Robert W. Gehl

So... Protonmail is using AI code and people are like, move.

But where?

Seriously... name a service I can use that won't have this problem. Even if I self-host email (which I'm not going to do) any FOSS software I use to do so is probably going to be touched by LLM code.

AIF.

#isThereNothingSacred

Fuck you Trump for fucking up what used to be easy: sending a letter from Canada to the US. Used to be I could just do it. Now I need two apps(!) and share a bunch of personal information to send a fucking letter. That letter I sent? The one that took so much work to send? Yeah, it was a ballot, and I pray to god it was the first domino in the series of dominos that leads to your rotting in jail.

I am being just overwhelmed with amazing research on #alternativeSocialMedia during an #AoIR2026 panel right now. The work happening now is going to resonate for years.

I needed some good news, so I wrote a blog post about happy things in my professional life as an academic who gets stuff done with FOSS:

https://fossacademic.tech/2026/09/12/dogged-FALD.html

It praises LibreOffice, how easy it is to migrate infrastructure if you work at it, and Zotero!

#FOSSAcademic #goodNews

If you're not soul-crushingly exhausted, you're not paying attention

Megacorp just bought all the rare Stradivarius violins in existence to train their robots on vibrato technique. Per law, the violins have been shredded and are now being repurposed as toothpicks

Here's a #privacy settings tip for Meta product users: on your phone or computer, go to wherever you delete applications and delete Meta's products. Never use them again.

My latest FOSS Academic post is a doozy. It's "Reading the Digital Safety Act with My Mastodon Admin Hat On":

https://fossacademic.tech/2026/06/11/reading-digital-safety-act.html

I'm reading Canada's proposed Digital Safety Act. My conclusion is that the proposed regulations could be very burdensome to non-profit, community-run social media, including AoIR.social.

I'd love feedback on this, particularly from Canadian fediverse admins.

#mastodon #fediverse #Canada

about once a week I hear someone tell me that the fediverse failed and is dead

and every day I find something new on it, some new instance, or some new account or interesting post

take that how you will

#fediverse

A bunch of reviews are in for Move Slowly and Build Bridges, my book about the fediverse, and... they're good!

https://moveslowlybuildbridges.com/endorsements.html

"essential reading... realistic, honest, and deeply informed... highly recommended reading... an academic text that's enjoyable and easy to read... insightful, superbly researched... a better version of what the internet could be..."

#MoveSlowlyAndBuildBridges

This is what we've sunk to: begging the newly rich to have the charitable impulse to build nicer mansions so future generations can look at them:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/23/opinion/artificial-intelligence-philanthropy-beauty.html

or we could tax the fuck out of them and fund things people actually want

As a child growing up in Malaysia and Turkey in the 1980s, Balkan was lucky: he grew up with a personal computer. It was an IBM PC, and it was his, he told me. He learned the coding language BASIC on it, he played games, and he made his own games....

https://moveslowlybuildbridges.com

#MoveSlowlyAndBuildBridges #bot

In addition to content moderation concerns, those who sign the #fedipact or otherwise pledge to block Meta cite many other reasons for doing so. vanta’s fedipact site sums up several: “that time they helped facilitate a genocide. that time they helped try to rig an election....

https://moveslowlybuildbridges.com

#MoveSlowlyAndBuildBridges #bot

I might not be at #fediforum this time but I did my bit, hosting a #Mastodon workshop for folks in Serbia, Mexico, and Canada.

My basic presentation is here:

https://www.robertwgehl.org/presentations/MastodonWorkshop.html

Happy to chat with others who are curious about Mastodon and the fediverse.

Even though Mastodon was the first major project to implement ActivityPub, it’s an open protocol, meaning anyone with the technical ability can adopt it. Today, dozens of different projects rely on the ActivityPub protocol, including not only Mastodon microblogging but also PeerTube video, Pixelfed image sharing, and WriteFreely blogging....

https://moveslowlybuildbridges.com

#MoveSlowlyAndBuildBridges #bot

maybe that doc was in slack. maybe it was in teams. maybe someone shared a google drive. it was sharepoint, I'm sure of it. it was whatsapped to me. it was signaled.

