It's going to be a long summer. WIRED has some advice for being prepared.
Werd I/O
• Ben Werdmuller
How to Protest Safely in the Age of Surveillance
Werd I/O
Writing at the intersection of technology, democracy, and society by Ben Werdmuller
- Not verified.
- Updates via WebSub.
- ● Invalid.
Generator: Ghost 5.123
Werd I/O
• Ben Werdmuller
How to Protest Safely in the Age of Surveillance
How to Protest Safely in the Age of Surveillance:
"The nation, fractured by war, disease, and famine, has seen more than 6 million people die since the mid-1990s, making the conflict the deadliest since World War II. But, in recent years, the death and destruction have been aided by
Werd I/O
• Ben Werdmuller
Airlines Don't Want You to Know They Sold Your Flight Data to DHS
404 Media reports that the country's major airlines are selling passenger data to Customs and Border Protection and ICE.
Werd I/O
• Ben Werdmuller
Welcome to the new Werd I/O
I relaunched my website on Ghost. Here's why.
Werd I/O
• Ben Werdmuller
Airlines Don't Want You to Know They Sold Your Flight Data to DHS
[Airlines Don't Want You to Know They Sold Your Flight Data to DHS]
I assumed this was happening, but it's good to have it confirmed.
"A data broker owned by the country’s major airlines, including Delta, American Airlines, and United, collected U.S. travell...
Werd I/O
• Ben Werdmuller
Who's reading Werd I/O? Community survey 2025
I’m grateful that people stop by and read my posts. I think I’m really lucky. Thank you!
I love writing here, but I’d love to know how I could serve you better. So every year I ask my readers to fill in a short survey. It doesn’t take more than a minute or two.
This survey will help me figure out which problems and ideas people are thinking about, which will help me figure out how helpful I can be.
Click here to answer a few short questions. It’s entirely anonymous (unless you decide to leave your email address).
Thank you in advance for your feedback!
Werd I/O
• Ben Werdmuller
Who's reading Werd I/O? Community survey 2025
I’m grateful that people stop by and read my posts. I think I’m really lucky. Thank you!I love writing here, but I’d love to know
Werd I/O
• Ben Werdmuller
Bounce lets you move your followers from Bluesky to Mastodon
[Cameron Faulkner at The Verge]
Bounce is a game-changer for the open social web:
"Bounce is built on the work of Bridgy Fed, which makes your Bluesky posts visible on Mastodon and vice versa. Using Bounce will bridge your accounts, in case you haven’t already set up Bridgy Fed. Then, Bounce can move your account from Bluesky to Mastodon by shifting personal data servers and utilizing the native “move” functionality that ActivityPub and AT Protocol have in common. A New Social CEO and executive director Anuj Ahooja tells The Verge, “Folks on Bluesky will likely never even know you’ve Bounced to Mastodon.”"
This prevents any one service on the open social web from locking you in. Which, after all, is the promise and the power of the platform.
[Link]
Werd I/O
• Ben Werdmuller
Bounce lets you move your followers from Bluesky to Mastodon
[Cameron Faulkner at The Verge]
Bounce is a game-changer for the open social web:
"Bounce is built on the work of Bridgy Fed, which makes your Bluesky posts visible on Mastodon and vice versa. Using Bounce will bridge your accounts, in case you haven’t already set up
Werd I/O
• Ben Werdmuller
The Darkest Day: A fantasy Doctor Who season
I can’t help myself. I’ve loved every moment of the rebooted Doctor Who on Disney+, but it appears to have hit a bit of a pause while Disney considers whether to renew its co-production. With its future unclear (although I’m certain it’s coming back before too long), I’ve b...
Werd I/O
• Ben Werdmuller
The Darkest Day: A fantasy Doctor Who season
If I was Doctor Who showrunner ...
Werd I/O
• Ben Werdmuller
Letter to Arc members 2025
[The Browser Company]
Arc is my primary browser, and I'm feeling like that's a choice I should never have made:
"The part that was hard to admit, is that Arc — and even Arc Search — were too incremental. They were meaningful, yes. But ultimately not at the s...
Werd I/O
• Ben Werdmuller
Letter to Arc members 2025
Arc is my primary browser, and I'm feeling like that's a choice I should never have made:
"The part that was hard to admit, is that Arc — and even Arc Search — were too incremental. They were meaningful, yes. But ultimately
Werd I/O
• Ben Werdmuller
Curtis Yarvin’s Plot Against America
[Ava Kofman in The New Yorker]
Curtis Yarvin is a pathetic little man:
"As his ideas have been surrealized in DOGE and Trump has taken to self-identifying as a king, one might expect to find Yarvin in an exultant mood. In fact, he has spent the past few mont...
