Standard Reader

Connected Places

Connected Places

Understanding how the new social web works

@laurenshof.online6readers130posts13d ago

LatestRecent writing

FR#164 – The Pope on Defederation

This week, the Catholic Church wrote one of the better diagnoses of why decentralised social networks keep struggling.

FR#163 – Decrypting Matrix

On the convergence towards private data on social networking protocols, and the connection to Matrix

FR#162 – EU Regulation Won’t Save Open Social Networks

The European Commission has decided not to extend the Digital Markets Act's interoperability rules to social media, closing off a potential pathway for adoption for open social networks.

FR#161 – Conference Edition

How the conferences FediForum and 2mr.social this week show how fediverse is trying to build connections with European politics, as well as with the atmosphere.

Federation Has a European Legal Problem

What the Russmedia ruling means for ActivityPub and atproto.

FR#160 – Everyone Wants Servers And Nobody Wants Servers

What makes a social network resilient?

FR#159 – Sovereign Tech Agency funds Mastodon

Mastodon has received a 600k grant by the Sovereign Tech Agency, and Surf has launched.

FR#158 – What is Mastodon for?

On AI and place, and how Mastodon gives tools to create communities at the instance level, but people experience 'place' at the federation level.

FR#157 – Social Software Distribution

Open social protocols are expanding beyond social media into the infrastructure developers use to build, distribute, and discover software. Three recent launches show what that looks like in practice.

FR#156 – Share Where?

On Mastodon's new Share button, and protocol ownership.

FR#155 – Where Does Community Live – updates

A big grab bag of news, that ties into the question of 'Where Does Community Live?'

FR#154 – Search and Community

Fediverse search engine Holos Discover shut down this week, showing structural issues how to distinguish between individual and community consent.