Chat is the minimum-viable tool for online organizing. Without complete control over our means of communication, our ability to organize depends entirely on the goodwill of the very same hegemonic incumbents which we seek to surpass.
Group chats rule the world
Most of the interesting conversations in tech now happen in private group chats: Whatsapp, Telegram, Signal, small invite-only Discord groups. Being part of the right group chat can feel like having a peek at the kitchen of a restaurant but instead of food, messy ideas and gossip fly about in real time, get mixed, remixed, discarded, polished before they show up in a prepared fashion in public.
Why Your Community Needs a Home, Not Just a Group Chat
We all crave connection. And when we want to bring people together, the easiest option is to spin up a group chat. But if you’ve ever tried turning a Slack, Discord, or WhatsApp group into a real community, you’ve seen the trade-off
A few design decisions for a new chat platform - the sporks space
Discord has recently made a controversial decision that could be the start of long-term decline. The situation has people looking at alternatives. However, a lot of the alternatives I feel bark up the wrong tree, or are good for certain… Continue reading →
Humans are social creatures. We crave bonding and social connections. In our digital world, our common social space is a campfire, which is the group chat.
Group Chats Are Making the Internet Fun Again
The triumphant return of aimless digital chatter.
Chat is a bad UI pattern for development tools
You don’t want to have a conversation with your computer, you want to build.
A Theory of Messaging Styles & Ghosting.
Online communication tools serve many purposes. So does silence.
The fall... and rise and rise and rise of chat networks
From CompuServe to Telegram, chat has come a long way—and it's just getting started.
proto instant messenger
AIM-inspired group chat on the AT Protocol. Real-time chat rooms, presence, away messages — a safe space for community.
proto instant messenger
AIM-inspired group chat on the AT Protocol. Real-time chat rooms, presence, away messages — a safe space for community.
A bridge beyond Discord
Millions of digital communities have already made a home for themselves on Discord, and we'd rather not force them to make a binary choice between the critical mass of members they've built up on Discord and the agency afforded to them on Roomy.
Patrick - I'm worried about the web
I'm worried about the web. I don't want to live in a world where most users of internet-connected devices consume their information and accomplish their tasks via a chat bot interface.
Matrix and Element: a case study of funding an open protocol for real time chat
Matrix is a distributed comms protocol for real-time chat that looks like it is taking off.
Exit Chat Control · Become Ungovernable
A practical field guide to escape Chat Control and reclaim your digital privacy: encrypted messaging, email, VPN, DNS, passwords, Linux, GrapheneOS, self-hosting. Free, open source, no tracking.
Small talk acts like social glue – here’s how to get better at it
Maybe think of small talk as a technology: a human invention for accomplishing social goals.
