stephen.news

hypertext, words and more

Blogging

  • So long Twitter, hello fediverse

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    4 min read

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    For as long as I’ve known the web, I have known the little textarea element. It’s a simple element. In all likelihood, it’s just about as ubiquitous as the input tag on websites. It’s a captivating little thing. Before the modern inventions of React or complex JavaScript libraries, all it ever really contained was text.

    I suppose that’s the case to this today. But, it has long evolved into a springboard for authoring webpages. Modern publication inventions such as tweets, blogs, posts, blocks and countless others all stem from the textarea (sprinkle in some JavaScript magic, some drop zones and you have yourself a little “composer” where you can add images, video and more).

    Looking over the W3C spec for the textarea and looking back on SMS character limits (they were varied to say the least), it doesn’t take much imagination to see why Twitter came about in the first place. It seemed that short-form blogging was always destined to become a thing. Twitter’s success can largely be attributed to the fact that there’s really a lack of competition in the short-form blogging space.

    Tumblr and WordPress have always occupied the space between short and long-form blogging, sure. But, the spiritual successor to status messages (aka away messages)? Twitter has owned that (and marketed themselves as such) ever since it became a mainstream social network.

    While Twitter’s previous management has a long and well-documented history of running this company into the ground, Musk maintains no exception either. He’s nosediving and it’s headed for a calamitous user exodus. With no Trust & Safety board and a hostile CEO at the helm, banning tweets to Mastodon, banning journalists, then re-instating some of them — he’s clearly on a tyrannical, pathetic war path toward creating a platform that benefits Elon, elites and promotes a right-wing stochastic terrorist echo chamber.

    Needless to say, I’m getting the heck out of dodge. Like many others before me, I am kissing my neat little Twitter handle goodbye. Meanwhile, I was enthralled and delighted by Matt Mullenweg’s Decoder interview. There’s a brief point where he discusses what it means to be a good steward of Tumblr and how it has humbled him. Between Automattic’s Tumblr, the fediverse and this blog (which is also powered by WordPress an Automattic invention), I’m absolutely delighted to leave Twitter behind. Not to mention, the kind folks at Tumblr are considering adding ActivityPub support to their network which would effectively make Tumblr that largest Mastodon instance on the fediverse.

    You may be asking, “but, wait — how will I find my friends on Mastodon?!” Well, I have some good news! First off, don’t deactivate your Twitter. Follow these steps to get started with Mastodon

    1. First, join an instance. Doesn’t matter where you join! You can move freely about the fediverse. Think of each instance like an email handle.
    2. Next, add your Mastodon handle to your Twitter profile (this will make it easier for folks to find you in the fediverse).
    3. Finally, go here and sign in with your Twitter creds to find your friends who have also moved to the fediverse: movetodon.org

    With your help Twitter can be given a proper burial. It should go down as one of the worst acquisitions in business history and become the cautionary tale that it deserves. The textarea and microblogging on the other hand is never going away. In fact, I would argue that the slow death of Twitter reveals what we all want deep down — each of us want to own a little piece of web. One step closer to a de-commodified web utopia.

    Update: Elon banned links to Instagram, Mastodon and other social platforms and then reversed that decision. Then ran a poll on wether or not to step down, which ended with 58% in favor of him stepping down. Despite claiming he would abide by the results, there’s been no indication he would do so. Even more concerning, it appears he’s spellbound by the idea of restricting poll voting on Twitter to Blue subscribers. Welcome to hell, Elon.

    If you are so inclined, you can find me in several places on the web now!

    I’m on Tumblr where I may shitpost, share photos, re-blog cool things and whatnot: tumblr.com/petrey

    Elsewhere, on the fediverse I have several handles. However, I’m mostly here with my fellow hackers and unix computer club community: tilde.zone/@petrey

    Follow me wherever you’d like, but wherever you go, this blog remains ✨

  • Bokeh: A Privacy-focused Photo-sharing Network

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    4 min read

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    Fellow blogger, writer, front-end engineer, and John Gruber fan (who doesn’t like Daring Fireball seriously?) — Tim Smith of BrightPixels is Kickstarting probably the coolest thing I’ve seen in a while. If you like services like Letterboxd or Micro.blog I think you’ll enjoy this Kickstarter.

    More on that in a bit. But first, let’s back up. If you follow the blog here, you know I’m no fan of Facebook. No surprise there. There’s been some interesting developments recently concerning Facebook:

    Oh. Fun. 2.8B fake accounts.

    That. Is fucking insane. A huge admittance.

    Our precious fragile WWW is dire peril ya’ll. It’s up to us. It’s time to dump Facebook. Zuckerberg’s recent pivot to “encryption” and “privacy” is a nothing short of malarkey and an attempt to circumvent potential FCC fines for future data-mishandling. He knows Facebook is bleeding users and there’s a reason why Instagram’s co-founder left Facebook last year.

    To make matter worst, Instagram is horrible for your mental health. We spend way too much time peering into the black mirror of Instagram. It’s driving many of us into depression, others into despair, and for others inspiring fear and hate.

    Magic Mirror, on the wall, who, now, is the fairest one of all?

    So yeah. Facebook is horrible. There’s really no disputing that Facebooks suite of social media applications are tearing apart the web, our mental health, and society. *sighs*

    Enter Bokeh. A refreshing new take on photo-sharing.

    If you’re a fan of MLTSHP (or the predecessor MLKSHK), I think you’ll enjoy Bokeh’s vision (from the Kickstarter):

    Bokeh will be ad-free, have a chronological timeline, and will be private by default. That means that all accounts will start off as private. Public accounts will have an RSS feed, will have the option to cross-post to other social networks, and will support custom domains. All accounts will have an indie web compatible export so you can self-host if you want to.

