Category: Communication
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An ActivityPub WordPress plugin
Matthias Pfefferle has made a WordPress plugin that converts your blog into a very, very stripped-down Fediverse server. What this means, basically, is that if you install this plugin on your WordPress blog, then your blog posts will appear as posts in ActivityPub Fediverse servers, such as (most famously) mastodon.social. You just install and activate…
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The Era of Centralized Social Media Is Over
For too long, we have made what has amounted to a Faustian bargain. If you post your comments, your pictures, your videos, your essays, your reviews—your content—on Big Tech’s enormous centralized platforms, then Big Tech will give you free hosting, an audience if you compete well, and some content development tools. It seemed fair. At…
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My new book is launched in paperback: Here are some quotes
I am now announcing that my new book is now available on Amazon in paperback. Please show your appreciation for this blog (and my other attempts to enlighten the world) by buying it!
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How to Fix Social Media in Three Easy Steps
The social media bullies—YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and more—constantly violate our digital rights. That is the problem. The solution is to wean us off these social media giants, somehow. You own your own data and decide what you see (or not) for yourself. You subscribe to people, period, not to people’s accounts on this-or-that service. That…
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New book: Essays on Free Knowledge
Update: Available in paperback on Amazon – as an audiobook read by the author I published my first book this morning. The current cost is $9.95. It is a 270-page ebook, first published on Gumroad, where I’ll get a higher percentage. Buy via the embedded ad below, and after that, I’ll have a few notes…
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How and Why to Decentralize the Internet: a Course
I am thinking of offering a new, independent online course about decentralization and freedom. The focus would be social media; perhaps a future course would focus on free encyclopedias. Or maybe we would do the encyclopedia course first. A proposed reading list is below. Interested? Have ideas about what we should read for this? This…
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Toward a Superior News Service
Do you run a news startup that features original reporting—not just news aggregated from other sources? Do you want to make it a standout, the sort of service people will point to as “the best solution to all the problems with fake news”? Then I want to give you some free advice. And look in…
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How to Choose a (Bible) Translation
Choosing a Bible translation is not easy or straightforward. While readability or comprehensibility are important, accuracy reigns supreme, for the simple reason that inaccuracies may be defined as failures of translation. A failed translation is an invention of the translator rather than a representation of the intent of the original author. The author’s thoughts must…
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Toward a social contract for social media
Last week, I led a “strike,” or boycott, associated with the hashtag #SocialMediaStrike, directed at the giant, centralized social media services. Though throttled by Twitter and no doubt by others, the brief campaign led to massive use of the hashtag, many people carrying out the strike, as well as dozens of news stories from around…