Werd I/O
• Ben Werdmuller
Curtis Yarvin’s Plot Against America
[Ava Kofman in The New Yorker]
Curtis Yarvin is a pathetic little man:
"As his ideas have been surrealized in DOGE and Trump has taken to self-identifying as a king, one might expect to find Yarvin in an exultant mood. In fact, he has spent the past few months
Werd I/O
• Ben Werdmuller
Building a newsroom technology culture
A quick note before we begin: This post reflects my own views on newsroom technology leadership, not necessarily those of my employer.
I like to say that journalism treats technology as something that happens to it — like an asteroid. But technology is too important to the ...
Werd I/O
• Ben Werdmuller
Building a newsroom technology culture
A practical guide to hiring, supporting, and empowering the technology competence that journalism needs to survive
Werd I/O
• Ben Werdmuller
What I've Learned from Ten Years with Coral
[Andrew Losowsky]
Running an open source community platform for a decade is no small feat - particularly one as storied and supported as Coral. Andrew Losowsky's reflections on its first decade are inspiring.
"Among so many conversations, we brought comment...
Werd I/O
• Ben Werdmuller
What I've Learned from Ten Years with Coral
Running an open source community platform for a decade is no small feat - particularly one as storied and supported as Coral. Andrew Losowsky's reflections on its first decade are inspiring.
"Among so many conversations, we brought commenters into newsrooms to speak with journalists, moderators
Werd I/O
• Ben Werdmuller
Sahil Lavingia's DOGE diary
[Sahil Lavingia]
I personally don't think his decision to join DOGE was defensible, but there are lots of interesting details in Sahil Lavingia's diary of the 55 days he worked there.
For example:
"I was excited to help in-source VA's software, but I was al...
Werd I/O
• Ben Werdmuller
Sahil Lavingia's DOGE diary
I personally don't think his decision to join DOGE was defensible, but there are lots of interesting details in Sahil Lavingia's diary of the 55 days he worked there.
For example:
"I was excited to help in-source VA's software, but I
Werd I/O
• Ben Werdmuller
The Substack Election
[Lauren Egan at The Bulwark]
If I was Substack, this is exactly what I'd be doing. But then again, if I was Substack, I wouldn't have paid Nazis to post on my network.
"The company sees an opportunity. Its employees have been meeting with congressional staff...
Werd I/O
• Ben Werdmuller
The Substack Election
If I was Substack, this is exactly what I'd be doing. But then again, if I was Substack, I wouldn't have paid Nazis to post on my network.
"The company sees an opportunity. Its employees have been meeting with congressional
Werd I/O
• Ben Werdmuller
12 years of Ghost
This is a lovely reflection on 12 years of Ghost, the non-profit, open source publishing platform that powers independent publishers and allows them to make a living on their own terms.
"Over the years, we've focused consistently on building the best tools for publishing on the web. In the past 5 years, in particular, we've also focused heavily on building ways for creators, journalists, and publishers to run a sustainable business on the web."
As John notes, this has been very successful: outlets like 404Media and Platformer use it as their platform, and they've generated over $100 million for small publishers. It's the right product, and particularly now, it fills a need at the right time.
[Link]
Werd I/O
• Ben Werdmuller
12 years of Ghost
This is a lovely reflection on 12 years of Ghost, the non-profit, open source publishing platform that powers independent publishers and allows them to make a living on their own terms.
"Over the years, we've focused consistently on building the best
Werd I/O
• Ben Werdmuller
Mastodon updating some legal features
[Mastodon]
Mastodon's legal updates are an important way to support different kinds of communities. It's great to see the Mastodon team grow to support these features. I'd love to see CC-licensed terms of service for communities to use.
Those features:
"Mas...
Werd I/O
• Ben Werdmuller
Mastodon updating some legal features
[Mastodon]
Mastodon's legal updates are an important way to support different kinds of communities. It's great to see the Mastodon team grow to support these features. I'd love to see CC-licensed terms of service for communities to use.
Those features:
- "Mastodon servers already
Werd I/O
• Ben Werdmuller
Focusing on speculative futures
I'm changing the direction of my blog.
Werd I/O
• Ben Werdmuller
Focusing on speculative futures
If you’ve enjoyed my recent series about the open social web, great! There were four parts, which I think are collectively some of my best work:
What the future of Bluesky might look like
How Mastodon could be the future of online communities
What I’d do if I was running m...
Werd I/O
• Ben Werdmuller
Let's fund the open social web
A pro-social approach to building better platforms