This week, WordPress.com announced that all of their blogs would now have the option to join the Fediverse. The announcement included instructions on how to enable it.

As Twitter, now X, has become increasingly less usable, a number of other platforms have been vying to be its replacement: Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, and several others. Unfortunately, choosing a social media platform has historically been more about who was on that platform than its feature set.

But one trend offers the chance of upending that calculation: interoperability. If someone on service A can follow and interact with people on service B or any other service, then, similar to using email or the straight web, everyone can be free to choose the platform of their choice. The biggest new factor in the calculation might be whether a particular service participates in that interoperability.

WordPress.com’s announcement means they’ll be part of that broad federation. For now, turning it on just means a couple of million Mastodon users, as well as users of a few other Fediverse services, can subscribe directly to your blog. However, both Tumblr and Threads have announced plans to join the Fediverse, so eventually this could dramatically increase the reach of anyone participating in these services by hundreds of millions of users.

Hopefully critical mass will incentivize other services to join. Bluesky, with its own federation protocol, might eventually be brought into the fold. And even the old legacy social networks may find it worth their while. It’s a future which could marry the benefits of the old open web with the conveniences of social networks.

So this blog is now on the Fediverse. The purpose of this post is to announce that, and to note that the current implementation has some rough edges.

The biggest I’ve noticed so far is that while the blog posts themselves federate out to other services, comments currently don’t. A direct reply to the post on another service does show in WordPress as a comment, which is cool, but it appears to be one way. Replies to that comment do not currently go back to the other service. Which means if you reply to a comment from Mastodon here in WordPress, the Mastodon person won’t see it.

In the short term, I’m not sure how many of these there will actually be. (So far I’m the only Fediverse follower of my blog.) But you can recognize a Fediverse comment because it will have “@blog-account-name” in it (“@selfawarepatterns.com” for this blog). You can see the reply in its native service, along with any subsequent replies, by clicking on the comment timestamp.

Hopefully this is something that will be fixed soon. I checked with the developers on their Github, and it’s slated to be included “in the next iteration”. Hopefully that means the next version release which is quickly incorporated by WordPress.com. Until then, if it becomes an issue here, I’ll do my best to bridge any conversations.

There are other issues, such as the post title not being included in the federated version, as well as the Fediverse profile looking a bit rough. And I’m sure others will come out with usage. But overall it’s progress.

Anyway, if you’d like to subscribe to this blog in the Fediverse, it’s address is selfawarepatterns.com@selfawarepatterns.com.

Do you plan to put your blog in the Fediverse? Or wait until the kinks are worked out?

https://selfawarepatterns.com/2023/10/15/hello-fediverse/

#ActivityPub #Fediverse #WordPress

Pete Davidson hosted Saturday Night Live last night and somehow said exactly the right thing to open a comedic television program after an unspeakably tragic week. https://kottke.org/23/10/comedy-and-tragedy

Beep boop. #VideoGames #dogs #funny

#TheOnion absolutely knocking their coverage of #IsraelPalestineconflict out of the park, as usual, and skewering the broadsheets in the process: https://www.theonion.com/the-onion-stands-with-israel-because-it-seems-like-yo-1850922505

A satirical comedy site provides better balance than most newspapers. That's the universe we're in. We'll be wearing our shoes on our heads before long.

To err is human, to forgive is also human, the possibilities of human action are multitude.

Welcome... to Night Vale.

Quite possibly the best #PHP meme i've ever seen. 🧡

When we see light at the end of the tunnel, the urge is to sprint toward it, throwing caution aside to be free of our burden sooner. But know this: If in our haste we leave a comrade behind, or fail to administer aid along the way, we have dimmed that light for all.

If you could press a button that would give you a great deal of money, but it would cause someone you don't know in a distant part of the world to die, then you would have a good model for how our current economy works.

Welcome... to Night Vale.

@ewdocparris Duckburg was in ruins. Gyro Gearloose tried to warn them the machine was unstable. Now in the flaming crater that had once been the McDuck mansion, a single figure known only as Gooey emerged.

Ahead of him, lay a hastily discarded pair of spectacles and black top hat. Gooey followed the heat signature to the locked door of Scrooge's vault

"d-d-d danger lurks behind you...There's a stranger out to find you...Duck...Tales"

His servo-motors whined with each step.

...Woo-oo...

Geology rocks, but geography is where it’s at.

Conversation with my wife:

Me: I just had to tell our VP of Engineering he was wrong about something.

Her: So are you the VP of Engineering now?

Me: No. I don’t become him by defeating him.

My brother-in-law died last night. It was cancer, and he was a relatively young man. They thought he’d have a few more weeks, maybe months, but that didn’t happen.

I told the kids tonight. They never actually met him, because he and my sister have only been married a few years, and they live halfway across the world. Never had the chance.

But after I told my kids about his death, and how their aunt was really sad, my six-year-old turned to me and said, “we need to say a prayer.”

You always hope you’re raising your kids to be good, decent people. He didn’t know what he could do to help, but he understood my sister needed some kind of help, so he offered the only suggestion he could think of: ask a higher power.

He’s such a kind, compassionate person. I’m really lucky to be his dad.

#Parenting #WeNeedToPray

Just had a good #mask interaction.

Coworker: What's with the mask?
Me: Wastewater metrics.
C: Huh? Wastewater?
M: At this point, it's the best metric for data-driven decision-making. Virus counts in the wastewater aren't confounded by test participation rates.
C: Oh.
M: We're currently at levels like the first few peaks in 2020 and 2021.
C: Are you kidding me? I better get one of those.

A good use case for the Eloquent sole() method https://masteringlaravel.io/daily/2023-09-21-a-good-use-case-for-sole?utm_content=bufferd8520&utm_medium=social&utm_source=bufferapp.com&utm_campaign=buffer