Notices by Richard MacManus (ricmac@mastodon.social), page 5

I take a look at how Online Identity has evolved through the years, from the fluid identities of BowieWorld to the neutered identity culture that Facebook introduced in the 2000s. David Bowie himself played with virtual personas (how could he not?!) and I also look at a 1999 book by US sociologist Sherry Turkle. https://cybercultural.com/p/online-identity-bowieworld-1999/ #InternetHistory #OnlineIdentity

"AI summarization is rapidly tearing down a business model that has worked for decades. Unless there is an agreed upon business model that is accessible to all players including small publishers and long-tail AI startups, we may lose the diversity of opinions and perspectives that have given us the open web we currently enjoy." @everwas https://everwas.com/2025/07/publishing-in-an-agentic-ai-world/

Needless to say, I was in tears during episodes 7 & 8 of season 4, but I really liked how it ended in episodes 9 & 10. I won’t spoil it if you haven’t watched to the end of Halt and Catch Fire…but I assure you it’s worth it.

I just finished my binge of ‘Halt and Catch Fire’, which I didn’t finish watching the first time round (probably cuz I was disillusioned by Silicon Valley at that time, 2015-17). Anyway, I watched all of it this time and loved it. Nice summary here: “…in its final season, “Halt” managed to convey a sincere nostalgia for the optimism of the early Web. Those crappy early HTML pages, with their corny cartoons and lists of links, were doors leading to endless other doors.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/14/arts/television/halt-and-catch-fire-finale.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ZU8.5fMs.I1C64iCbUDQU&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

I can’t get over how different Google is from the 1999 company that offered web users a qualitatively better search engine than what they’d been used to with portals. I know Sergey Brin is into AI now, but I wonder what Larry Page makes of 2025-Google search, and how bad for users and publishers alike it is. https://cybercultural.com/p/google-1999/ https://mastodon.social/@404mediaco/114904206348867968

@Gargron

Out of sheer boredom on a Saturday post-dinner, I opened up Threads (I no longer post there) and saw this cry for help. Poor bastards… #MetaWorld #AOLvibes

One of the ways to get Mastodon more visibility across the normieverse is to add your link to @Techmeme. e.g. I requested that one of my Mastodon posts about the OpenAI browser news be added (I thought it added good context) and within a minute or two it was up there. It's a small way to promote the fediverse, but it helps when people see more Mastodon (or indeed indie blog) links on Techmeme. Note: the button, on the bottom-right, only displays on the desktop version of Techmeme (not mobile).

What’s the social protocol for when you want to tweak your #introduction post on Mastodon? Just minor updates, so I don’t think it deserves a new post. Maybe just putting “Updated, 10 July 2025” in it?

Oh no…now Meta is automatically sharing our private messages to its AI. As far as I can tell, you can only turn it off for each message thread, one at a time (and there seems to be no option to turn it off *at all* for group threads!). Yet another privacy disaster from Facebook.

I use Messenger btw for family and non-tech friends, so don’t (ahem) shoot the messenger.

As search engines in 2025 shift from providing links to (AI) answers — and all the angst that is causing web publishers — I thought I'd take a look at what search engines were like in 1998...one year before Google became popular. At that time search was seen as just one part of the portal experience. But little did AltaVista know, it wouldn't be the center of attention on @dannysullivan's Search Engine Watch for much longer. https://cybercultural.com/p/search-1998/ #InternetHistory #searchengines

@Gargron option to turn on HTTP referrer; great for us web publishers! 🙏 🙏 🙏

Don’t fall for this again, hundreds of millions of people. https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/07/threads-is-nearing-xs-daily-app-users-new-data-shows/

This is why we loved David Lynch: such PASSION for his chosen medium. Be sure to watch this video all the way through. https://youtu.be/OQiQk8AJ0YI

via https://www.indiewire.com/features/craft/twin-peaks-season-3-theatrical-mix-david-lynch-intended-1235136544/

@evan Personally I view it the other way round: a DM is confidential unless you both agree otherwise. It’s like email sent from a friend or acquaintance: I wouldn’t share a personal email to me unless I got the other person’s ok. That’s just how I see it (fwiw I voted ‘never’, but probably ‘rarely’ would’ve been better).

Another one bites the dust… #XThreads

“Mr. Prince said he was “deeply concerned that the incentives for content creation are dead.””

This definitely resonates with me. Sometimes I wonder why I bother spending so much of my time writing articles that fewer and fewer people read. Yes, AI is to blame, altho I also put a lot of blame on ‘traffic-throttling’ social media like X, LinkedIn, Facebook/Threads. The open web is, sadly, almost devoid of incentives for creators. This is a challenge for fediverse too.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/01/technology/cloudflare-ai-data.html?unlocked_article_code=1.TE8.6JAh.CFClZ2CqkmoO&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

“I think the new web aesthetic is about getting active again. Platforms encourage passivity. They want us to stay still and scrolling, looking at what the algo wants to show us. Like, swipe, repeat. But the new web aesthetic is non-linear. It encourages you to move from one site to another, to dive down rabbit holes, and crucially, to continue sharing what you find.”

toward a new aesthetic, @sachajudd https://newsletter.sachajudd.com/archive/toward-a-new-aesthetic/

Creative Commons has a new set of AI licenses, CC Signals: "This is not about creating new property rights; it is more like defining manners for machines."

Hmmm, some of these machines already ignore robot.txt files, so I'm not sure how well this will work. But CC *did* revolutionize copyright licences in early Web 2.0, so I'd certainly like to see them help out in the AI era.

https://creativecommons.org/ai-and-the-commons/cc-signals/implementation/

Threads is allegedly part of the fediverse, yet I'm nowhere near the point of being able to ask Threads users to follow my Mastodon profile. Attached is how my Mastodon profile looks over there. Some of the issues:

1. Threads users can follow Mastodon Me *only if* they themselves have turned on fediverse sharing (an arbitrary hurdle).
2. They have to exactly type my Mastodon handle.
3. You can like but not reply.
4. "Some posts may not be visible" (why?!)
5. There's no bio!

Any other hurdles?