Werd I/O

[Martin SFP Bryant at The New Stack]

"How do you get started if you want to integrate your own software with ActivityPub? [Evan] Prodromou has written a new book on this very topic, and we caught up with him to explore the practicalities of linking up with the fediverse."

I'm convinced that ActivityPub is the underlying standard that all future social software will be built on. Evan is one of the founding parents of the fediverse, and this article is a great overview. His new book will be an invaluable resource for everyone who wants to embark upon this journey.

#Fediverse

[Link]

[George Hammond at the Financial Times]

"Y Combinator, the San Francisco start-up incubator that launched Airbnb, Reddit, Stripe and Coinbase, is backing a weapons company for the first time, entering a sector it has previously shunned."

Specifically, its a low-cost cruise missile startup, which the Financial Times reports would be suitable for use in a potential war between the US and China. The cruise missiles are 10x smaller and 10x cheaper than today's alternatives, but presumably still murder people.

Also from the article:

"There is “a very interesting situation where geopolitical heat and the end of zero-interest rate policies have made people become more pragmatic,” said the founder of one start-up that was in the same group of YC-funded companies as Ares. [...] “People support builders doing cool, hard stuff.”"

Very interesting indeed. Certainly, you can make money by selling weapons of war. But should you? And in what world is killing people "cool stuff"?

Silicon Valley's origins are in large part military, of course, so this shouldn't be too much of a surprise. But for a while there, in the wake of the this-is-for-everyone radical inclusion of the web (which was not a military creation), it seemed like tech was heading in a different direction. It's disappointing to see that this was ephemeral at best.

#Technology

[Link]

[Tara Tarakiyee]

"I want to talk about three examples I see of cracks that are starting to form which signal big challenges in the future of OSS."

I had a knee-jerk initial reaction to this post - what open source bubble?! - but Tara Tarakiyee makes some important points here about our dependence on open source code and how that might change over time.

The through line to all of them is about money. The OSI's new "open source AI" definition is loose because AI vendors likely couldn't make money otherwise (although whether they can make money anyway is still up for debate); source-available licenses have become prevalent because it's easier to sell commercial licenses and therefore make a living building software; much open source software was precariously funded through European Commission Next Generation Internet grants, which are now evaporating.

While we can stand for pure open source values all we like, the people who build open source software need to make a living: food must go on the table and they need a roof over their heads. Ideally their compensation would extend beyond those basic necessities.

This has been the perennial problem for open source: how can it be sustainable for the people who build it? We're not launching into a post-monetary Star Trek future any time soon. In the meantime, people need to be paid for their work, or open source runs the risk of being a hobbyist-only endeavor.

People won't pay for software that they don't need to pay for. I suspect open-core, which opens the core of a software platform while monetizing high-value extensions, is the best answer we can hope for. But even that might not be realistic.

#Technology

[Link]

[Andy Jassy on LinkedIn]

Andy Jassy on using Amazon Q, the company's generative AI assistant for software development, internally:

"The average time to upgrade an application to Java 17 plummeted from what’s typically 50 developer-days to just a few hours. We estimate this has saved us the equivalent of 4,500 developer-years of work (yes, that number is crazy but, real)."

"The benefits go beyond how much effort we’ve saved developers. The upgrades have enhanced security and reduced infrastructure costs, providing an estimated $260M in annualized efficiency gains."

Of course, Amazon is enormous, and any smaller business will need to scale down those numbers and account for efficiencies that may have occurred between engineers there.

Nevertheless, these are incredible figures. The savings are obviously real, allowing engineers to focus on actual work rather than the drudgery of upgrading Java (which is something that absolutely nobody wants to spend their time doing).

We'll see more of this - and we'll begin to see more services which allow for these efficiency gains between engineers across smaller companies, startups, non-profits, and so on. The dumb companies will use this as an excuse for reductions in force; the smart ones will use it as an opportunity to accelerate their team's productivity and build stuff that really matters.

#AI

[Link]

[The 404 Media team]

"In the last year, we learned that the technical infrastructure exists now for even non-technical journalists to build a sustainable site that can receive money from subscribers. [...] If you are a journalist reading this thinking about going out on their own: the tech is there for you to do so with very little know-how needed."

404 Media has been a new shining light in technology journalism. That it's worked out for them, having invested a thousand dollars each at the outset, is delightful.