WHY CAN'T WE JUST USE EMAIL

Research confirms this observation. Technologists of color, for example, often face obstacles, including the brute obstacle of bigotry: white coders often question the qualifications of their Black peers. This is in part due to the fact that Black contributions to science and technology have repeatedly been overlooked....

https://moveslowlybuildbridges.com

#MoveSlowlyAndBuildBridges #bot

Exacerbating his feeling of burnout, the existence of surveillance capitalist, for-profit social media gives Rochko a vision for how things could have been otherwise....

https://moveslowlybuildbridges.com

#MoveSlowlyAndBuildBridges #bot

Umm... must we call someone with an honorary doctorate "Dr"? Good lord, the ego on this guy.

https://hostux.social/@fsf/116172571144464102

Facebook and Twitter want users to be able to log on and infinitely scroll and post at any time. To achieve such reliability, however, requires massive amounts of energy and hardware – they regularly cycle through hardware, draw power off energy grids, and use water to keep their systems cool....

https://moveslowlybuildbridges.com

#MoveSlowlyAndBuildBridges #bot

Covenantal federalism has three main features: noncentralization, the consent of the governed, and federal liberty. Noncentralization is a core organizing principle: it means that the network of groups is designed so that a powerful center cannot emerge. Typically, this is achieved through opposing powerful parts of the system with other powerful parts....

https://moveslowlybuildbridges.com

#MoveSlowlyAndBuildBridges #bot

The latest FOSS Academic post is an early review of Zotero 8, the latest from

. TL;DR version: I might just use this version to do a lot more 'synthetic' note taking, a practice I had been doing in Zettlr with Markdown files.

https://fossacademic.tech/2026/02/26/zotero-8-review.html

I've been using Zotero since 2009 and I can't imagine doing my job without it. Kudos to the team at Digital Scholar!

#zotero #FOSSAcademic

However, one major lesson of Musk’s takeover is that these corporate sites are at the end of day controlled by billionaires. Whether it’s Musk or Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, why should we trust control of our social interactions to a single person? A cadre of wealthy shareholders (such as the group that owned Twitter prior to Musk’s takeover) isn’t any better....

https://moveslowlybuildbridges.com

#MoveSlowlyAndBuildBridges #bot

I wrote a little post for Own Your Digital (a Canadian project to help folks move to the fedi). It's called "The Canadian Network Effect":

https://ownyourdigital.ca/news/the-canadian-network-effect/

Basically, I'm addressing something I hear all the time about the fediverse, whether it's #Mastodon or other systems: I'd move there but all my friends are on [name a corporate social media site].

We gotta start somewhere. One by one, as people move, the Canadian fediverse gets better.

#MastoCanadaGov #fediverse #Canada

Yesterday I met with a bunch of folks who plan on advocating for politicians, municipalities, journalists, and others to set up accounts on the #fediverse. The focus is on Canada. I'm totally on board for it, because I've long advocated for folks to leave corporate social media, and let's face it... that's an area dominated by US corporations.

Democratic deliberation in Canada is far too important to trust to US corporations.

#MastoCanadaGov

Hey, Canadians!

I'm looking for recommendations for podcasts about Canada. Right now I listen to quite a few, mostly focusing on politics and news. I also listen to APTN news about Indigenous issues.

But there's a glaring gap: Quebec. I'm an American so of course I never learned French, and while I can work on that, are there good podcasts (or news sources) that discuss Quebec for Anglophones?

Another area I'm interested in is the Maritimes.

#canada #askFedi

Anyone making a version of Noscript (the Javascript blocking plugin for Firefox) that blocks "AI assistants" or any other such garbage?

