#socialnetworks — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #socialnetworks, aggregated by home.social.
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The messy state of social networks #community #insight #socialnetworks #socmed #webstories
The messy state of social netw... -
The messy state of social networks #community #insight #socialnetworks #socmed #webstories
The messy state of social netw... -
Apple and Google Miss Deadline to Block Child Nudity on Their Phones in the UK
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Apple and Google Miss Deadline to Block Child Nudity on Their Phones in the UK
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Apple and Google Miss Deadline to Block Child Nudity on Their Phones in the UK
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Apple and Google Miss Deadline to Block Child Nudity on Their Phones in the UK
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Apple and Google Miss Deadline to Block Child Nudity on Their Phones in the UK
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Mashable: Is Myspace coming back? Owners confirm relaunch plans. “Chris and Tim Vanderhook, whose company acquired Myspace in 2011, say they plan to relaunch the once-dominant social media platform. The brothers confirmed their intentions in Tommy Avallone’s recent documentary Myspace, although they have not announced when the relaunch will happen or what it will look like.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/08/03/mashable-is-myspace-coming-back-owners-confirm-relaunch-plans/ -
Engadget: Reddit’s CEO sure seems frustrated with Google’s AI overviews . “You can add Reddit CEO Steve Huffman to the growing list of publishers, platforms and others who are frustrated with the state of Google search and AI Overviews. ‘People don’t want a summary of Reddit; they want Reddit,’ he wrote in a letter to shareholders ahead of the company’s second-quarter earnings call.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/07/31/engadget-reddits-ceo-sure-seems-frustrated-with-googles-ai-overviews/ -
The same individuals can accomplish more, with less, when we do it *together*. Body doubling is mutual aid in action. Community mutual aid is body doubling scaled up to a neighborhood, or broader.
There are various apps that facilitate body doubling with strangers. These are mostly subject to the same enshittification problems as dating apps, etc. Can we do a body doubling social network using federation between services?
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Spokesman-Review: Judge declares Al Merkel’s Nextdoor posts to be public records subject to release. “Spokane Valley Councilman Al Merkel violated the city’s social media policy and the Washington Public Records Act by discussing council business on his private social media accounts and refusing to submit the posts for public records requests, a Spokane County judge ruled last week.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/06/30/spokesman-review-judge-declares-al-merkels-nextdoor-posts-to-be-public-records-subject-to-release/ -
I pushed a post “Mastodon kinda hates AI” that is basically what it says on the tin https://nathanherald.com/posts/mastodon-kinda-hates-ai/
I saw this post by 1Password https://1password.social/@1password/116569353856438624 and the replies were pretty overwhelmingly negative on Masto, but not anywhere else.
Do you see the same thing? Is it good/bad/neutral that Masto overall has biases?
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PC Mag: Mastodon Plans End-to-End Encryption for Private Messages. “Decentralized social media platform Mastodon plans on adopting its own end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for private messages. Mastodon announced the upcoming feature in a blog post about receiving €614,000 ($724,000) from the Sovereign Tech Fund, an effort backed by the German government to support open-source software.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/04/17/pc-mag-mastodon-plans-end-to-end-encryption-for-private-messages/ -
Pinterest launches a new feature to promote a Pin
https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/24/pinterest-launches-a-new-feature-to-promote-a-pin/
#pinterest #pinterestnews #pinterestpin #pinpromotion #marketing #womentech #femaletech #shooping #shop #tech #technews #socialmedia #socialnetworks #pinterestshop
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Earn earlier: expanding YouTube Shopping to creators with 500+ subscribers
https://blog.youtube/creator-and-artist-stories/youtube-shopping-expansion-500-subscribers/
#youtube #youtubenews #youtubeshop #shooping #shop #tech #technews #creators #youtubers #youtubeshooping #socialmedia #socialnetworks #shoopingexpansion
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TikTok for Business introduces campaign to drive in-app shopping
#tiktok #tiktokbusiness #inappshooping #shooping #shop #tiktokshop #marketing #tech #technews #business #inapp #tiktoknews #tiktokcampaign #socialmedia #socialnetworks
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Some creators don’t see immediate value in Instagram’s controversial ‘Shop the Look’ AI test (long article)
#instagram #instagramnews #instagramtest #instagramai #ainews #shopthelook #aitest #tech #technews #insta #instanews #socialmedia #socialnetworks #marketing #instagrammarketing #instagramads #creators #controversial #shooping #shop #instagramshop
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TikTok alternative ‘RedNote’ removed from Android and iOS app stores in India
#rednote #rednoteapp #rednotenews #apps #tech #technews #india #indiaapps #indiaban #appban #tiktok #socialnetworks #socialmedia #tiktokalternative #chineseapps #chinaapps #china #chinaappban
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@cloudskater wrote:
Some instances are run by bad people. Hell, a few projects like Lemmy and Matrix are DEVELOPED by assholes, but the FLOSS and federated nature of these platforms allows us to bypass/fork them and create healthy spaces outside their reach.
