I'm still trying to wrap my head around the difference between Mastodon and ActivityPub. If ActivityPub is some sort of protocol that allows all these different social platforms to communicate with one another, why can't that backbone just work with all of these different federated social media apps?

I'll give you an example. This is my Mastodon account, for Federated Twitter as I like to call it. Pixelfed is just Federated Instagram. Right? Shouldn't I be able to just log in with my Mastodon account to Pixelfed, and just see a feed that scrapes all of the pictures from my followers on Mastodon, and simply organize it in a UI that looks like an Instagram clone?

Shouldn't I then be able to sign in to Friendica with my Mastodon account and just see a timeline of all of the Mastodon posts (as well as photos and links and stuff), organized in a way that looks like a classic Facebook feed?

Someone on a Mastodon thread said that they could interact with Mastodon accounts from Friendica but they can't post to polls. I was trying to understand: can't I just use my Mastodon account to log in to Friendica? He said no, it doesn't work like that.

I kind of feel, in my own dumb way, that every single social media app is just a different launcher for the same kind of source material.

#mastodon #pixelfed #friendica #activitypub

SWF is glad to support European.social getting off the ground in Berlin today. This new association brings together Fediverse and other open protocol communities to build real digital autonomy for European governments, companies, organisations and individuals.

Open Source and open standards aren’t uniquely European, of course. Everyone around the planet deserves to exercise their autonomy on the open social web. But the freedoms and opportunities that open standards bring — to own and operate services that can stay connected on a first-class basis to the rest of the social web — are especially important as the balance of technology power shifts globally.

SWF supports European efforts to build domestic social networking infrastructure from the bottom up — connecting companies, civil society organisations, universities, cities, families and friend groups together into an integrated social web. We believe ActivityPub is essential technology for this vision — a Web-based technology for the Social Web. We will continue to participate in events as well as software and networking projects that bring communities together in Europe.

Thanks to our partners and colleagues, especially Michael Foster of Newsmast and Björn Staschen of Save Social, who’ve been so important in getting the European Social Association launched and moving forward. It’s been especially good to work with people from other protocol communities to connect Europeans across technological boundaries with bridging, dual-stack and other strategies.

SWF also hope that the movement for European social network autonomy can catalyse further digital autonomy movements around the world. Already in Canada and Brazil, we’ve seen the beginning of efforts by social network operators to collaborate with each other and partner with domestic businesses and government agencies to promote locally-owned and operated networks. We hope to see this continue in other regions: East Asia, Africa, West and South Asia, around the Americas and Oceania.

Regional and national digital autonomy is one of many important lenses to understand the Fediverse movement. We’re looking forward to being a leading part of this conversation as it spreads worldwide.

This post originally appeared on The Fulcrum.

Welcome to this week’s The Programmer’s Fulcrum.

It’s your weekly curation of the essential news in the Open Media Network and Open Social development communities with a focus on devastating big tech via Techno Anarchism.

As usual, we aim to provide actionable content you can use to destroy Techno Feudalism each week. It has the additional benefit of weakening authoritarianism.

IMHO, the best way to do that is to use tools from the Techno Anarchist Manifesto to build your own site(s) to participate in the Open Media Network. Then you should share it (them) via Real Simple Syndication (RSS), Open Social, and possibly a newsletter or podcast. This approach is similar to what some call the IndieWeb and its POSSE philosophy.

The second best strategy is to have accounts on open social and use the hell out of them. And do the same with a RSS feed reader.

If you want some recommended tools see our LESS stack.

We publish TPF on Fridays so you can enjoy it over your weekend.

There’s good stuff in all of our categories, so please take the time to enjoy and bookmark the items most relevant to your goals. We hope you are inspired to create new ones.

Or you can scroll down to your favorite section.

FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And may involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists. Fuck´em.

⬆️ Just an image. Search for the handle below.

Follow or contact us on the Fediverse

Just copy and paste @thefulcrum@thefulcrum.dev into your platform/client’s search field and hit follow.

⬆️ Just an image. Search for the handle below.

Or in the Atmosphere

Again, just copy and paste @thefulcrum.eurosky.social into your Atmosphere app’s search field and hit follow.

Featured Item(s)

Dead Simple Tech writes:

The moment that we in the tech industry are going through bears similarity, in a bunch of very important ways, to what people went through during the First World War.

Looking at it like that, it’s not so hard to see the parallels with our situation. Our industry’s always had that optimistic attitude that’s willfully ignorant of any sign that it could ever be harmful, or that anything other than continuous forward progress could ever happen. (We are incapable of seeing evil for what it is.)

We find ourselves at the precipice before the break. There’s enough (techcunt induced) instability to see how things are going: things are breaking, vital things are ceasing to work, the bulk of the population hates what the industry is doing to them. The best are exhausted and isolated, while the worst are creating yet another vibe-coded pile of crap.

In such circumstances, at the very least, we have to acknowledge that fracture, obscenity and the shattering of the way we see the world is what we’re facing: it does no good for us to pretend that it is anything other than something that we simply can’t put into words or symbols.

We have no words for what LLMs are doing to our profession, nor for why we find them so viscerally unacceptable, but we know that they are, only to find that the words we have for that are inadequate to our experience.

We don’t know what would make sense of everything that’s happening to us now or if there’s even some sense to be had. But we need to remain open to the possibility that there could be, that with the right knowledge or the right perspective, we will be able to make some sense of this, and we can, one way or the other, move on with our lives. (That there may be a revelation coming.)

Developing a keen sense of patience is… an important discipline. A revelation may well come, and we can watch in hope for one. But it may tarry… Being able to wait without frustration and keep doing things while we’re waiting is important to stay sane…

Finally, in times like these, one of the best things we can do is witness and record it.

Slouching towards Bethlehem

Personally, I find that strong doses of Taoism, Stoicism, and doing things for people you don’t know keep me sane and moving forward (albeit in a crooked line).

Hamish Campbell writes:

Ten years ago, I wrote about a problem that was already undermining the open web, that nobody was linking to anybody, and that the incentives were all moving in the wrong direction. Mainstreaming platforms had little reason to send people towards alternative sources, while grassroots projects were left struggling to build connections with each other. Even when people wanted to cooperate, there were plenty of reasons to avoid linking, sharing audiences or giving another project visibility.

The result was an increasingly fragmented web. Lots of websites, lots of content, lots of people doing useful work, but fewer if any meaningful connections between them. Ten years later, the technology has changed, the underlying problem has not gone away.

[The open web is a network of links, not islands]

So, please boost meaningful posts you come across on open social and link to important information on other sites within your open web site’s content.

CMSs

The Torment Nexus asks:

Is the internet as we know it dying or is it already dead?

