When rumours started to appear that Meta, of all companies, were working on an ActivityPub based social network, I was sceptical. I’m a massive fan of the protocol since retreating to micro.blog as my only social interaction in the middle of last year. Meta putting its stamp on some IndieWeb underpinnings could mean so much for networks such as Mastodon, and could mean that social media companies were finally being more open.
This is just something companies say. Marketing spin to ride on the coat tails of the hype surrounding the influx of Mastodon users, and wouldn’t actually be the case come launch day. If Meta really wanted to do something like this, surely they would put it into established apps like Instagram first. It was a confusing proposition to have this huge ad company, used to locking everything down and maximising eyeball time, adopt anything open. I didn’t buy it.
Months later, Threads appears in a rush, following a few weeks of drama on some Mastodon servers calling for de-federation. Surprise, surprise, with no ActivityPub support – but Meta does seem invested in implementation. There are still some doubts, that have grown following Threads mass adoption, but the conversation by Casey Newton and Instagrams head Adam Mosseri on Hard Fork convinces me that ActivityPub is in their near future.
By making it easy to follow other ActivityPub accounts, they not only open the service up to more users and more content. They also make it easer to move elsewhere. That’s a huge advantage to someone like me who plans to retreat to his ActivityPub blog once all the fuss is over, but also for every other user. Don’t like the way Threads is run, get tired of the algorithm thirst trap, or just want to expand your brand further? That’s easy with ActivityPub. You can move to a different server and still access all the content being posted on Threads.
I am not naive enough to think this is for completely altruistic purposes. The cynic in me can point to numerous advantages to Meta for seeming to embrace an open standard. Account portability means that any negative press or possible legal action over algorithmic feeds and so-called shadow-banning can be combatted with the fact users can move. There’s no argument against ‘de-platforming’ someone, as ActivityPub makes it easy to pack up your account and leave.
Meta also has the opportunity to turn Threads into what The Verge referred to as the blue bubble of ActivityPub. You can build on top of the standard, allowing your specific service to have extra features, but also syndicate everywhere else. Making Threads more attractive to people seeking those features, perhaps such as deep integration with Instagram, but not being restrictive. The downside of this, of course, is that you can only show ads to your users, but that might mean Meta has to work on providing a platform people want.
Whatever the motivation behind ActivityPub, it doesn’t negate the fact that openness is solving big issues for social media platforms. ActivityPub’s integration is best for both parties and solves massive issues, and does it well. Being able to move your content from platform to platform is the dream of an open web, and if that works out best for indie blogs and social media corporations at the same time, that’s great for everyone.
Meta rushed out its Twitter competitor come rip off due to the current rate limit disaster going on over there, and everyone rushed to try it out. The combination of a vast number of people using it, increased moderation efforts and hype around ActivityPub integration met in a perfect storm of interest that meant tens of millions of users flooded in. I was one of them that jumped on the Zuck bandwagon, and I’ve got some conflicting thoughts.
I downloaded that app when it was launched. In fact, I was that sad I pre-ordered the app a couple of days before. Not because I was excited, but I was pretty intrigued to try it out, as I do with most new apps with significant hype around it. I don’t really want to get involved with a Twitter replacement, but I enjoy kicking the tyres on most things just to see what they offer.
Only a matter of minutes after porting my Instagram account data into Threads, I was deactivating it and deleting the apps. The homescreen was filled with clout chasing ‘influencers’ spouting all kind of drivel that really wasn’t what I needed in my life at this point. I had escaped one hell site that I was moderately addicted to, and just the thought of using Threads gave me horrible flashbacks. For a few hours, anyway. I read some posts, listened to some thoughts and a few messages exchanged with other people using Threads, I logged back in again.
In my haste to get away from the service, I had unwittingly deactivated my Instagram account too. Meta are unable to untie the two once you’ve signed up (something they claim to be working on a fix for). So, I am actually thankful I logged in again. This time around I followed a few more people and began to realise the benefits of the service. Don’t get me wrong, the thirst trap algorithms are still turned up to 11, and I hate it, but there is a benefit to having many people you want to follow in one place. Threads mixes my worlds together with Photographers from Instagram, tech people that never Twitter and also friends that never ‘got’ Twitter but were pushed toward Threads from Instagram.