Nope, that is actually what is killing the fediverse. I just explained here:
The issue is the divergence in semantic interpretation that emerges at the interpretation layer. ActivityPub standardizes message delivery and defines common activity types. However, it leaves extension semantics and application-layer policy decisions to individual implementations. Servers may introduce custom JSON-LD namespaces and enforce local behaviors, such as reply restrictions, while remaining protocol-compliant. But, the noise created by divergences are problematic, because it creates unexpected, unintended, and unpredictable behavior.
Divergence appears when implementations rely on non-normative metadata and assume reciprocal handling to preserve a consistent user experience. Behavioral alignment then varies. Syntactic exchange succeeds, but behavioral consistency is not guaranteed. Though instances continue to federate at the transport level, policy semantics and processing logic differ across deployments. Those differences produce inconsistent experiences and results between implementations.
That leads to fragmentation, specifically semantic or behavioral fragmentation and an inconsistent user experiences. ActivityPub ensures syntactic interoperability, but semantic interoperability (everyone interprets and enforces rules the same way) varies. This creates a system that is federated at the transport level yet fragmented in behavior and expectations across implementations. It is funny how the thing that the fediverse touted has made the entire thing very brittle. ActivityPub technically federates correctly, but semantically falls apart once servers start adding their own behavioral rules.
https://neon-blue-demon-wyrm.x10.network/archives/16932
FYI, I’m not doing culture wars or political debates. I’m just saying this idea of “forking away” from them is literally breaking the fediverse’s distributed network and creating all kinds of issues with semantic interoperability. Yes, federation is still happening at the delivery level, but the semantic issues are out of fucking control. You are a federation by the very sheer skin of your teeth.
The reason why developers are leaving the fediverse is because you folks don’t take criticism. You respond to criticism with — I’m being so serious right now — political manifestos and harassing developers. ActivityPub developers and authors oversold you folks on the capabilities of ActivityStreams. They flat-out lied to y’all.
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ActivityPub Server’s Custom Reply‑Control Extensions Undermine Federation
It seems like Activitbypub developers are extending ActivityPub with optional metadata to fix a lot of its issues, but that is still problematic. Trying to add moderation tools and user control to threads seems to be the ongoing battle. I am fascinated by dumpster fires, so I’ve started looking at the ActivityPub protocol in detail. I tend to become fascinated with things that are going down in flames.
As a brief recap of the problem:
So, one of the very popular features on Bluesky—also popular on Twitter—is the ability to select who can reply to a post. A major issue in the Fediverse is the inability to decide who can reply, and once you block someone, their harassing reply is still there. I honestly thought it was simply a case of them choosing not to add or address it for cultural reasons. What is clear from that thread is that they were always aware that the ActivityPub protocol and most Fediverse implementations don’t provide a universal way to control reply visibility or enforce blocks across instances.
An ActivityPub server that has reply control is GoToSocial. ActivityPub, as defined by the W3C specification, standardizes how servers federate activities. It defines actors, inboxes, outboxes, and activity types (Create, Follow, Like, Announce, etc.) expressed using ActivityStreams 2.0. It also specifies delivery mechanics (including how a Create activity reaches another server’s inbox) and how collections behave.
