going, and publish a range of magazines for different ages.

16. The Kobo Libra Colour has been a game-changer for me: I can read books in bed once our little one goes to sleep. Book lights were all taken as toys; I am tethered to the bedroom for a good portion of every night. So this was a liberating device. The screen is beautiful, the refresh rate is just right, and it’s pleasant to hold in my hand. It also gets frequent active updates and supports borrowing ebooks from the library.

17. Maybe consider giving your loved ones a 1Password family plan and Mozilla VPN? Privacy and security are good things to have.

18. Haymarket Books publishes radical books on a series of progressive topics. It’s a great company. And it has a book club! Subscribers receive every new book published during the duration of the club, and there are both ebook and print options. Take a look at the author list and you’ll get a good sense of what’s in store.

19. My office is full of Yoko OK prints, and you might find that your loved ones appreciate these lively works of art too (also: don’t overlook the zines). Many of them have a San Francisco theme.

20. Despite what you may have heard, it’s still a good idea to mask up in public places. If your loved ones struggle with wearing masks comfortably, the FLO Mask is likely to help: it’s by far the most comfortable mask I’ve ever used. I have the Pro. This is a particularly great gift if you have a loved one who is immunocompromised, or if you care about immunocompromised people anywhere.

21. AirPods Pro were always pretty great — there’s very little that compares — but the clinical-grade hearing aid capability is a big deal. Hearing aids cost thousands and getting them tuned is a pain. Something that approaches that utility that can be tuned on an app and costs an order of magnitude less is a game-changer. Just don’t drop the case on the ground.

What else am I missing? Do you have recommendations? I’d love to read them.

Buying from some of these links may result in a small affiliate fee that helps pay for my web hosting. Hey, we all live under capitalism. Also, it’s really just the book links.

The open social web puts control back in your hands. Unlike big social media platforms, it’s not run by a single company — it’s made up of independent, connected communities where you decide how and with whom you interact. It respects your privacy, avoids intrusive ads, and gives you the freedom to truly own your online experience. It’s like the internet used to be: open, personal, and community-focused.

How to get started

There are two main emergent social networks on the open social web:

The Fediverse is a co-operative of small communities that all interoperate as one large, cohesive social network. Each community has its own interface, moderation policy, and rules, but anyone on one community can seamlessly follow and share with anyone on any of the other communities. It’s more decentralized, which means that the user experience is a little different to what you’re probably used to.

The most common Fediverse platform is Mastodon (although Threads is also rapidly joining the network) and the easiest place to get started is by joining mastodon.social.

Bluesky is a social network built on an open social web protocol but largely controlled by one company, Bluesky Social. It’s less decentralized than the Fediverse, but some find it easier to use.

It is very reminiscent of early Twitter, with some added innovations designed to help people build up a network of interesting people to follow quickly, build their own bespoke social media algorithms, and block people they don’t want to interact with. The result is a very vibrant, contiguous community that’s growing very quickly.

The easiest place to get started is by signing up on the Bluesky website.

For writers, artists, journalists, and publishers

In a world where platforms like X have devalued outgoing links and often skewed their algorithms towards particular points of view, the open social web is a breath of fresh air. Links are celebrated, not suppressed, which means journalists can promote their work. open social web platforms default to just showing you the posts and reshares by people you subscribe to in reverse-chronological order, rather than skewing your feed.

Because no single company owns the open social web, it’s not subject to the whims of an owner. There’s no single platform that can be sold to Elon Musk or rapidly pivot in order to try and increase its total market capitalization. It simply exists to allow people to follow and share with each other.

This has attracted some of the most engaged people on the internet. Users on the open social web are more likely to share your work, read it deeply, and donate to support you.

For developers and researchers

Because the open social web has no owner and isn’t proprietary, you don’t need to ask for anyone’s permission to build on top of it. You can build any kind of social tool on top of its open protocols, and nobody can stop you, or charge you for the privilege. This also means that journalists and researchers can examine social networking data to their heart’s content, for example to study trends and dynamics between communities.

