Glad you think so! 👌 My goal with Yarn.social has always been to provide the best (best that I can anyway!) truly decentralised (slow) social experience that uses the Twtxt format under the hood 😅

@kate@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz Glad you think so! 👌 My goal with Yarn.social has always been to provide the best (best that I can anyway!) truly decentralised (slow) social experience that uses the Twtxt format under the hood 😅

@kate@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz Glad you think so! 👌 My goal with Yarn.social has always been to provide the best (best that I can anyway!) truly decentralised (slow) social experience that uses the Twtxt format under the hood 😅

This expands the usefulness of Twtxt / Yarn.social to:

• Sharing small posts
  
• Sharing links
  
• Sharing media
  
• Having long conversations
  
• Voting on topics, opinions or decisions
  
• RSVPing to virtual or physical events

💡 I had this crazy idea (or is it?) last night while thinking about Twtxt and Yarn.social 😅 There are two things I think that could be really useful additions to the yarnd UI/UX experience (for those that use it) and as “client” features (not spec changes). The two ideas are quite simple:

• Voting – a way to cast, collect a vote on a decision, topic or opinion.
  
• RSVP – a way to “rsvp” to a virtual (pr physical) event.
  

Both would use “plain text” on top of the way we already use Twtxt today and clients would render an appropriate UI/UX.

Timeline of Evolution of Twtxt/Yarn.social:

• 2016 – Twtxt created by John Downey: plain text + HTTP = minimalist microblogging
  
• 2017–2019 – Community builds CLI tools, but adoption remains niche
  
• 2020 – Yarn.social launched by @prologic@twtxt.net with federation, threading, UI
  
• 2021–2023 – Pods sync, user mentions, blocking, search, and media support added
  
• 2024+ – Yarn.social becomes the reference Twtxt platform, with active federated pods

I asked ChatGPT what it knows about Twtxt 😂 And surprisingly it’s rather accurate:

Twtxt is a minimalist, decentralized microblogging format introduced by John Downey in 2016. It uses plain text files served over HTTP—no accounts, databases, or APIs.
In 2020, James Mills (@prologic@twtxt.net) launched Yarn.social, an extended, federated implementation with user discovery, threads, mentions, and a full web UI.
Both share the same .twtxt.txt format but differ in complexity and social features.

A new ChatGPT version just dropped and GeoGuesser is now a solved problem
Comments ⌘ Read more

i must stop ghosting all my social media except discord and fedi when i am depressed. ghosting is the mind killer

@doesnm.p.psf.lt@doesnm.p.psf.lt It was always intended to have both Yarn.social and Salty.im integrate together. Yes. This includes having a set of specifications that anyone can write clients to.

@andros@twtxt.andros.dev I don’t see any “fighting” here. This is just good experimentation. Unfortunately there hasn’t really been enough time or effort by other “client authors” yet, me especially as I’ve been super busy with ya’ know my “day job” that pays the bills and refactoring yarnd to use a new and shiny and much better SqliteCache 🤣 – I certainly don’t think your efforts are wasted at all. I would however like @doesnm.p.psf.lt@doesnm.p.psf.lt encourage you to look at the work we’ve done as a community (which was also driven out of the Yarn.social / Twtxt community years back).

Experimental release of GrapheneOS for Pixel 9a
Comments ⌘ Read more

Florida’s New Social Media Bill Explicitly Demands an Encryption Backdoor
Comments ⌘ Read more

Dept of Homeland Security Says Social Media Will Be Screened for ‘Antisemitism’
Comments ⌘ Read more

A false X post about pausing tariffs led to multi-trillion-dollar market swings
Comments ⌘ Read more

Doge’s attack on social security causing ‘complete, utter chaos’, staff says
Comments ⌘ Read more

EU may “make an example of X” by issuing $1B fine
Comments ⌘ Read more

@kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz the site i mentioned last week that got flooded by teens? yeah it’s this site, based on the retrospring codebase, it’s a social Q&A site. ask me stuff on there!!!!!!!!

Apple killed Asahi Linux with M4 update
Comments ⌘ Read more

Wikipedia, says its bandwidth costs have gone up 50% since Jan 2024
Comments ⌘ Read more

Gitlab Bluesky Tips
Comments ⌘ Read more

@prologic@twtxt.net @eapl.me@eapl.me I want to highlight another social problem: People don’t read. Paper industry is a bad moment because people don’t pay for books; it does not matter if it is a physical or digital platform. I have this information because I have a good friend who left the industry after publishing a magazine, books and working in an editorial. DRM is a try to give some more money.