What we promote here every week is somewhat radical and subversive. Unfortunately, it will soon be absolutely radical and subversive. It should be commonplace.

Tech Policy Press explores:

Creating a New Internet Bargain to Preserve Fair Use and Protect the Commons

Gavin Anderegg says:

Just put some HTML on the web

Yep.

Ian Monroe says:

I’ve integrated the Sveltia CMS to this site to make it easier to publish more often

S3N Net has a:

Publii Quickt!pp: Verlinken für Faulpelze

Hana + Nils examine:

The Designer’s Toolbox

Speaking of design, Micro.blog announces:

A new API for editing themes and templates

IndieWeb

Roy Lindauer explains:

How I am participating in the IndieWeb

Ghost

Magic Pages announces:

A contact form for your site

Bear

Bear’s founder, Herman shares:

The upvote dilemma

Back to top 👆🏼

Tools

The Guardian reports:

A leaderless revolution has swept Serbia. The world should be watching.

There are some great anarchic lessons here, Foremost of which is doing the good small things everyday eventually allows you to do a great thing.

Digital Commons EDIC announces:

The Digital Commons EDIC adopts joint strategy to scale open-source alternatives

The Worldwide Web Consortium demands:

Installing Websites Must Be Easy

The Association for Progressive Communications shares:

Breaking free of digital monopolies together: A conversation with the Rise Against Big Tech coalition

Chat / Team Chat

About Signal reports:

Signal Desktop without a smartphone one step closer

Browsers

Tor announces:

New Release: Tor Browser 16.0

The Freedom of the Press Foundation reports:

Privacy Badger now supports Safari

Search

Marginalia looks at:

Marginalia Search, Money, C++, Rust, AI, stuff

Unless you want to self-host, use it via the website.

Marginalia Search

Writing

Collabra announces:

Google Apps Script add-ons in Collabora Online

And LibreOffice announces:

LibreOffice 26.8.2 improves stability, multimedia and compatibility

Creative

9to5Linux reports:

Scribus 1.6.7 Open-Source Desktop Publishing App Released with Improvements

Linux / Open Android

The Privacy Dad asks:

Why Is It So Difficult To Build an Alternative Operating System for a Smartphone?

FuriLabs announces:

Telephony App

It’s FOSS explores:

Community Strikes Back: 12 Open Source Projects Born from Resistance

Igor Wawrzyniak examines:

F-Droid: 10 apps worth installing

Leo Gaggl says:

Convenience Is the Bait: Why the Hard Way Is Worth It

100%.

This week’s featured OMN tool

OmniTools

Boost your productivity with the toolkit for getting things done quickly.

OmniTools

Back to top 👆🏼

Programming

Picallili says:

If we stop, we lose

Keep sharing your knowledge peeps.

Project Libres shares an interesting podcast:

77 – [Conférences] Le Capitole du Libre : parler du libre à Toulouse depuis 2011

I am looking forward to attending this 25th anniversary edition here in my current home.

Prateek Surana looks at:

Evolution Of HTTP: An Interactive Guide

A good explainer of something you rarely if ever need to touch.

Markdown

We published an article this week:

The Bear necessities of writing Markdown for your Bear Blog

Stuart Ellis shares:

Notes on Modern Markdown

CSS

Mat celebrates:

Taking Back CSS-Tricks

Fan-fucking-tastic!

CSS Tricks has the official announcement:

CSS-Tricks has a new owner!

And:

The Frankenstein Table

Master.dev examines:

Useful @custom-media Presets

Web Components

Dem Odell says:

Design Systems Should Be Fast by Default

AI

Phorion shares:

Official Claude Code Extension Compromise: Security Advisory

FYI, if you’re a clueless fuck who uses Andropit or Microslop.

NOYB reports:

AI: EU Member States approve “digital expropriation” for AI companies

Tech Policy Press opines:

Breaking the Open Web Won’t Stop the Bad Bots

404 Media reports:

If You’re In the UK or EU, Here’s How to Object to Meta’s AI Training

Or you can 100% block it by not using the techcunt company’s techshit.

IEEE Spectrum looks at:

How Wikipedia’s Editors Keep the Online Encyclopedia Human-Written

Other

XWiki shares:

Release Notes for XWiki 18.9.0

OpenProject announces:

OpenProject integration app for Nextcloud released in version 3.3.0

Cool.

This week’s featured programming tool

HTMX

Access to AJAX, CSS Transitions, WebSockets and SSE directly in HTML.

HTMX

Back to top 👆🏼

ActivityPub

Todd Sundsted announces the:

Release v3.14.0 of Ktistec

Pachli announces:

Pachli 3.10.0 released

And ActivityPub for WordPress announces:

9.4.0 — Picture This

Event Federation has an:

Update on our specification work

This week’s featured ActivityPub featured tool

Fedify

Fedify is a Typescript framework that lets you build for the Fediverse but skip the boilerplate.

Fedify

Back to top 👆🏼

Permanent aside here (unfortunately)

This is a perpetual pet peeve because many people aren’t able to comprehend ⬇️:

• The Fediverse is for communities (private, semi-private, formal, informal, or otherwise)
• and the Atmosphere is for the masses (unwashed, washed, or otherwise).
• and corporate social media is for naive fools and intentional techcunts.

So, recognize their natures and don’t ask the two protocols to go against them. This is also why we have accounts on both platforms and use them differently.

Fediverse

Axel Valdez says:

I’m in Love with the Fediverse

Labjor asks:

Chamar as mídias sociais alternativas de “plataforma” é um erro? Pesquisador canadense provoca o campo na Conferência da AoIR

Betula announces:

Version 1.9.0

Back to top 👆🏼

More

A New Social explains:

The risks of bridging private data

Waag Futurelab announces:

Waag Futurelab launches oso.social, a social media platform where society sets its own rules

Two Waves and a Dot explores:

SocialSpec, and why we need it

Ricky Moorhouse is:

Adding SocialSpec to my site

Weisser Zwerg examines:

Nostr from First Principles: Protocol, Relays, and Application Galaxies

Like Nostr itself, this has a whiff of AI about it.

David Meissner continues a series:

gemini, gopher, SDF part 2

ATProto

ATProto shares:

Open Social Groups — the Vision

Contrails has:

Spaces are Views

Why we can’t have good things

Pizza Thoughts asks:

But Does It Float?

Atmosphere

Aaron Ross Powell says:

We Should be Optimistic About the Internet Again

As you can see from one one the links above, there is a wide variety of opinions on this. Fortunately, we have the tools to make the “internet” be what we want it to be. Although, it may be smaller.

