Paths & Patches

Project News Featured

Your community. Your platform.

We’re reaching a lot of new people this year, so here’s a re-introduction to what we’re about. The Newsmast Foundation is a non-profit, public-interest organisation building open, ethical digital infrastructure for media, institutions and communities. We support digital sovereignty, independence, and long-term public value. In Europe and

Futility or hope: pink flowers, crowbars & compost

On New Year’s Eve Tim Chambers shared a link to John Green’s review of Auld Lang Syne, resurfacing Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s question: how do we perceive a bright pink flower growing in an alley? Looking back through the lens of 2025, a rough year in so many

Social web

The end of liberalism and the beginnings of resistance

I was at the Thompson Reuters Trust Conference last week. A good place to see where the philanthropic arm of the liberal elite is heading.* Short answer: it's lost. Blinded by AI and blindsided by Trump, the liberal institutions are in survival mode. Instead of taking a stand,

Project News

Building apps for social spaces

The Newsmast team was in Rome last week, working through our messaging and branding with a non-profit agency. It was hot, hard work, ending up with a lot of mosquito bites, some fabulous memories and a clear plan to take forward. Here’s the big idea we’re working on:

Social web

Homes from home

I’ve been away from home, on holiday. A good time to ruminate on open social web homes from home. Here’s five takeaways from the last couple of weeks. One. Blacksky Blacksky is winning aclaim for its nascent Bluesky decentralisation: the rsky implementation; a blacksky.community app and PDS;

Project News

Newsmast unplugged: FediCon Part III

Travelling nine and a half hours around the world is one way to get a different perspective. Made easier by finding a welcoming Third Space to call home for a few days. FediCon was the perfect place to unplug and unwind. A refreshing break from finishing the Newsmast Foundation Fediverse

Social web Featured

Third Spaces in the Fediverse: FediCon thoughts Part II

The day after FediCon, Vancouver waterfront was overtaken by hundreds of cosplayers at Anirevo - the Anime Revolution convention. Power Rangers, One Piece pirates and classic Japanese anime characters, with photographers and props in tow. Turning a patch of the city into what Johanna B called, in her FediCon presentation,

Patches, paths & The Matrix: FediCon thoughts Part I

The after hours Fediverse session at FOSDEM 2025 was held at HSBXL - Hackerspace Brussels. A cool, cyberpunk hangout. Wires everywhere, old computers, a fridge full of beer, Belgian goth-punks, and an old fashioned telephone receiver, hanging by its wire from the ceiling. We were in The Matrix.* In one

Social web

Five reasons for charities to cheerfully leave X

Here's five reasons for charities to be cheerful when leaving X (With thanks to Ian Dury and the Blockheads) One: The obvious X and Elon Musk played a big part in the Trump victory last week, buying both an equally big presence at the heart of the incoming

Project News

It's our birthday!

A year ago today, the Newsmast app launched in the Fediverse. Introducing curated communities on matters of public interest. From Politics to Photography. Black Voices to Biodiversity. Social Media to Sport. Newsmast was already a year in the making, inspired, as so much has been, by the fallout from Elon

Social web

Addition, magic, community. Bluesky & the Fediverse.

How 3 + 0 adds up to more than 1 + 2 This week Bluesky added over a million users. It’s taken a lot of moving parts coming together to get to this. Over in the Fediverse the parts are still being maneuvered into place. Ghost moved into ActivityPub beta. Bonfire

Project News Featured

"We can have a different web, if we want it"

The run up to FediForum was hard, as we worked to pull a ton of things together. After taking a month off to recharge, this blog is back in action.  It’s almost our birthday We’re coming up on the one year anniversary of the launch of Newsmast -

Platforms

Brazil, Bluesky & the Fediverse

It’s been a week for migration. That’s the big story. Some people in the Fediverse have been concerned that the news is all going Bluesky’s way. This blog is here to say: step back from the clone wars, redefine the arena, build alliances and it’s all

Social web

Organisations and content creators enter the Fediverse

In a Fedicentric world, everything revolves around Mastodon. Mastodon has around 80% of the monthly active users on the Fediverse. Mastodon sets the standard, and is where the action is. So a lot of Fediverse debates revolve around Mastodon policies, Mastodon releases, what Mastodon should and could do better. Look

Project News

Content, technology, community

“Newsmast is all about content, why are you moving into technology?” A great question from Jaz-Michael King at IFTAS. At first there was a simple answer: we developed a complex fork of Mastodon, and some of the technology looked like it could benefit the wider Fediverse. As we’ve started

Project News

Patchwork progress

As the Fediverse embarks upon a well-deserved round of holidays, our dev team are hard at work on the basic building blocks of Patchwork. Here's a round-up of what we've achieved and what we're working on. Dashboard The first version of the Patchwork dashboard

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Storytelling in the Fediverse

How do we get more people to join the Fediverse, keep them engaged once they join, and bring them back if they drift away? Right now, we're in Field of Dreams mode: "If we build it, they will come." That's a lovely sentiment, and

Project News

Building Fediverse channels

After a run of big picture blog posts, here's a deep dive into channels on Patchwork. There's a lot going on as we all work to finish building the Fediverse. Long-form content is one big idea. Curated channels are another. Something new which we're

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Re-centring the Fediverse: how a footnote tells the bigger story

This blog post was inspired by a conversation with Laurens Hof of Fediverse Reports. Thank you Laurens! Microblogging in the wider Fediverse received a big boost this week with the launch of the Threads API. All credit to the Threads team for pulling it off. Another key part of the

Social web

We need to finish building the Fediverse Part II: Patchwork

The blog post “We need to finish building the Fediverse” set out ten building blocks to transform the Fediverse. Evan Prodromou added an extra one - making the Fediverse more social, so it’s easy to invite your friends. We’re starting work on a lot of these through Patchwork.

Social web

We need to finish building the Fediverse

Faced with the challenge of how to respond to the increasing enshittification of the web, and fuelled by a night out with Flipboard’s Mike McCue and Mastodon’s Eugen Rochko, Casey Newton of Platformer laughs and says: “We need to finish building the Fediverse.” “Hell yeah” responds Evan Prodromou

Platforms

An unlikely couple

Farcaster, meet Newsmast. It’s weird when two things pop up around the same time, looking the same. Like Hollywood releasing two versions of the same story, in the same year. Even more weird when one is a crypto start-up with a billion dollar valuation. And the other an under-funded

Project News

Building communities across platforms

“The social web offers an exciting opportunity for Newsmast to spread knowledge-sharing on social media more widely.” That’s the conclusion of a report into knowledge-sharing communities on Bluesky and Threads, published today by the Newsmast Foundation.  We’ve backed this up by identifying twenty top communities where there is

Social web

Impressions of a platform surfer

Venturing out from our base in the Fediverse to promote the social web, the Newsmast team spent last week on multiple decentralised platforms - and LinkedIn. Here's a quick summary of my first impressions. Farcaster: by far the biggest surprise. Lively, growing, highly positive. Yes, it's

News

Social web news in May

The month kicked off with a wonderful piece by Molly White This is the world of today's web. Most of us spend our days within the confines of a handful of platforms, wandering around to admire what people have done with the seeds they are allowed in the