Overview: Social Media Strategy

"I was in Berlin last November to present at a satellite event around the Summit on European Digital Sovereignty. The two posts which resulted are below, followed by the latest from the growing ATProto4Science movement."

Remember this next time you're arguing with someone on the internet:"Hey, can you mansplain any louder?""Yeah, sure!"

"A popular resolution each new year is to do a "digital detox"... But studies are mixed on the benefits... [the very idea] puts the blame on us ... that we have insufficient willpower and we could put our phones down at any time if we really wanted to. This completely ignores the deliberatively manipulative design of the apps ... There are literal…

"Standard.site provides shared lexicons for long-form publishing on AT Protocol. Making content easier to discover, index, and move across the ATmosphere" - by the makers of leaflet, pckt & offprint - a good example of how builders can just collaborate on the ATmosphere without drama: "The standard grows when builders identify shared needs and ali…

The producers would "love to make Leaflet better for scientists", and set out some ideas how.Annotations: "Semble is working on a lexicon for inline annotations which sounds cool and may have some overlap with Leaflet... Something like post references is closely related"References and backlinks, referencing Semble's "trackbacking... basically a b…

Alexandra Geese on the EC's "first-ever non-compliance decision under the Digital Services Act against X ... a necessary first step in enforcing European digital regulation... [but] not sufficient to address the systemic risks posed by X... systematic amplification of certain political content and the systematic suppression of others" as part of "…

"Large organisations need dedicated tools and processes to manage their Bluesky presence and get the most out of ATproto".A repost onto Medium of version 4 of a wiki page I've been developing for most of the year.

Nekomimo "built cutebook, a tiny library that lets you add a guestbook to any website. Visitors sign in with their Bluesky account, leave a message, and that message gets stored in their own data repository. No database on your end. No user accounts to manage. Just two web components and a few lines of configuration" - and she explains how, and ho…

"What happens when you put politicians, media businesses and protocol engineers in the same room to discuss European sovereignty?" - my post following Eurosky.Live in Berlin, November 2025.

Some thoughts on technical issues surrounding building communities on ATproto, although it doesn't address the issue of what happens to someone's "community posts" when they leave a community?"AT makes it easy for individual accounts to publish things, and to build global aggregations from them. But community spaces are a bit different... forums …

Newsletter as I head off to Berlin to talk about digital sovereignty, social media and ATprotocol.

"blogging and long-form writing on atproto is rapidly developing, and it gives some interesting insight in what decentralisation on atproto looks like".Decentralisation describes two different things at once: a technical architecture for how networks are structured, and the actual behaviour of people using those networks" - so while ATproto looks …

"trolls seek negative attention and ignoring them removes their reward... When someone posts inflammatory content, makes personal attacks, or tries to derail conversations with bad-faith arguments, they're fishing for reactions ... trolls derive pleasure specifically from "negative social potency", aka knowing that others are annoyed... non-enga…

"A journalist gets blocked by Bluesky, but her Bluesky posts can still be seen via Blacksky. This apparent contradiction goes to the heart of resilient social media, where businesses must support their users to stay in business"

"Congressman Clay Higgins (R-LA) delivered a letter to social media leaders demanding the immediate removal of posts and accounts that celebrated the assassination of Charlie Kirk" is a good example of why social media conversations must NOT be concentrated in one legal jurisdiction (particularly, let's face it, Trump's US).The letter was sent to …

Further progress by Bluesky on "improving the quality of replies and making conversations feel more personal, constructive, and in your control":identifying social neighbourhoods "the people you already interact with or would likely enjoy knowing" and prioritising conversations in thema dislike option to help personalise Discover & other feeds. "D…

"European sovereignty hangs in the balance. As long as 80 percent of European digital products and services originate in the United States, blackmail will thrive. Europe needs independent European infrastructure now—especially home-grown social networks that preserve a level playing field for information, safeguard media freedom and guarantee gen…

"When infrastructure is too centralized, gatekeepers gain new powers to capture, enshittify, and censor."Short, link-rich piece on the many ways science is being undermined by gatekeeping scientific publishers and "Large intermediary platforms... inserting themselves between researchers and between the researchers and these published works—through…

"For a while, social media tried to be politically neutral. Moderation is difficult as a practical task, and fighting over the decisions ... is bad business. But it was somewhat obvious to everyone that social platform neutrality was a performative fiction, even before Musk discarded the norm."Whatever you do, social media can't be neutral: "Even …

"publications can now have nested pages — illustrated here with pages about embeds, comments, and more... great for collections, project wikis or documentation, essays with branching tangents, and more", like hubs for ex., with a different skin. "nest them as deep as you like"

Another ATproto app in the linkedin space, "ProtoPro is the future of businesses and professionals connecting online. With AT Protocol, your identity, graph, and content are portable, secure, and under your control."

"log in to your existing accounts on the supported networks. Afterward, you’ll instantly be following all your friends in a combined timeline. The app also features a combined trending section and cross-posting support.... will later introduce a subscription plan to generate revenue."

"at://work is a modern job board that leverages decentralized identity and social networking. We believe in empowering professionals to own their digital identity while connecting with meaningful career opportunities... ensures that your professional profile and job postings remain under your control. "

Another ATproto longform app, "an entire blogging platform that fits in your pocket... a place to jot down and share your ideas, opinions, hobbies, and anything else you’d like to share with the world, quickly and easily.

"Middleware, third-party software intermediaries between users and platforms, has been broached as a means to decentralize the power of social media platforms and enhance user agency... widespread adoption of open middleware has long hinged on the cooperation of established major platforms; however... Mastodon and Bluesky, has led to increased off…

"the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace conducted a workshop with eighteen experts to explore governance challenges to defederation... on decentralized social media [which] offers new possibilities for online governance. Experts consider how it can be used responsibly, in a way that balances speech and safety".A good example of how the dis…

How Graze raised funding for NPR and PBS "while also learning more about the future of sponsored content on ATProto".Results: "The Graze.social NPR/PBS donation campaign's 168% ROAS is exceptional performance in the nonprofit digital advertising landscape. Industry benchmarks from M+R show that typical Facebook/Meta campaigns achieve only 48% retu…

Misinformation is "a problem, but not the most important one. The fundamental problem... is not that social media misinforms individuals about what is true or untrue but that it creates publics with malformed collective understandings".while democracy "is a profoundly collective enterprise", we see it as the sum of individuals' knowledge and decis…

The always good Laurens on the ActivityPub-ATproto open letter: "There is a large group of people who are actively moving the space forward, and who have signed the open letter that calls for mutual respect and working together for a better open social web. The number of people who voiced objections and concerns is minimal, but by focusing on proc…

"The first thing I noticed is how strange it felt to use... strange and empty, every interaction felt like it took an eternity... any interaction with others to require multiple levels of intentional actions".After acclimatising, however, "I began to feel comfortable ... very calming... [then] I ran out of stamina" - the site ceased 'working', so …