Howdy! I'm the nerd who's building #Emissary - an ActivityPub server for building custom social applications on the Fediverse.
My first app on this platform is a music sharing server for indie bands, called #Bandwagon. And now I'm also working on #Atlas, a social mapping server for adding Federated annotations to places in the real world.
If you'd like to talk about any of my projects, feel free to DM me here, or on Signal (@benpate.5280)
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| Emissary | https://emissary.dev |
| Bandwagon.fm | https://bandwagon.fm |
| Atlas | https://atlasmaps.org |
| GitHub | https://github.com/benpate |
We all know about the ways tech founders have sold their souls for funding to keep their platforms online; ads, Venture Capital, acquisition by corporations, or becoming one (IPO). Obviously we need ethical alternatives for social web services.
But not just alternative funding models. We also need alternative governance models, which keep the operators of services accountable to the people using them.
(9/?)
Ben identified this risk in the talk, so I don't want to give the impression it's something they're not aware of. What I'm trying to describe here is the weird feeling of double consciousness, where Ben pitched things that I've advocated for myself, and I was able to respond to them as if I was hearing them for the first time. Understanding some of the objections I've encountered from the inside, for a change.
(2/?)
Last night I watched a video of @benpate's talk from #FediCon last year;
https://peertube.iridescent.nz/w/sW6qcdP4ogG5DXW1RUzyo3
What a ride! I found myself vigorously agreeing with most of it. But there were other parts where I was divided against myself. One part still agreeing. another part nervous, that if we go down the road of scaling, monetisation and professionalisation, we risk repeating the mistakes of the original web, and end up right back where we started in another 20 years.
(1/?)
Nearly 10,000 organizations, institutions, companies, and other official groups with a fediverse presence recorded on Wikidata!
Have you seen this news?
#Mastodon just got funding to add end to end encryption into their software.
So, some time next year, you’ll be able to send truly private messages to the vast majority of the #Fediverse
Im so excited about this.
Because it’s an open spec, this opens the doors for every Fediverse app to join the party.
Yesterday, this project was a proof of concept. Today, Mastodon has turned it into a stampede.
https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2026/04/sovereign-tech-agency-funding/
I've just decided that I don't trust tech executives whose bio pages have fancy glamour headshots.
Karl, if it's that important to get your hair done and make a pouty face for the poor cameraman at the website photoshoot, maybe you're not the guy to be leading product right now.
Strypey
Stefan Bohacek
Andy Piper
David Rovics