Notices by Richard MacManus (ricmac@mastodon.social)

While I was writing my Web 2.0 memoir, I realised that I didn’t have nearly enough screenshots from that era. The ones I did have were usually done with Skitch. I wish I’d used it more though! https://indieweb.social/@classicweb/114248027432834035

@jdp23 I think the best thing about the fediverse is that YOU (the user) can choose which version of the fedi you want to live in. If you don’t want Meta, then choose an instance that blocks them out (or self-host). If you don’t want people searching your content, you can shut that off in your settings. If you don’t want “normies” here, then you can close the doors via your instance. What annoys me is people who want to make *their* version of the fedi the default.

Ah, the glory days of Plain Blue Links. Back when we knew how to link to each other. And of course, @davew improved that situation even more by building blogging tools and RSS. https://indieweb.social/@classicweb/114205823193887379

I've moved my Mastodon account that posts screenshots of old websites to a new handle: @classicweb. It's a manually curated bot that posts memorable websites from the past, like this strange 2006 site that appeared out of nowhere (was it microblogging, was it a new form of txting? Nobody knew at that point...)
https://indieweb.social/@classicweb/114201528286279570

Sometimes I think the fediverse is actually saving the Web. I don’t know about you, but I want the web to always be a HUMAN network. I’ll be producing my “pretty .html static pages” for many years to come, for human readers not LLMs. I get why it makes sense for software documentation to be 99% for AI, as Karpathy says, but it’s his “Repeat for everything” that I find incredibly obnoxious. Fortunately that kind of nonsense is mainly on X. I feel like the fediverse is human-first and web-first.

Three Hollywood movies were released in 1995 with internet themes: the Keanu Reeves cyberpunk film Johnny Mnemonic (with an accompanying website), The Net with Sandra Bullock, and Hackers. As well as these 3 films, I look back at William Gibson's now extinct mid-90s website, "William Gibson’s Yardshow", and the equally lost to time Johnny Mnemonic net.hunt, an online scavenger hunt. https://cybercultural.com/p/cyberspace-movies-1995/ #InternetHistory #90smovies

Some great points here about email newsletters — including that email open stats are starting to become unreliable due to AI and big tech like Apple screwing around with the inbox (no, email is not immune to enshittification!). All this is part of why I moved away from calling my site Cybercultural a "newsletter". I'm not exactly sure how to define Cybercultural currently, but it will involve fediverse as a community-driver going forward. #IndieWeb #WebLife2025

ref: https://www.therebooting.com/the-newsletter-bubble/

@evan I think you should name this “me-centralisation” (kind of a pun on re-centralisation)

“What makes me hopeful is that when you find a way to look at how people are really using the web, a lot of it still feels like the early internet. It's expression, communication, connection. Fundamentally, it's a place where regular people share themselves and do wonderful things." https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250306-inside-youtubes-hidden-world-of-forgotten-videos

A look back at GeoCities in 1995 (30 years ago!), including a couple of rare screenshots of the GeoCities website from 1995 — when it was still known as Beverly Hills Internet. https://cybercultural.com/p/geocities-1995/ #InternetHistory #GeoCities (special thanks to @GIFmodel for the knowledge and @andrewjbtw for the 1995 BHI images)

In this week's Cybercultural post, I look back on Tumblr in 2012. In particular, I explore how the gifset — a collection of animated gifs — came to epitomize Tumblr's quirky appeal and helped redefine blogging. (note: I fired up my YouTube a/c for this post, recording 4 video screencasts to illustrate some beautiful 2012 gifsets) https://cybercultural.com/p/tumblr-2012/ #InternetHistory #Tumblr #gifsets

On February 19, 2007 — 18 years ago! — David Karp launched #Tumblr: "A tumblelog isn’t better than a blog. It’s not a replacement. But we’re certain it will be a fabulous alternative to the 90% of web users who don’t care to maintain a blog." https://davidville.wordpress.com/2007/02/19/tumblr/

Good thread here for those curious about bots. I made my own internet history bot recently: @cybercultural (cc @botwiki and @FediFollows for your directories)
https://social.growyourown.services/@FediTips/114031982543389776

This week on Cybercultural I continue my look back at 1994 in #InternetHistory. I delve into how Netscape Navigator brought multimedia to the web, what it took to move the industry beyond the "internet in a box" paradigm, and why it was time for the ROMbloids to move aside and make way for the Webuloids! https://cybercultural.com/p/netscape-1994/

This week's look back at #InternetHistory is again about 1994, and what I think was the world's first multimedia website: the Internet Underground Music Archive (IUMA). I tried my best to get some screenshots of IUMA from 1994, even though none appear to exist! I used somewhat blurry images from old YouTube videos and computer magazines. If anyone happens to have, or know of, a 1994 screenshot of IUMA, do let me know and I'll add it to the post. https://cybercultural.com/p/iuma-1994/

So BuzzFeed is promoting its new social media platform to compete with X, TikTok et al with...a 10,000 word manifesto?! https://www.buzzfeed.com/island/manifesto

2/2 I have to thank @stefan for his inspiration and @botwiki website — a great bots resource! Also shoutout to @simon, whose post guided the structure I chose: https://til.simonwillison.net/mastodon/mastodon-bots-github-actions. I'm using a #Python script running on GitHub Actions, with screenshots taken via Playwright.

Other credits:
- ChatGPT helped me build this.
- I’m hosting my bot on @tchambers Indieweb.social instance.
- And finally, of course, I’m using @internetarchive's Wayback Machine for the content snapshots.

1/2 I made a bot! I’ve created an internet history themed Mastodon bot: @cybercultural. It posts screenshots of classic tech news websites and tech blogs from Dot-Com, Web 2.0 and the 2010s. There’s one post per hour, so it’s not too noisy. I’ve attached an example toot, and I invite you all to follow the bot if you want some tech blogging memories in your feed.

Note: it’s still ‘under construction’, as we used to say in the ‘90s, but otherwise good to go!

Totally agree with this…can we just stop with the wall-to-wall toots about politics, ex-Twitter, etc. Let’s instead build the social web (and world) we want to live in.

“We don’t need any more irony-poisoned hot takes or cathartic, irreverent snark. We need to collectively decide what kind of world we actually do want, and what we’re willing to do to achieve it.”

You Can’t Post Your Way Out of Fascism https://www.404media.co/you-cant-post-your-way-out-of-fascism/

I'm the same, using social media over the past few weeks has become a chore again. That's another great thing about Usenet the web forums back in the day, you could choose what you wanted to engage with. Wish Mastodon (and fediverse in general) had more tools other than mute to dial down political stuff in one's feeds and lists. And btw, it's probably even worse on Bluesky.
https://alpaca.gold/@Jeremiah/113936618805176377