Anyone can build an app. There are already dozens of mobile apps for each open social web platform, for example, as well as tools like Sill that allow you to gain insights from the network in new ways.

For startups and entrepreneurs

A long-standing issue with building new social apps and services is the cold start problem: until people join in large numbers, there’s nobody to talk to.

If you build a social app on the open social web, you can connect directly with the existing network. There will instantly be millions upon millions of people for your users to connect with — and, in turn, those people can more easily learn about your app or service. The open social web improves the experience of your early users and reduces the friction to acquiring new ones, while giving you full freedom to innovate and build new features.

For nonprofits and activists

Open social web users are engaged and typically care about social causes. They’re more willing to donate than on platforms like X, and there’s no algorithmic bias to suppress links or prevent your message from reaching its audience.

For everyone

On the open social web, you aren’t locked into any platform. If the application you’re using doesn’t work out for whatever reason, you can just use another one. For example, Bluesky’s mission talks about enforcing the possibility of a “credible exit”: if they ever turn user-hostile or make bad decisions, users should always have the ability to take their profiles, conversations, and content somewhere else, with very little friction, at no cost, and without losing followers. Account migration is also a feature of Mastodon and inherent to the Fediverse.

This means that there’s very little cost to investing in a network. Unlike Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, where some people lost over a decade’s worth of posts and social connections, on the open social web you own it all, and it can come with you if you ever choose to leave.

It’s free to get started

The open social web offers an exciting opportunity to reclaim control over our online interactions.

Whether you’re a writer seeking an engaged audience, a developer building the next big innovation, or an entrepreneur overcoming the cold start problem, the open social web provides the tools and community to make it happen. By embracing these decentralized networks, we can shape an internet that works for everyone — one that prioritizes privacy, creativity, and authentic connections.

The time to join the open social web is now. Dive in, explore, and help build the future of the internet. No-one can stop you.

Daniel van Strien, a machine learning librarian at Hugging Face, took a million Bluesky posts and turned them into a dataset expressly for training AI models:

“This dataset could be used for “training and testing language models on social media content, analyzing social media posting patterns, studying conversation structures and reply networks, research on social media content moderation, [and] natural language processing tasks using social media data,” the project page says. “Out of scope use” includes “building automated posting systems for Bluesky, creating fake or impersonated content, extracting personal information about users, [and] any purpose that violates Bluesky's Terms of Service.””

There was an outcry among users, who felt that they hadn’t consented to such an activity. The idea that a generative AI model could potentially be used to build new content based on users’ work without their participation, consent, or awareness was appalling.

Van Strien eventually saw that his act was a violation and subsequently removed the dataset, writing an apology in a Bluesky post:

I've removed the Bluesky data from the repo. While I wanted to support tool development for the platform, I recognize this approach violated principles of transparency and consent in data collection. I apologize for this mistake.

Which is true! Just because something can be done, that doesn’t mean it should be. It was a violation of community norms even if it wasn’t a legal violation.

Bluesky subsequently shared a statement with 404 Media and The Verge about its future intentions:

“Bluesky is an open and public social network, much like websites on the Internet itself. Just as robots.txt files don't always prevent outside companies from crawling those sites, the same applies here. We'd like to find a way for Bluesky users to communicate to outside orgs/developers whether they consent to this and that outside orgs respect user consent, and we're actively discussing how to achieve this.”

It turns out a significant number of users moved away from X not because of the far-right rhetoric that’s become prevalent on the platform, but because they objected to their content being used to train AI models by the company. Many of them were aghast to discover that building a training dataset on Bluesky was even possible. This event has illustrated, in a very accessible way, the downside of an open, public, permissionless platform: the data is available to anyone.

