Sitting in a panel discussion about the effect of social media on news consumption and the open social web networks haven't been mentioned. It's all Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, X. But any newsroom that *isn't* paying attention to Bluesky and Mastodon is missing a trick.

Timely advice from WIRED. It’s going to be a long summer. #Democracy

Ben Werdmuller

How to Protest Safely in the Age of Surveillance

It's going to be a long summer. WIRED has some advice for being prepared.

I'm knee-deep in migrating from Known to Ghost. It's a little harder than I'd like - I think I need to export into an interim format and then build something in Node to convert my HTML into Lexical JSON. But I'm getting there. It's kind of an emotional transition to move from something I wrote to something I didn't, but it's the right decision for me (and Ghost is awesome).

What characteristics do you think are important in a technology leader in a non-technical organization like a non-profit or a newsroom?

However you feel about AI, it's a big part of the modern software landscape. @ProPublica is hiring a two-year AI engineering fellow in collaboration with @The Lenfest Institute. We're not cheerleaders or naysayers; we want to explore ways that it might support the newsroom, while remaining anchored in real human problems and strongly adhering to our values, standards, and strict need for safety.

ProPublica

<p style="margin-bottom: 1em;">ProPublica is an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. With...

#media #journalism #ai

Still baffling to me how people asking for basic human rights and civil liberties are painted as far left. They’re normal asks and enjoyed in many other countries. The rhetoric is just designed to stop the conversation; it’s not a serious discussion.

One of the most important things we can be doing is imagining better futures and then describing them in detail. Design fiction, science fiction, speculative fiction, and - dare I say it - business fiction all matter and are a huge part of building the future.

I published my most in-depth post ever today. It’s about funding the open social web platforms that have the potential to unseat democracy-eroding services like X. I’d love your feedback.

Ben Werdmuller

Let's fund the open social web

A pro-social approach to building better platforms

I thought this interview with Jay Graber was pretty insightful. Ignore the dumb headline; I'm excited for what's next for the open social web. #Technology

Ben Werdmuller

Bluesky Is Plotting a Total Takeover of the Social Internet

[Kate Knibbs at WIRED] This is an insightful interview with Bluesky CEO Jay Graber. The headline here overreaches quite a bit, and needlessly desc...

I’ve written before about what I’d do if I ran Bluesky or Mastodon. But what if I started from scratch? What would it look like to build a new open social platform - one that's private-by-default, human-centered, and sustainable from day one? Here’s the blueprint I’d follow:

Ben Werdmuller

If I started fresh

What would I do if I was building an open social web platform from scratch?

#Fediverse #opensource #socialmedia