Bluesky is cancelling accounts when foreign governments ask them to, and Threads is doing adverts soon.

The thing to understand about the corporate public messaging systems is that they do not exist to let you publish or to talk to people. That is not the point of them. That's at best just the bait laid to lure you into their trap.

They exist to make money for the shareholders. That's why Threads exists, that's why Blockchain Inc invested to keep Bluesky running.

Only one network exists in order to let people communicate as the point and reason for it's existence. Only one network has no shareholders and no owners.

Only one is fighting for the user, not the shareholder.

#fediverse

Fighting words from @molly0xfff's opening talk at the Fediverse House at SXSW 2025:

“We're facing an existential threat. We need a web that serves people not profit, a web built on protocols, not platforms…It's being built right now by people like you in communities like this one.”

Thank you, developers and denizens of the open social web.🙏🏼

https://flipboard.video/w/p7cECAUgThGrfQo9Cqvb8r

#OpenSocial #OpenSocialWeb #ProtocolsNotPlatforms #MollyWhite #DigitalSovereignty #ActivityPub #Fediverse #FediverseHouse #SXSW

Today Melissa Lewis over on BlueSky pointed out that the font used in the infamous "You wouldn't steal a car" anti-piracy campaign was actually designed by Just van Rossum, whose brother, Guido, created the Python programming language (bsky.app/profile/melissa.news/post/3ln7hx5rhcj2v)

She also pointed out that the font had been cloned and released illegally for free under the name "XBAND Rough". Naturally, it would be hilarious if the anti-piracy campaign actually turned out to have used this pirated font, so I went sleuthing and quickly found a PDF from the campaign site with the font embedded (web.archive.org/web/20051223202935/http://www.piracyisacrime.com:80/press/pdfs/150605_8PP_brochure.pdf).

So I chucked it into FontForge and yep, turns out the campaign used a pirated font the entire time!