Louis Escher opines:

You don’t have a “Bluesky account”

Skyreader shares a:

Skyreader update – Bring your own RSS app and Semble connections everywhere

On a related note, Melanie Kat asks:

Do At-Proto Users Know This Is Public?

FYI, if you use any atmosphere app, everything is public.

RSS

FreshRSS announces:

Potentially breaking change approaching

And Cédric Bonhomme announces:

Newspipe 12.3.0 released

Alternatives numériques has a review:

Test et découverte de Flus, un service de veille complet basé sur les flux RSS

XMPP

Michele (Cuche) shares:

Una presentazione su XMPP al Linux Day 2026

LinuxFR has its:

Lettre d’information XMPP de septembre 2026

Matrix

The Matrix Conference has:

The Matrix Conference 2026: Our biggest edition yet

Watch the talks

Computer World reports:

Matrix gains ground in Europe’s public sector — but replacing Teams is another matter

Matt Vestengen-Cox says:

What was old is new again

It is not just for larger organizations.

CTAs

• That’s it for this week. Please share The Programmer’s Fulcrum.
• Follow us on Surf or at @thefulcrum@thefulcrum.dev on the Fediverse or at @thefulcrum.eurosky.social on the Atmosphere for daily coverage.
• Read, live, and share The Techno Anarchist Manifesto!
• Escape techshit with the LESS Stack.

And please build something for a community! We’re promoting the LESS stack via our Manade project.

Share on Open Social Media

Copy and paste:

Explore this week’s “The Programmer’s Fulcrum”. https://www.thefulcrum.dev/the-programmers-fulcrum-30-october-2026/ #ActivityPub #ATProto #WebDev #Programming

Blasts from the past

Previous Battalion Posts

Previous Symfony Station Posts

Alt...

Header illustration with text over dark background of stars, spaceship, and astronaut.

Someone replies to your post from Mastodon with a photo. Until now, your blog showed the text and dropped the photo. With 9.4.0 that can change.

This release is mostly about what you and your visitors see: images in replies, quotes, and your blog profile. It also contains another round of security fixes, so please update.

Images in Replies

There is a new option in the ActivityPub settings: Show images attached to replies. When you turn it on, images in replies from the Fediverse show up below the comment text. Image descriptions come along, so the images stay accessible. Replies that are only an image, with no text, are accepted too.

The images are cached on your own server, so your visitors never load them from the other server. Up to three images per reply are shown. Images only appear on approved comments. Pending, spam and trashed comments show only their text, and their images are never downloaded.

The option is off by default. WordPress itself does not show images in comments, so this changes how your comment section looks, and we did not want to do that without asking. One thing to keep in mind: if your site approves comments automatically, images from other servers become visible without anyone looking at them first.

If you turn the option off again, the images disappear and the descriptions show as text. Turn it back on and they come back.

Quote Posts From the Fediverse

Since 7.7.0, your site can receive quotes. Now it can quote, too.

The new Federated Quote block works like the Reply block. Paste the link of a Fediverse post, and the block embeds it in your post. When you publish, your site asks the author of the quoted post for permission. If they agree, your quote is marked as verified on their server. If they decline, your post stays, but the quote turns into a plain link.

The editor shows where the request stands, approved or declined. It also warns you if the author does not allow quotes at all. You can still publish in that case, but the author will probably say no.

There is also a quote bookmarklet on the Tools screen, next to the reply one. Click it on any Fediverse post and you get a new draft with the Quote block already in place.

This depends on the other server. Mastodon supports the permission request since version 4.5. Other software might not answer yet, and then your quote stays unverified.

On the receiving side, the Comments screen has a new Source column. It links incoming replies and quote posts to the post they came from.

A Name and Face for Your Blog Profile

Until now, your blog profile on the Fediverse used your site title as its name and your site icon as its avatar. You can now give it its own. Under Settings → ActivityPub → Blog Profile there is a new name field and an avatar picker. If you leave them empty, nothing changes, and the site title and site icon are used as before.

Security, Again

As in 9.3.0, this release fixes vulnerabilities that were reported to us.

• Signed requests are checked more strictly. They have to be addressed to your site, and signing keys from other servers are verified more carefully.
• Blocks are respected everywhere. Accounts you blocked can no longer reply to, like, repost or quote your posts and comments, and only the sender of a reply or like can change or remove it.
• Content from other servers is handled more safely when it is imported as posts or comments.
• Apps you connect can only do what you allowed them to do, and only on content the connected user is allowed to change.

If you run the plugin, please update.

Smaller Things You Might Notice

• More languages. Posts are federated with the language Polylang assigned, and posts from Mastodon apps keep the language the app set. Handles like @renée@café.example now work in mentions and search.
• Blocks that fit your theme. The Followers and Following blocks take their colors and font from your theme, and the Reactions block has a new Counts style that can replace the comments link in a query loop.
• Your uploads folder stops growing. Profile pictures were downloaded again on every page view, leaving a copy behind each time. The update removes the extra copies.
• Fewer duplicate emails when another server delivers the same message twice, or when a reply also mentions you.
• Comments: replies are no longer auto-approved because the account liked a post before, likes and reposts no longer leak into comment lists, and comment links open the right page.
• What your followers get: no extra image under your posts, summaries that stop at the “Read more” tag, podcast files from outside your media library, and account moves that are verified and reach your followers.
• Apps and the ActivityPub API: mentions from Mastodon apps are federated again, and replies to posts on other servers are delivered.
• Compatibility: fixes for WordPress 7.1 and 7.2, PHP 8.5, Polylang, and sites behind a proxy.
• Under the hood: remote content is cached through the object cache, and endpoints that other servers call now have a rate limit.

The full changelog is in the GitHub repository.

Get It

Download from WordPress.org or grab it on GitHub. If your site updates automatically, you already have it.

Turn on images in replies, try quoting a post, and let us know how it looks on your site. Which servers answer your quote requests, and which ones stay silent?

Thank You

A huge thank you to everyone who contributed code, tested early builds, filed bug reports, or reported a security issue for this release.

Alt...

A Fediverse reply in the comment section, with the photo of a steaming coffee mug shown below the comment text.

Alt...

The Federated Quote block in the editor, with the URL of the quoted post, a note that the author will be asked for permission, and an embed of the post.

Alt...

The Blog Profile settings with the new name field set to "Slow Mornings" and a custom avatar.

The Social Web Foundation is pleased to announce the Social Web Devroom at FOSDEM 2027, and invite participants to submit proposals for talks for the event.

FOSDEM is an exciting free and open source software event in Brussels, Belgium that brings together thousands of enthusiasts from around the world. The event spans the weekend of January 30 to January 31, 2027 and features discussion tracks (“devrooms”) for scores of different technology topics. This is the third FOSDEM Social Web Devroom.

