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Notices tagged with socialweb
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“Tell me, what are words for?” They are for blogging!
Earlier today during an informal espresso live stream in the #indieweb cafe, Spotify was playing an auto-generated daylist, something like “romantic 80s tuesday morning”, and the 1982 song “Words”¹ by the band Missing Persons came on.
When we heard this lyric:
🎶 What are words for when no one listens? 🎶
I remarked half-jokingly in response:
Words are for blogging, whether anyone is listening, reading, or not.
Another participant noted that blogging sometimes feels like screaming into the void.
I noted it doesn’t matter if anyone is reading (or listening), it’s fine to blog for an audience of one, yourself, even just to have something to refer to or reference in the future.
When I write a post it’s often directed at only a small number of people, who may be part of a larger conversation. The point of publishing it publicly is to assert a level of confidence and credibility by the act of “putting it on the permanent record” (since nearly everything blogged is promptly indexed and archived.) with a permalink.
The lyrics have some quite prescient bits, like this:
“No one notices, I think I'll dye my hair blue
Media overload bombarding you with action
It’s getting near impossible to cause distraction”
Written and sung more than forty years ago. Long before the web (or #socialWeb) was a thing.
Rewriting the lyrics as a parody could be a fun project, e.g.:
🎶 What are blogs for when no one reads them? 🎶
some existing lyrics barely need any edits, like:
“It’s like the feeling at the end of the page
When you realize you don't know what you just read”
perhaps an exercise for the reader for now.
Previously: “Inbox Zero” (parody of The Fixx “Saved by Zero”²)
* https://tantek.com/w/InboxZero (2009-01-29 https://twitter.com/t/status/1160324190)
This is post 10 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts
← https://tantek.com/2025/055/t1/three-steps-indieweb-cybersecurity
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Glossary
blog
https://indieweb.org/blog
blogging
https://indieweb.org/blogging
permalink
https://indieweb.org/permalink
why blog
https://indieweb.org/why_post
References
¹ https://libre.fm/artist/Missing+Persons/track/Words (YouTube link inside)
² https://libre.fm/artist/The+Fixx/track/Saved+by+Zero (YouTube link inside)
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🎉 Eight years ago today, the #IndieWeb Webmention protocol was published as a W3C REC https://www.w3.org/TR/webmention/
As a social web building block, #Webmention was designed to work with various other building blocks. Small pieces, loosely joined. Every year developers find new ways to work with Webmention, and new subtleties when combined with other building blocks.
The primary uses of Webmention, peer-to-peer comments, likes, and other responses across web sites, has long presented an interesting challenge with the incorporation and display of external content originally from one site (the Webmention sender), on another site (the Webmention receiver).
There are multiple considerations to keep in mind when displaying such external content.
Two examples of external content are images (e.g. people’s icons or profile images from the author of a comment) and text (e.g. people’s names or the text of their comments).
For external images, rather than displaying them in full fidelity, you may want to compress them into a smaller resolution for how your site displays the profile images of comment authors.
If you accept Webmentions from arbitrary sources, there’s no telling what might show up in author images. You may want to pixelate images from unknown or novel sources into say 3x3 pixel grids of color (or grayscale) averages to make them uniquely identifiable while blurring any undesirable graphics beyond recognition.
For external text, one thing we discovered in recent IndieWeb chat¹ is that someone’s comment (or in this case their name) can contain Unicode directional formatting characters, e.g. for displaying an Arabic or Hebrew name right-to-left. Text with such formatting characters can errantly impact the direction of adjacent text adjacent.
