A quick web search for third-party coverage information tells me that Wanaque has good coverage from Verizon and poor coverage from T-Mobile. It’s easy to guess why T-Mobile might be motivated to change that situation.

Federated systems are one option for this. On one of my sites, the only way people can leave comments is with ActivityPub. They must have a (probably pseudonymous) account on a server to use that, and I hope that most servers have moderation I find acceptable. I can block those that do not.

More sophisticated options for sharing reputation between servers would help here. If, for example five servers I trust block another server as a source of harassment, I’d like to block it as well, automatically.

Google had the chance to make its Hangouts messaging app dominant when it was, briefly the default SMS client on Android devices. They threw that away following pushback from carriers.

I’m glad Google doesn’t have the dominant messaging service, but I find it bizarre anybody still uses SMS when there are so many internet-based options. I have six, and if somebody really wants to use another, I’ll probably add it.

I’m sure Apple shares a lot of the blame, but holy shit how is this not solved in 2024. I shouldn’t have to resort to spam filled shitware from Meta to get remotely modern messaging cross platform

There’s no shortage of options; the problem is getting the people you’re talking to to agree on one you like. I find Signal strikes a good balance between goodness and ease of use, and many people I know who aren’t tech or privacy nerds use it.

I’m guessing not a lot of users know about it. Their ActivityPub implementation is still only about half done.

It will be interesting to see of they promote it heavily when it’s more complete.

My (self-hosted) Mastodon server seems unable to view profiles on Threads. As far as I can tell, there’s nobody to talk to about that.

I don’t have high hopes about Meta having good intentions here, but I am eager to see platforms that would have previously been walled gardens open up to the federated model. I do think we have some work to do on the open source side to manage the potential massive increase in exposure once Threads users can follow users of other software.

Of course you can pick a server that blocks Threads if you just don’t want to deal with that.

TikTok is really popular operating on essentially the same principle. I, for one want nothing to do with that.

It’s also illegal in most jurisdictions. My point isn’t that anyone should drive without insurance, but that allowing insurance companies to offer discounts for accepting spying will lead to the spying being effectively mandatory for most people.

I’m inclined to think this should be illegal because it could lead to a situation where insurance is unavailable to or unaffordable for anyone who doesn’t opt in to fairly invasive tracking.

Why do you have an app for that?

That’s a valid point, though it looks like Popfile’s installation instructions call for manually installing libraries, presumably current ones. I think it processes only text, not PDFs or images, which are traditional sources of vulnerabilities. I’m fairly certain it doesn’t attempt to execute Javascript. It is, itself written in Perl, which is memory-safe.

It’s worth considering security because there’s so much malware out there trying to spread indiscriminately, but Popfile is less vulnerable than an Android app (which bundles its dependencies) or anything written in C (which is subject to all kinds of memory management bugs).

Abandoned doesn’t necessarily imply no longer useful. Sometimes, though rarely in the modern world software is finished.

I may give it a try. It does actually have the features I’m asking for.

Not yet, but they’re actively developing ActivityPub support.

And the losing server has to cooperate, which is why I mentioned the commitment to support migrating away.

ATProto/Bluesky has some interesting ideas, and I’m interested to see how that develops as third parties start supporting the protocol. For a new service launching now, I think ActivityPub is the more important protocol to support, but it’s presumably possible to support both.

ActivityPub supports alsoKnownAs and movedTo so that users can migrate their social graphs to a different server or software. Of course that doesn’t work for migrating from networks that don’t support ActivityPub.

Content import is a separate issue, but I can imagine it being helpful as well.

I think it would be great for new social things like this to just speak ActivityPub. They can build up their own user experience and culture while joining a larger network. I don’t have a problem with the software itself being non-free if the protocols are and they commit to supporting account migration.

They’re using loaded language to say that without access to the source code and the ability to modify it, Cara could start behaving in a way you don’t like and you wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.

Libre means free as in freedom rather than free as in cost. A service that costs money to use, but communicates using open protocols, gives you full control over your data, and allows you to easily migrate to competitors and self-hosted solutions might be described as “libre”.

I block ads pretty aggressively, and I find it surprising anyone else can tolerate the modern internet without doing so.

I would LOVE feedback from folks if you get a chance to try it out!

I have feedback completely unrelated to the recommendation engine: please consider using CSS prefers-color-scheme instead of defaulting to light mode.