The Social Web Devroom will be a 5 hour track.

Format

There will be two available talk formats:

• 25 minutes – for bigger projects, followed by 5 minutes of questions.
• 8 minutes – micro-talks on smaller or newer projects, in groups of 3, followed by 6 minutes of combined questions for the group.

Topics

The Social Web Devroom is open to talks all about the Social Web, AKA the Fediverse, including:

• Implementations of the ActivityPub protocol or ActivityPub API
• Clients for ActivityPub-enabled software like Mastodon
• Supporting services for the Fediverse, like search or onboarding
• ActivityPub-related libraries, toolkits, and frameworks
• Tools, bots, platforms, and related topics
• Advocacy, organization and social activity in deploying Open Source ActivityPub applications

Important dates

• Submission open: 27 Oct 2026
• Submission deadline: 27 Nov 2026
• Acceptance notifications: 1 Dec 2026
• Final schedule announcement: 7 Dec 2026
• Devroom: 31 Jan 2026

Submissions

Submit talk proposals to https://pretalx.fosdem.org/fosdem-2027/cfp. Select “Social Web” from the “Track” dropdown, and include the length of your talk (8/25) in the submission notes. (Note that the “Lightning Talks” track is a separate event-wide track; if you’re proposing a Social Web micro-talk, please choose the “Social Web” track!)

Code of Conduct

All attendees and speakers must be familiar with and agree to the FOSDEM Code of Conduct.

Contact

Questions about topics, formats, or the Social Web in general should go to contact@socialwebfoundation.org.

This post originally appeared on the Fulcrum.

Welcome to this week’s The Programmer’s Fulcrum.

It’s your weekly curation of the essential news in the Open Media Network and Open Social development communities with a focus on devastating big tech via Techno Anarchism.

As usual, we aim to provide actionable content you can use to destroy Techno Feudalism each week. It has the additional benefit of weakening authoritarianism.

IMHO, the best way to do that is to use tools from the Techno Anarchist Manifesto to build your own site(s) to participate in the Open Media Network. Then you should share it (them) via Real Simple Syndication (RSS), Open Social, and possibly a newsletter or podcast. This approach is similar to what some call the IndieWeb and its POSSE philosophy.

The second best strategy is to have accounts on open social and use the hell out of them. And do the same with a RSS feed reader.

If you want some recommended tools see our LESS stack.

We publish TPF on Fridays so you can enjoy it over your weekend.

There’s good stuff in all of our categories, so please take the time to enjoy and bookmark the items most relevant to your goals. We hope you are inspired to create new ones.

Or you can scroll down to your favorite section.

FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And may involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists. Fuck´em.

⬆️ Just an image. Search for the handle below.

Follow or contact us on the Fediverse

Just copy and paste @thefulcrum into your platform/client’s search field and hit follow.

⬆️ Just an image. Search for the handle below.

Or in the Atmosphere

Again, just copy and paste @thefulcrum.eurosky.social into your Atmosphere app’s search field and hit follow.

Featured Item(s)

Open Media Network has this timely item:

In the Open Media Network (#OMN), the commons represents both the foundation and the destination of the native open web. Rather than relying on closed web corporate dotcons or top-down state power, it re-frames the commons as a practical, lived alternative. You might call it a “quiet” form of collective ownership and mutual aid grown into daily social infrastructure.

A reminder, what is the OMN

For example:

I finally got around to customizing our Bear (cross-posting) blog:

The Fulcrum on Bear

I am seriously considering practicing what I preach with LESS, and moving this site to Bear (or an equivalent) next year. I’ve had it with convoluted, increasingly AI ensloppified, and heading towards enshittified CMSs like Drupal, WordPress, Ghost, etc. They are no longer fit for purpose with small sites. Jamstack sites are just as bad.

Sticking to markdown, HTML, and CSS is a constraint that breeds creativity, resists techno feudalism, and refuses fascist artifacts like AI.

I would move our Fediverse account to self-hosted serving with Starling. And kill the newsletter.

CMSs

Offprint News announces:

A new editor, block by block

Publii has a new theme:

Blogmere: a magazine theme for lifestyle and culture journals

Silex announces:

Silex 3.10.0-canary.4 is out, a prerelease for testing

Typemill announces:

[https://typemill.net/news/typemill-2-28-0-soloprint-is-free-and-deeper-git-integration]

WordPress

Roddie Ouijital explores:

WordPress parent’s problematic plans for .php (pending primary-string payoff)

Blind Access Journal shares:

An Open Letter to Matt Mullenweg on Accessibility in WordPress

I doubt they will get any satisfaction from WP’s increasing deranged, techcunt founder.

I ran across this new federated blog project this week:

Omnicron: Write freely. Share universally.

This could be a promising Bear alternative.

IndieWeb

Joe Crawford has:

Be IndieWeb Enough

Ilyess shares:

My Quest for IndieWeb Citizenship

Small Web

Nat’s Space is:

Challenging myself to make for the web

I’m not quite here yet. But, see my Bear note above.

Ghost

Ghost announces:

Stripe Checkout customization

As usual, this is for the Pro plan or self-hosted versions.

Magic Pages shows us how to integrate:

Emoji reactions for your posts, without tracking

Back to top 👆🏼

Tools

The NLNet Foundation has:

NLnet Labs as an open-source software steward under the CRA

NLnet Publishes More Stringent Generative AI Policy

Small Web

Long Live the Web shares:

Not a manifesto

Let’s hope this is true.

Chat / Team Chat

About Signal reports:

Signal registration without a phone number now available on Android

Xoron examines:

The Signal Protocol in Rust

Anything is better than NodeJS.

Browsers

Servo shares:

August in Servo: CSS Grid, text selection, and more!

Better a late update post than none. 😉

Webkit announces:

Blocking Identity Resolution Infrastructure

Cloud

Nextcloud takes a look at the techcunts at Microsoft:

Your Data. Their Rules. – Sovereignty washing at its finest

Writing

The Document Foundation documents:

The history of the standardisation process of the proprietary OOXML format

Creative

9to5Linux reports:

Calibre 9.17 E-Book Manager Adds JPEG XL Support and Performance Improvements

Linux / Open Android

And:

Ubuntu Touch OTA 2.1 Rolls Out with Support for Volla Tablet, Various Updates

Nura announces:

Improvements in internationalization and localization

F-Droid announces:

F-Droid and F-Droid Basic were updated to 2.0.1 and 2.0.2

And iode announces:

Find My Device: find your phone, keep your privacy

Alternatives numériques has an:

Interview croisée d’Agnes Crepet (Fairphone) et Gaël Duval (Murena et /e/OS)

This week’s featured OMN tool

Hyper8

Hyper8 is a static site generator for video publishing.