Fortunately there is a CSS property, 'unicode-bidi', that can be used to isolate such external text. Thus when you embed text that was parsed from a received Webmention, possibly with formatting characters, you have to wrap it in an HTML element (a span will do if you have not already wrapped it) with that CSS property. E.g.:
<span style="unicode-bidi: isolate;">parsed text here</span>
Though even better would be use of a generic HTML class name indicating the semantic:
<span class="external-text">parsed text here</span>
and then a CSS rule in your style sheet to add that property (and any others you want for external text)
.external-text { unicode-bidi: isolate; }
This is post 7 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts #socialWeb #openSocialWeb
← https://tantek.com/2025/004/t1/micro-one-onramp-open-social-web
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Glossary
HTML class name
https://tantek.com/2012/353/b1/why-html-classes-css-class-selectors
IndieWeb chat
https://indieweb.org/discuss
pixelate
https://indieweb.org/pixelated
small pieces, loosely joined
https://www.smallpieces.com/
Unicode directional formatting characters
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidirectional_text#Explicit_formatting
unicode-bidi CSS property
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/unicode-bidi
References
¹ https://chat.indieweb.org/dev/2025-01-05#t1736092889120900
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The team @micro.blog have done it again.
They soft-launched https://micro.one yesterday¹.
This may be the most accessible onramp to the open social web ever.
Cost: $1 a month. Yes you read correctly.
This is the simplest and cheapest (where you are the customer, not the product) way to own your identity and content online².
Stop posting in someone else’s garage³.
Time to export your Twitter, and migrate your Mastodon handle to your own home on the web.
Of course you can bring your own domain name. Additionally:
* blog posts, naturally, both articles and microblogging notes
* photos
* podcasting
* custom themes
* web-clients and native mobile posting clients
* WordPress, Tumblr, Mastodon, Medium import
More details (and alternatives) at https://micro.one/about/pricing
And yes, it interoperates with the open #socialWeb, including:
* #ActivityPub support, #Mastodon and #fediverse compatibility
* #IndieAuth to sign-in to third-party apps
* #microformats support in all built-in themes
* #Webmention for sending and receiving replies across websites
* #Micropub standard posting API, supporting dozens of clients
* #Microsub standard timeline API, supporting social readers
More #indieweb support details at https://micro.one/about/indieweb
Did I mention the the superb micro.blog (and micro.one) Community Guidelines?
* https://help.micro.blog/t/community-guidelines/39
Well done @manton.org and team.
This is post 6 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts #ownYourIdentity #ownYourData #openSocialWeb
← https://tantek.com/2025/003/t1/lastfm-year-in-review-playback24
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Glossary
IndieAuth
https://indieweb.org/IndieAuth
microformats
https://microformats.org/wiki/microformats
Micropub
https://indieweb.org/Micropub
Microsub
https://indieweb.org/Microsub
Webmention
https://indieweb.org/Webmention
¹ https://www.manton.org/2025/01/03/microone-was-effectively-a-softlaunch.html
² https://tantek.com/2025/001/t1/15-years-notes-my-site-first
³ https://tantek.com/2023/022/t2/own-your-notes-domain-migration
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No I did not block you on the #fediverse / #Mastodon / #Misskey etc.
If you were following me @tantek.com on your client/server/instance of choice but noticed you were no longer doing so, that was due to a recent software bug in my fediverse provider which accidentally caused everyone’s #ActivityPub servers to unfollow me (bug details below).
No it’s absolutely not your fault, you did nothing wrong.
We need a variant of Hanlon’s Razor¹ like:
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by a software bug.”
Take another look at my posts if you want (directly on @tantek.com or try searching for that on your instance) and if you like what you see or find them otherwise informative and useful, feel free to refollow. If not, no worries!
Also no worries if you ever unfollow/refollow for any reason. I mean that.
I always assume people know best how to manage their online reader/reading experiences, everyone’s priorities and likes/dislikes change over time, and encourage everyone to make choices that are best for their mental health and overall joy online.
Bug details:
This was due to a #BridgyFed bug² that deleted my profile (“ActivityPub actor”) from (nearly?) all instances, making everyone’s accounts automatically unfollow me, as well as remove any of my posts from your likes and reposts (boosts) collections. It also removed my posts from any of your replies to my posts, leaving your replies dangling without reply-contexts. Apologies!
The bug was introduced accidentally as part of another fix about a month ago³, and was triggered within the following week⁴.
Anyone following me before ~2024-09-22 was no longer following me. A few folks have noticed and refollowed. Any likes or reposts of my posts before that date were also undone (removed).
