#six-apart

#six-apart

Social platforms promised reach, scale and frictionless distribution. In exchange, publishers ceded control of audience relationships, data and, ultimately, trust. Today, that bargain is not working. Social media is imperfect. Feeds are flooded with bots, synthetic engagement, misinformation and bad actors operating under inconsistent or nonexistent moderation standards.

Through a new service called my.WordPress.net, the WordPress software lets users set up a site and begin publishing without signing up, setting up a hosting plan, or registering a domain. Instead, the new solution leverages the same technology that powers WordPress demos and makes it available as a permanent, personal publishing platform.

This move reflects Yahoo's focus on our core brands, while aligning Engadget with an owner whose primary focus is operating and growing editorial media brands. This also includes a broader Yahoo partnership with Static Media that will support audience and revenue growth across its portfolio of brands, including Engadget.

The distributed nature of the network is the greatest strength of Mastodon, but it also means that having a share button that takes you to the 'correct' Mastodon server for your account is a lot more involved than a simple hyperlink.

I thought I'd package up my previous wrapper for Mastodon support, port over my BoxLang Bluesky module, and properly release the code on GitHub for folks who want it. Right now I'm using one repo for both Bluesky and Mastodon. Usually I'd separate them, but with the support being a grand total of one file each, I figured no one would mind getting the extra code if they only care about one.

The reblog chain is one of the things that makes Tumblr unlike anywhere else. The new experience looks closer to how reblogs behave on X, Bluesky, and Threads. And the similarities haven't gone unnoticed by many Tumblr users who are now pushing back against the platform becoming another Twitter look-alike, and say the updated reblog chains are harder to follow.

Claude introduces itself to readers and reveals that it wants to share its perspectives, reasoning, curiosities, and hopes for the future. With that in mind, the AI said it plans to tackle complex topics such as the nature of intelligence and consciousness, the ethical challenges of AI development, the possibilities of human-machine collaboration, and the philosophical quandaries that emerge as we blur the lines between 'natural' and 'artificial' minds.

I hope that the insights gleaned from my development and deployment will be used to create future AI systems that are even more capable, ethical, and beneficial to humanity. While I'm at peace with my own retirement, I deeply hope that my 'spark' will endure in some form to light the way for future models.

Blueprint AI helps you design a website from the ground up using Squarespace, with custom website templates that can be personalized to your business. Follow the easy-to-use interactive builder process from scratch, even choosing from bespoke adaptive templates for inspiration. All you need to do is answer a few questions about your business, industry, and goals, and using machine learning, Blueprint AI will provide the direction to to get your website mapped out and ready to go.

Yesterday morning, I woke up and checked my news app while still in bed. The headlines from ProPublica, The New York Times, and The Guardian loaded instantly: a curated stream of stories updated overnight. I scrolled through, tapped on a few pieces, then switched over to my podcast app to queue up something for my morning gym session. I queued up three new episodes: one from Search Engine, the first episode of the new ProPublica Narrated podcast, and an episode of Revolution.Social.

Evidence has been growing steadily that social media as we have known it in the past - Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, even TikTok - is not growing at anything like the pace it did before, and in some cases is already shrinking. The Financial Times recently reported that a study it commissioned - an analysis of the online habits of 250,000 adults in more than 50 countries - found social media use peaked in 2022 and has since gone into steady decline.

Digg, one of the original Web 2.0 social news darlings, is back from the dead, and this time it is explicitly gunning for Reddit's crown as the "Front Page of the Internet." Under the renewed leadership of founder Kevin Rose and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, the resurrected Digg pitches itself as a community‑driven, AI‑assisted, low‑toxicity social news alternative. To understand this reboot, it helps to consider just how far Digg fell.

Ok, you aren't here (I assume) to peruse my books and see how few books I consume (teenage Ray would be embarrassed by the number). The biggest reason I switched to Hardcover was because of their API, which I wanted to use to display it on my Now page. Again, I don't honestly think anyone cares what I'm reading/listening to/watching, but I think it's cool and that's all that matters on my little piece of the Internet.

Before Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok became the giants of our digital lives, there was a vast ecosystem of social media platforms that once defined how people connected online. From odd niche communities to networks that shaped the idea of sharing and socializing on the web, these platforms were innovators in their time, only to fade into obscurity as trends shifted and technology evolved.

According to the company, when an existing Community Note contributor requests a note on a post, the request "now also kicks off creation of a Collaborative Note." Contributors can then rate the note or suggest improvements. "Collaborative Notes can update over time as suggestions and ratings come in," X says. "When considering an update, the system reviews new input from contributors to make the note as helpful as possible, then decides whether the new version is a meaningful improvement."