Hyper8

Back to top 👆🏼

Programming

Tech Policy Press reports:

EU’s Digital Sovereignty Push Runs Up Against Budget Cuts for Civil Society

Whenever you think things can’t get worse with governments, you’re wrong. And other than the U.S. (ironically) it’s about to be a bad election season for democracy. As anarchists have said for years, you can’t count on governments for funding anything other than repression. So, it’s up to us to support and donate to TAM software tools.

TetraLogical looks at:

WCAG 3: a different future for accessibility

Eric Bailey says:

The Accessibility Compat Data project has a homepage now, and you should support the project

And Rob Ricci says:

What a Terrible Day to Have a Computer

This is so tiring.

The PHP Foundation (the gods bless them) explain:

Today’s PHP Security Release, and How We’re Strengthening PHP Security

Fortunately, as Elias Taylor notes:

There isn’t an easy exploit for this PHP vulnerability

And The Atlantic has this click bait headlined (but important) related article:

‘If Anything Happens to This Guy … Everyone Is Screwed’

Git

Bastian Greshake Tzovaras explores:

Using Codeberg’s git-pages deployment with git lfs

Markdown

I ran across the ATProto markdown tool, Reams this week:

Welcome to Reams

Michael Hanscom shares a:

Wishlist: Truly Semantic Plain Text Markup

CSS

Piccalilli examines:

Native masonry layouts with CSS grid lanes

CSS god, Josh Comeau looks at:

The Future of CSS

AI

404 Media reports:

AI Is Changing Everything About Hacking. No One Knows What Happens Next.

Other

OpenProject has:

Passion Project: Discover what’s new in OpenProject

This week’s featured programming tool

HTML

Structure your site.

HTML

Back to top 👆🏼

ActivityPub

Lorenz Diener explores:

New Features in Mastodon.py 2.3

This week’s featured ActivityPub featured tool

FediDB

FediDB indexes 41,097 servers across 522 software projects, checks every one of them each day, and publishes all of it through a free public API.

FediDB

Back to top 👆🏼

Permanent aside here (unfortunately)

This is a perpetual pet peeve because many people aren’t able to comprehend ⬇️:

• The Fediverse is for communities (private, semi-private, formal, informal, or otherwise)
• and the Atmosphere is for the masses (unwashed, washed, or otherwise).
• and corporate social media is for naive fools and intentional techcunts.

So, recognize their natures and don’t ask the two protocols to go against them. This is also why we have accounts on both platforms and use them differently.

Fediverse

Steffen Voß says:

Das Fediverse ist viel mehr als nur ein weiterer Social-Media-Kanal

FediDB heralds:

A New Era

Phoenix Paulina Schmid looks at:

Threads and the Fediverse: The Threat that Wasn’t

Let’s hope it stays this way.

Mastodon announces:

5.0: A closer look

Everyone is celebrating the competent UI.

Catodon has:

Catodon recently implemented Mobilizon/Gancio events

HolosSocial announces:

HolosSocial is not abandoned

My mistake was making it easy to run the server on your device, but not to get your own identity.

Back to top 👆🏼

More

A New Social shares its thoughts on:

On Nostr, Farcaster, and other protocols

Tech Policy Press says:

End the Algorithm

A great new project, SocialSpec has:

Introducing SocialSpec.org

App Spotlight: Micro.blog

App Spotlight: WordPress (Plugins)

I got this rolling on the backup Fulcrum Too (WordPress) site. You have to import your RSS following list via a plugin as well. Here’s our list if you want to bulk follow it. Which you should. 😉

David Gardiner examines:

WebSub notifications when my blog has new content

TechDirt opines:

Accident Or Not, The No Kings Takedown Is Why You Shouldn’t Rent Your Megaphone From Zuck

True, but his boys at Bluesky are on a path to catch up with Failbook level enshittification in the next few years.

ATProto

ATProto announces:

An Intro to Atmospheric Groups

Again, this is one of the main developments for why we pivoted with our Manade project.

We just cut another spaces alpha release

Tynan Is Typing claims to be:

Rating all the things

JolaDev shares a clickbait headlined, but good article:

The time Bluesky tried to kill my server

This is why you shouldn’t self-host your PDS, yet.

Atmosphere

Atmosphere Money is:

Introducing Atmosphere Money

Skyreader has a:

Skyreader update – Saved searches, PDFs and books, Semble Connections, and more

Cosmik Labs explores moving:

From Personal Knowledge Management to Collective Knowledge Gardening

W Don’t Have Time reports:

Just 18 unverified VIP accounts produce more than half of all W Social content

P2P

LoRes Mesh examines:

Offline websites with Kiwix, but P2P

Worm Blossom looks at its:

New WTP Specification

RSS

Buttondown says:

Google Reader was building the wrong future

Dropping Reader and pimping Google+ was definitely the moment the enshittification of Google gained steam.

I found this super solid RSS tools resource:

RSS isn’t dead. It’s the resistance.

Incognito Cat has:

Privacy Tool Spotlight: FreshRSS

XMPP

Aetherius Eldritch explores:

Un clásico del software libre para platicar con los amigos: así funciona Pidgin y el protocolo XMPP

Movim announces:

Movim 0.35.2 bug fixes and improvements

CTAs

• That’s it for this week. Please share The Programmer’s Fulcrum.
• Follow us on Surf or at @thefulcrum@thefulcrum.dev on the Fediverse or at @thefulcrum.eurosky.social on the Atmosphere for daily coverage.
• Read, live, and share The Techno Anarchist Manifesto!
• Escape techshit with the LESS Stack.

And please build something for a community! We’re promoting the LESS stack via our Manade project.

Share on Open Social Media

Copy and paste:

Explore this week’s “The Programmer’s Fulcrum”. https://www.thefulcrum.dev/the-programmers-fulcrum-23-october-2026/ #ActivityPub #ATProto #WebDev #Programming

Blasts from the past

Previous Battalion Posts

Previous Symfony Station Posts

Alt...

Header illustration with text over dark background of stars, spaceship, and astronaut.

This post originally appeared on The Fulcrum.

Welcome to this week’s The Programmer’s Fulcrum.

It’s your weekly curation of the essential news in the Open Media Network and Open Social development communities with a focus on devastating big tech via Techno Anarchism.

As usual, we aim to provide actionable content you can use to destroy Techno Feudalism each week. It has the additional benefit of weakening authoritarianism.

IMHO, the best way to do that is to use tools from the Techno Anarchist Manifesto to build your own site(s) to participate in the Open Media Network. Then you should share it (them) via Real Simple Syndication (RSS), Open Social, and possibly a newsletter or podcast. This approach is similar to what some call the IndieWeb and its POSSE philosophy.

