Writer, speaker, and researcher Erin Kissane joins Jim to trace how the social internet got here, what’s worth salvaging, and how we can do better by listening to people.
Bryan Newbold: Protocol engineering
A protocol engineer at the social-media platform Bluesky describes building an open protocol around a fast-growing social media platform.
We’re in the middle of a perfect storm for rollback of the “open web” and burgeoning online surveillance
Looking at fallout of the KOSA hearings today — and subsequent commentary — I remain optimistic for the development of social technology & communication but I’m beginning to think the ope…
Nobody Cares About Your Protocol | John ✦° | Offprint
Nobody joins a social network for its architecture. An honest look at why Bluesky lags Threads, plus real ideas to close the gap.
The nerds are building a new internet, and I could feel it in the room
The AT Protocol is a quiet attempt to rebuild social software the way email was built — open, portable, owned by no one. A meetup in Portland this week made the stakes feel real.
Rewilding the internet with ATProto
So far, many of the projects in the ATProtocol ecosystem have focused on bringing parity—making projects that replicate our existing tools and platforms, but with the affordances of the protocol instead. That's cool and we need to do that, but I think we can go much farther, and take this opportunity to challenge some of the biggest assumptions of what the modern internet is for, who builds it, and how we interact with it. This talk is in conversation with several of the talks from last year, and in I'll argue that we'll never get away from skeuomorphism until we've fundamentally changed the definition of what "the social internet" means in the first place.
Brett Scott (@brettscott)
Marshall McLuhan is famous for his observation that the form of a communication technology can shape our mind and society The age of the printed book, for example, carried with it a particular way of being. Regardless of the differing content of different books, all books required a particular mindset in which a thread is followed from the beginning to the end through an arc I feel the age of social media is like the age of a ripped up book, as if we were surrounded by torn shards and shreds of paper floating like confetti around us. We grab for them, hoping for some tiny insight, but not having any way of knowing where it fits in the overarching narrative This note is one such shard. You can toss it away now
omni social | reclaim your feed
The fun side of the internet. Social video, messaging and more. Built on the AT Protocol.
Holdfast 0: Situating
This post introduces the written version of some optimistic and constructive thinking on knowledge in networks that I’ve been wrestling with since the end of last year.
The Cobbler's Kids - AT Protocol
Jim and Alex are back on the livestream at a new time to discuss personal websites, Coop 1.0, exciting announcements from Eurosky, a new OAuth scope builder—plus news from around the Atmosphere.
Protocolly Atmoseed - AT Protocol
News from around the Atmosphere, including a proposal to fix localhost, more webdevs getting into atproto, Mu Social's opinionated news feed, and more.
Decentralized Social Media for 40 Million+ Users (with Bluesky’s Jay Graber)
"The protocol world has been trying to solve the problem of how to leave, and the next step is working on how we can stay together."
It's not enough to be free. We also need to be in community
Really feels like the open Internet is falling apart, with bsky as a rare bright spot.
Ashton Pittman
The New York Times is now blocking The Wayback Machine from accessing its articles. That means you'll no longer be able to view archived versions of NYT stories published in 2026 and beyond on archive.org. (All those posts you see tracking changes to NYT headlines and ledes? They relied on WBM).
Another reason why it’s so important that we have open protocols for social media.
Kai Kupferschmidt
One of the issues that has come up again and again in my reporting on misinformation and social media is the massive influence social media companies have on research in the field. Last night a preprint dropped that tries to get at this with some numbers. My piece in @science.org (and 🧪🧵 coming):
