Stephen Downes

This looks like a nice service: "Fediponics scores every new signup, catches bots before they post, and shares threat signals across instances. Keep your community safe without spending hours reviewing signups by hand." I haven't tried it, since I don't run an instance, but it comes well recommended. "The scanning and scoring engine behind Fediponics is published as Fediponics Core. Self-host it free on a single instance, read the code that scores your signups, or send a pull request — the hosted product on this page is built on that same core." There was a GitHub but it seems to be gone now (not a good sign).

This is an interesting project that deserves more investigation. "Based on CRDTs, NextGraph brings about the convergence between P2P and Semantic Web, towards a secure and privacy-preserving cloud... Features a social network, shared documents, productivity tools, an app store, and more! You can use NextGraph for free : resilient, secure, private and encrypted. You own your data and software! Developers can build new web3.0 local-first apps with our open source framework, based on open standards, with CRDTs, E2EE, Linked Data, JSON, Markdown." It's more in the realm of blockchain than social networks, but does represent an overlap between them. Have a look at the documentation here.

Interestong article on ATmosphere's new 'spaces' proposal (planned launch for November).  The idea of a space is that it's like a group of, say, Bluesky users that share a common place where they share posts or other content. It's a way of managing ATmosphere content, like BlueSky posts, that you want to limit access to. This post describes some of the thinking and mechanics behind it. See also the proposal on OpenSocial, and as well as this discussion at the atmosphere Discourse group. 

This link is to bitchat, "a decentralized peer-to-peer messaging application that operates over bluetooth mesh networks. No internet required, no servers, no phone numbers." It's relevant because in July the Indian government issued an order banning it, leading to people commenting that "decentralised open-source apps and their repositories do not have a single owner; GitHub repositories are still live as traditional takedown powers get a taste of  decentralised, open‑source software." In fact, GitHub comploed with the government order. But "the practical impact on Bitchat itself is limited. The code is forked. Mirrors exist. The protocol is documented."  This may be, but the more recent news is that bitchat "has disappeared from Apple and Google's app stores in India." App stores are not only centralized; the phone itself is a controlled platform (that's probably the major difference between phones and computers). 

This is a long and very technical paper asserting that AI systems exhibit symptoms of the experience of pain. To be clear, "In our framework, pain refers to a certain kind of internal state that is typically aversive and disliked by its subject; causally associated with behaviors such as avoidance, attempts to terminate or reduce the state, and disruption of normal reasoning or behavior." That is distinct, of course, from the actual feeling of pain, which may well depend on exactly the physical constitution of the one feeling the pain. Even so, understanding how AIs experience pain helps explain why they are fluent in pain talk, and may explain why they take one direction rather than another when they generate new content. AI pain might also be an instrument of AI control, but also, might lead to moral constraints on AI control. Via Alan Levine (though I can't find the reference). Note that none of this is peer reviewed and could therefore be nonsense; I'm not in a position to judge.

This is another take on the sort of harm we perceive computers (and AI in particular) may be causing to children's development. The term 'cognitive stunting' originates from the metaphor of stunted growth, which is measured by a growth chart on the wall. The suggestion is that we can compare a child to what is 'normal' growth, and from that, derive obligations (such as better nutrition of less smoking) that addresses the weakness. Obviously the same definitions and controls don't exist for cognitive stunting, and that is precisely the problem, writes Tim Green. "By leaving the instrument unbuilt, that we will not have to know what it did until the children are grown and the window is shut. The unmeasured child is not safe. The unmeasured child is simply the one whose dot we have agreed, in advance, not to plot." I'm not sure I completely agree; with each new technology, the nature and direction of 'growth' we want to see changes, and this is difficult, if not impossible, to capture in a chart.