The second best strategy is to have accounts on open social and use the hell out of them. And do the same with a RSS feed reader.

If you want some recommended tools see our LESS stack.

We publish TPF on Fridays so you can enjoy it over your weekend.

There’s good stuff in all of our categories, so please take the time to enjoy and bookmark the items most relevant to your goals. We hope you are inspired to create new ones.

Or you can scroll down to your favorite section.

FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And may involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists. Fuck´em.

Featured Item(s)

Misha Things writes:

Given what is at stake, it is surprising that so few people seem to be aware of, and engaged with this struggle over our digital world. Much like many of the boomers and generation X (what’s in a name) could not be bothered to think through the geopolitical and economic implications of letting the Americans build our digital world, a big part of the younger generations seems to have thrown in the digital towel, accepting their lives as digital serfs.

Escaping TechnoFeudalism

On a related note, we have an important pivot development with Manade:

Corporate surveillance, techno feudalist tech sucks and people want to leave it. But, some people have trouble with selecting individual tools that work well together. LESS is our very opinionated selection of a coherent stack. We want to make it easy for you to tell big tech to sod off.

Our Manade project will pivot into supporting and promoting this decentralized democratic tech stack.

With the new focus we aim to reduce decision paralysis and KISS for end users of tech. We want to help you escape the increasingly fascist techshit we are all stuck with.

The name is obviously inspired by KISS, the philosophy that “less is more”, and the ideals of the country where we live, France. Long live liberty, equality, and solidarity.

Announcing LESS – the Liberté, Egalité, Solidarité Stack

Pivot to AI writes:

Linux kernel maintainers are complaining they’re drowning in slop. Torvalds’ answer is: less people, more chatbots!

Torvalds said he is not trying to push non-chatbot users out of the project. But there’s already so much slop code and so many slop procedures that his actions don’t match these words.

I suggest the social action: shame. Shame these people. Their actions are shameful. AI bros hate being shamed and they try to make rules against shaming — because shame works.

None of these people doing shameful things deserve a place in polite company. They should be shamed for their shameful choices.

Linux kernel goes full AI slop code, hides chatbot commits

Linus has always been a libertarian but as he ages he’s becoming more of a techcunt. Discouraging. I guess it’s time to start checking out FreeBSD if you’re technical enough.

CMSs

pckt shares:

Okay, so… A lot has happened on pckt

You can now “import a blog from: Substack, Ghost, Tumblr, Buttondown, Pika, WhiteWind, or from anywhere that exports as Markdown.”

Jay Perry explores:

A room full of new friends

Manton Reece has announcements for Micro Blog:

New feature: Blog Audit

Social Spec

On a journalistic note, Current Affairs explains:

Why We’re Banning AI

WordPress

Haurand Webdesign has:

Zustände in WordPress 7.1.x bei Buttons

Good stuff.

Small Web

Tim’s Blog shares:

My take on the SmolWeb

Ghost

Spectral Web Services announces:

Multi-channel announcements

Magic Pages lets you:

Choose what your site sends to the social web

Back to top 👆🏼

Tools

Fast Wonder reviews:

Open Source Summit Prague: Sovereignty, Metrics, and Burnout

Matrix envisions:

What will it take to build an open source Europe and how the Digital Commons EDIC can help

Open Productivity announces:

Open Productivity: Six Open Source Vendors Form Joint Venture for openDesk

Gut. This is a solid option for medium-sized operations and up.

The Document Foundation peruses:

The Politics of Standards

Goodtech examines:

Souveraineté numérique : le rapport accablant qui pointe les lacunes de l’Europe

Tuta announces:

Building a private internet together: Tuta & (photo storage app) zeitkapsl partnership

Browsers

9to5Linux reports:

Mozilla Firefox 158 Is Now Available for Download, Here’s What’s New

Remember to use forks of Firefox like Zen, Waterfox, or Librewolf.

Speaking of, Waterfox announces:

6.7.6 — Feed controls and browser fixes

Cloud

Nextcloud reports:

Armira Growth teams up with Nextcloud: Frank Karlitschek on what it means for the community

They need to do this in order to take business away from Microslop, Gaggle, and Sapple. If you have a problem with it, check out Framaspace.

Writing

The Document Foundation announces:

The Document Foundation (now) has its own visual identity

LibreOffice comes to the rescue of Microsoft Publisher users

Creative

Vaibhav Haldia explains how:

A Patent Troll Almost Killed GIF

The Worldwide Web Consortium announces:

Updated Candidate Recommendation: Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 2

Kdenlive asks:

Help us test Kdenlive

Linux / Open Android

Amos Batto asks:

Will Linux phones become a viable alternative to the Android/iOS duopoly?

This is an incredible (and long) post on the challenges Linux phones face. You might want to start at the end. 😉

LineageOS announces:

24.0: Slick Seventeen, Awesome Applications, Universal USB Tools

The Free Software Foundation Europe has a:

GrapheneOS review

9to5 Linux reports:

Linux Mint 27 “Adrien” Slated for Release on Christmas, Based on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS

Matthias Kirschner demonstrates:

The Power of fdroidcl

This week’s featured OMN tool

Scribus

Scribus is the go-to Libre Desktop Publishing Application.

Scribus

Back to top 👆🏼

Programming

Terence Eden says:

I paid people to try and follow my README

Kruno Golubić looks at:

The 2026 round of new domain endings

Markdown

Writing Slowly longs for:

Built-in support for the ‘Web of Markdown’?

HTML

Master.dev lists:

5 Good Choices for HTML Containers

Great stuff.

Scott Jehl explores:

Standards In Progress: Making Video Posters Accessible, Responsive, and an Element

Ahmad Alfy examines:

Iframes that finally fit their content

A quick HTML and accessibility tip: if you put your headline in the header image you still need to add it as an H1 in your text or via your CMS’s title field.

CSS

Cyd Stumpel shares:

My picks for interop 2027

And Eric Meyer shares:

My Interop 2027 Rankings

Web Components

Aaron Gustafson looks at:

Tabbed Interface: The Web Component

AI

deadSimpleTech says:

There’s little that’s “inevitable” about AI

And Iris is 100% correct.

Other

OpenProject shares:

The open source alternative to Jira

This week’s featured programming tool

Codeberg

A community-led effort that provides Git hosting for free/open source projects.

