All the latest updates and tips for Haven
I am a technologist. I enjoy the things that computers and digital devices can do–they often seem magical and amazing! As a technologist, I have a particular vantage point to see and be very uncomfortable with what companies are doing with that technology. There are catchphrases for these patterns: AdTech, Surveillance Capitalism, Rage Bait, Engagement-Optimized Feeds, Harvesting Eyeballs. I am…
This week, the popular Twitter/X alternative Bluesky shared that they’re working with Epic Games and the UK Government to do Age Assurance “—verifying the age of a user before showing them adult-appropriate content. At face value, this seems like it would be a good thing, we’re protecting children, right?. Unfortunately, there are some very important details that get glossed over. In the United…
Haven promotes a different paradigm for social media, a model where everything is private. It is that paradigm that is important. Haven is just one option for implementing that paradigm but it is the paradigm I want to promote. One really cool consequence of private social media is that it cannot be censored. Today, almost everything we do leaves a digital footprint. Watching a Netflix or Youtube…
There is a history to the web. When it started, this computer-to-computer network let people share web pages by running a program on their computer (a webserver) and someone else could run a program on their computer (a web browser) to see what the first person shared. If you wanted to publish something on the first generation of the web, you needed the following: A computer to run the webserver,…
Today’s blog post is something a little bit different. Google released a tool called NotebookLM 1 that can summarize articles in the form of a podcast. I tried it out with things I’ve written about Haven, and it generated a really good overview of Haven; exploring what Haven is and the role it plays in the ecosystem of online communication. Take a listen below! Your browser does not support the…
The first time I heard about Secure Scuttlebut, or SSB , I thought it was the coolest idea. Let people moving around from place to place be the transmission mechanism for a network. Facebook over sneakernet! I love protocols and this one triggered some sort of itch with the crossover of novel ideas along with a lack of dependance on (or vulnerability to) the internet. It felt very cyberpunk. So I…
I love the IndieAuth community, I love what they stand for, and I love a lot of the technology they’ve built and defined. But I have a hard time getting behind Webmentions, even though they clearly solve a problem that exists and the people who use them love them. What’s going on here? First, some background. The IndieWeb community wants an internet that isn’t dominated by a few giant silos. They…
What is Facebook? For a tool that so many people use every day, the answer is surprisingly difficult to pin-down. It’s a social network, which means it’s about connecting you to other people. You have friends on Facebook, and it helps you keep in touch with those people. You get to see what they are up to and they get to see what you are up to. Right? Wrong. Facebook should be those things. It…
Bluesky is a project/company that came from somewhere inside of Twitter or Jack Dorsey. They’re moving forward with the idea that Twitter (or its replacement) should operate with an open protocol so that users can move between different hosting providers. Under this vision, Twitter would just be one provider but the protocol would be compatible with people who want to run their own servers and…
You might have noticed a new “Run on PikaPods” button in the Haven Readme file. PikaPods is a company that offers very economical paid hosting for open source projects like Haven. As of today, if you sign up with PikaPods you get a free $5 credit without needing to add a credit card. PikaPods only charges $1.64 per month to run your Haven, so you get 3 months free to try out Haven before you have…