Ryan (@snarfed.org) has been really good about giving folks a heads-up, and apologizing, and quickly doing what he can to fix things.
Bugs happen, yes even in production code, so please do not post/send any hate.
I’d rather be one of the folks helping with improving BridgyFed, and temporary setbacks like this are part of being an early / eager #IndieWeb adopter.
This bug has also revealed some potential weaknesses in other ActivityPub implementations. E.g. deleting an “actor” should be undoable, and undoing a delete should reconnect everything, from follows to likes & reposts collections, to reply-contexts. Perhaps the ActivityPub specification could be updated with such guidance (if it hasn’t been already, I need to double-check).
To be clear, I’m still a big supporter of #BridgyFed, #ActivityPub, #Webmention, and everyone who chooses to implement these and other #IndieWeb related and adjacent protocols as best fits their products and services.
All of these are a part of our broader open #socialWeb, and making all these #openStandards work well together (including handling edge-cases and mistakes!) is essential for providing #socialMedia alternatives that put users first.
References:
¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
² https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/1379
³ https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/commit/4df76d0db7b87cabbd714039546c05b3221169be
⁴ https://chat.indieweb.org/dev/2024-09-22#t1727028174623700
This is post 26 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts
← https://tantek.com/2024/285/t1/io-domain-suggested-steps
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Implemented liking/favoriting of #Mastodon posts via Bridgy Fed on my site! (Actually of any post on any site that #BridgyFed can discover an #ActivityPub endpoint to send likes to.)
Tested it by liking @evanp.me (@evan@cosocial.ca @evanpro)’s reply¹ confirming that he received a notification from my prior post². I sent a #Webmention from my like post³ to Bridgy Fed, and it #federated the like to Evan’s server, which subsequently showed up in the "favourites" list of Evan’s post:
https://cosocial.ca/@evan/111237962392745000/favourites
Every step that connects heterogenous #socialWeb systems & protocols feels like progress.
This is day 45 of #100DaysOfIndieWeb. #100Days #IndieWeb #like #likes #fediverse #favorite #favourite #favourites
← Day 44: https://tantek.com/2023/234/t1/threads-supports-indieweb-rel-me
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¹ https://cosocial.ca/@evan/111237962392745000
² https://tantek.com/2023/287/t1/federating-mentions
³ https://tantek.com/2023/289/f1
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I recently wrote a high level summary blog post:
W3C Technical Plenary and Advisory Committee (TPAC) Meetings 2023
https://tantek.com/2023/262/b1/w3c-technical-plenary-tpac
of my time at the #W3C (@W3.org, @w3c@w3c.social, @W3C) #TPAC the week before.
Posting this note to explicitly #hashtag that article with topics mentioned therein:
#Sevilla #Seville #Spain #WICG #SocialCG #SWICG #Fediverse #SocialWeb #sustainability #IndieWeb #ActivityPub
because I forgot to put explicit categories (p-category markup) in the article post.
Adding that markup after publishing, and then sending an ActivityPub update (via #BridgyFed) is apparently not enough for #Mastodon to notice that the Update has new tags to display and aggregate on tag pages. In my next #w3cTPAC article post I’ll be sure to include category markup before publishing and see if that works.
Post glossary:
article post
https://indieweb.org/article
note post
https://indieweb.org/note
p-category
https://indieweb.org/p-category
tags
https://indieweb.org/tags
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going to the #SocialWeb CG meeting @W3C #w3cTPAC tomorrow (2023-09-12) at 09:30 CEST.
Looking forward to seeing @evanp.me (@evan@cosocial.ca @evanpro) and many others!
So many advances in #ActivityPub, #Webmention, Micropub, #IndieAuth etc. that it may be time to restart the #SocialWebWG to officially update all our active specifications.
We can & should also reach out to #Bluesky & #Nostr communities to work together on shared semantics and bridging protocols to continue growing a heterogenous #fediverse built on the #OpenWeb.