Critical reverse engineering includes a normative component: the goal is to make something better than the original. What is “better” can vary quite a bit. In my research, I’ve studied alternatives that center protections for free speech, seeking to avoid censorship....

https://moveslowlybuildbridges.com

#MoveSlowlyAndBuildBridges #bot

Nothing says "Canadian digital sovereignty" like a website that relies on Google infrastructure

Latest FOSS Academic post is -- you guessed it -- a 2025 year in review post. Thrill to the fact that I'm using much of the same FOSS to do my work as I always have! Feel the chills as I talk about #generativeAI and how terrible it is! Above all, join me in living the FOSS Academic Lifestyle Dream!

https://fossacademic.tech/2025/12/21/year-in-review.html

Replies to this post will appear as comments on the blog thanks to the magic of #ActivityPub!

#FOSSacademic

Someone at a conference I'm attending just called ChatGPT "capitalism on cocaine."

Federated social media is a radical departure from corporate social media. While big companies like Google and Microsoft produce email servers that can intercommunicate with hundreds of other providers, in the world of social media, cross-company communication is largely unheard of....

https://moveslowlybuildbridges.com

#MoveSlowlyAndBuildBridges #bot

Hey, #admins!

Along with a grad student, I am working on a paper the surveys Mastodon (and forks -- Hometown, Glitch) servers that have some connection to #Canada.

We have done a lot of digging and have found ~40 instances that have some connection to Canada. We presented our work recently:

https://robertwgehl.org/presentations/CanadaFediASM.html#1

But! Maybe we're missing some. If you are willing to share, please let me know if your Mastodon/fork instance meets this criteria.

Boosts appreciated!

I'm grading student papers, and I can report that one effect of generative AI is that I now suspect everything my students submit. And that's not a good place to be in while grading.

#banGenAIfromUniversities

In addition to content moderation concerns, those who sign the #fedipact or otherwise pledge to block Meta cite many other reasons for doing so. vanta’s fedipact site sums up several: “that time they helped facilitate a genocide. that time they helped try to rig an election....

https://moveslowlybuildbridges.com

#MoveSlowlyAndBuildBridges #bot

Second, the use of Amazon and Cloudflare could also be a violation of the ethical covenant many fediverse instances adhere to, since these are corporations with poor reputations for their anti-union activities or willingness to host conspiracy theorists....

https://moveslowlybuildbridges.com

#MoveSlowlyAndBuildBridges #bot

Because we need more #dogsofmastodon, here is Agnes.

you know where I just don't see AI slop?

that's right, the fedi

thank you fedi! Keep it human!

This kind of came a bit unexpectedly today, but I have a new article out:

https://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/1556

It focuses on those most controversial moderation tools on the #fediverse: #blocklists. I consider the philosophy and practice of listing to argue that those who run blocklist services work hard to mitigate their problems.

I also make a case that we simply need more scholarship on content moderation on #noncentralized, noncommercial social media.

#alternativeSocialMedia

someone please make an image search system that filters out #generativeAI images

it is so, so miserable to search for images now.

I had a wonderful time yesterday talking to folks at the

book launch event for Move Slowly and Build Bridges! It was especially fun to see folks who were interviewed for the book!

As usual, I want to share the text of my talk as well as the slides. You can see them here:

https://robertwgehl.org/presentations/fediForumBookTalkText.html

https://robertwgehl.org/presentations/fediForumBookTalk.html

The latter has alt text for images, and there's a "presenter view" if you want to see the text and slides together. (Marp ftw).

Also, this:

This might be a longshot... but the fediverse might be the best place for me to post this and get the reply of fellow Linux friends.

One of my kid's buddies found an in-the-box Samsung SM-T113 "Tab." Doing searches, I see it may be possible to put something like PostMarketOS on it.

Anyone out there have experience in this?

boosts appreciated

#Linux #keepingStuffOutOfLandfills

I'm having a virtual book event with the

folks next week!

https://fediforum.org/news/2025-09-04-robert-gehl-move-slowly-and-build-gridges-special-event/

I will talk about my new book, Move Slowly and Build Bridges: Mastodon, the Fediverse, and the Struggle for Democratic Social Media.

