Last month, @tomcoates was one of only ~20 people at a meeting at Meta's SF offices where the Threads team talked openly about their plans for integrating it with the Fediverse, including their broad roadmap, motivations, and plans for content moderation and personalization. Tom posted his extensive notes and thoughts from the meeting, and it's well worth reading for anyone interested in the subject. http://plasticbag.org/archives/2024/01/how-threads-will-integrate-with-the-fediverse/
If you’re wondering how X’s advertiser crisis is going, they’re now endlessly showing me the same ad, selling a bra for older women, after every four tweets. All from different fake user accounts so they’re unblockable.
This is apparently an internal Automattic memo making the rounds on Tumblr, indicating that they’ve failed to get Tumblr activity/revenue up since its 2019 acquisition and it will now be maintained by a skeleton crew of Trust & Safety and support folks, with the majority of its 139 employees moving to other projects inside Automattic.
Neal.fun's Internet Artifacts is an online museum of artifacts from the early internet, including the first spam email, first MP3, first livestream, and dozens of notable early websites with a working browser and Flash emulation. https://neal.fun/internet-artifacts/
When Meta's Threads launched, The Verge's Alex Heath reported they planned to integrate ActivityPub "three months after the initial release." But I noticed Instagram's Adam Mosseri stopped mentioning it since Threads blew up. His latest video update has a long list of planned features, but ActivityPub isn't on there. https://www.threads.net/@mosseri/post/CumU7sGg3Y8
I'm skeptical that Threads ever meaningfully integrates ActivityPub, personally. Mosseri repeatedly said before launch that account portability was a top priority for Threads, but I think the moment they exploded in popularity, that was dead in the water. The Threads social graph is basically the Instagram social graph, and the idea that Meta would freely let that go seems pretty unlikely.
Tiny Awards is a new effort to celebrate the best of the "small, playful, and heartfelt web” made in the last year. As part of the selection committee, I helped narrow the ~300 nominees down to 16 finalists, and now you decide who wins. I wrote a little about each site here— voting’s open until July 20! https://waxy.org/2023/07/vote-on-the-tiny-awards/
4,144 people are currently drawing "The Free Movie," MSCHF's new project to "crowd pirate" a hand-drawn, frame-by-frame recreation of The Bee Movie with a built-in MS Paint-like editor. https://thefreemovie.buzz/
accidental art challenge: go to your online marketplace of choice, search for people trying to sell their mirrors, and reply to this post with the best photos you find
Went to the Billy Ireland Cartoon Museum in Columbus, and found myself unexpectedly overwhelmed seeing original art from cartoonists who shaped my childhood: pencil roughs, eraser marks, Wite-Out, and all.
Calvin’s hair was originally different, but Watterson’s editor at the syndicate convinced him to change it, suggesting readers would want to see his eyes.
Ever wonder what the rest of Citizen Kane looked like? Got AI to generate the other 78 years of Charles Foster Kane’s life not depicted in the film, from potty training and first steps to board meetings and tax audits. Over 200,000 hours of him sleeping, it’s boring as fuck
Hank Green has cancer. Fortunately, it's one of the most curable kinds, Hodgkin lymphoma, and he started chemo today. He talked about his worries and expectations for how the treatment might affect his work and life over the next 4+ months in a characteristically thoughtful video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6a4hMyiwBo