We know it is possible. We worked hard in the Social Web working group to align a lot of semantics across #ActivityStreams and #microformats2. The fruitful results of that are services like http://fed.brid.gy/ which I myself use to send a Webmention when I make a new post (like this one) and have #BridgyFed automatically federate it via ActivityPub using my personal site identity to #Mastodon followers and others.
@snarfed.org wrote up a recent comparison of top #decentralized #socialProtocols that can help inform a lot of this discussion: https://snarfed.org/2023-09-04_50856
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Threads.net now supports the #indieWeb #microformats #openStandard rel-me for distributed ✅ verification!¹ (supported since 2023-08-09)
My Threads profile already had my domain since it was created from my Instagram profile.
View source on https://www.threads.net/@tantek and you can see the #relMe on a link tag:
<link rel="me" href="https://tantek.com/" />
Instructions to add yours:
* Add your domain to your Threads profile "Link" field. That’s it.
Longer explicit steps: https://indieweb.org/rel-me#Threads
Thanks especially to @timothychambers.net (@tchambers@indieweb.social, @timothyjchambers@threads.net) for requesting rel-me support² which one Threads engineer “decided to hack it together” one night!³
You can view Tim’s profile @tchambers@indieweb.social for a real world example of a Mastodon profile showing a green text ✅ verified link to a Threads profile.
Tim made several good points in his request:
“… a small, but disproportionately helpful addition would be to support this "rel=me" feature in your profiles. That could launch well before full ActivityPub, & show the first real integration to open social web standards”
Microformats (and IndieWeb) standards in general are deliberately designed as small, incremental building blocks which are disproportionately helpful as Tim says.
These small building blocks which directly enable user features are usually something a web developer can code at least some (often complete!) support for in one day/night which makes them particularly appealing as a way to rapidly support open #socialWeb standards used by the #fediverse and beyond.
Incrementally implementing microformats & IndieWeb standards⁴ also demonstrates good will and good intentions for supporting the #openWeb.
This is day 44 of #100DaysOfIndieWeb. #100Days
← Day 43: https://tantek.com/2023/171/t1/anniversaries-microformats-posse
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Previously:
* 2023-02-01 Wikipedia.org supports multiple rel=me links: https://tantek.com/2023/139/t1/wikipedia-supports-indieweb-rel-me
¹ https://www.threads.net/@mosseri/post/Cvu2eXurRbB
² https://www.threads.net/@timothyjchambers/post/CupCvChAxI8
³ https://www.threads.net/@0xjessel/post/Cvu7-A4viZu
⁴ https://spec.indieweb.org/
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Watching #MozFest session Dialogues & Debates: Making the Fediverse¹ and panelist @stevetex@mozilla.social (@stevetex) just announced that we (#Mozilla) are standing up a #Mastodon instance², starting with limited sign-ups.
I’m excited that Mozilla is experimenting with #socialWeb alternatives to centralized #socialMedia silos.
There are many #Mozillians with #fediverse addresses you can follow:
* https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mastodon
Several of these folks also have their own #IndieWeb sites.
It’s interesting seeing how people are individually choosing to use a fediverse address on someone else’s server, vs their own server like with a subdomain, vs just using their existing site.
One trend I have seen is people using someone else’s Mastodon server as a stepping stone, a learning experience, before migrating to either self-hosting Mastodon (or an easier to run alternative like microblog.pub³, not to be confused with micro.blog⁴), or ideally directly using their own site, blog etc. to connect to the fediverse⁵.
Do you have an @-@ address and want to use your own site instead?
If you’re a #webdev, you can totally do this by connecting your existing personal site with https://fed.brid.gy/ and own your presence on the web, social web, fediverse all at one place.
Got questions? Drop by the IndieWeb chat! https://chat.indieweb.org/dev
This is day 35 of #100DaysOfIndieWeb #100Days
← Day 34: https://tantek.com/2023/072/t1/blog-as-if-ai-trained-posts
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¹ https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/UEEGYL-1
² https://mozilla.social/
³ https://indieweb.org/microblog.pub
⁴ https://indieweb.org/micro.blog
⁵ https://tantek.com/2022/301/t1/twittermigration-bridgyfed-mastodon-indieweb
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Watching #MozFest session Dialogues & Debates: Making the Fediverse¹ and panelist @stevetex@mozilla.social (@stevetex) just announced that we (#Mozilla) are standing up a #Mastodon instance², starting with limited sign-ups.