DOGE To Rewrite SSA Codebase In ‘Months’
Longtime Slashdot reader frank_adrian314159 writes: According to an article in Wired, Elon Musk has appointed a team of technologists from DOGE to “rewrite the code that runs the SSA in months.” This codebase has over 60 million lines of COBOL and handles record keeping for all American workers and payments for all Social Security recipients. Given that the code has to track the byzantine … ⌘ Read more

Doge Plans to Rebuild SSA Codebase in Months
Comments ⌘ Read more

👋 Hello @am@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz, welcome to yarn, a Yarn.social Pod! To get started you may want to check out the pod’s Discover feed to find users to follow and interact with. To follow new users, use the ⨁ Follow button on their profile page or use the Follow form and enter a Twtxt URL. You may also find other feeds of interest via Feeds. Welcome! 🤗

👋 Hello @mana@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz, welcome to yarn, a Yarn.social Pod! To get started you may want to check out the pod’s Discover feed to find users to follow and interact with. To follow new users, use the ⨁ Follow button on their profile page or use the Follow form and enter a Twtxt URL. You may also find other feeds of interest via Feeds. Welcome! 🤗

👋 Hello @luka@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz, welcome to yarn, a Yarn.social Pod! To get started you may want to check out the pod’s Discover feed to find users to follow and interact with. To follow new users, use the ⨁ Follow button on their profile page or use the Follow form and enter a Twtxt URL. You may also find other feeds of interest via Feeds. Welcome! 🤗

Zoom bias: The social costs of having a ‘tinny’ sound during video conferences
Comments ⌘ Read more

Twtxt was made for nerds, by nerds.
I’d like to change that. It’s by nerds/hackers, for nerds/hackers and friends of these. It doesn’t have to be hacky all the time, as you don’t need to be a nerd to have a blog.
But, for that to happen, someone has to build the tools to improve UX.

by design there really is no way to easily discovers others
Yeah, I agree, and although there are directories of email addresses, usually you don’t want that, unless you are a ‘public figure’.
I couldn’t say that a microblogging is a “social network” by default, as a blog is not either. At the same time, people would expect to find new people and conversations, as you’d do in a forum.

I think of two features on top of the current spec:

• Clients showing a few posts of what your following are watching but you don’t, so perhaps you find something interesting to follow next. Or that feature of “Your ‘followings’ are following these accounts/people”. (Hard to explain in english, but I hope you get the idea)
  
• Sharing your .txt into some directory, saying “Hey, I have this twtxt URL, I want to be discovered”. I’m thinking of something like the Federated tab on Mastodon.

@prologic@twtxt.net In all seriousness: Don’t worry, I’m not going to host some Fediverse thingy at the moment, probably never will. 😅

But I do use it quite a lot. Although, I don’t really use it as a social network (as in: following people). I follow some tags like #retrocomputing, which fills my timeline with interesting content. If there was a traditional web forum or mailing list or even a usenet group that covered this topic, I’d use that instead. But that’s all (mostly) dead by now. ☹️

Radiohead Ditch X for Bluesky
Comments ⌘ Read more

Thank you @python_valencia@twtxt.python-valencia.es for letting me show you the secrets of a decentralised plain text social network like twtxt.
I hope you enjoyed the talk! ❤️🐍


#python #twtxt

well… it has been an opportunity to build an artisanal microblogging client on top of a minimalist protocol. I agree on the hacker toy part.

And of course it’s about being part of a niche community which is (mostly) amazing, and nurturing. As there is almost no one writing in my native spanish, it has been an interesting challenge to share my thoughts in english, as well.

I couldn’t say it’s a ‘social network’ per se, I think it lack many engagement things usually associated with social networks, although it has a social part of igniting discussions, learnings and behavioral changes, which is the meaning of social for me.

What is twtxt for me? It is a community of users sharing plain text following a specification that can be readable by both humans and machines.

For some it is a microblogging platform, for others it is a social network, others see it as an enhanced RSS feed and a few consider it a hacker’s toy. I use it as a learning platform. And as collateral damage, I’m meeting some very interesting people.

And for you?

