Mike Masnick notes, as the "Bluesky is dying" discourse moves into it's 3rd? week, that it's "a bit odd: when something is supposedly dying or irrelevant, journalists can’t stop writing about it". But the premise of these critiques is wrong as they "fundamentally misunderstand what people want from social media a…

"Deer.social is a soft fork of the official Bluesky client, offering enhanced features, customizable toggles, and a focus on high-impact improvements for power users" as options you can toggle on, like the ability to "see through quote blocks and detachment (nuclear block for quotes/reply chains)", ignore " !no-unauthentic…

In late April I was in Hamburg for Ahoy! 2025, the first European conference dedicated to the ATmosphere — the information ecosystem built atop of ATproto, the protocol underpinning Bluesky.

In late April I was in Hamburg for Ahoy! 2025, the first European conference dedicated to the ATmosphere - the information ecosystem built atop of ATproto, the protocol underpinning Bluesky. I proposed a couple of ideas for the unconference sessions, and came away with content for at least 5 posts, none of which I've found time to write.

A deep dive into the April 2025 "censorship" on Turkish Bluesky illustrates that government censorship on ATmosphere apps is limited and will become even less effective as more people exploit its decentralised nature.Context in brief:March 2025, the Turkish "government ordered X to restrict access to various X accounts ... associate…

Some thoughts on how Groundmist supports the ideas I'm developing for decentralised collective intelligence, written in preparation for an online workshop with the Groundmist developer and other interested people.

Boris tests Leaflet's new ATproto integration: "Leaflet has a great rich text editor that works well even on mobile web. It’s a block based editor... you can embed various fancy blocks, like Bluesky embeds, RSVPs... Each block might be a different lexicon"(on Discord): "here’s the record in my PDS ... Blocks with rich text fac…

When I saw this "Open space proposal by Boris (Mann) at Ahoy" I shelved my very similar proposal and proposed another, which was successful (good news) and scheduled at the same time as Boris' (bad news).Boris' idea is essential, imho, to my ideas for decentralised collective intelligence - a "long form, Markdown lexicon D…

The go-to article you need when you want to show how anything online can spiral into a commenting catastrophe, using as a case study "the website for ... a radio station in Melbourne... published a peppy, harmless instructional post for the making of an "Amazing Rainbow Tie-Dye Number Surprise Cake.""Thank god they took screens…

The 3rd post of the series focuses "on interoperability and composability—how we can combine data from multiple local-first applications, privately and seamlessly".The problem: by their nature, "Local-first software applications typically store data separately and independently", so it's fragmented. The lack of "commo…

Grjte's 2nd Groundmist post "to explore ... local-first AppViews for local-first data, similar to atproto's AppViews for public data" first points out that the protocol allows anyone "to build a wide variety of different views ... of public ... Personal Data Servers (PDSes). These interfaces are known as "AppViews&quo;…

Came across this via Boris Mann in the runup to Ahoy2025 - the very first time I saw someone developing the #ai4community tools I want for decentralised collective intelligence: "Groundmist echoes the design of AT Protocol... but applies these ideas and select elements of the protocol to local-first software and data... It uses Automerge, AT …

Boris Mann's personal notes on what he wants for what is essentially the private garden segment of #ai4communities: a "multi-player personal notes & publishing stack", a place to put "meeting notes, quick scratch notes, pages on their way to be published, links and a few comments, research from multiple web pages... your co…

"Skeets is a 3rd party iOS / iPad OS client for Bluesky" which I saw at the Ahoy conference. It's a good example of how Bluesky is more than a X alternative: it can be used by any (iOS-carrying) Bluesky user, but offers other features than Bluesky PBC's own app, including:"Keep reading position Edit posts Post notification…

Saw this presented at the Ahoy conference. It starts with a well argued outline of surveillance capitalism: "a few predominantly US and Chinese tech companies control information and public debate... users must disclose their most personal data to access ... [while] algorithms opaquely filter what users see ... freeing us from the common good…

"How would MyHub.ai evolve to become part of the ATmosphere?" - One of my suggested conversation topics at the Ahoy conference, April, 2025.

"Let's build a tool to help large organisations coordinate their Bluesky footprint, helping them get the most out of the platform" - One of my suggested conversation topics at the Ahoy conference, April, 2025.

Shawn Murphy channelling his inner Vulcan as he describes what happens when "two people only are having a conversation ... a particular magical thing ... call it Mind Melding". This is something similar to shared mental map, an idea I borrowed from England's relatively famous footback coach in the 1990s. But this isn't football…

Last month I published a couple of posts on X and Bluesky. They make a nice pair, so I'm including both, below, and taking this opportunity to ask for your perspective. I'd really value getting you and your organisation's views on both platforms in 2025, and I'd be happy to answer any questions in return.

" This new user agent is coming – but will it be something that's owned by one company & designed to extract from us, or owned by all of us & designed to empower us? We're building the latter."

From Sublime, who know a thing or two about curation: "At first, I saw using AI as a binary choice between soulless efficiency or becoming a luddite and preserving your authentic human creativity", but Claude changed that. "Curiosity is a better compass than cynicism... [stop] defending your territory [and] exploring what's pos…

"the Evil Housekeeper Problem... a principle of computer security ... once someone is in your hotel room with your laptop... the intruder has physical access, you are in much more trouble".Applying this to "the wrecking ball that is Elon Musk and President Trump’s DOGE... What happens if someone comes in and tells you that you’ll be…

Full title: "The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort and Confidence Effects From a Survey of Knowledge Workers", first viewed and discussed on Bluesky."higher confidence in GenAI is associated with less critical thinking, while higher self-confidence is associated with more crit…

OpenSocial's AI integration provides "a unique AI model trained on your specific platform data... Gaia Chatbot transforms how you access information, making every interaction a seamless exchange of knowledge discovery".Works with all AI providersautomatic tagging and classification"adapts in real time to user ... individualized…

If, like many, you think Bluesky is "Twitter, but with less Nazis", this post is for you.

"most people think AI is human more than half the time. Apparently, AI does, too" - and by providing good examples (fiction, poetry), she's convinced me that I can't tell the difference, either. Only SurferSeo comes out well as an automatic AI detector in all examples.The only content that most (but not all) detectors performed…

"a type-safe library to build automation at the top of ATProto/Bluesky API... to make automating actions on Bluesky both friendly and highly flexible... a domain-specific language (DSL) and builder pattern abstraction ... to streamline common sequences of actions (like searching posts, replying, following, liking, etc.) which typically requir…

"Sill shows the most popular links being shared by accounts you follow on Bluesky and Mastodon", linking through to "the individual posts... with what people said about" them. You can sort (“newest” or “most popular”), "hide reposts, and limit posts to the last 3, 6, 12, or 24 hours".Built in response to the death of …

Gary Marcus pouring cold water on Deep Research, "which... can write science-sounding articles on demand, on any topic of your choice".In many ways there's not much new here, except perhaps for how model collapse will affect science, not just LLMs.As known:LLMs flooding the zone with shit has been a concern since the beginning, and …

Good career advice, and a great exploration of glue work: "the difference between a project that succeeds and one that fails"."nobody else is onboarding the junior engineers, updating the roadmap, talking to the users, noticing the things that got dropped, asking questions on design documents, and making sure that everyone's go…