The 2025 World Wide Web Award for „Best Textual Representation of Dial-up Modem Sounds” goes to @ifixcoinops for his masterpiece

„WEEWEEWEEWEESCHRRRRRB'DANG,B'DANG”

https://retro.social/@ifixcoinops/115697405237351236

Also: What Dan says. ⤴️

#Australia #SocialMediaBan #WWW #redecentralize #ReclaimTheInternet #ReclaimTech #FuckGAFAMN #SaveSocial #PlatformCapitalism #SurveillanceCapitalism

Alpha launch - .well-known/avatar - feedback wanted

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/10/alpha-launch-well-known-avatar-feedback-wanted/

I've gotten sufficiently annoyed with a trivial problem that I'm preparing to write an IETF RFC. Yeah. That's how ticked off I am!

Every site that I sign up for asks me to upload an avatar to represent myself. Whenever I change my photo, I have to log in to a hundred sites and change it there0.

Perhaps they could all use Gravatar - but that's a centralised service1 and doesn't work with wildcard email addresses. Libravatar also relies on email addresses and requires implementers to set up new DNS entries.

So I'm proposing .well-known/avatar. Here's how it works (for now). I'd like your feedback before going further2.

I sign up to a service and use the email address [email protected].

The service looks up my avatar using a well-known path. For example, request https://shkspr.mobi/.well-known/avatar?resource=acct:[email protected] and you'll get back this JSON:

That's a slightly enhanced https://webfinger.net/rel/#avatar which adds a sizes parameter. The service can then pick the appropriate MIME and size.

Alternatively, you can request the same URl but with a header of Accept: image/gif and receive the default sized avatar in that specific format.

Try it by running:

You should receive an auto-converted version of my avatar.

Some Thoughts

Please add your thoughts to the comments box. Here's some feedback I've received so far.

Perhaps this is too complicated? What's wrong with just serving up an image when the URl is requested? That would make it easier for static sites.

Simon Josefsson

@[email protected]

@Edent Thinking about this, while I like content negotiation as a clever hack, I wonder if maybe it isn’t too clever. The nice thing with WKD is that you can deploy it with any normal static HTTP file without any special magic. Maybe the protocol could be dumbed down to simply rely on WKD-style URLs? I’m not sure how to configure my web server (Apache) for your avatar well known URL with negotiation magic.

What about a size parameter?

Chip

@[email protected]

@Edent It'd be nice if the query could limit the size of the avatar being returned. If only there were `Accept-Max-Size`, but maybe a query param? I wouldn't want my performance taking a dive if Alice has a 35M avatar that my client starts downloading. If my client had requested with `max_size=3072` I'd rather not see the avatar than degrade performance/pull excess data

Will anyone actually use it?

Andreas Gohr

@[email protected]

@Edent good luck with getting the hundreds of services to implement it. I mean it. it would be awesome and you might be well connected enough to make it happen.

What about hashing the email?

David Bushell 🎮

@[email protected]

@Edent would using a hash of the email address in its place improve privacy? 🤔

You've already given the service your email address, and your domain already knows your account name - so there's no privacy leak here. Obviously, a service shouldn't hotlink to your avatar image.

How about DNS?

I like it. Is there an argument that service / endpoint should be specifiable at the DNS level?As others in your comments pointed out, if your site is currently just static, some users might prefer to run an entirely separate dedicated avatar service.

— Emily Shepherd (@emi.ly) 2025-10-25T11:57:43.456Z

Personally, I think that's a bit complicated, but I'm happy to be convinced.

Is this restricted to email?

No! For example, if you know my GitHub username then you should be able to get the avatar from https://github.com/.well-known/avatar?resource=acct:edent

How can a service tell if the avatar has been updated?

Perhaps a hash, timestamp, or something else?

Can requests for multiple accounts be sent at once?

I'm not sure how / if WebFinger handles this. I suppose there ought to be some limit to avoid overwhelming a server.

Proposal

I think the default should be to return an image.

If an accept of image/… is requested, the server should try to return an image in that format.

If an accept of application/json or similar is requested, the server should return a JSON document listing the available avatars.

I don't think a ?size= GET parameter is necessary; services can resize once they've downloaded, or use the JSON document to get the right size.

A limited amount of alt text could be added using the title attribute in the JSON.

Before I start writing up anything formal - I'd love your constructive criticism on this.