And then there's this:

"The biggest challenge that we face is discoverability. To the extent possible, we don’t want to have to rely on social media algorithms, search engines that don’t index us properly and which are increasingly shoving AI answers into their homepages, and an internet ecosystem that is increasingly polluted by low-quality AI spam."

So to counter that, they're building community. Which just so happens to be what every single newsroom should also be doing.

Here's to another year of 404.

#Media

[Link]

[Jess Weatherbed at The Verge]

"A federal judge has blocked the Federal Trade Commission’s ban on noncompete agreements that make it difficult for workers to join their employers’ rivals or launch competing businesses. The ruling prevents the FTC’s ban on noncompete agreements from taking effect on September 4th, though the agency could still appeal the decision."

This is such a blow. Non-competes are already illegal in California; they're inherently anti-worker and are also very clearly a hindrance to innovation.

Hopefully the FTC appeals. The judge's argument that it would cause "irreparable harm" is nonsense: any business that has to protect itself by not allowing its workforce to go work for a competitor is obviously not competitive at what it does. Instead, businesses should seek to do good work and create conditions so that workers don't want to leave in the first place. The solution is a better workplace, not legal restrictions that prevent people from finding a different employer.

#Business

[Link]

[Erin Kissane]

"Back in the fall, I wrote about a research project I was diving into with Darius Kazemi. Now, after a few months of prepping and conducting interviews with people who run Mastodon and Hometown servers about how they govern their parts of the network and then many more months of analyzing and writing up what we found, we’re releasing our findings. We found so much."

This is an impressively in-depth report by Erin Kissane and Darius Kazemi, which has some important conclusions about how moderation can work in a federated system (including the not-insignificant conclusion that it can work). There's room for more tooling, and better communication between instances - but this is all doable stuff.

The shorter satellite documents - opportunities for funders and developers who want to serve this ecosystem and a quick-start guide to fediverse governance - are super helpful, too.

#Fediverse

[Link]

[Open Society Foundations]

"In February 2024, the Open Society Foundations issued a call for applications for a convening in which selected participants would share their visions of an AI-mediated future."

I thought this, from the concluding observations, was telling:

"Participants were generally reluctant or unable to articulate exactly how AI might transform the information ecosystem. [...] Relatively few submitted scenarios described an AI-driven transformation in specific detail, and it was clear that many participants who were convinced that AI would fundamentally restructure the information ecosystem also had no specific point of view on how that might occur."

In other words, while many people in journalism see that this set of technologies may transform their industry, and are potentially excited or terrified that it will, they have no idea how that will happen. This is the very definition of hype: one can imagine people proclaiming that blockchain, or push notifications, or RealMedia, or WebTV might do the same.

It's not that there are no uses for AI (just like it's not that there are no uses for blockchain). It will find its way into end-user applications, underpin newsroom tools, and power data-driven newsroom investigations, without a doubt. But the hype far exceeds that, and will eventually, inevitably, deflate.

In the meantime, journalists are not as worried about the technologies themselves as who controls them:

"Throughout the application process and workshop discussions, it became clear that much of the conversation was not actually about AI, nor about journalism, nor about the current or future information ecosystem, but instead about power. It was clear that power, and the potential for transfers of power from one group to another, was the explicit or implicit subject of many of the submitted scenarios as well as the five final scenarios that were distilled from the workshop."

Technologists, in turn, were blind to these power dynamics, while simultaneously predicting more dramatic changes. There's a fundamental truth here: it's ultimately about money, and who controls the platforms that allow readers to read about the world around them.

Same as it ever was: that's been the struggle on the web since its inception. AI just shifts the discussion to a new set of platforms.

#AI

[Link]

[Alexander Saeedy and Dana Mattioli at The Wall Street Journal]

"The $13 billion that Elon Musk borrowed to buy Twitter has turned into the worst merger-finance deal for banks since the 2008-09 financial crisis."

"[...] The banks haven’t been able to offload the debt without incurring major losses—largely because of X’s weak financial performance—leaving the loans stuck on their balance sheets, or “hung” in industry jargon. The resulting write-downs have hobbled the banks’ loan books and, in one case, was a factor that crimped compensation for a bank’s merger department, according to people involved with the deal."

