Post APVccaumZsZbZlEDaq by blaine@mastodon.social
(DIR) More posts by blaine@mastodon.social
(DIR) Post #APVccZVDpQX7CCGI76 by blaine@mastodon.social
2022-11-11T23:08:56Z
3 likes, 2 repeats
While everyone's being nostalgic about what Twitter means to them, I may as well add my two cents.I didn't give birth to Twitter – that was Jack and Florian. But I was its midwife and adoptive mother; for two months in early 2007, I was the code's sole guardian and caretaker.I was also the first person to hate Twitter; back when it was SMS-only, I did the math and realized that my immigrant prepaid phone plan would charge me $2000/year to send and receive even a 2006-era number of tweets. 🧵
(DIR) Post #APVccZye424KfS1myW by bigstrongboy@toothole.org
2022-11-11T23:14:06.462174Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@blaine my sneakers used to hurt my feet but then i saw this infographic that said if you have a "high instep" you should lace them this special way. i tried it and my feet didn't hurt any more. if the internet had never been invented i would probably have sort feet still. my vision is that one day everyone will have feet that don't hurt.
(DIR) Post #APVccaumZsZbZlEDaq by blaine@mastodon.social
2022-11-11T23:09:33Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
But, eventually, I came to love it, and it's lived rent-free in my head ever since. In so many ways, it defines me as much as I want it not to. It's a relationship that's unreciprocated – the job will never love you back. A friend used to say that I didn't owe it anything, but ...
(DIR) Post #APVcccQ0zF9OEuqfui by blaine@mastodon.social
2022-11-11T23:09:43Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
Twitter – the concept, not the collection of servers and contracts and code – is something so much bigger than a job. It's the most visceral representation of human communication and ideas that we've ever created. And how do you let *that* go? (no seriously, if you've got ideas!)
(DIR) Post #APVd1u4yShzwFj40oK by blaine@mastodon.social
2022-11-11T23:09:53Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
That's another aspect to this that is so poignant for me, personally. I tried to make Twitter better. I tried to make Twitter the fediverse, back in 2008, and after I failed, I left and tried to make the fediverse a thing without Twitter.That was not an easy task. For a long time, I truly felt it was my fault, personally, that we failed. The enormity of Twitter became oppressive, because it was so obviously the wrong thing, corrupted from its potential by capital and a lack of imagination.
(DIR) Post #APVd1uU8x88BVmq72e by blaine@mastodon.social
2022-11-11T23:10:12Z
2 likes, 0 repeats
Seeing Mastodon and the fediverse succeed today is deeply gratifying and hopeful for me. It's imperfect and early, but watching thousands of people birth communities that they can nurture and shape and watch grow and evolve, after so many years hoping and dreaming of this ...
(DIR) Post #APVd1ym10cnsoNERSC by blaine@mastodon.social
2022-11-11T23:10:33Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
Well, it's not a feeling I can easily express. It feels like Spring. And the Winter, on Twitter – there's a feeling of loss, but also clarity. The trees laid bare, the bright snow on the ground. It's space for less, before something new.
(DIR) Post #APVd20BZl4qNBwCMvw by blaine@mastodon.social
2022-11-11T23:10:44Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
A former job was at another Great Empire of Culture, from a previous century. I realized there that technology has more in common with the past than we admit. It, too, is a fashion industry. Styles and fame come and go, inevitably.
(DIR) Post #APVd21mpo2F29mddeC by blaine@mastodon.social
2022-11-11T23:11:04Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
The constant is us: the communities we nurture, the culture we create. The space we cherish is just a vessel for those. It hasn't always been an easy ride, but I'm delighted that this place has been one of those cherished spaces, and proud of the role I played. ❤️🪺
(DIR) Post #APXRYhl6TosGSoZ0Uq by Polychrome@poly.cybre.city
2022-11-12T20:19:32.819927Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@blaine were your early attempts to make a federated twitter involved with Diaspora / Identi.ca / GNU Social in some way?Those were the precursors for our current ActivityPub based Fediverse, which Mastodon is a part of.
(DIR) Post #APXTUG5FdJ4TNgzkwa by blaine@mastodon.social
2022-11-12T20:40:33Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@Polychrome yup! The initial Twitter federation code used xmpp pubsub, but when xmpp was abandoned by twitter (the timeline is a bit fuzzy here, tbh), I created webfinger (which was used by ostatus/gnu social and in a slightly different form today by activitypub) as a way to federate identity on the web. 😊
(DIR) Post #APXlxTGxTUAxrHYBNY by Fritange@maly.io
2022-11-12T23:36:40Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@blaine Thank you so much. What were the limits of xmpp pubsub and webfinger compare to ActivityPub ? @Polychrome
(DIR) Post #APXlxThtrJj7Cq9hNA by blaine@mastodon.social
2022-11-12T23:55:16Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@Fritange @Polychrome If you squint, xmpp pubsub is/was kind of like the sub-structure of activitypub, just with a different underlying transport. Sadly, the standards were quite complicated and a social consensus developed that made it untenable to build on top of xmpp.ActivityPub uses webfinger extensively under the covers! Any time you follow someone from a different server, there’s a bunch of stuff that happens via webfinger to create the link.
(DIR) Post #APXlxUIPfYvx25ErHk by Polychrome@poly.cybre.city
2022-11-13T00:08:07.011807Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@blaine @Fritange it's funny how XMPP is now common among the technical side of fedi.
(DIR) Post #APYEq9H0KXXgTXQsAS by realcaseyrollins@social.teci.world
2022-11-13T05:31:45.390531Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
Who are you?
(DIR) Post #APjCPpjUIS8vAldf2e by aral@mastodon.ar.al
2022-11-18T12:22:46Z
1 likes, 1 repeats
@blaine It was never your fault. A shopping mall can never become a park.