#IETF #ReDeCentralize #standards #web

🆕 blog! “Alpha launch - .well-known/avatar - feedback wanted”

I've gotten sufficiently annoyed with a trivial problem that I'm preparing to write an IETF RFC. Yeah. That's how ticked off I am!

Every site that I sign up for asks me to upload an avatar to represent myself. Whenever I change my photo, I have to log in to a hundred sites and change it…

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/10/alpha-launch-well-known-avatar-feedback-wanted/
⸻
#IETF #ReDeCentralize #standards #web

Some thoughts on personal git hosting

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/09/some-thoughts-on-personal-git-hosting/

As part of my ongoing (and somewhat futile) efforts to ReDeCentralise, I'm looking at moving my personal projects away from GitHub. I already have accounts with GitLab and CodeBerg - but both of those sites are run by someone else. While they're lovely now, there's nothing stopping them becoming as slow or AI-infested as GitHub.

So I want to host my own Git instance for my personal projects. I'm experimenting with https://git.edent.tel/

It isn't quite self-hosted; I'm paying PikaPod €2/month to deal with the hassle of hosting and updating the software. I get to point my domain name at it which means I can always change the underlying service if I want. For example, it uses Gitea and I might want to switch to Forgejo later.

So far, it works. But there are a few significant drawbacks.

Network Effects

A large service like GitHub has network effects which are incredible. It feels like 90%+ of all developers have an account there. That means if someone wants to leave a comment or send a PR there is no barrier to entry. That's huge! There are a bunch of popular FOSS projects which make me sign up for yet another service when all I want to do is send a simple bug report which I find deeply annoying.

Luckily, Gitea has built in support for various OAuth providers. So I've set up single-sign-on with Gits Hub and Lab.

I asked people how easy it was to use - most people were able to use it, although a few people wanted a local-only account.

But is is still a bit of a faff. Even a little bit of hassle turns people away.

Forking isn't Federated

Suppose you want to make a Pull Request or just take a copy of the code. At the moment, you have to create a fork on my server. There's no way to easily fork something to your GitHub or personal server.

You can git clone the repo to your local machine, and you can manually move it elsewhere, but there's no way to send a PR from your repo to mine.

There's also no way for users to find other forks. Perhaps the upcoming ForgeFed proposals will fix things - but it doesn't exist yet.

As pointed out in "Let's Make Sure Github Doesn't Become the only Option" - most of the tooling of git hosting platforms isn't adequate for modern needs.

Discoverability

The easiest way to find code at the moment is to search GitHub. Moving my stuff to a different site means it will only be discovered by a general search engine.

I want people to find and use my code. If that's hard, they won't. I can point existing users to the repo - but it still cuts down on discovery.

Admin Hassles

Although PikaPods takes care of all the hosting administration, there's still the faff of setting up all of Gitea's options.

If I get hit by an automated spam attack, it'll be up to me to clean it up.

I'm not sure if I have the time, patience, or expertise to correctly and safely configure everything. Time spent administrating is time not spent coding.

Sponsorship

I get a little bit of money when people sponsor me on GitHub. There's no "sponsor" option on Gitea and, even if there was, the network effects of GitHub are substantial. Getting people to enter their credit card info into a random site isn't as convenient as clicking a button in GitHub.

Now What?

My most popular Github repo has around 140 contributors. I genuinely don't think I could attract that many people to OAuth onto my personal git hosting service.

Gitea seems to have a mixed reputation. But it's the only one offered by PikaPods.

There are interesting discussions about how to replace GitHub but they're only in the early stages.

Although €2/mo isn't a huge amount, I've gotten used to having free services on GitHub / GitLab / CodeBerg.

So this, I think, is my plan:

I'm also going to look for a hosted Forgejo instance which lets me use my own subdomain - hopefully at a cheaper or comparable price. If you have any recommendations - please let me know!

#developers #git #ReDeCentralize

🆕 blog! “Some thoughts on personal git hosting”

As part of my ongoing (and somewhat futile) efforts to ReDeCentralise, I'm looking at moving my personal projects away from GitHub. I already have accounts with GitLab and CodeBerg - but both of those sites are run by someone else. While they're lovely now, there's nothing stopping them becoming as slow or…

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/09/some-thoughts-on-personal-git-hosting/
⸻
#developers #git #ReDeCentralize

Self Hosting is an Unhelpful Term

Mathew Duggan has a brilliant post called "Self-Hosting Isn't a Solution; It's A Patch". In it, he (correctly and convincingly) argues that compelling people to run their own computer services is a complex and distracting crutch for the current problems we face.

