Here's a little heartwarming whimsy to get your weekend started. I hope I age as gracefully as Jan.

We're also live in the App Store and Play Store! Get the Streamplace mobile app and you'll get notified when people you follow on Bluesky go live! stream.place/download

But we're more than just a streaming platform: we're inventing a new form of decentralized public broadcast. Read more about it on Streamplace's @leaflet.pub blog here: blog.stream.place You can even run your own Streamplace node and we'll rebroadcast it! docs.stream.place/docs/guides/...

STREAMPLACE v0.9.1 is live now!!! Two big features: 1. Teleportation! This is Streamplace's take on "raiding" or "hosting". When you're wrapping up your stream, type /teleport user.example.com in chat and send your viewers over to someone else!

Welcome to all the new users! We're Streamplace: Open-Source livestreaming on the AT Protocol. Get started streaming today with OBS! Directions and video settings are here: docs.stream.place/docs/guides/...

Here's our briefing for this week. We're going deeper with a different team each week, and this week obviously had to be focused on Immigration. (We added 25+ events to our timeline this round, and that's a tiny fraction of everything we saw.)

I'd like to see some coordination in the open source community to respond to this. The outcome could shape significant funding and strategic moves. Off the top of my head, there's a few things that I'd like to see in a new European open source strategy. 🧵

“If you put the Apple icons in reverse it looks like the portfolio of someone getting really really good at icon design” (Source: mastodon.social/@heliographe...)

Conversation techniques that have potential for depolarization:

Algorithms and polarization:

Last year, we shared a lot of innovative research findings showing that having meaningful connection and conversation on social media isn’t a lofty dream — it’s possible! Here are some of our favorite studies from 2025. 🔬🦠💬

Starting a series on Open Social! Hoping to spotlight some of my favorite atproto projects :) And your favorites too, so tag them in the comments! There were a ton of logos in this video, so I've tagged everyone in the comments #tiktoksale #opensocial #atproto

A modest proposal for privacy on atproto: Avoid building privacy on protocol. Instead, fall back on the computer networking stack and vpns. @tailscale.com. Put all the software pieces that enable atproto to happen inside private networks and manage privacy through network security. Bonus: groups.

I find @realcodemiko.bsky.social incredibly inspiring. Always doing awesome shit that no one else is doing. The real metaverse might be a metaverse of one. 😆 I wonder what kind of experiences she would develop with her community if she discovered atproto. Twitch is too small for her creativity.

Announcing @modalfoundation.bsky.social, a nonprofit making open social tech viable at scale. Modal will connect experts, strategists, builders and communities to create a human-centered internet. The foundation will oversee @freeourfeeds.com, @eurosky.social and more to come. modalfoundation.org

i think mastodon and bluesky really messed this up cause they're still so normatively white. it prevents different cultures on the site from growing and thriving. there's been a history on here of black and brown posters promoting the app and then getting ignored or banned, and it's messed up

a key thing i want to emphasize with this app is how it works for multi-marginalized users. we KNOW social media and online communities have toxic cultures. why don't we design with these in mind from the start? what features do Black & brown, disabled, queer & trans users want? what protects us?

again, the focus is on safety, and that comes from affirmative consent & contextual content moderation. furthermore, we don't want safety to come from some "universal" or default majority standpoint, the app should be "designed from the margins" www.de-center.net/what-is-desi...

one example of this is something i've wanted this co-op to be based off of, which is jane im's consentful systems research. her website is down, but here's the research paper that details what specific features a social media focused on affirmative consent might have: imjane.net/papers/chi20...

this gets me to my point that there's a lot of important sociotechnical research on social media and online communities that we should take a look at and implement! i'm tired of engineers reinventing the wheel and ignoring the studies people have conducted already

i've talked to quite a few folks about content moderation over the years, and while i won't get into details here, i'll say that it *needs* to be contextual and run by people who aren't invisibilized. it can't just be up to automated systems or a single centralized unit.

I just found out last night that the $50k enrollment bonus only pays out after 5 years of service, and reader, the laugh I let out when I read that woke the dog from across the house. These absolute fucking grapes aren't seeing a dime of that money. No way they can ride out 5 years of this job.