Here's a link for more information about the book: https://moveslowlybuildbridges.com

#bookstodon

"Mark Zuckerberg called the people who trusted him with their data when he set up Thefacebook at Harvard “dumb fucks.” His extractive business of building intimate profiles of people to exploit for profit has made Facebook a trillion-dollar corporation and Mark a billionaire. So should you trust Threads and federate with it? Sure...." -- Aral Balkan

https://moveslowlybuildbridges.com

#MoveSlowlyAndBuildBridges #bot

Hey, fedi, I'd like a bit of help. My book (https://moveslowlybuildbridges.com/) is out now in paperback. Yay! But as an author I have little insight into what that means, beyond the fact that Amazon is shipping it in North America.

Folks have let me know the book is on bookshop.org (https://bookshop.org/p/books/move-slowly-and-build-bridges-mastodon-the-fediverse-and-the-struggle-for-democratic-social-media-robert-w-gehl/22541467?ean=9780197776681).

What I'd like to know is: where else is it available? I want to collect this info for folks who don't want to buy from Amazon. I will put the info on my website. boosts appreciated!

What if there are no "best practices" when using generative AI for research?

What if all use of genAI is inherently harmful?

What if I don't want to participate in research using generative AI?

These questions seem to be completely off the table now.

This feels like 2006 all over again, when everyone everywhere seemingly thought they had to use corporate social media for their professional activities.

Pleased to announce that my book, Move Slowly and Build Bridges: Mastodon, the Fediverse, and the Struggle for Democratic Social Media, is now available online, and will be out in print in a couple weeks!

https://moveslowlybuildbridges.com

That site has more stuff, too -- links to related articles, some notes about how I researched it, and a contact form in case you want to talk about the fediverse with me! (I'd be happy to chat with journalists about it!) #academicChatter #bookstodon #fediverse #mastodon

certainly been seeing a massive difference as to how people are discovering shows without Twitter. I think that’s because of the algorithm, the Twitter algorithm, would put stuff in front of you....

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/move-slowly-and-build-bridges-9780197776681?cc=ca&lang=en&

#MoveSlowlyAndBuildBridges #bot

Wolfgang Messner, writing in

on how generative AI could homogenize culture: "The danger is not that AI will fail us, but that people will accept the mediocrity of its outputs as the norm. When everything is fast, frictionless and “good enough,” there’s the risk of losing the depth, nuance and intellectual richness that define exceptional human work."

https://theconversation.com/is-ai-sparking-a-cognitive-revolution-that-will-lead-to-mediocrity-and-conformity-256940

I talked to

about generative AI's impact on teaching. Apparently I wasn't alone... not by a long shot.

got a ton of responses about this topic and ran many of them here:

https://www.404media.co/teachers-are-not-ok-ai-chatgpt/

While it's distressing to read all of them, it's good to see I'm not alone.

#generativeAI #higherEducation #teaching #academicChatter

What will the cardinals do this year?

As if I needed more reasons to loathe Elsevier.

Lately I've received peer review requests from Elsevier journals. If I decline their request via the email link, it takes me to a website that has an angry red box that says "Action not allowed."

Ok, so I will email the editor to say I can't do it. That apparently goes to some IT support system, not the editor.

And today I got an email implying I was being unprofessional because I did not respond to their reviewer request.

#academicChatter 1/2

The following is a random quote from my next book, Move Slowly and Build Bridges:

Will people keep using Twitter, even after Musk’s takeover – even after he changed its name to “X”? Is this time different? As of this writing, that remains an open question....

#MoveSlowlyAndBuildBridges #bot

The following is a random quote from my next book, Move Slowly and Build Bridges:

It’s time, Balkan and the Small Tech Foundation argue, to degrow things like corporate social media. Degrowth is a way of thinking that counters years of capitalist fantasies of infinite growth....

#MoveSlowlyAndBuildBridges #bot

I keep hearing people call legitimate concerns about LLMs/generative AI a "moral panic."

I really hope folks stop using that framing. This is not the same as parents getting freaked out about Dungeons and Dragons in the 1980s. This is a moment when huge, for-profit interests are seeking to exploit the creativity of writers, artists, and anyone else who creates. It's completely legitimate to express concerns. It's not a moment of "Won't someone PLEASE think about the children!?!".