It's expensive to self-host, there are moderation problems, and the difficulty level is too high for most people.

But, in my opinion, I think he misunderstands something about self-hosting because, as a term, it is both misleading and unhelpful. When people say "Defund The Police" what they mean is "Move funds away from miliary style policing and give it to trained mental health professionals" - what people hear is "Abolish the police and let anarchy reign".

The ability to "Self Host" doesn't just mean "run this on a Raspberry Pi in your cupboard and be responsible for constant maintenance". Yes, you can do that if you're a masochist, but it isn't restricted to that.

To me, "Self-Hosting" means "I am in control of where I host something". I currently pay a company to host this blog. It has previously been hosted on Blogger, WordPress, my own VPS, and a variety of other services. Tomorrow I could decide to host it with a big company, or I could run it from my phone. I get to choose. That's what "Self-Hosting" is - a choice in where to host.

Similarly, Mastodon allows me self-host my account. I can have my content on one of the big servers and let them do moderation, storage, and maintenance for me - or I can move my account anywhere I choose. To a server in my cupboard and back again.

Email is similar. I know people who've gone from CompuServe, to HoTMaiL, to Gmail, to their own domain, then to OutLook. Their address-book moves with them. Forwarding rules ensure incoming email is routed correctly. They can choose to actively moderate spam, or outsource it. They can pay a company to host, keep backups in their basement, or watch adverts in return for services.

I agree with nearly everything Mathew says in his post. It is absurdly privileged to think that running your own services is something normal people want to do and are capable of doing. Strong regulation helps everyone, people want simplicity, and ecosystems can be fragile.

But witness all the people moving over from Twitter to new networks. Do they care where their data is hosted and how it is maintained? No! But they want to move their social graph with them. And when BlueSky and Mastodon collapse, people will want to move again.

In the UK, I have the ability to move my phone number between hundreds of providers. If I'm particularly techy, I can even run my own infrastructure and route the number there. People love the fact that they can leave crappy service providers and move somewhere cheaper or with with better customer service or whatever it is they value. I think that's a form of self-hosting; I get to choose who provides my services.

Similarly, I believe people have a desire for "self-hosting" which is difficult for them to articulate. They want to move their data around - be it old photos, a social graph, or a username. Most of them don't really care about the underlying technology (and why should they?) but they do care about continuity of service and being able to escape crappy service providers.

So, that's my reckons. Self-Hosting means you can choose where to host, and I think most people can find value in that.

What do you think?

#fediverse #ReDeCentralize #SocialNetworks

🆕 blog! “Self Hosting is an Unhelpful Term”

Mathew Duggan has a brilliant post called "Self-Hosting Isn't a Solution; It's A Patch". In it, he (correctly and convincingly) argues that compelling people to run their own computer services is a complex and distracting crutch for the current problems we face. It's expensive to self-host, there are moderation pro…

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/11/self-hosting-is-an-unhelpful-term/
⸻
#fediverse #ReDeCentralize #SocialNetworks

@fasnix 👍✊

Finding and switching to alternatives Microsoft, Adobe and other #enshittification software products can seem hard.

@switchingsoftware https://switching.software/
and
@alternativeto https://alternativeto.net

are two great resources to get started today!

#alternativeTo #SwitchingSoftware #floss #fuckMicrosoft #fuckGoogle #SurveillanceCapitalism #redecentralize

💡 #TIL about @european_alternatives – they collect #EuropeanAlternatives to #US-based (commercial) #cloud, #hosting and various other online services.

🇪🇺 https://european-alternatives.eu

#Degoogle #ungoogle #fuckGAFAM #GDPR #DSGVO #privacy #redecentralize
#alternativeTo
#WebAnalytics #CloudComputing #CDN #email #VPS #SearchEngine
#DNS #FileHosting
#VPN
#captcha #payment #IAM #LiveChat #VideoConferencing #collaboration #Mailing #WebFont #DDoS #SSL

Sometimes I feel like I am living in the Middle Ages where powerful technological inventions like #RSS and federated networks have long been forgotten, and people spend their days reinventing the wheel because those who still remembered how it works have long passed away.

#redecentralize #fediverse