SocietalCode: Curated is a weekly feed of news, analyses, resources, etc. concerning societal change and technology.

I read broadly to keep myself up to date on the space, and pass along the best of what I find here. Intentionally presented with little analysis, it’s meant as a curated stream with a pinch of context, rather than my full thoughts.

Feed

Mastodon (Social Network)

Since a few of the other links this week are about Mastodon, here’s the Wikipedia entry on it in case you want a primer.

Mastodon is free and open-source software for running self-hosted social networking services. It has microblogging features similar to Twitter, which are offered by a large number of independently run nodes, known as instances, each with its own code of conduct, terms of service, privacy policy, privacy options, and content moderation policies.

Each user is a member of a specific Mastodon instance (also called a server), which can interoperate as a federated social network, allowing users on different instances to interact with each other.

Twitter Alternative: How Mastodon Is Designed to Be “Antiviral”

A thoughtful look at the design and existing use of Mastodon, and how it differs from Twitter. It’s roughly analogous to Twitter, and you may have seen it mentioned as a Twitter replacement, but it has enough subtle changes in the design and the network structure (it’s decentralized like email, there’s no single all-encompassing authority) that the resulting social behavior may end up quite different.

Medium Embraces Mastodon

Medium, the blog/newsletter platform, is launching a Mastodon instance and will encourage its users to participate on it. This is the largest existing social network I’ve seen to openly endorse and push Mastodon, and it is a strong sign that Mastodon may become the dominant microblogging social platform after the recent shake-up with Twitter itself.

How to Maintain Mental Hygiene as an Open Source Researcher

A thoughtful look at how to intentionally consume information while still maintaining your overall mental well-being. While targeted at journalists, all of us have daily access to the entirety of global suffering these days. It’s easy to consume more distressing content than we can handle as individuals.

Tweet from Oliver Carroll [@olliecarroll]​

Note: link is to a nitter instance, a free and open source alternative Twitter front-end focused on privacy and performance.

This is a link to a tweet from Oliver Carroll, a journalist for The Economist. He linked to an article he had worked on, but it had been “overwritten for print”, so he posted pictures of the original report as he had written it. The two are quite different, and it’s interesting to peek behind the curtain and see how much may change from the original on-the-ground report to the final print copy.

Now, I don’t mean this to sound conspiratorial. The idea that editorial staff rewrites articles is nothing secret or surprising, especially for The Economist which is famous for its singular voice and lack of bylines. Also, I don’t know the full context though, perhaps the final article is an amalgamation of multiple individual journalists’ reports, not a total rewrite of this single report. Still, quite interesting to see something you normally don’t get to.

If you have comments, suggestions, criticism, or you just simply want to say hello, I would love to hear from you! You can always reach me by replying to this email.

See you next week,

Nate