at what point will people learn that expensive, energy-intensive technologies that are developed and deployed in metropoles and have made a small group of people hyperrich will not, in fact, 'democratize' anything? it's groundhog day up in this place

I'm grading student papers, and I can report that one effect of generative AI is that I now suspect everything my students submit. And that's not a good place to be in while grading. #bangenaifromuniversities

Enjoyed this Techcrunch piece about the new show Pluribus from the creator of Breaking Bad. Fun fact, the star of the new show Rhea Seehorn and I used to study for a statistics class together at GMU. I had such a secret crush back then (okay maybe still a little). "If you watched all the way to […]

The lastest FOSS Academic post is a whiny, weedy gripe session where I talk about being nervous about installing new Linux distros: https://fossacademic.tech/2025/11/09/contained.html Basically, between Snaps, Flatpaks, Wayland, and Secure Boot, installing a fresh Linux distro on a machine isn't […]

[Daily random quote out of context from my academic book about Mastodon] Above all, the biggest contrasts the 2022 Twitter wave revealed between Mastodon and Twitter/X are the contrasts between individualism versus social groups and centralization versus noncentralization. This chapter began […]

[Daily random quote out of context from my academic book about Mastodon] In fact, millions of people did ultimately join Mastodon and the rest of the fediverse in the wake of Musk’s takeover, indicating that this wave of discontent could result in long-terms shifts in how social media is done […]

Imagine me as Kirk, but instead of screaming "Khan!" I'm screaming "Waylaaaaaaaaaaaaand!"

[Daily random quote out of context from my academic book about Mastodon] In addition to revealing details of how social media works, alternative social media reveal details about how people govern themselves online, which is a growing area of scholarly concern […]

[Daily random quote out of context from my academic book about Mastodon] Part of this process involves learning how to refer to interviewees. All interviews began with a conversation about names and preferred pronouns. Some interviewees chose to use legal names, other screen names, and all […]

[Daily random quote out of context from my academic book about Mastodon] The narrative about Mastodon followed the same arc. In January, tech reporters looked and discovered that Twitter/X was still operating in spite of the existence of Mastodon and the fediverse. Seemingly more alarming was a […]

Shame. This vandalism in my home town doesn’t help starving Gazans, or hold Netanyahu to account, or bring back anyone who has been lost. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-synagogue-toronto-vandal-antisemitism-israel-rabbi-police/

elect a central banker, get such a budget

[Daily random quote out of context from my academic book about Mastodon] An Alternative to an Alternative... https://moveslowlybuildbridges.com #moveslowlyandbuildbridges #bot

Cade Cunningham is a bad man. #detroitpistons

[Daily random quote out of context from my academic book about Mastodon] The bulk of the people I’ve interviewed for this book agree. Ro, the founder of Playvicious and the Bad Space, Signaled me “LOL, DON’T DO IT!” when I asked if people should federate with Threads. Jessica Rowbottom, the […]

#fedibookfair! What a great idea! I'm now following that hashtag and learning about a bunch of new books! I also have a book to share: Move Slowly and Build Bridges, a book about the #fediverse (with a lot of focus on #mastodon). It features interviews with developers, admins, moderators, and […]

Love to see @economist.com going all-in on non-sequitir absurdism. It's an imminent critique of the epistemic failure of news media in times of burgeoning fascism.

[Daily random quote out of context from my academic book about Mastodon] Started in the late 2000s, GNU (pronounced gah-New) social was created by Free Software activists. As GNU social co-founder Matt Lee told me in an interview in 2014, “Free software is an ethical choice to protect free […]

[Daily random quote out of context from my academic book about Mastodon] In contrast, on the fediverse, staying small is a common practice. It helps instance admins in many ways: it makes moderation easier and keeps maintenance costs down. Multiple admins told me they keep their instances small […]

This is nonconsensual.

Day Two of Future Networks (future-networks.ca) commences! On tap today, panels about the ecological impacts of media and alternative social media. Plus a keynote from @couldrynick!

[Daily random quote out of context from my academic book about Mastodon] And still others left because other people were leaving. In probably the most painful story I heard, one person – a friend of mine – told me that her Twitter feed simply died the day Musk took over. An avid cyclist, she […]

[Daily random quote out of context from my academic book about Mastodon] In addition to content moderation concerns, those who sign the #fedipact or otherwise pledge to block Meta cite many other reasons for doing so. vanta’s fedipact site sums up several: “that time they helped facilitate a […]

@rwg Play is always subversive when viewed from a hierarchy. Contrast co-labore --> collaborate with its uncomfortable double meaning.

