Leaflet test stream

Telling my readers that open protocols matter feels like preaching to the choir, so I mostly don't focus too much on it. However, I think this story is worth flagging because it is such a clear signal of what's to come for 2026:

All the sessions of last week's Eurosky Live conference in Berlin are now available online, here.

I'm writing this update on the train back from the Berlin Eurosky Live event, and it was amazing to see so many people in person, had a great time with all the sessions and meeting so many great people! Shoutout to the organisers (Sebastian, Sherif and many. more) for a great event, and for bringing both policy people and the developers building a new social networking ecosystems together into a single coherent conference.

This is the second part of this week's news, you can find yesterday's report here, with news of Ganders fundraiser and how atproto governance is in the process of being housed at the IETF.

Gander Social, a Canadian atproto-based social media platform currently in private beta, launched an equity crowdfunding campaign through FrontFundr at the end of October. The campaign positioning itself as an opportunity for Canadians to co-own a social media platform built on values of digital sovereignty and independence from surveillance-based business models. Within hours of launching to their Early Access Program, Gander surpassed $500k CAD in investments, and within a week reached over $1 million with more than 1200 investors. Gander is planning to use the funds for hiring engineering and trust and safety staff, developing creator monetisation tools and moderation systems, and supporting a public launch planned for 2026.

When people talk about decentralisation in the atproto ecosystem, the conversation almost always centres on Bluesky. Conversations on decentralisation are messy at the best of times, but the strong focus on Bluesky and microblogging make it even more complicated. Decentralisation describes two different things at once: a technical architecture for how networks are structured, and the actual behaviour of people using those networks. Because Bluesky is so central to atproto, the social dynamics of hosting >99.9% overwhelm any technical dynamics that atproto provides regarding decentralisation.

Building a new social internet on open protocols is by its vary nature a highly political project. That social media has meaningfully shaped our society in the recent decade is such a true-ism that it barely feels worth stating anymore. I'm not saying something particularly shocking either by pointing out that the state of Big Tech platforms has political impacts. But the implication is that politics is a highly important lens to understand the new open social protocols. So politics will continue to play a main role in how I write about the ATmosphere, the fediverse, and everything around it.

A short report with some thoughts on two articles about Bluesky and atproto this week, as well as some additional links that stood out to me.

The Trump administration functionally rules via decrees on social media, and extensively relies on social media for validation of their policies and proposals. The actions of the regime are done to a significant extent precisely because of how it will be perceived on social media. Like other fascist regimes, terror is a core part of how the regime projects power. Violence itself only becomes terror when it can be packaged into a message to distribute to the population. US government agencies heavily rely on X for the distribution of their messages of terror, from creating ASMR videos of deportation to sharing the videos of missile strikes on fishing boats in Venezuela. As X radicalises more and more into a place for regime supporters, the platform starts to lose effectiveness for projecting violence. It becomes more important for the administration to find the (digital) places where their political opponents gather, to spread their message of hate.

Programming note: I've barely written about atproto in the last month: some issues with my shoulder severely limited the amount of hours I can spend at a computer each day, and I've had to prioritise some paid work in the limited time. Things are finally going better now, and I'm slowly catching up on the backlog. I have been keeping fairly close track of all the news shared in the last months anyway. So for the next few updates, I'll be going over the backlog and share some of the news and links that stands out to me. See it as a way to find out what news you've missed over the last month or so.

(a short bonus post because I need an example of a Leaflet post with an image embedding as a heading, and figured I might as well write something)

I was chatting with Sebastian Vogelsang (who's behind Flashes, Skeets and Eurosky), and he mentioned that he had recently given a presentation about atproto for media people. I asked him what his method was for explaining atproto. He said that compared atproto to wire services, and that this was a comparison that landed really well with the audience.

An overview of the last week or so of news related to atproto tech. News about specific atproto software and apps are for another update, as well as the larger socio-economic context of the open social networks. This update is focused on developers and other people who are interested in the more technical aspects of atproto. For more news on the open social web you can check out my writing at connectedplaces.online, or check out my Leaflet for shorter updates.

Small note beforehand: If you've followed me before, you likely know that I write a weekly ATmosphere Report with all the news about Bluesky and the ATmosphere every week, over at connectedplaces.online. These weeks I'm switching it up a little, by splitting the report up into smaller parts and publishing them separately. The entire ATmosphere Report will still be published (and emailed) regularly as well, and this posts will be made more accessible on my own website soon.

Small note beforehand: If you've followed me before, you likely know that I write a weekly ATmosphere Report with all the news about Bluesky and the ATmosphere every week, over at connectedplaces.online. These weeks I'm switching it up a little, by splitting the report up into smaller parts and publishing them separately. The entire ATmosphere Report will still be published (and emailed) at the end of the week as well.

Small note beforehand: If you've followed me before, you likely know that I write a weekly ATmosphere Report with all the news about Bluesky and the ATmosphere every week, over at connectedplaces.online. These weeks I'm switching it up a little, by splitting the report up into smaller parts and publishing them separately. The entire Bluesky Report will still be published (and emailed) at the end of the week as well.

Calls for people to get off Substack pop up regularly on the open social web. People argue against writers using Substack predominantly based on three reasons:

Here's a sentence for you:

Bluesky is banning access to its app for people from Mississippi following a new drastic age verification law:

The new Substack for "centerleft" (lol) writers decided to open their launch with a passionate argument of why its totally fine to stay on Twitter.