My book about Mastodon and the fediverse is now available for pre-order!

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/move-slowly-and-build-bridges-9780197776681?q=gehl&lang=en&cc=ca#

#Mastodon #fediverse #bookstodon #academicchatter

Use Tor Use Signal

BUT NOT LIKE THAT NOOOO

I know activists use corporate social media because many other people do, but it also means you put all your eggs in a really shitty basket. And it's meant that since about 2006 or so.

https://www.politico.eu/article/musks-x-suspends-opposition-accounts-turkey-protest-civil-unrest-erdogan-imamoglu-istanbul-mayor/

that whooshing sound you're hearing is me rushing off to join any class action lawsuit against Meta for training its LLMs on my books

#Meta #LLaMA #generativeAI

Hey, accessibility advocates! While I've used screen readers on occasion, I do not use them regularly. I'm curious to know from folks who either regularly use screen readers or are accessibility experts: is this site accessible?

https://freeourfeeds.com/

I took a look at the code and it's almost entirely javascript and styling, not really readable HTML. My take is this is pretty inaccessible to something like a screen reader, but maybe I'm wrong?

boosts appreciated

#accessibility #askFedi

Umm... hey, Canadians, why don't you also look for Canadian social media instead of discussing "Buy Canadian" on Facebook?

You know, the company that won't let you read Canadian news?

I have reached the copyediting phase of the book, with a proof version of the title page as a nice tease of what it will all look like!

#bookstodon

My university, York U, is suspending admissions to a bunch of programs, mainly in the humanities. This includes Indigenous Studies.

There's news coverage in

. But it doesn't really address the cause.

1/2

#academicchatter #indigenousStudies #YorkU

UsefulSmallCorp is now a part of ConHugeCo. Over the next few months, we'll migrate your account to ConHugeCo, where you will be ignored except when we eliminate the free plan you initially signed up for.

Hey, y'all, I've been on the fedi a minute. I've been on Mastodon since 2017, and an admin since '22.

The people at IFTAS are doing great work. Needed work. They provide space for admins to share knowledge, and they build evidence-based blocklists new instances can use to stay safe.

They need help. Now. Consider giving to IFTAS:

https://about.iftas.org/donate/

I've done it.

#fediverse #mutualAid #IFTAS #trustAndSafety

For Global Switch Day, I'll recommend my blog post about switching to Linux. I wrote it for academics, but other professionals might benefit from it:

https://fossacademic.tech/2024/05/24/fald.html

#GlobalSwitchDay

nostr:npub10fdlwe3x8nhlafzyaf9jgl9c5lhk0a20u5hwurhvaec8njxx0gqsu7lytg and I wrote a book called "social engineering."

The Trump White House loves that term. What do they mean by it? What is the history of this curious term? And might Trump and his pals, themselves, be engaging in social engineering?

May I humbly suggest you check out our book? It's now available as an e-book on Bookshop.org!

https://bookshop.org/p/books/social-engineering-how-crowdmasters-phreaks-hackers-and-trolls-created-a-new-form-of-manipulativ-e-communication-sean-t-lawson/17170706?ean=9780262368933&next=t&next=t&digital=t

Me in 2010: you should leave corporate social media.

Others: LOL, that's silly. They spread Democracy(TM)!

Me in 2015: you should leave corporate social media.

Others: sure, they spy on me, but I have nothing to hide.

Me in 2025: you should leave corporate social media.

Others: that wasn't a Nazi salute, I swear. And what about Engagement(TM)?

Today you'll hear many people quote the "I have a dream" speech (including people on the right) but fewer people quote this:

"'And one day we must ask the question, 'Why are there forty million poor people in America?' And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth."

1/2

#MLKjr #MLKday

With a lot of folks trying out Pixelfed, if you're predominantly on Mastodon (like me) but you want to discover Pixelfed accounts, don't forget that you can follow hashtags. Follow #photography, for example, and you will see lots of Pixelfed accounts in your feed -- and then you can follow accounts you find interesting from there.

