links.lmorchard.com - #social

Is X Back? Who Cares. Social Media Monoliths Are Passé.

Tue, 13 Oct 2026 02:16:15 +0000

But I think this discussion also opens up another, related question: Do we need to live in a world where every network is the biggest thing ever? Can you have a thriving community without your primary platform being a zeitgeist machine? Gruber’s framing on the issue seems to suggest that Twitter circa 2009 is the ideal. But what if that moment has genuinely passed? The Threads algorithm that Gruber points to specifically goes out of its way to discourage the very kinds of interactions that a 2009 Twitter once allowed. The fediverse’s server-oriented setup favors interactions in smaller communities even if, in practice, people still tend to favor the larger ones.

Tags: #fediverse #mastodon #social #twitter #x

We are going to kill “unalive” - Anil Dash

Tue, 06 Oct 2026 23:49:24 +0000

If you are a 20th century relic like me, it is incumbent upon you to remind the generation that grew up inside the algorithm that another world is possible, and that we know this because we lived it. We were able to style a MySpace page in any way that we wanted; the code for LiveJournal was entirely open source so there was no part of the algorithm that was unknowable. A blog like the one you’re reading right now could be made by anyone, and put up for pennies, and nobody could stop it from being read by millions of people. (And that last one? It’s still possible.)

Tags: #language #metablogging #social #speech

Bubbles — 10+ votes

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 20:51:52 +0000

Tags: #feeds:subscriptions #lbogs #social

Bubbles Daily Briefing

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 20:49:18 +0000

Tags: #blogs #feeds:subscriptions #social

Look, just fucking use Mastodon already

Tue, 09 Jun 2026 21:14:16 +0000

See, what makes Mastodon less worse than something like Twitter or Bluesky or, god forbid, fucking Threads, is that it has escape hatches. You may not like being told “go find another instance,” but you can go find another instance, and that is fucking spectacular. Twitter started going into the shitter even before Elon Seig Heil Musk painted a big “X” on it with his dick, but did you all just say “sucks, man,” and fuck off to another Twitter instance? No! Why not? Because there were no other fucking Twitter instances!

Tags: #activitypub #atproto #bluesky #bsky #mastodon #social

The Myth of the Adult Friend Group

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 16:42:25 +0000

This points to a mismatch between expectation and reality. The cultural ideal of a cohesive friend group may be harder to sustain than we imagine. In practice, emotional well-being often depends on maintaining a few reliable, intimate relationships. That may help explain why many adults naturally gravitate towards one-on-one, or dyad friendships.

Tags: #adulting #friends #psychology #social

The Hacker News tarpit

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 00:01:51 +0000

You can't build Place People Go as a feature. It's a thing that happened over time, through a specific and unrepeatable sequence of events, most of which were not planned and some of which were just luck.

Tags: #hackernews #social #socialmedia

Digg - People. Places. Things.

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 20:53:23 +0000

Building on the internet in 2026 is different. We learned that the hard way. Today we're sharing difficult news: we've made the decision to significantly downsize the Digg team. This wasn't a decision made lightly, and it's important to say clearly: this is one of the strongest groups of people we've ever had the privilege of working with. This is not a reflection of their talent, their effort, or their belief in what we were building. It's a reflection of the brutal reality of finding product-market fit in an environment that has fundamentally changed.

Tags: #digg #social #web

Friendship Skills for Neurodivergent Adults by Caroline Maguire | Hachette Book Group

Sat, 07 Feb 2026 00:09:57 +0000

From a social emotional learning expert: a book providing simple, science-based, practical advice including scripts, tips and strategies to help Neurodivergent adults who have ADHD, autism or anxiety find the belonging and support of lifelong friendships they seek.

Tags: #adhd #books #friends #neurodivergent #social

as days pass by — Use RSS to read newsletters

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 17:36:02 +0000

There is a solution to this and the solution is called RSS. Andy Bell explains RSS and this is exactly how I read newsletters. If I want to read someone's newsletter and it's on Substack, or ghost.io, or buttondown.email, what I actually do is subscribe to their newsletter but what I'm actually subscribing to is their RSS feed. This sections off newsletter stuff into a completely separate app that I can catch up on when I've got the time, it means that the newsletter owner (or the site they're using) can't decide to "upsell" me on other stuff they do that I'm not interested in, and it's a better, nicer reading experience than my mail app.

Tags: #newsletters #rss #social #substack

I Was Right About ATProto Key Management - nora's notes

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 04:50:10 +0000

I don’t like Bluesky, or ATProto; I wish we lived in a world were community-driven projects got megabucks and we were all self-hosting little social media servers for our communities. We don’t live in that world, so we have to interoperate with VC-backed, corporate social media. When those platforms call themselves “decentralized”, I think they should deliver.

Tags: #atproto #bluesky #social

So, we're still doing this, huh? - Portland Mercury

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 17:25:56 +0000

This whole "talk about politics on the internet" as if it makes a difference thing? We're still doing this? We think the things we say on the internet matter to literally anyone? We think if we craft the perfect anti-Trump argument, maybe one person will change their mind? I mean listen, go ahead. I'm not saying you shouldn't do it. I'm just saying it's worse than internet porn. Because at least with internet porn, you eventually achieve end goal with that.

Tags: #online #politics #social #uspolitics

EchoFeed - Cross post your RSS feed to Mastodon, Bluesky, Micro.blog, Discord, and more!

Sat, 10 Jan 2026 00:05:44 +0000

It supports reading RSS & Atom & JSON feeds and then posting those items to Mastodon & Micro.blog & Bluesky & GitHub & Discord & LinkAce & LinkDing. Or it can send them as Webmentions & Webhooks.

Tags: #metablogging #social #web #webdev

How I rebooted my social life - by James O'Malley

Sun, 04 Jan 2026 18:57:30 +0000

So what good is there in being a part of a community? It seems almost too obvious to say. I could talk about how there are practical advantages in terms of mutual support. I could point to how communities are engines of trust, which we need for society to function. Or I could recognise how community bestows a sense of belonging or identity as we float through an empty, meaningless, godless, universe. But this would hardly be revelatory.

Tags: #community #friends #life #social

Scripting News: The web as your plan B

Fri, 26 Dec 2025 18:18:50 +0000

My advice -- think this through, now. And if you can't see a way that you share in the success of the company behind Bluesky, which we know very little about, then I urge you to at least have the web as a backup. Use a standard format to broadcast your writer's work to places outside the AT Proto-verse, so we can pick up your signal, and you'll still be on the air if they yank your chain. This alone might get the Bluesky folk to listen to you more carefully. My experience, no matter how much you want, you can't wish away the economics of this stuff.

Tags: #atproto #social #web #webdev