What lessons can we learn about the fact that MCP got more adoption as a quasi-open standard in a few months than the entire fediverse stack has in nearly a decade? (Or two, depending on how you count.) Obviously, they’re in different domains, but there are some parallels. How might other open efforts piggyback on hype cycles like AI to bootstrap open efforts we could use to re-open the social web? Who’s integrating MCP interfaces into the ActivityPub stack?
This one was, obviously, bittersweet to write: we’re shutting down app hosting on Glitch. This post covers how everybody can export your apps & download your code. I didn’t get into where the Glitch community goes next, because honestly we’re still figuring it out, but it’s still the end of an era. I’ll have more to share about this later, of course, but I just wanted to make sure everyone got the news straight from me. If you have any questions, you can ask in the forum.
It’s been fun watching the unlikely rise of MCP as a standard, which is open and messy in a way that mimics the dynamics of the good parts of Web 2.0. Maybe something interesting will happen!
I would only add that this is a valid assertion about all of the major platforms funded by big tech. (Whether they are framed as non-profits or B corps or not.) It need not be intrinsic to the technology, but we do not yet have any meaningful large-scale counterexamples.
A bunch of tech CEOs are talking about being “AI-first”, the latest in a series of CEO fads like “return to office”, “founder mode” and “pivot to full fascism”. This one’s weird, though, because it only makes sense if… none of their workers are great at their jobs. https://www.anildash.com//2025/04/19/ai-first-is-the-new-return-to-office/
Truly my greatest professional joy is that, not only did we get to build a tool to help people stop AI bots from scraping up their work without consent, I was able to have our in-house artist create a SLOP sign to mark the spot where the bots expire.
If you are a non-profit or open source project that does good internet stuff, we’ll protect you for free. If not, then you can pay us money and we will hook you up. Either way, good tools to put you in control over the bots.
I took a look at the top “tech” podcasts and holy SHIT all but, like… 2? of them are just straight up fascist propaganda by VC firms promoting their defense investments or lifestyle scams from right-wing bros? Obviously we don’t need any more podcasts, but it made me think I should bring mine back.