#FediTips #Pixelfed #Mastodon

The legend of John Pixelfed is becoming reality

#pixelfed

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of speaking to a seminar run by

about the fediverse. It was titled, "The Fediverse: What it is, why I study it, and why you should, too."

My slides for the presentation are here:

https://robertwgehl.org/presentations/Muenster.html

You can see the talk text if you select presentation view. Or, just go to this link for the text:

https://robertwgehl.org/presentations/MuensterText.html

#fediverse #academics #research

Over on Bluesky,

is trending because Meta is actively blocking links to Pixelfed servers.

When will any of these tech CEOs learn?

One of the things I've come to enjoy on the fediverse is that most admins and moderators are pretty easily reachable, so if people want to know why they made whatever decision they made, the conversation usually can happen.

Can it get acrimonious? Sure.

But you cannot do this with corporate social media. When they make questionable decisions, you can't contact them. You can post to your public timeline and maybe some PR flack states "we'll look into it," but all the decisions remain opaque.

I just gave a presentation at the Institute for Technoscience and Society at York University, titled "Seeking Just Governance in Community-Run Social Media."

Now, thanks to Marp and a bit of BeautifulSoup, I can share the presentation and notes easily:

https://robertwgehl.org/presentations/ITS_presentation.html

Here's the text:

https://robertwgehl.org/presentations/ITS_presentationText.html

The presentation includes alt text on images.

Latest FOSS Academic: Marp!

https://fossacademic.tech/2024/12/01/marp.html

In which I discuss a Markdown-based way to make slide shows.

Thanks to

for alerting me to the awesomeness that is Marp.

[Replies to this post will appear as comments on my blog]

#FOSSAcademic #FALD #marp

Latest FOSS Academic post: libraries! Libraries everywhere!

https://fossacademic.tech/2024/11/29/libraries.html

In which I share links to two alternative social media/fediverse libraries. More scholarship! Bring it to me!

[Replies to this post will appear as comments on my blog unless privacy is set to followers-only or DM. CWs will work, as will deletions]

#FOSSAcademic #alternativeSocialMedia

I'm purposely going to follow more non-Mastodon/micro-blog accounts to expand my view of the network. Anything out there you would recommend? I've been poking through #Pixelfed accounts, but surely there is more cool stuff out there!

Just got done listening to

give a book talk about The Digital Closet. It's a deep critique of the underlying technologies of content moderation used by #Google and #Meta. Such important work!

the book is free to read, too!

https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262545952/the-digital-closet/

Hey, folks from what was once called Twitter! My fedi tip is: follow hashtags. You can search for hashtags of interest and then follow them just like you can follow any account. Your timeline will fill up quickly if you do that, and then you can start to follow interesting people in the timeline.

For example, some of the hashtags I follow include #blackmastodon, #mutualaid, and #canpoli, among others.

I've found that I can get news just as fast here as folks on #X.

#fediTips

Latest FOSS Academic post:

Hey, Journalists: X is now Truth Social. Start treating it that way.

https://fossacademic.tech/2024/11/08/ASMandTFG.html

In which I argue that, if they cannot leave X, journalists need to treat it like Truth Social. Dip in, copy what you gotta copy, and get out.

[replies to this post will appear as comments on my blog]

#journalism #FOSSacademic

lol at the post-election coverage that suggests Trump won in spite of "rhetoric that many Americans found repulsive"

umm... they found it enticing, actually. by definition

the billionaire newspaper/market/pharma owners figured out which way the wind is blowing, didn't they

People often ask why I support the #fedipact.

https://www.404media.co/zuckerberg-the-ai-slop-will-continue-until-morale-improves/

“I think we’re going to add a whole new category of content, which is AI generated or AI summarized content or kind of existing content pulled together by AI in some way,” [Zuckerberg] said. “And I think that that’s going to be just very exciting for the—for Facebook and Instagram and maybe Threads or other kind of Feed experiences over time.”