Reporting suggests that Threads was rushed out at least a couple of weeks before it was ready, and even at that point I think it would have been an MVP. Meta has thought about the important things such as muting and blocking, but the edges of the service are more than a little rough. Including the inability to attach photos without the app crashing. Something initially blamed on iOS17 betas, but is also plaguing Android users.
It is hard to know if the terrible experience on the main feed is to combat a lack of content and users (usually referred to as a cold start). I hope that it will be turned down once the user base is high enough. However, it is quintessentially Instagram in the sense that it shows you people you follow first and then quickly ramps up the influencers posts. The app takes on the annoying approach of showing you a glimpse of an interesting post that then disappears once the app loads, never to be seen of again.
Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri says that a chronological feed is “on the list” but how long that list is who knows. Given the app’s tendency to not only crash but log you out in the process, and the lack of any web app, I would say that list is pretty long.
I absolutely hate this idea that platforms are only as valuable as the traffic they provide but it is true most of the time. Users flocked to Twitter because it was the place to be, provided up-to-the-minute news, and for publishers it provided access like never before. All of a sudden, you could see what people were up to, and at the same time drive traffic to whatever it was that you were producing. Rapidly working its way into journalists' lives, as well as publishers bottom lines.
The same could be said about Instagram. It provides access to even more people of note, albeit through an airbrushed and filtered lens. Users can show off their best life, showcase their work and influence the purchasing decisions of more than a billion people. What Meta are really good at is recognising this and maximising the results in their favour. They don’t care what you post, only that you are posting and consuming as much as possible. It is social media manipulation in the most obvious sense – and I hate that.
Threads is also a pretty nice place to be. If you can mentally filter out all the noise, that hopefully will die down in a few days. Currently it feels as if we have all realised that Twitter was wrong on so many levels and want Threads to be a nicer place to be. I have no doubt that tools, dunking on people and attention seeking will come, but Instagram have promised that their moderation efforts are aimed to make Threads a pleasant place to be. However, Meta doesn’t exactly have the best track record and may already be hitting issues.
Ultimately, I am conflicted. I know in my heart of hearts that using a product by Meta is the worst social media decision. Even if it appears that Meta is the better of two evils, it is still evil and nothing can change my mind on that given their history. However, I am actually enjoying being able to interact with more people again. I am catching up with people that I haven’t followed for a very long time, and that is great. I see myself diving in a little until Threads introduces ActivityPub – at which point I will probably divert everything back to my blog.
I am excited for a time when I can take part in the discussions happening on Threads, but not have to use the service or their terrible app. Let’s hope this doesn’t take too long but I have a feeling it might not be this year.
One of the biggest complaints I had at the time I chose to remove the iPad from my workflow was the constantly changing nature of it. Each time Apple updated the OS they slightly changed, or completely revamped, the way multitasking and other things worked. When you use and rely on something as much as I did my iPad, it gets frustrating quickly. Unfortunately, they have now done it to the Apple Watch, and I’m pulling out what little hair I have.
I am aware it beta software, so everything could change, but watchOS 10 changes the core functionality so much that I doubt it will all of a sudden roll back these changes. This isn’t uncommon for Apple either, way back in 2017, I was frustrated at the inconsistency on what a swipe does on different iPhones. Now it is my muscle memory that has been forged by many years of having these things strapped to my wrist.
I don’t even dislike the update, a lot of it makes sense, it’s more of the jarring UX change. I keep swiping up from the bottom of the screen, something I have done thousands of times to access Control Center, and it now shows me widgets. Widgets that, excuse me for being an old man shouting at clouds for a moment, I have absolutely no need of!
