@iftas is conducting its annual needs assessment survey, inviting Fediverse moderators, administrators, and community managers to provide input on how IFTAS can help them.

In the past, this has led to the development of critical tools for CSAM detection and reporting, regulatory compliance […]

🔥 Bonfire Social 1.0 release candidate has landed!

Curious about what the fediverse could look like with real community control?

Try out features like custom feeds, nested discussions, shared profiles, circles, and boundary-based permissions — then let us know what breaks or needs improvement […]

[Insect cocoon]

I got a lot of weird looks laying in the mud in my local park to get these photos, but it's always worth it!

Also, if anyone can identify what insect made that shell, please let me know!

#MushroomMonday #mushtodon #mushrooms

Interesting to look back at this five months later ... here's what's currently happening today in terms of decentralization the ATmosphere.

* @rudyfraser.com announced today that Blacksy feeds and moderation service are now powered by our own atproto relay -- and it's an independent […]

We re-launched our website at the Applied Social Media Lab, which is not very exciting except that

1) we have an announcement for Frankly, a newly open source project I helped (a little bit) with that builds some public interest infrastructure for deliberative decision-making […]

Latest FOSS Academic Post: My workflow, 2025 edition:

https://fossacademic.tech/2025/03/15/workflow2025.html

In which I discuss chasing the FOSS Academic Lifestyle Dream, a world in which an academic can get all their work done using free and open source tools. And not just coding! I'm […]

I made a little tool that lets you search the full text of all published Fediverse Enhancement Proposals.

https://fep-search.glitch.me/

It does so privately in your browser using a neat in-browser elasticsearch-type-thing called FlexSearch:

https://github.com/nextapps-de/flexsearch

Eric Fassbender (@Fassbender) is coming to FediForum and wants to talk about:

Blocklists and their effectiveness
Relays and their effect on content federation
Bridging systems

Join us? April 1-2, online?

More info and registration: https://fediforum.org

Hardest thing I've had to write in quite some time:

https://about.iftas.org/2025/02/06/funding-challenges-and-the-future-of-our-work/

tl;dr - we are running out of money and will not be able to pay our bills in April. As such, unless we can secure funding by end of February, we will be […]

Hey, y'all, I've been on the fedi a minute. I've been on Mastodon since 2017, and an admin since '22.

The people at IFTAS are doing great work. Needed work. They provide space for admins to share knowledge, and they build evidence-based blocklists new instances can use to stay safe.

They need […]

Ursula Franklin—technology thinker, physicist, metallurgist, Quaker, and committed pacifist—is one of the people whose work I return to the most when things are bad.

I *tried* to write about her great short checklist for making decisions about technology and I ended up writing a whole post […]

Latest FOSS Academic:

https://fossacademic.tech/2025/01/18/makingAlts.html

In which I talk about how state regulations are affecting the development of ActivityPub and the fediverse, and how trying to make a TOS for Loops by using an online service resulted in a surveillance […]

Hey folks, you know how @iftas is doing so much heavy lifting bringing CSAM detection and really thoughtful shared-but-not-centralized moderation tools to the Fediverse?

And the needs surveys, and the wonderful library of resources, and the moderation community to help keep everyone ahead of […]

Decentralization and erasure: Blacksky, Bluesky, and the ATmosphere

https://privacy.thenexus.today/decentralization-and-erasure-blacksky-bluesky-and-the-atmosphere-2/

There's been a lot of discussion about whether or not Bluesky and the ATmosphere (the ecosystem using the AT protocol) are […]

We are excited to announce that @ted has joined the IFTAS Advisory Board!

Ted is a distinguished leader in open-source technology and digital public interest work. With his deep expertise in fostering #privacy, transparency, and ethical tech practices […]

[Original post on mastodon.iftas.org]

Good morning! I have thoughts about the internet.

https://www.wrecka.ge/against-the-dark-forest/

Finally got my film developed. Using turquoise filtered film really reflects on white mushrooms

#mushtodon #mushrooms #filmphotography #35mm