How did the term "collude" shift from "playing with" (co-lūdĕre) to "conspire with"? That's got to be a fascinating story. #academicchatter

We fucking told you https://www.404media.co/ice-and-cbp-agents-are-scanning-peoples-faces-on-the-street-to-verify-citizenship/

[Daily random quote out of context from my academic book about Mastodon] FOSS and federated alternative social media are important because they fundamentally challenge our assumptions about how social media needs to work. A basic insight from the field of science and technology studies (STS) is […]

[Daily random quote out of context from my academic book about Mastodon] They were effective. Gab was blocked from the vast majority of the fediverse. In fact, it was so well-blocked that Andrew Torba indulged in what could be characterized as a childish rage-quit […]

hey, does either team want to win this game? Cuz I want to sleep #worldseries

[Daily random quote out of context from my academic book about Mastodon] Observing fediverse members’ disdain for unethical research and the contentification of social media posts, I sought consent from fediverse members. In the case of interviews, I have engaged in standard institutional […]

[Daily random quote out of context from my academic book about Mastodon] By late 2017, Mastodon had shifted from being described by its founder as a GNU social alternative to being reported upon by tech journalists as a Twitter alternative.... https://moveslowlybuildbridges.com […]

Back when they invented the DHS after 9/11, many of us in the US said "Dept of Homeland Security? That sounds like some dystopian Nazi-ass shit" And all the Voices of Reason were like "stop catastrophizing, we need to come together in these trying times" Flash forward two decades and […]

[Daily random quote out of context from my academic book about Mastodon] This was quite disappointing to Ro. In light of the toll that racist trolls were taking on moderators like Marcia, he could not understand why safety features, such as importable instances blocklists, were not being […]

[Daily random quote out of context from my academic book about Mastodon] Del wasn’t the only one seeing such growth. The explosion of traffic was affecting the entire fediverse of Mastodon and other ActivityPub-speaking servers. Eleven thousand kilometers away from Del, across the Pacific ocean […]

produce content with an expressive blob

[Daily random quote out of context from my academic book about Mastodon] The existence of a standard set of ethical principles is clear in the Mastodon part of the fediverse. In 2017, some students and I collected hundreds of codes of conduct from Mastodon instances, and we often saw repeated […]

"People aren’t misguided to want shelter from surveillance and harassment, or to seek high-context, community-centric moderation; all echo-chamber punditry notwithstanding, those are necessary conditions when life online has such direct and dramatic effects on the character of our offline […]

I wrote about Bluesky’s moderation tensions and the White House’s threats and the critical need for open networks that can do broad connection and also care for communities at Tech Policy Press […]

[Daily random quote out of context from my academic book about Mastodon] For all the infuriating difficulty they endured while producing it, Guy, Prodromou, Lemmer-Webber, Tallon and Shephard’s ActivityPub protocol has helped bring about such a transition.... https://moveslowlybuildbridges.com […]

My salary is "frozen" again & I can't get research funding. We laid off most of our staff. My brother lost his government job. My disabled mom's health insurance is about to go up 10x. My neighbors' houses are all for sale. The middle class is deep underwater and this billionaire MF keeps […]

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Good morning! I am looking for contract work. If you have 10-15 hours a week of work on a well defined technical project (‘we need to move 6 websites by this date’, ‘we need to hire a team to do an infra migration’, ‘we need to complete an accessibility audit and figure out next steps’, ‘we need […]

📆 Mark your calendars: I’ll be doing a book talk AND a musical performance with @jesgilbert.bsky.social and DJ Spooky at @pioneerwork.bsky.social in Brooklyn, NYC on November 9th. Free and open to the public. https://pioneerworks.org/programs/second-sundays-november-2025

[Daily random quote out of context from my academic book about Mastodon] If the fediverse never touches regions of the world, does that mean that its members are free to not care about those regions of the world? No. “Technology has made it possible for the effects of our actions to extend far […]

update your CV update your ORCID update your website update your university's website update your funders update your colleagues update your broader network update your mom update the old gods and the new

In all the excitement of #aoir2025 I forgot to mention one of the coolest bits: I met one of the #friendsofdesoto who inquired if I got that bump from my P1. IYKYK

[Daily random quote out of context from my academic book about Mastodon] All the while, Del was watching the impact of all the new members on the Mastodon.art server. Using Sidekiq – software designed to monitor and manage computer processes – she could see how her server was processing all the […]

I love paying thousands to fly and being forced to watch commercials

[Daily random quote out of context from my academic book about Mastodon] Second, the use of Amazon and Cloudflare could also be a violation of the ethical covenant many fediverse instances adhere to, since these are corporations with poor reputations for their anti-union activities or […]

@julian is working on a way to follow ORCID accounts via the fediverse! My ORCID fedi handle is: @0000-0001-6000-4722 This is in the early stages, but it looks really cool! I can imagine following the work of a bunch of researchers and seeing new publications appearing in a timeline.