There is a big difference in approaches here: on X, models are trained on platform data by the platform owner, for its own profit, whereas on Bluesky, the platform is trying to figure out how to surface user consent and does not, itself, participate in training a model. But the outcome on both may be similar, in that the end result is a generative model trained on user data, which someone other than the people who wrote the underlying posts may profit from.

The same is true on Mastodon, although gathering a central dataset of every Mastodon post is much harder because of the decentralized nature of the network. (There is one central Bluesky interface and API endpoint; Mastodon has thousands of interoperating community instances with no central access point or easy way to search the whole network.) And, of course, it’s true of the web itself. Despite being made of billions of independent websites, the web has been crawled for datasets many times, for example by Common Crawl, as well as the likes of Google and Microsoft, which have well-established crawler infrastructure for their search engines. Because website owners generally want their content to be found, they’ve generally allowed search engine bots to crawl their content; using those bots to gather information that could be used to build new content using generative models was a bait and switch that wiped away decades of built-up trust.

So the problem Bluesky is dealing with is not so much a problem with Bluesky itself or its architecture, but one that’s inherent to the web itself and the nature of building these training datasets based on publicly-available data. Van Strien’s original act clearly showed the difference in culture between AI and open social web communities: on the former it’s commonplace to grab data if it can be read publicly (or even sometimes if it’s not), regardless of licensing or author consent, while on open social networks consent and authors’ rights are central community norms.

There are a few ways websites and web services can help prevent content they host from being swept up into training data for generative models. All of them require active participation from AI vendors: effectively they must opt in to doing the right thing.

1. Block AI crawlers using robots.txt. A robots.txt file has long been used to direct web crawlers. It’s a handshake agreement at best: there’s no legal enforcement, and we know that AI developers and vendors have sometimes ignored it.
2. Use Do Not Train. Spawning, a company led in part by Mat Dryhurst and the artist Holly Herndon, has established a Do Not Train registry that already contains 1.5B+ entries. The name was inspired by the Do Not Track standard to opt out of user tracking, which was established in 2009 but never widely adopted by advertisers (who had no incentive to do so). Despite those challenges, Do Not Train has been respected in several new models, including Stable Diffusion.
3. Use ai.txt to dictate how data can be used. Spawning has also established ai.txt, an AI-specific version of robots.txt that dictates how content can be used in training data.
4. Establish a new per-user standard for consent. All of the above work best on a per-site basis, but it’s hard for a platform to let a crawler know that some users consent to having their content being used as training data while others do not. Bluesky is likely evaluating how this might work on its platform; whatever is established there will almost certainly also work on other decentralized platforms like Mastodon. I imagine it might include on-page metadata and tags incorporated into the underlying AT Protocol data for each user and post.

I’m in favor of legislation to make these measures binding instead of opt-in. Without binding measures, vendors are free to prioritize profit over user rights, perpetuating a cycle of exploitation. The key here is user consent: I should be able to say whether my writing, photos, art, etc, can be used to train an AI model. If my content is valuable enough, I should have the right to sell a license to it for this (or any) purpose. Today, that is impossible, and vendors are arguing that broad collection of training data is acceptable under fair use rules.

This won’t stifle innovation, because plenty of content is available and many authors do consent to for their work to be used in training data. It doesn’t ban AI or prevent its underlying mechanisms from working. It simply gives authors a say in how their work is used.

By prioritizing user consent and accountability, we can create a web where innovation and respect for creators coexist, without stifling innovation or disallowing entire classes of technology. That’s the fundamental vision of an open social web: one where everyone has real authorial control over their content, but where new tools can be built without having to ask for permission or go through gatekeepers. We’re very close to realizing it, and these conversations are an important way to get there.

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 impact is unmistakable. This year, ProPublica has averaged 11.8 million page views per month on- and off-platform (views on propublica.org and on aggregators such as Apple News and MSN). That represented a jump of 22 percent since 2022. It also just passed 200,000 followers on Instagram and has nearly 130,000 followers on YouTube.

