Well-written and touching post. To switch off this API used by so many long-time users on the same day "For You" appears as the default option on Twitter triggers me. The "For You" timeline is only for Elon: it will drive engagement, extremism, and all the things social networks have been accused of driving for years now in order to make more $.
Some folks here have been comparing the crypto/Web3 and ActivityPub craze recently but I see a massive difference. A billionaire has spent the last 3 months shitting on what I thought was my social backyard. Crypto and NFTs did not impact how I use my bank accounts, Elon ruined in a quarter a very special place I had crafted over a decade.
Mastodon is not great right now, the UX needs to vastly improve, but all for-profit social networks have always disappointed in the long run. Looking back, few technologies have kept the same degree of greatness over the past 15 years: emails, torrents, RSS feeds... only tools no corporation fully controls. I hope ActivityPub can join that list fairly soon.
Hatching Twitter is very interesting and has a lot of drama, I loved it. I found that Elon Musk had a boring writing style (very slow to start). I also recommend Bad Blood, it's hard to stop reading it once started.
One great aspect of Facebook is that Zuckerberg interviewed with the author for years and the cut into parts makes a lot of sense (Harvard and before, "Move fast and break things", Trump, aftermath).
Giphy shows good results but the search is quite slow IMO, I hope this improves in the future.
If you haven't read Facebook by Steven Levy I recommend it, the book explains quite well what happened after the acquisitions of Instagram, Whatsapp, and Oculus.
> [They were] buying assets WeWork would in turn lease back from them. But as Rebekah explained in an interview with Fast Company, “We don't have a line at all between work and life. It's not even a blurred line. There is no line.”
There was also no line between business and theft.
Related to the topic, I highly recommend this short documentary about the Cavendish banana and the deadly fungus affecting it: https://youtu.be/YkI3zkQ4WBo
I don't understand this German cliché, it's not insanely great but the amount of delays is the same as in France with better internet, cleaner toilets, and a descent price. Internet in Germany is a combination of shitty contracts, slow speeds, and deceptive ads. That is much worse than a descent service with clear pricings like Deutsche Bahn.
Some folks here have been comparing the crypto/Web3 and ActivityPub craze recently but I see a massive difference. A billionaire has spent the last 3 months shitting on what I thought was my social backyard. Crypto and NFTs did not impact how I use my bank accounts, Elon ruined in a quarter a very special place I had crafted over a decade.
Mastodon is not great right now, the UX needs to vastly improve, but all for-profit social networks have always disappointed in the long run. Looking back, few technologies have kept the same degree of greatness over the past 15 years: emails, torrents, RSS feeds... only tools no corporation fully controls. I hope ActivityPub can join that list fairly soon.