Let that sink in.

It's not like this was unpredictable: it was obvious that Elon Musk was not going to turn Twitter into a roaring success. While Twitter was, at its heart, a media company, Musk's direction has been a muddle of three sometimes-competing priorities: his long-held desire to create X, an "everything" app; his desire to build his own brand in an effort to boost his own equity and therefore wealth, sometimes in ways that got him in trouble with the SEC; and his desire to influence global politics.

There's no three-dimensional chess being played here; this likely isn't an intentional plan by Musk to write off the debt. It's simply narcissistic mismanagement, and one has to wonder how this will affect his businesses at Tesla and SpaceX in the longer term. There will come a time when shareholders declare that enough is enough - although given that they approved his ludicrous pay deal, perhaps that time isn't coming soon.

#Technology

[Link]

[Jess Weatherbed at The Verge]

"“Generative AI is ripping the humanity out of things. Built on a foundation of theft, the technology is steering us toward a barren future,” Procreate said on the new AI section of its website. “We think machine learning is a compelling technology with a lot of merit, but the path generative AI is on is wrong for us.”"

This is a company that knows its audience: the lack of concern for artist welfare demonstrated by AI vendors has understandably not made the technology popular with that community. Adobe got into trouble with its userbase for adding those generative AI features.

It's a great way for Procreate to deepen its relationship with artists and take advantage of Adobe's fall from grace. There's also something a bit deeper here: if work created with generative AI does run into copyright trouble at the hands of current and future lawsuits, work created with Procreate will be clean of those issues.

#AI

[Link]

[Surveillance Watch: They Know Who You Are]

"Surveillance Watch is an interactive map revealing the intricate connections between surveillance companies, their funding sources and affiliations."

This is a volunteer-driven, well-cited database of global surveillance companies and how they interrelate. It's very well-executed: a pleasure to use, and the visualizations show clearly how data is extracted to companies across the globe, skirting local privacy regulations in the process.

#Privacy

[Link]

[Anuj Ahooja and Sean Tilley at We Distribute]

"Starting today, Flipboard will let users search for and follow accounts from across the Fediverse from the comfort of their own dashboards. [...] This new feature isn’t just limited to Mastodon or PixelFed, but includes Threads profiles that opted in to Fediverse Sharing, such as MKBHD, Molly Jong-Fast, and Nilay Patel. You won’t need to have a Threads account to cross this boundary, but will still be able to see what your favorite creators are up to. This is a neat way of letting people dip their toes into the wider network, without needing to fully commit to it on day one."

This is the power of the open social web: you can follow someone who's publishing on social network A from social network B, and interact with them as if they were on the same network. Everyone can choose which social platforms that fit them best without having to sacrifice reach or the ability to follow people they care about.

Flipboard has been a leader in this space, and this is a major step forward. It, Threads, Mastodon, Ghost, Micro.blog and others are pushing the social web forward by embracing these standards - and there's a lot more to come. No company and no developer needs to ask anyone permission to join the network; they can opt to support the protocols and - boom! - they're in.

Every media company and every individual publisher should be jumping on this. I could not be more excited about the possibilities.

#Fediverse

[Link]

[Andy Kroll at ProPublica and Nick Surgey at Documented]

"Project 2025, the controversial playbook and policy agenda for a right-wing presidential administration, has lost its director and faced scathing criticism from both Democratic groups and former President Donald Trump. But Project 2025’s plan to train an army of political appointees who could battle against the so-called deep state government bureaucracy on behalf of a future Trump administration remains on track."

It's not hyperbole to look at these as training videos to enact a heavily right-wing America: one that is subject to Christian nationalist ideas and seeks to squash dissent. They discuss how to eliminate climate change protections and erase decades of progress on race and gender.

At any rate, it's a fascinating view on a movement that, regardless of your political views, clearly seeks to re-make America. In that sense they're a little like something from a Philip K Dick novel - or, dare I say it, the Handmaid's Tale.

#Democracy

[Link]

[Dan Kennedy at Media Nation]

"Four years ago, Boston lawyer and journalist James Barron wrote that the Watergate break-in may well have been an attempt to steal documents from Democratic Party headquarters showing that Nixon had taken $549,000 from the Greek government in order to help finance his 1968 campaign."