The issue with ICE is not training, the issue with ICE is that it fundamentally should not exist. The violence is the purpose

Account closed! Took two calls. First one they asked why, I told them, they transferred me and then I got disconnected while on hold. But successfully closed on the second call. I don't need to offer my patronage to collaborators.

Be careful about what you post on social media, and be aware that if you take photos or videos, they could be used to expand law enforcement’s view of who attended it. Make sure you have permission to photograph or videotape any fellow protesters.

Consider wearing a face mask and sunglasses to make it far more difficult for you to be identified by face recognition technology. Avoid colorful clothing and prominent logos, and cover up any identifiable tattoos.

You should use end-to-end encryption for messaging, and make sure your smartphone’s contents are encrypted, too. If you use biometric unlocking, turn that off temporarily so it’s harder for law enforcement to force you to unlock your phone.

For the best chance at anonymity, you should leave your phone at home. But if you can’t, keep it off as much as possible—or keep it in a Faraday bag that blocks all of its radio communications. You can also consider using a secondary phone or a burner.

You should assume that any digital evidence that you were at or near a protest could be used against you—that includes data from your phone as well as tracking tools like license plate scanners and face recognition.

Just days into 2026, the killing of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good by a federal immigration officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, has sparked protests around the US. If you’re planning to protest, here’s how to safeguard your digital security.

And on top of it all, they can't even mask right to protect themselves.

We need to legit sit down and look at how tech moved during Obama's campaign and the like. Like ICE, Dems have planted so much of the fertile soil that these folks move on and that's because it's not a partisan thing: it's *what* this place runs on.

There are many sins and faults in the first revolution, but they do not have to be ours. We can learn from their failures. Since we are lucky enough to be their successors, this is our chance to excise the demons they left behind.

Today is very bad and we should all be very angry but I am here to remind us that the birthday we are celebrating this year is not for the Constitution but for our rebellion against monarchy. The sincerest form of flattery is imitation.

@bad-example.com I love your pfp. Left shark tries their best. 💃🦈🕺

🚨 ICE can track your phones without a warrant through location data bought from 3rd party apps. They also have the ability to take a photo of your face and find your information including your social media.

The 2025 Social Web Trust & Safety Needs Assessment Report is now available. Volunteer moderators are burning out. Spam is rising. Legal threats are growing. The 2025 Report reveals where things stand, and what must change. ➡️ about.iftas.org/2026/01/08/t...

Freedom City = Charter City = Network State =

Two of my space uncles have a podcast!

Paris Marx's guide to ditching US tech is useful, but it assumes people are rational. We're not. I wrote a piece on why lists don't work and what actually does: blog.dougbelshaw.com/getting-off-... #DigitalSovereignty #Privacy #BehaviourChange

Rizèl Scarlett explains why nursing rooms at conferences are a health necessity, not a perk. Essential reading for event organizers who want to create truly inclusive spaces for nursing parents in tech.

Found a gem peeps at @harvard.edu's Berkman Center for Internet and Society wrote in 2021 before Bluesky was a thing and Twitter was only partially a platform for nazis. cyber.harvard.edu/story/2021-0...

A Dutch worker went viral after explaining to their American boss that they have a life outside work.

Looking at my message history this morning, I appear a bit more unhinged than usual. No more coffee before breakfast.

So much great thinking in @niemanlab.org’s 2026 predictions, especially about the role journalism orgs and practitioners play in local media ecosystems around the country. Here’s a playlist of great pieces:

Reminder: we’re still collecting responses to our annual survey for folks who read our newsletter or follow us on social media. What feels worth paying attention to? What do you want to know more about? Where should we be directing our focus? Hint: Don’t comment here, answer the survey :)

@daniloc.xyz so like, are you what comes out when someone accidently puts a copy of I, Robot in the blender with the sofrito?

What would happen if every @nextcloud.bsky.social instance was an #atproto pds? What if every @civicrm.org was an atproto appview development platform? How could these two developments change the nature of institutions in our society and how we relate with them? These opportunities blow my mind 🤯

Whut.