For example, multiple studies have shown that in communities that aren't addressed by a robust local news outlet, local corruption goes up. Having a good newsroom _does_ improve an understanding of what your representatives are up to, and a lack of information _does_ allow them to get up to more behind our backs.
I think the biggest failure of this piece is to make all news equivalent. Yes, cable news is junk; yes, many of the corporate newsrooms that churn out hundreds of articles a day are junk. They use engagement as a metric for success rather than finding ways to align themselves with impact and creating an informed, empowered electorate. That last thing - an informed, empowered electorate - is what it's all about.
Real journalism that is diligently undertaken in the public interest does make a real difference. (Should we know whether Clarence Thomas was taking corrupt bribes? Yes. Should we know how climate change is progressing? Yes. Should we know if the police are killing innocent people? Yes. Should we know that the police at the Uvalde school shooting hung around for over an hour doing nothing? Yes.) Telling people not to pay attention to the world around them results in an electorate who cannot meaningfully vote on real issues.
For those of us who build software, we need to know the factors that impact the lives of the people we're serving. We need to know the trends in the marketplaces and communities where we show up. The news is good for that, too.
Turn off cable news; pay more attention to non-profit news; go for long-form written journalism. Stay informed.
It's absolutely true that we take a psychic hit for doing so. I'd say that's more to do with the world than it is the media overall. Perhaps we should spend more time trying to make it better?
We all have foreign policies. For example, in the US, our government is heavily involved in Gaza and Ukraine. It's far away, but it's also highly relevant to how our representatives work on our behalf.
Should we give aid to other countries? How should we think about global society? Those things are all relevant, too.
That's the relevant differentiation here. Local news are practically relevant and lack the potential for mental abuse that is found with inter/national events and news.
Honestly delighted that this still exists. Like others, I used to leave my computer running overnight to render. Dating myself, but it was a big deal in the BBS scene in the UK in the early nineties - so many files and techniques being swapped.
In addition to what's already described, ActivityPub allows for access control. It's completely possible to have feeds for paid readers, personalized feeds, etc, in a way that RSS doesn't really support.
Yes, but it's a kludge: 404 has specific, secret RSS feeds for subscribers that contain full-text copy. With ActivityPub each recipient can have personalized content through the same link, and even for free subscribers, the publisher has a better view on who is actually subscribing.
If you look at the history of American city design, you'll find that it's not free market demand that has brought us to this point, but pretty heavy lobbying and more from the automotive industry (which also has seeded this idea that public transit is inherently inferior). Elon Musk is also guilty of this by seeding the hyperloop idea in order to try and stop efforts around high speed rail. Public transit really works when it's done well, and benefits everybody. If we actually design and invest in it well, it will be used.
I made an open source social networking platform that was used by non-profits like Oxfam and Greenpeace to train aid workers; the Canadian government as an intranet; the Spanish anti-austerity movement as an organizing platform; universities like Stanford and Harvard to teach; and Fortune 500 companies as a social intranet.
I had no idea what I was doing at the start. I'm very, very lucky that it worked out the way it did.
Totally fair! This is an experiment - we'll see what comes out in the wash. The biggest impact I'm hoping for is to encourage more sites to remove their "share to Twitter" buttons.
> Totally fair! This is an experiment - we'll see what comes out in the wash. The biggest impact I'm hoping for is to encourage more sites to remove their "share to Twitter" buttons.
My bet is that your reason for building this widget ("The biggest impact I'm hoping for is to encourage more sites to remove their 'share to Twitter' buttons") is misaligned with what web owners want (publicity, exposure, discoverability, engagement) which you get by using the largest megaphone. X
I'm not sure if the goal is to not let people post on Twitter/X, but rather to not have a webpage with a share to Twitter button, to FB button, to Mastodon button, etc, but to have one button and when you click it, opens up the full list.
I see it almost as a way to do the share menu that mobile phones have. I tested the Share Openly button on my phone and it not only opened Threads and Bluesky much faster than the share menu on my version of iOS, it also added not just the URL but the title as well.
In all seriousness, I think it's true that those buttons mostly are useful as reminders that you can post / share elsewhere. Which is another reason why moving on from the "share to Twitter" / "share to Facebook" paradigm from 2009 is probably a good idea. There's a whole open social web out there that people need to be encouraged to explore.
For example, multiple studies have shown that in communities that aren't addressed by a robust local news outlet, local corruption goes up. Having a good newsroom _does_ improve an understanding of what your representatives are up to, and a lack of information _does_ allow them to get up to more behind our backs.
I think the biggest failure of this piece is to make all news equivalent. Yes, cable news is junk; yes, many of the corporate newsrooms that churn out hundreds of articles a day are junk. They use engagement as a metric for success rather than finding ways to align themselves with impact and creating an informed, empowered electorate. That last thing - an informed, empowered electorate - is what it's all about.
Real journalism that is diligently undertaken in the public interest does make a real difference. (Should we know whether Clarence Thomas was taking corrupt bribes? Yes. Should we know how climate change is progressing? Yes. Should we know if the police are killing innocent people? Yes. Should we know that the police at the Uvalde school shooting hung around for over an hour doing nothing? Yes.) Telling people not to pay attention to the world around them results in an electorate who cannot meaningfully vote on real issues.
For those of us who build software, we need to know the factors that impact the lives of the people we're serving. We need to know the trends in the marketplaces and communities where we show up. The news is good for that, too.
Turn off cable news; pay more attention to non-profit news; go for long-form written journalism. Stay informed.
It's absolutely true that we take a psychic hit for doing so. I'd say that's more to do with the world than it is the media overall. Perhaps we should spend more time trying to make it better?
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