Dan Kennedy argues that there are parallels here with the story, reported a year ago, that Donald Trump might have partially funded his 2016 election campaign with an illegal contribution from the Egyptian government.

It does seem strange that the story hasn't been followed up on by either the press or the Democratic Party. What sticks out to me about Dan's commentary, though, is this:

"What makes a story stick is repetition — and without prominent Democrats coming out every day and giving journalists something to report on, it quickly withers away."

Should that be true? I'd hope that the press could find their own leads. Otherwise it, in effect, becomes a press release driven industry. I'm not disputing that it probably is true in reality, but I'd hope for a better dynamic.

#Democracy

[Link]

[Bill Grueskin in Columbia Journalism Review]

"What’s most important is that a disruptive start-up not be placed at the mercy of the old organization—which might see the upstart as a competitive threat and attempt to have it shut down or cause it to fail."

"[...] Newsroom managers must figure out if their current staff is equipped—intellectually, emotionally, technologically—to handle the pace of change in the business."

Interesting reflections here on newsrooms that split in order to incubate future-facing innovation alongside their legacy businesses. It seems like a good idea to me, if you can afford it: a pro-innovation culture is likely to shed the bureaucracy and processes that may be present in an older business. (This isn't just true for newspapers vs "digital", whatever digital is: it's also true for businesses that are set in an older version of the web.)

The trouble is, as this article notes, that these innovative newsrooms are likely to be so successful that they end up re-merging with the main newsroom and falling under its control. At that point the culture of innovation tends to die, which is something anyone in the tech industry who watched Yahoo acquire startups in the mid-2000s will recognize clearly.

So what's the solution? I think there isn't one. It may be more effective for the innovative newsrooms to be spun off completely, so that they aren't so much parallel sides of the same organization as new organizations entirely, with a more complete ability to reinvent how they work. My guess is that this would extend far beyond new modes of content and audience engagement and extend to the experience of working itself. After all, that's exactly what happened in tech - an exploration that, depending on the organization, was often positive for tech workers. Some people in news describe tech workers as "coddled"; I'd describe it more as "free to invent".

#Media

[Link]

[Sean Tilley at We Distribute]

"Following President Joe Biden’s exit from the 2024 election, Democratic supporters have gained a massive influx of energy and support all over the Web. Hours after the president made his announcement, Heidi Li Feldman, a law professor emeritus at Georgetown University, launched an ActBlue fundraiser comprising of Mastodon users."

It's been pretty successful: almost half a million dollars at the time this article was written. It's another example of how Mastodon users are politically engaged, more active per capita than any other social network, and ready to contribute.

It's also a facet of Mastodon's wider userbase that there were some criticisms this money was being raised for the Presidential election than, say, local mutual aid. From my perspective, both are important: perhaps there's a way to learn from this in order to fund a wider mutual aid campaign, but contributing to an election campaign to stop an authoritarian, nationalistic second Trump administration feels incredibly important.

Political purity tests and fractions unfortunately are a feature of Mastodon's communities, and will likely continue to be - but one positive way of looking at it is that it means they care, a lot, and are interested in ways to improve the lives of vulnerable people. That's an incredibly good thing that should give us all hope for the future.

#Fediverse

[Link]

[Matt Levine at Bloomberg]

"Here’s a thing. It costs $1. If you buy one, the next one will cost $2. If someone buys it, the next one will cost $4. Et cetera. The price of the thing always goes up, leaving every buyer (except the most recent one) with a large guaranteed profit. Of course they can’t sell the thing to realize the profit, but that too is a benefit: If they can’t sell, the price can’t go down.

"Man, 2019 was just amazing. That was an economic model that you could advertise."

It genuinely is incredible. Matt Levine is incredulous that anyone could think that they could avoid SEC regulation because something was "decentralized" - but even then, BitCloud wasn't really decentralized.

In a way, I'm a little envious: it seems like one could have raised millions and millions of dollars for some crypto venture and actually, with complete impunity, openly spent it on something else that really had nothing to do with a token scheme. Imagine what could have been funded that way!

As Matt points out:

"And then you could just take the money! And be like “what, I told you I wouldn’t spend it on developing the protocol, and I didn’t.”"

What a time. Anyway, I'm sure nothing like it is happening in the tech industry right now.

#Crypto

[Link]