I’m excited that Mozilla is experimenting with #socialWeb alternatives to centralized #socialMedia silos.
There are many #Mozillians with #fediverse addresses you can follow:
* https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mastodon
Several of these folks also have their own #IndieWeb sites.
It’s interesting seeing how people are individually choosing to use a fediverse address on someone else’s server, vs their own server like with a subdomain, vs just using their existing site.
One trend I have seen is people using someone else’s Mastodon server as a stepping stone, a learning experience, before moving to either self-hosting Mastodon (or an easier to run alternative like microblog.pub³, not to be confused with micro.blog⁴), or ideally, directly using their existing site, blog etc. to connect to the fediverse⁵.
Do you have an @-@ address and want to use your own site instead?
If you’re a #webdev, you can totally do this by connecting your existing personal site with https://fed.brid.gy/ and own your presence on the web, social web, fediverse all at one place.
Got questions? Drop by the IndieWeb chat! https://chat.indieweb.org/dev
¹ https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/UEEGYL-1
² https://mozilla.social/
³ https://indieweb.org/microblog.pub
⁴ https://indieweb.org/micro.blog
⁵ https://tantek.com/2022/301/t1/twittermigration-bridgyfed-mastodon-indieweb
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#indieweb 🤝 #fediverse
✨ https://werd.io/2022/the-fediverse-and-the-indieweb (@benwerd)
✨ https://catgirlin.space/posts/moving-to-the-fediverse-and-indieweb/
✨ https://tantek.com/2022/301/t1/twittermigration-bridgyfed-mastodon-indieweb
Previously: https://twitter.com/t/status/1586264352453427201, https://twitter.com/t/status/956436348361158658 #TwitterMigration #ActivityPub #SocialWeb #OpenStandards #OpenWeb
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#indieweb 🤝 #fediverse
✨ https://werd.io/2022/the-fediverse-and-the-indieweb (@benwerd)
✨ https://catgirlin.space/posts/moving-to-the-fediverse-and-indieweb/
✨ https://tantek.com/2022/301/t1/twittermigration-bridgyfed-mastodon-indieweb
Previously: https://twitter.com/t/status/1586264352453427201, https://twitter.com/t/status/956436348361158658 #TwitterMigration #ActivityPub #SocialWeb #OpenStandards #OpenWeb
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Freshly posted: Toward a More Civil and Social Web
@optoutools founder Teresa’s keynote @IndieWebCamp Berlin last November
12:10s video: https://archive.org/details/iwcberlin2-keynote-teresaingram
#AI #AIEthics #NLP #machineLearning #socialWeb #socialMedia #TechIsNotNeutral #IWD2020
Must see for anyone desiging/building tech for humans.
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I have repeatedly expressed to peers working on #IndieWeb #SocialWeb #SocialMedia #FederatedSocialWeb that tech/plumbing-centric framing of #dweb "Decentralized Web" "Distributed Web" is heavily problematic. Beyond MastoGab, there is now something much worse (not linking). I’ll follow up with a longer blog post (it’s been in my drafts for a while), explaining why, how we got here, and maybe some ways for how can we replace use of "Decentralized Web" or "Distributed Web" with something human-centric instead.
For a start, re-read Mozilla’s Manifesto and Principles:
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/
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Amazing start @IndieWebCamp #Berlin with inspiring & thought-provoking keynotes:
Teresa Ingram (OptOut founder) on Toward A More Civil Social Web
Yulia Startsev (#IndieWeb Organizers) My First IndieWebCamp
videos will be posted.
#openweb #socialweb
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*looking at the development in the W3 group on #SocialWeb and its API discussion. RESTish v…
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Discussions in W3 #SocialWeb group are turning out to discussing stuff to make "the perfect…
Tantek
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