I fell in love with the Apple Watch, much like I did the iPad because it was simple. It did exactly what I required. Told the time and gave me the health tracking needed. Now I just feel a little out of touch, as if it is watchOS 1 and Apple thinks I am going to send my heartbeat to other people again. I hope that watch OS doesn’t suffer the same fate as iPad OS and forget exactly what it is, and how simple it should be.
Accessing the dock of apps is now double press the crown, and turning it also accesses the aforementioned widgets. I like change, I love change for a reason, but this feels like change for change’s sake. The new animations do look nice though!
It is pushing on for a year since I wrote about my all in use of Apple notes. That was about a year into my journey that started with numerous moving backwards and forwards in note apps, and ended with the realisation that the app that was built ring into my phone was the best one. It was the one I used the most, the one I relied on, and the one that delivered the most consistent experience. With iOS 17, the app is just about perfect for my use, and I bet that would be the case for most people.
Listen, I love my notebooks, I carry them everywhere and love writing in them – but nothing beats digital notes for surfacing things. My Field notes is my inbox of sorts, it contains all the mess and fleeting things that come to mind (as well as all my scribbles). My enjoyment of them is purely tactile, and I fully understand that digital notes can be far more useful to keep, so I exist in this wonderful word of writing notes and then typing the important things into Apple Notes.
I digress slightly, but I guess this gives you a good understanding of where the thoughts contained in the post come from. I have never been convinced that Apple notes was ‘perfect’, it was just the best option for me and most people. It lacked some simple things such as block quotes, and even making links on iOS was overly complicated, but iOS17 solves most of these little faults, and now it’s mostly perfect.
The biggest update to Apple Notes is linking between notes easily, and it’s not an exaggeration to say Apple absolutely nailed the implementation. You can tap link and just type out the name of the note you want to link to, there’s no double bracket or back linking bandwagon joining, it’s simple, elegant and exactly what is needed. You’re not going to start a full PKM with Apple notes, but I would make the argument if you really need to anyway.
Couple this with improvements to not only the styling options (hurray for block quotes) and also the easy you can do these, makes Apple Notes a serious note app for almost everyone. I had started writing most of my notes into Bear Notes until updating to the iOS17 beta and seeing most of my issues solved. It doesn’t have as many customisation and export options, but most of this can be solved with Shortcuts if that’s your thing.
After about 3 weeks of use, the app is fast, fluid and provides one of the best stock notes apps I have seen. I’m as shocked as you are that Apple actually cares about its apps, once iOS17 comes out you should try it out.
I’ve started reading Jason Sinek book Start With Why and like most books of this ilk it’s tough getting through all the repetitive cherry peaked examples and struggles to get to the point. It suffers from the modern problem of a book that could and should have been a blog post.
The idea it covers do help with loss of things though. It talks through the importance of communicating why you do something or why you have created the things you do, first. It does this in a very business centric way, it’s a business book after all, but it also applies to everything you want to do, even if you are communicating it just to yourself. Something I started thinking about it after watching a Maurice Moves video a few months ago.
In it, he discusses the things he writes in his notebook and a few tips about productivity – sounds like my kind of video doesn’t it! However, it is very different from most others about this subject. He plans everything in his notebook, including his desires and motivations, and by writing these out he gains a new perspective.
By being clear about the ‘why’ of what he wants to achieve, he quite often finds that the ‘what’, or the results, he would like to achieve is not always what he defines at the start. Sound confusing, let’s look at his example.
He started his YouTube channel, wishing to get to 1 million subscribers. When asking himself why he wanted this goal, it was so he could monetise his videos well and earn enough money for this to become his ‘job’. By clearly defining the ‘what’ and validating this through asking ‘why’ he discovered that the perceived result of wanting subscribers, is actually a symptom of the actual desired result. The actually desired result was creating enough revenue to live from, which has nothing to do with channel earnings, it is merely a symptom.
As Alan De Botton puts it “it’s bad enough not getting what you want, but it’s even worse getting to the end and realising it isn’t what you wanted all along”. Don’t fall into this trap and start asking why, to everything.