    People won’t be able to find you by name, but will instead need to know your username to find you. Bokeh will never display publicly who follows you or who you follow. If someone has requested to follow you 3 times and you’ve declined, the app will prompt you to block them. In other words, these are your pictures and I want you to have precise control over who sees them.

    A still from Tim’s Kickstarter pitch-video.

    I think this is really compelling privacy-focused concept. I’m an avidly public persona online, and that’s just me personally — but everyone isn’t into that. So, having this privacy-by-default option is really rad. Moreover, I’m digging the pricing strategy:

    Bokeh will have individual and family accounts. Individual accounts will cost $3/month or $30/year, and family accounts will cost $5/month or $50/year. You’ll be able to add up to 5 people to a family account, including the account admin. By backing this project now, you’ll get a discount and allow me to pay for the initial development.

    This right here is what hopefully keeps hate-speech at bay, and might even eliminate bots and spam. I firmly believe pay-to-play models will save our online communities. Whereas, free-to-play models might become (predictably) the last bastions of hate-speech.

    I really like Tim’s blog. I really like Tim’s idea and that’s why I’m backing his project. I really want privacy to win. But more importantly I want us to win. The more we use services like Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp — the more we lose. For the longest time, I thought Apple was uniquely positioned to bring us a privacy-focused photo-network but that never really panned out did it? It’s time for a change. Isn’t it time we had a real place to share photos with our friends?

    Visit the Kickstarter Here

  • What of the Tumblelogs?

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    4 min read

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    Wasn’t Tumblr remarkable?

    I don’t travel to Tumblr’s realm anymore. But, I know plenty who still do. Even with their bullshit adult-content ban — it’s still a great resource for artists, designers and those who crave visual stimulation. Hell, it’s a neat place to get your toes wet in blogging. The adult-content ban was probably predetermined to happen anyways. Now that it operates at the behest of the Verizon/Yahoo!/AOL mega-corp. It’s a bummer — a wet blanket on creativity, social-sharing and generally just not a good idea to mimic the tightly manicured faux-reality of censored nipples and porcelain skin of Instagram.

    Frankly, I’m worried for Tumblr. I’m also deeply concerned for the web.

    But let’s back up for a bit. What even is Tumblr? Tumblr, the word — comes from tumblelogs. One could call it a sub-culture of blogging, but really that’s affording it too much. It’s really just an approach to blogging that was born out of the quick-and-dirty modus operandi many of us have. I mean, look at Instagram (or even Snapchat) stories. That quick-and-dirty framework is what catalyzes content to virility. It’s what draws people to the next big thing. Be it MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, or even Ello (remember that one?). Anyways, Tumbling as it came to be known, is now colloquially synonymous with blogging. Thanks to Tumblr, blogging was truly born.

    From a 2005 post from kottke.org:

    A tumblelog is a quick and dirty stream of consciousness, a bit like a remaindered linksstyle linklog but with more than just links. They remind me of an older style of blogging, back when people did sites by hand, before Movable Type made post titles all but mandatory, blog entries turned into short magazine articles, and posts belonged to a conversation distributed throughout the entire blogosphere. Robot Wisdom and Bifurcated Rivets are two older style weblogs that feel very much like these tumblelogs with minimal commentary, little cross-blog chatter, the barest whiff of a finished published work, almost pure editing…really just a way to quickly publish the “stuff” that you run across every day on the web.

    I like this description because it gets right to the point (RIP to the 404s). Now that I think about it, my blog is basically a tumblelog of links, videos and highly-opinionated posts on technology. But the other half of my life is chronicled elsewhere on Twitter and Instagram. Frankly, I’m comfortable with that for now. But I would love for all of my content to live here on this blog. The quickly diminishing youth market of Tumblr knows that too.

    I can guarantee Zuckerberg understands that too. He literally wants to merge as many of Facebook’s services into one. I think that’s a really bad idea. I don’t think it’s inherently dumb or evil to use Facebook to connect with your friends or family. But I do think it’s dumb to have Facebook be at the center of your life.

    Your blog, website or tumblelog should be at the center of your digital footprint. Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr are just the appendages. Your blog or website is the body. So protect your body.

    Step one: buy a domain name. Step two: start a blog with WordPress. It’s never been cheaper to self-host a website or blog. This is not to be confused with WordPress.com. Which, is also a blogging service (not unlike Tumblr) that has its own merits. However, self-hosting with WordPress(dot org) the past several years has opened my eyes, it’s been pretty inexpensive, and very reliable. For what it’s worth, I have hosted my blog at DigitalOcean since day one. Here’s a free $100 credit if you’re interested. DigitalOcean has a one-click install option for WordPress, read more about that here.

    Blogs (as I have frequently been writing about lately), or tumblelogs — pick your poison. They’re here to stay, even if the social network appendages in your life disappear.

  • Revisiting Blogging in 2019

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    2 min read

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    Jason frequently hits the nail on the head. It’s pretty rare that predictions of his don’t hold water. He’s the proprietor of the kottke.org. One of those great places your can find on the web where name is the address.

    2019 is surely going to be a golden year for bloggers, web journals, and anyone who has “exited social media”. The perfect storm has arrived. The Facebook exodus. The Snapchat well has dried up. The paywalls are going up left and right. Hell, even George R. R. Martin is migrating his old LiveJournal posts to a personal author blog he can manage on his own. My personal favorite — people and organizations are leaving Medium (and going back to WordPress), and honestly it’s been a long-time coming. Medium’s open paywall system hasn’t fared very well. Apparently the revenue falls short, and the traffic is low-quality.

    What’s old is new again. 2019 is the year we take back blogging ✌️