Codeberg

Back to top 👆🏼

ActivityPub

Projets Libres shares:

#76 – (Fediverse) WordPress, ta maison dans le web social décentralisé

Note the last avatar on the reposts in the “Reactions to a post on Jeremy’s blog” image. 😉

Dr. Fed announces:

DrFed 0.1.0: Our first release

The Real Grunfink announces:

I’ve just published version 2.96 of snac, the simple, minimalistic ActivityPub instance server written in C

Terence Eden has:

Some quick thoughts on Unit Testing ActivityPub

PieFed demonstrates:

Reducing PieFed RAM usage

This week’s featured ActivityPub featured tool

LittleFedi

A lightweight, efficient and Mastodon-compatible home for the Fediverse. Your server. Your community. Your Fediverse.

LittleFedi

Back to top 👆🏼

Permanent aside here (unfortunately)

This is a perpetual pet peeve because many people aren’t able to comprehend ⬇️:

• The Fediverse is for communities (private, semi-private, formal, informal, or otherwise)
• and the Atmosphere is for the masses (unwashed, washed, or otherwise).
• and corporate social media is for naive fools and intentional techcunts.

So, recognize their natures and don’t ask the two protocols to go against them. This is also why we have accounts on both platforms and use them differently.

Fediverse

Lowkey Party explores The Forkiverse fiasco:

10k users… and how many Moderators?

Speaking as a journalist, journalists are just as stupid as any other humans. And even more tech illiterate. So, they probably shouldn’t spin up Fediverse instances.

Heisse reports on:

Age verification in the Fediverse: How the KIDS Act challenges Mastodon

The University of Innsbruck introduces:

Social Media: Mastodon für alle Studie­renden

Matthias Pfefferle launches:

a landing page on WordPress.com and video series with that explains the Fediverse

I was not aware of the Federated Reply WP block which is a useful one for interacting with the wider Fediverse. And this all works via the ActivityPub plugin if you self-host WP, which you should.

Platform for Social Apps announces:

There is an ActivityPub integration available for your Elgg instances

Bonfire

Public Spaces reports:

Mentaal.nl test Bonfire voor community’s in de ggz

Back to top 👆🏼

More

IFTAS releases the:

2026 Social Web Annual Survey & Needs Assessment Report Now Available

Truffle Culture opines:

Culture Is Abandoning the Public Feed

Great stuff and why our original mission for Manade was important.

European Trends has:

The Great Unfollow: How Europe is Rewriting the Social Contract

This is a bit optimistic for now, but let’s hope it blossoms.

Brennen Day shares:

Oldnets and Altnets: A Guide to Building a Low-Spec Daily Internet Out of Gemini, Gopher, and Terminal Tools

Old but vital.

ATProto

ATProto explores:

Developer Experience Goals for Atproto Spaces

at:// pizza thoughts examines:

Spatial Analysis

Jola.dev has:

Making your own atproto backlink index

Thoughts on standard.site

Boris Mann Tech Blog connects:

LaSuite Apps + Atmosphere Accounts

Tres cool.

Atmosphere

Tierney Cyren shares:

What is the Atmosphere: An Untech Introduction

Skyreader announces:

Skyreader update – Newsletters and Search

Aiueo has:

“European public voices choosing W” — But are they?

W Don’t Have Time asks:

Have you been Wned?

On a related note, MeTacheles has:

W Social: Verifiziert heisst veroeffentlicht

Elena Rossini covers the douchebaggery in detail:

Public by Design: How W Social Makes Their Verified Users’ Personal Details Visible on the Open Web

Matthew’s Newsletter covers:

How not to build trust

If you don’t know by now, W Social is a corporate grift targeting gullible marks. It’s a shady organization that’s a stain on the Atmosphere. At least (almost as shitty) Bluesky is honest about their commercial intentions and the very public nature of any information you provide them.

Meanwhile, Eurosky announces:

The Eurosky Identity Platform is now a Digital Public Good

P2P

Meshtastic says:

Let’s talk about 2.8

RSS

Robert Alexander looks at:

Misconceptions about RSS

Matrix

Tesseract announces:

Tesseract is now in beta!

CTAs

• That’s it for this week. Please share The Programmer’s Fulcrum.
• Follow us on Surf or at @thefulcrum@thefulcrum.dev on the Fediverse or at @thefulcrum.eurosky.social on the Atmosphere for daily coverage.
• Read, live, and share The Techno Anarchist Manifesto!
• Escape techshit with the LESS Stack.

And please build something for a community! We’re promoting the LESS stack via our Manade project.

Share on Open Social Media

Copy and paste:

Explore this week’s “The Programmer’s Fulcrum”. https://www.thefulcrum.dev/the-programmers-fulcrum-16-october-2026/
#ActivityPub #ATProto #WebDev #Programming

Blasts from the past

Previous Battalion Posts

Previous Symfony Station Posts

Alt...

Header illustration with text over dark background of stars, spaceship, and astronaut.

This post originally appeared on The Fulcrum.

Welcome to this week’s The Programmer’s Fulcrum.

It’s your weekly curation of the essential news in the Open Media Network and Open Social development communities with a focus on devastating big tech via Techno Anarchism.

As usual, we aim to provide actionable content you can use to destroy Techno Feudalism each week. It has the additional benefit of weakening authoritarianism.

IMHO, the best way to do that is to use tools from the Techno Anarchist Manifesto to build your own site(s) to participate in the Open Media Network. Then you should share it (them) via Real Simple Syndication (RSS), Open Social, and possibly a newsletter or podcast. This approach is similar to what some call the IndieWeb and its POSSE philosophy.

The second best strategy is to have accounts on open social and use the hell out of them. And do the same with a RSS feed reader.

We publish TPF on Fridays so you can enjoy it over your weekend.

There’s good stuff in all of our categories, so please take the time to enjoy and bookmark the items most relevant to your goals. We hope you are inspired to create new ones.

Or you can scroll down to your favorite section.

FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And may involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists. Fuck´em.

Featured Item(s)

Hamish Campbell writes:

There is a third path: community self-hosting. And this is actually how much of the Fediverse has worked for the last decade. A local group, cooperative, union, neighbourhood, or affinity group can share the cost, skills and responsibility of running services.

This is a way of taking the original “self-hosting” idea further, from individual self-hosting → community hosting → federation → native P2P.

The answer to the dotcons isn’t everyone becoming a sysadmin

But, the more of us that do, the better it is for the rest of us. Self-hosting skills are vital. Someone has to run community hosting.

Dead Simple Tech writes:

Using my experience in the tech world along with my exposure to humanist modes of analysis, then, I’ve tried to have a look as to how enshittification works from the inside: what beliefs, what attitudes and what mentalities lead to enshittifiers coming to be and reproducing themselves?

Poor enshittified souls

More (detailed) explanation of why techbros and developers are clueless shits and what to do about it.

Molily writes:

Many independent educators who used to earn a living from web development training and developer relations have reported that GenAI has ruined their business.