It has partially filled the demand for local reporting that has resulted from the brutal realities of the newspaper industry’s consolidation. But it has also found relevance by being serious and focused, instead of giving way to many legacy media outlets’ impulse to lure back readers with games and frivolous lifestyle columns.

[…] I can only hope, for the sake of our democracy, that ProPublica will spawn imitators and provide competition to spur for-profits to be a better version of themselves.”

You can go read ProPublica here — its articles are all free to read and made available to republish under a Creative Commons license. If you have the means, you might also consider a donation.

ProPublica can also be followed on Mastodon, BlueSky, and Threads.

Here’s the full Washington Post article.

Like many of you, I received a survey today with the title: “What is your dream for Mozilla?” I filled it in, but the potential for Mozilla is so expansive and critical to the future of the internet that I wanted to address my thoughts in greater depth here.

Mozilla describes its mission as follows:

Our mission is to ensure the Internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all. An Internet that truly puts people first, where individuals can shape their own experience and are empowered, safe and independent.

I believe Mozilla is best placed to achieve this goal by explicitly fostering an ecosystem of open, accessible software that promotes user independence, privacy, and safety. It should be a facilitator, supporter, and convener through which projects that promote these values thrive.

What should its next chapter look like in an internet increasingly dominated by corporate interests? Mozilla has the tools, the history, and the mission to reclaim its role as a pioneer of the open web. But doing so requires bold steps and a renewed focus on impact and innovation.

A mission focus on impact

Its success should be determined through impact. It should publish an impact report that shows how it has spread usable, private, open software worldwide, and solicit donations based on that activity. How has Mozilla prevented a monopoly of ad-driven surveillance technology in different markets? How has Mozilla helped people keep themselves safe online while seeking reproductive healthcare? How has Mozilla tech been used in authoritarian regions to support community well-being? It should clarify its roadmap for turning its mission into measurable outcomes, and then be unashamed about fundraising based on this directed mission. These focused impact reports would guide internal strategy, demonstrate accountability, and inspire public and donor trust.

Conversely, I believe Mozilla is not a media company. That means it should not attempt to be Consumer Reports; we don’t need it to navigate the world of AI for us or tell us what to buy for Christmas. Those are valuable pursuits, but Mozilla should leave them to existing technology media companies.

Impact-focused products that bring something new to the table

I believe this impact focus means that it should not seek to charge consumers for its products. If the mission is to make the internet open, accessible, private, and safe for individuals, as much friction towards achieving that goal should be removed as possible.

Many of Mozilla’s efforts already fall in line with this mission. The Firefox browser itself is an open, anti-surveillance alternative to corporate-driven browsers like Chrome, although it has fallen behind. This is in part because of anti-competitive activity from companies like Google, and in part because some of the most interesting innovations in the browser space have happened elsewhere: for example, Arc’s radical changes to browser user experience are really compelling, and should probably have been a Mozilla experiment.

Firefox Relay — which makes it easy to hide your email address when dealing with a third party — and Mozilla VPN are similarly in line at first glance. But because the VPN is little more than a wrapped Mullvad VPN, with revenue splitting between the two organizations, it isn’t really adding anything new. In a similar vein, Relay is very similar to DuckDuckGo’s email protection, among others. And why is one branded as Firefox and one as Mozilla? I’m sure the organization itself has an answer to this, but I couldn’t begin to tell you. (For what it’s worth, Mozilla seems to agree about the distraction and has scaled back support for these services.)

AI is a new, hot technology, but there’s nothing really new for Mozilla to do here, either. Many vendors are working on AI privacy, because that’s where a lot of the real revenue is: organizations with privacy needs that relate to sensitive information. There is no reason why Mozilla will be the best at creating these solutions, or differentiated in doing so.

Instead, to paraphrase Bill Clinton: it’s the web, stupid.