@aelaraji@aelaraji.com That’s how twtxt started: As microblogging. Yarn shifted up some gears and now it’s more like social media – more powerful, but a bit different. 😅

👋 Hello @death@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz, welcome to yarn, a Yarn.social Pod! To get started you may want to check out the pod’s Discover feed to find users to follow and interact with. To follow new users, use the ⨁ Follow button on their profile page or use the Follow form and enter a Twtxt URL. You may also find other feeds of interest via Feeds. Welcome! 🤗

👋 Hello @radiantgarden@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz, welcome to yarn, a Yarn.social Pod! To get started you may want to check out the pod’s Discover feed to find users to follow and interact with. To follow new users, use the ⨁ Follow button on their profile page or use the Follow form and enter a Twtxt URL. You may also find other feeds of interest via Feeds. Welcome! 🤗

👋 Hello @hydaelyn@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz, welcome to yarn, a Yarn.social Pod! To get started you may want to check out the pod’s Discover feed to find users to follow and interact with. To follow new users, use the ⨁ Follow button on their profile page or use the Follow form and enter a Twtxt URL. You may also find other feeds of interest via Feeds. Welcome! 🤗

⭐ 🔗 https://mstdn.social/@stux/114071020532017226

I read a lot about Clean Code, SOLID, TDD, DDD… now I’m discovering «A Philosophy of Software Design»… but nobody talks about the importance of the project architecture. Do we depend on the framework to do the work for us?
You know I’m a big fan of Clean Architecture, but I feel alone when I share my thoughts on social media or at work.
You have to think outside the framework.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de So true! Either I’m hanging around with my direct teammates socializing in person in a meeting room or some other workmates are making so much noise in the open-plan office that I cannot concentrate at all. In any case, completely unproductive. :-D Luckily, I very rarely have to go to the office.

👋 Hello @emily0824@txt.sour.is, welcome to txt.sour.is, a Yarn.social Pod! To get started you may want to check out the pod’s Discover feed to find users to follow and interact with. To follow new users, use the ⨁ Follow button on their profile page or use the Follow form and enter a Twtxt URL. You may also find other feeds of interest via Feeds. Welcome! 🤗

👋👋 Reminders that this weekend our monthly Yarn.social online meetup. Who’s coming? 🤔 Some possible topics:

• Direct Messaging for Twtxt
  
• @prologic@twtxt.net ’s new EdgeGuard services 🤣
  
• What’s the weather like? 👍
  

Details:

• When: 25th Jan 2025 at 12:00PM UTC (midday)
  
• Where: https://meet.mills.io/call/Yarn.social

Simplifying my online presence further by removing my Known site. Goodbye social.johanbove.info - it was sometimes a little fun.

“L’alliance entre Donald Trump et des patrons de plateforme sociale, tels Elon Musk ou Mark Zuckerberg, représente une menace à l’échelle mondiale sur le libre accès à une information fiable. « Le Monde » fait donc le choix d’interrompre le partage de ses contenus sur X et de redoubler de vigilance sur des plateformes comme TikTok et sur celles de Metal”: https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2025/01/20/se-battre-sur-le-terrain-des-faits_6507058_3232.html

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Woah, that sun from satellite SDO is fucking sick!

@eldersnake@we.loveprivacy.club @arne@uplegger.eu Don’t let your telescopes rot! 😃

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org They say, 18:48 today is the next time slot: https://social.bund.de/@dlr_next/113859521382441187

Would anyone object to the feeds.twtxt.net service having auth soon™ ? 🤔 I’m tired of the garbage feeds that it has accumulated over tie (spammers) and I want to a) clean it up b) lock it down somewhat.

The idea would be that you’d login with your Yarn.social account on some pod you control/operate or share with a nice person 🤣 – For those unfamiliar, this is called IndieAuth or IndieLogin. ALL Yarn.social pods are in fact valid (have been for years now) IndieAuth Providers. So I can just ust that. This also technically means you could login with your own domain too (more on that later…)

@prologic@twtxt.net IMHO: Most people like it the easy way: “Don’t make me think!”. If you do not pay money for a service, your data/content is the price to pay. Some handy mobile apps for the fediverse and the ongoing debate on social media services may get the people and their content out of the walled gardens of the 21st century.

@prologic@twtxt.net Since I live in Germany, I do believe the media here is generally reputable. It really depends where you live of course. Source I look at are Reuters, NPR, The Guardian, Die Zeit, NY Times, CNN, Tagesschau, Spiegel Online, RP Online (for local news), … I would never just trust what I see in my social media feeds.