The specification does not include interaction policy semantics such as “only followers may reply” or “replies require manual approval.” There is no field in the normative vocabulary requiring conforming servers to enforce reply permissions. That category of rule is outside the protocol’s defined contract.
GoToSocial implements reply controls through what it calls interaction policies. These appear as additional properties on ActivityStreams objects using a custom JSON-LD namespace controlled by the GoToSocial project.
JSON-LD permits additional namespaced terms. This means the document remains structurally valid ActivityStreams and federates normally. The meaning of those custom fields, however, comes from GoToSocial’s own documentation and implementation. Other servers can ignore them without violating ActivityPub because they are not part of the interoperable core vocabulary.
Enforcement occurs locally. When a remote server sends a reply—a Create activity whose object references another via inReplyTo—ActivityPub governs delivery, not acceptance criteria. Whether the receiving server checks a reply policy, rejects the activity, queues it, or displays it is determined in the server’s inbox-processing code. The decision to accept, display, or require approval happens after successful protocol-level delivery. This behavior belongs to the application layer.
These are server-side features layered on top of ActivityPub’s transport and data model that are not actually part of ActivityPub. The protocol ensures standardized delivery of activities; however, the server implementation defines additional constraints and user-facing behavior. Two GoToSocial instances may both recognize and act on the same extension fields. However, a different implementation, such as Mastodon, has no obligation under the specification to interpret or enforce GoToSocial’s interactionPolicy properties. These fields function as extension metadata rather than protocol requirements.
The semantics of GoToSocial are not part of the specification’s defined vocabulary and processing rules for ActivityPub. They no longer operate purely at the protocol layer; it has become an application-layer contract implemented by specific servers.
Let’s use the AT Protocol as an example. Bluesky’s direct messages (DMs) are not currently part of the AT Protocol (ATProto). The AT Protocol has nothing that specifies anything for DMs, so DMs are not part of the AT Protocol. The AT Protocol was designed to handle public social interactions, but it does not define private or encrypted messaging. Bluesky implemented DMs at the application level, outside of the core protocol. DMs are centralized and stored on Bluesky’s servers. What is happening with servers like GoToSocial is sort of like that. The difference is that the AT Protocol was designed for different app views; ActivityPub was not.
The issue is the divergence in semantic interpretation that emerges at the interpretation layer. ActivityPub standardizes message delivery and defines common activity types. However, it leaves extension semantics and application-layer policy decisions to individual implementations. Servers may introduce custom JSON-LD namespaces and enforce local behaviors, such as reply restrictions, while remaining protocol-compliant. But, the noise created by divergences are problematic, because it creates unexpected, unintended, and unpredictable behavior.
Divergence appears when implementations rely on non-normative metadata and assume reciprocal handling to preserve a consistent user experience. Behavioral alignment then varies. Syntactic exchange succeeds, but behavioral consistency is not guaranteed. Though instances continue to federate at the transport level, policy semantics and processing logic differ across deployments. Those differences produce inconsistent experiences and results between implementations.
That leads to fragmentation, specifically semantic or behavioral fragmentation and an inconsistent user experiences. ActivityPub ensures syntactic interoperability, but semantic interoperability (everyone interprets and enforces rules the same way) varies. This creates a system that is federated at the transport level yet fragmented in behavior and expectations across implementations. It is funny how the thing that the fediverse touted has made the entire thing very brittle. ActivityPub technically federates correctly, but semantically falls apart once servers start adding their own behavioral rules.
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🚨 Human belief is becoming a #security issue.
Security in #sociotechnical #systems is shaped not only by #technology, but by how people interpret information.
Our new study reviews 24 factors and conceptualizes belief in false information as a human-centered security risk.