If Firefox is the biggest, most impactful software product in Mozilla’s arsenal today, how can it bring it back to prominence? One interesting route might be to use it as a way for third parties to explore the future of the browser. Mozilla can ship its own Firefox user experience, but what if it was incredibly simple for other people to also build wildly remixed browsers? Could Mozilla build unique features, like privacy layers tailored for vulnerable users, that competitors don’t offer?

Projects like Zen Browser already use core Firefox to build new experiences, but there’s a lot of coding involved, and they’re not discoverable from within Firefox itself. What if they were? One can imagine Firefox browsers optimized for everything from artists and activists to salespeople and investors, all available from a browser marketplace. The authors of those experiences would, by sharing their unique browser remixes, help spread the Firefox browser overall. While browsers like Chrome serve corporate goals around ads and analytics, the Mozilla mission gives Firefox a mandate to be a playground for innovation. It should be that. (And, yes, AI can play a supporting role here too.)

Note that while I think products should be made available to consumers free of charge, that doesn’t mean that Mozilla shouldn’t make money. For example, if there’s revenue in specific experiences for certain enterprise or partner use cases, why not explore that? Enterprise offerings could directly fund Mozilla’s open-source projects, reinforcing its mission.

Truly supporting a vibrant open web

While Mozilla’s products are key to advancing its mission, its influence can extend far beyond the browser. Mozilla has the potential to be a home base for similar projects that have the potential to create a more open, private, safe and self-directed web.

While that might mean support technically — developer resources, libraries, and guides — the most burning needs for user-centric open source projects are often unrelated to code. These include:

• Experience design. Most open source projects lean towards coding as a core competency and aren’t able to provide the same polished user experiences as commercial software. Mozilla could bridge the gap by providing training and direct resources to elevate the design of user-centric open source projects, and to prepare these projects to work well with designers.
• Legal help. Some projects need help with boilerplate documents like privacy policies, terms of service agreements, and contributor license agreements; others need assistance figuring out licensing; some will have more individual legal needs. It’s highly unlikely that most projects have the ability to produce this in-house, meaning they either leave themselves open to liabilities by not getting legal advice, or have to retain legal help at a high cost to themselves. Mozilla can help.
• Policy assistance. Mozilla could help projects navigate complex regulatory environments, such as GDPR or CCPA compliance or lobbying for user-first policies globally.
• Funding. Offering grants or investments for vetted open source projects could amplify Mozilla’s impact. It’s done this in the past a little bit through its defunct WebFWD accelerator and specific grants, and it’s doing a version of this today with its accelerator for advancing open source AI. There’s room for a wider scope here, and a little bit of a carrot-and-stick approach: for example, funding could be contingent on a project demonstrating its human-centered approach and being willing to work with designers.
• Go-to-market strategy. Mozilla could provide guidance on launching and scaling projects, including identifying its first users, building community, and targeting messaging to them. Mozilla could host workshops on community engagement and messaging, enabling projects to scale effectively.
• Regional impact. Different geographic communities have different needs. Regional accelerators could deliver it as a curriculum to local cohorts of open source teams. Regional accelerators could support open-source teams with tailored workshops and local mentorship, building capacity while addressing regional challenges.

A centralized Mozilla hub could provide templates, guides, and access to expert mentorship for projects to tackle legal, design, and policy hurdles. One-to-one help could be provided for the projects with the most potential to meaningfully fulfill Mozilla’s impact goals. And through it all, Mozilla can act as a connector: between the projects themselves, and to people and organizations in the tech industry who want to help mission-driven projects.

By creating a thriving ecosystem of user-centric open-source projects, Mozilla can ensure its mission outlasts individual products.

The dream of the nineties is alive in Mozilla

Mozilla has the tools, the history, and the mission to make the internet better for everyone. By fostering innovation and empowering communities, it can reclaim its role as a leader in the fight for an open web. Now is the time for bold action — and a strong focus on its mission.

That’s my dream for Mozilla. Now, what’s yours?