“The world's biggest academic association of genocide scholars has passed a resolution saying the legal criteria have been met to establish Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, its president said on Monday.” To say so is not to justify the Oct 7 attacks. But genocide is never justifiable. To those who wonder why Americans are concerned about this war over others: it’s because we’re deeply involved. Our money is paying for this. It’s a part of US foreign policy. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-is-committing-genocide-gaza-scholars-association-says-2025-09-01/

Can newsrooms become social platforms themselves? Should they? The future belongs to organizations that understand their communities, not just their analytics. In this post, I dig into a reader question that speaks to the future of social, newsrooms, and AI.

Ben Werdmuller

Can newsrooms become social platforms?

How community-first thinking can help newsrooms survive AI

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but decentralization doesn’t prevent you from having to adhere to laws and regulations.

I think this is super-interesting. Future developments, including using the web payments API, feel promising - a way of funding the #Fediverse. https://wedistribute.org/2025/08/introducing-crowdbucks/

If you have something you'd like to share with ProPublica's journalists, who deeply investigate abuses of trust and power in the public interest, here's how to that:

How to Contact ProPublica or Send a Tip Securely — ProPublica

If we're thinking about building GitHub alternatives, let's build ones that host not just code but everything involved in building software, including the community work involved in validating assumptions and making sure we're solving real problems, equitably, for the people we're trying to help.

The thing about so-called 'creeping fascism' is that it doesn't actually creep. It's loud and overt. What's insidious is how quickly those loud, overt changes are normalized.

I used to check into every restaurant and bar on Foursquare. Those thousands of location pins felt like memories. Now they feel like evidence. New piece on how our voluntary self-surveillance became a potential tool of authoritarian control - and what we might do about it:

Ben Werdmuller

Lifelogging under fascism

How self-tracking became self-incrimination

On bridging between networks vs cross-posting: "They’re similar, but they’re different in some important ways. Notably, bridging results in more unified conversations, while cross-posted conversations are more fragmented." That's why Bridgy Fed's approach is so interesting - and, imo, important.

A New Social

Bridging vs cross-posting

When we talk about what we do here, one topic that comes up often is bridging vs cross-posting. They’ve both been around for a long time, and the...

#Fediverse

"Yes, you read that right. A law supposedly designed to protect children now requires victims of sexual assault to submit government IDs to access support communities."

Techdirt

Didn’t Take Long To Reveal The UK’s Online Safety Act Is Exactly The Privacy-Crushing Failure Everyone Warned About

Well, well, well. The “age assurance” part of the UK’s Online Safety Act has finally gone into effect, with its age checking requirements...