The death of web development education

All of you fucks who use GenAI are ruining your own career and everyone else’s. No to mention the thievery and environment destroying. So, fuck you!

CMSs

Faircamp announces:

The first Faircamp 2 sites are coming online after the release

From Anna is:

Making a quick and easy website!

Publii introduces:

Isabella: a website theme for working photographers

Thomas Kräftner shares his experience at KirbyKon:

Community

Pika announces:

Focus & Typewriter Modes

WordPress

Souverain explores:

De WordPress au site statique : remettre le Web à plat avec Silex

While creating a Silex site is simple, connecting it to a WordPress backend is not.

IndieWeb

O Hello Ana examines moving:

Towards a personal online third-space

Nice site design, Ana.

Ghost

Ghost shares:

Automation analytics

Build Awesome / 11ty

Richard Djarbeng demonstrates:

Building a Modern Blog with Eleventy 3.x (Liquid Edition)

Leaflet

Sygnyn shows us how to:

Use your own domain name in Leaflet

Back to top 👆🏼

Tools

Chat / Team Chat

About Signal reports on:

Signal Desktop Releases

Signal Android Releases

Cloud

OpenTech(AUC) is:

Self-hosting with CoopCloud

Nextcloud has:

Introducing Nextcloud Academy: Free online courses for Nextcloud contributors

Nextcloud app development beginner’s guide: What you should know before building your first app

Writing

And:

Nextcloud Write: the open source Microsoft Word and Google Docs alternative for collaborative document editing

Creative

Lou Lüeder shares:

Notre pipeline de production des PDFs imprimeur est 100% libre

Linux / Open Android

PostmarketOS (now Nura) looks at:

The road to daily-drivable mainline phones

9to5Linux reports:

Ubuntu Summit for Ubuntu 26.10 Takes Place on November 12-13, 2026

Hosting / Serving

Selfh.st opens the:

2026 Self-Host User Survey: Open for Submissions

Back to top 👆🏼

Programming

Sheets.work reveals:

The people holding up the internet

David Bushnell wants a:

A sustainable web career, for when all this blows over

On a similar note, Deciphering Glyph correctly states:

Programming isn’t Special

Base 31 shows us:

Fighting Link Rot: How to Build Websites That Last

Steve Fenton explores:

Migrating from WEBP to AVIF

Vadim Makeev shares:

One SVG, nine posters: CSS linked parameters

Git

Linux Web News has:

Looking forward to Git 2.56 — and 3.0

Markdown

Nextcloud announces:

Nextcloud Text adds comments in Markdown files

HTML

Open Surveys opens the:

State of HTML 2026 Survey

Calibre App examines:

Lazy Loading Images and Media: How Far Ahead Browsers Fetch

Dave Rupert

Recursion is DEAD and HTML killed it

CSS

Master.dev looks at:

Fallbacks for CSS progress()

A Beautiful Site explores:

Named Breakpoints Without Sass

Amber Weinberg explains:

Optimizing CSS with Modern Selectors

JavaScript

Master.dev

Testing an iframe’s postMessage Handler

AI

Jacobin explores:

The Bosses’ Oldest Dream

David Bushell examines:

Leaving them behind

Other

OpenProject has:

OpenProject and bitcrowd join forces to strengthen open source project management and Jira migrations

News from the Product Desk: Project-specific workflows and forms for work package types and their variants

XWiki announces:

Release Notes for XWiki 18.4.6

Back to top 👆🏼

ActivityPub

The Social Web Foundation is working on:

Internationalized Webfinger Handles in ActivityPub

Call for Proposals: Fediverse Multimedia Grants

Fedify announces:

Fedify 2.4.0: FEP-ef61 portable objects, background tasks, media uploads, and inbox request reports

Fabio Manganiello announces:

Songhive

Grow Your Own Services covers:

A new very lightweight Fediverse platform that’s just been released called littleFedi

And LittleFedi has all the details:

The Little Computer People Present littleFedi: Our First Public Release

This is going to be similar to Stirling.

ActivityPub for WordPress announces:

9.3.0 — Modern Signatures and a Summer of Security Reports

And Journey of the Wolf and Raven announces:

Activity Relay 3.1.0 and Activity Relay Directory 1.3.0 are released!

Back to top 👆🏼

Permanent aside here (unfortunately)

This is a perpetual pet peeve because many people aren’t able to comprehend ⬇️:

• The Fediverse is for communities (private, semi-private, formal, informal, or otherwise)
• and the Atmosphere is for the masses (unwashed, washed, or otherwise).
• and corporate social media is for naive fools and intentional techcunts.

So, recognize their natures and don’t ask the two protocols to go against them. This is also why we have accounts on both platforms and use them differently.

Fediverse

Hamish Campbell covers:

Composting the Last Five Years of the Fediverse

The Fediverse’s tech is decentralized. The power over it is not. And it will slowly be enshittified if this doesn’t change.

Connected Places has:

Fediverse News – Summer 2026

I discovered Epsilon.Social from the article above:

The European social network, sovereign and built to respect you

It will be very interesting to see where this goes. Here are its TOS with details on the founder.

Terms of Service

Bonfire

Apache (the Dutch media version) reports:

Mediahuis gebruikt én kopieert big tech

Linux Magazine reports:

How the Fediverse Found Parts for Its Platforms

Back to top 👆🏼

More

WAFRN shows us:

How to update

ATProto

The Public Ledger of Credentials shares the:

First steps of the PLC organization

Jola is:

Building an atproto link aggregator

Building [at] Habitat shares:

Habitat’s road to release: 08 search

Atmosphere

The Modal Foundation is:

Incubating Aster

Skyreader shares a:

Skyreader update – From your follows, Bluesky posting, and more

And Cosmik shares:

Cosmik Updates: September 2026

P2P

P2Panda has:

Recordings from DWeb Camp

XMPP

Tubercule shares:

Avoir un compte de messagerie XMPP

Element announces:

Smoother collaboration with integrations

Matrix

Computer Weekly reports:

French local authorities to replace WhatsApp with ‘sovereign’ encrypted messaging

Democracy Tech

Blacksky has:

What Happens When You Have a Choice? : A Breakdown of The People’s Assembly and Blacksky’s Vision for Democratic Tooling

CTAs

• That’s it for this week. Please share The Programmer’s Fulcrum.
• Follow us on Surf or at @thefulcrum@thefulcrum.dev on the Fediverse or at @thefulcrum.eurosky.social on the Atmosphere for daily coverage.
• Read, live, and share The Techno Anarchist Manifesto!

And please build something for a community! We’re painfully nurturing Manade.

Blasts from the past

Previous Battalion Posts

Previous Symfony Station Posts

Alt...

Header illustration with text over dark background of stars, spaceship, and astronaut.