👉 https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.07016
#Misinformation #Disinformation #FakeNews #DeepFake #AI #Trust #DigitalRisk #InformationSecurity #BusinessInformatics #Wirtschaftsinformatik #FakeInformation #SocialNetworks #Cybersecurity
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TechCrunch: A beginner’s guide to Mastodon, the open source Twitter alternative . “Unless if you’re really in the know about nascent platforms, you probably didn’t know what Mastodon was until Elon Musk bought Twitter and renamed it X. In the initial aftermath of the acquisition, as users fretted over what direction Twitter would take, millions of users hopped over to Mastodon, a fellow […]
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/01/06/techcrunch-a-beginners-guide-to-mastodon-the-open-source-twitter-alternative/ -
TikTok Shop crossed $500 million in US sales during the Black Friday Cyber Monday week
https://www.businessinsider.com/tiktok-shop-crossed-500-million-in-us-sales-black-friday-2025-12
#tiktok #tiktokshop #tiktokshooping #shooping #blackfriday #cybermonday #500million #tech #technews #ussales #socialnetworks #business #economy #shoopingfrenzy
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Saturday, November 29, 2025
1 killed,11 injured in Kyiv amid Russian missile, drone strikes on residential buildings -- How Ukrainian helicopter pilots hunt down Russian drones -- Ukraine strikes Saratov oil refinery, airfield in Russian-occupied Crimea -- Unmanned Systems Forces blow up $60m worth of Russian air defense systems in 3 days ... and morehttps://activitypub.writeworks.uk/2025/11/saturday-november-29-2025/
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War toll beim DGNet Kongress dabei gewesen zu sein - nochmal danke @stegbauer für die nette Einladung
Thoroughly enjoyed myself at the DGNet conference in Bayreuth presenting my work on social and spatial networks
#NetzwerkForschung #SocialNetworkAnalysis #socialNetworks #ArchitectureResearch
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The AI Fix #65: Excel Copilot will wreck your data, and can AI fix social media? – Source: grahamcluley.com https://ciso2ciso.com/the-ai-fix-65-excel-copilot-will-wreck-your-data-and-can-ai-fix-social-media-source-grahamcluley-com/ #rssfeedpostgeneratorecho #ArtificialIntelligence #CyberSecurityNews #grahamcluleycom #microsoftexcel #Socialnetworks #Grahamcluley #SocialMedia #Microsoft #TheAIFix #Podcast #AI
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»#Decentralized #SocialNetworks & #WordPress with #AlexKirk: WordPress Can Be a Decentralized #SocialHub. The #Friendsplugin allows WordPress users to follow other sites, aggregate content, and even act as a #socialnetwork using ActivityPub.« https://dothewoo.io/decentralized-social-networks-wordpress-with-alex-kirk/?Fedizen.EU #Fedizen #Fediverse #ActivityPub #News
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These days, I lean heavily on Ryan Broderick’s Garbage Day newsletter to know what’s going on in the areas of social media I don’t pay much attention to. In other words, TikTok, Instagram, and… well, most of it.
However, as Broderick himself points out, nobody really knows what’s going on, and there is no centre, due to […]https://thoughtshrapnel.com/2023/11/09/the-fragmentation-of-the-social-web/
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Amazingly, noone on #socialNetworks that we've seen has posted a graph tracking how much money #theFed has printed for #assetPurchases to pump up markets.
Its out there — we just can't post images.
The Central Bank Digital Slavery project continues along quite nicely.
The #divisions between people based on covid response, seem to serve as a distraction to what is actually going on.
Its not going to end well… maybe that's the point.
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Glassdoor acquires Fishbowl, a semi-anonymous social network and job board, to square up to LinkedIn - While LinkedIn doubles down on creators to bring a more human, less manicured elem... - http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/EvttWD4VSys/ #lererhippeauventures #recruitholdings #socialnetworks #binarycapital #sanfrancisco #scottbelsky #enterprise #glassdoor #microsoft #fishbowl #linkedin #recruit #hiring #labor #m&a #ceo
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Polywork gets $3.5M to blend professional and social networking - Life is complicated and so — increasingly — is work-life. That’s the premise under... - http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/zP8V5WrYPEU/ #professionalnetworking #caffeinatedcapital #fundings&exits #socialnetworks #briannekimmel #scottbelsky #socialmedia #maxlevchin #instagram #joelflory #stevechen #startups #kevinlin #linkedin #lystable #behance #twitter #social #saas #kalo
