Mastodawn

"I’ve come to see the Open Social Web not as a destination, but as infrastructure — a reliable data substrate and system of record for online social interaction. Its job is to make identity portable, data durable, and interoperability tractable so builders can create without trapping users.

...

The Open Social Web succeeds when it is quietly dependable underneath and unmistakably valuable in lived experience on top."

@blaine, 2026

https://fediforum.org/2026-03-growing-open-social-web/

Nicely put.

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#SocialWeb

FediForum | Growing the Open Social Web:<br>An Online Un-Workshop

FediForum

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Strypey Feb 16

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At the risk of splitting hair though, I would say open Social Web. Like the open Internet. Actually I wouldn't normally capitalise them, but I do normally capitalise Free Software and Open Source, and other such terms of art like DataFarming. So maybe I will from now on.

But I digress ...

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Strypey Feb 16

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Like internet is irreducible to 'inter' and 'net', Social Web* is irreducible. It's definitely more than the web, and more than "socials". In the sense of "social media", which these days seems to mainly mean DataFarming platforms.

Open is a description and an important value of both, but they imply it, not the other way around.

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blaine Feb 17

@strypey 💜 Thanks!

Re: capitalization, if it's any consolation, I'm usually not one for precise terms like that and don't have a strong attachment to the specific words or capitalization. For me, having a clear idea of the goals and not getting lost in the minutiae of the terminology is key; no matter which terms are used, everyone will find their own meaning.

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Strypey

@blaine
> no matter which terms are used, everyone will find their own meaning

That's true to some extent, but meaning-making is a collective activity, not purely a matter of individual style choices. Linguistic existentialism turns language into word salad. That's how a Trained #MOLE speaks, not a human being, and the difference is unmistakable to the listener/ reader.

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blaine Mar 3

@strypey thanks for putting a definition of "Trained #MOLE" in your bio.

Obviously, I don't love being compared to an LLM because you happen to disagree with my approach to word choice.

In reflection, I used the precise term the conference chose, and my contribution wasn't to split linguistic hairs.

My last word here: I've had way too many conversations where people lost up their own bums insist that their words are the only way to think about a thing. Life's too short for that noise. 💜✌️