#facebook clone app

[jcmarchi]

Using Pages CMS for Static Site Content Management

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/using-pages-cms-for-static-site-content-management/

Using Pages CMS for Static Site Content Management

Friends, I’ve been on the hunt for a decent content management system for static sites for… well, about as long as we’ve all been calling them “static sites,” honestly.

I know, I know: there are a ton of content management system options available, and while I’ve tested several, none have really been the one, y’know? Weird pricing models, difficult customization, some even end up becoming a whole ‘nother thing to manage.

Also, I really enjoy building with site generators such as Astro or Eleventy, but pitching Markdown as the means of managing content is less-than-ideal for many “non-techie” folks.

A few expectations for content management systems might include:

Easy to use: The most important feature, why you might opt to use a content management system in the first place.

Minimal Requirements: Look, I’m just trying to update some HTML, I don’t want to think too much about database tables.

Collaboration: CMS tools work best when multiple contributors work together, contributors who probably don’t know Markdown or what GitHub is.

Customizable: No website is the same, so we’ll need to be able to make custom fields for different types of content.

Not a terribly long list of demands, I’d say; fairly reasonable, even. That’s why I was happy to discover Pages CMS.

According to its own home page, Pages CMS is the “The No-Hassle CMS for Static Site Generators,” and I’ll to attest to that. Pages CMS has largely been developed by a single developer, Ronan Berder, but is open source, and accepting pull requests over on GitHub.

Taking a lot of the “good parts” found in other CMS tools, and a single configuration file, Pages CMS combines things into a sleek user interface.

Pages CMS includes lots of options for customization, you can upload media, make editable files, and create entire collections of content. Also, content can have all sorts of different fields, check the docs for the full list of supported types, as well as completely custom fields.

There isn’t really a “back end” to worry about, as content is stored as flat files inside your git repository. Pages CMS provides folks the ability to manage the content within the repo, without needing to actually know how to use Git, and I think that’s neat.

User Authentication works two ways: contributors can log in using GitHub accounts, or contributors can be invited by email, where they’ll receive a password-less, “magic-link,” login URL. This is nice, as GitHub accounts are less common outside of the dev world, shocking, I know.

Oh, and Pages CMS has a very cheap barrier for entry, as it’s free to use.

Pages CMS and Astro content collections

I’ve created a repository on GitHub with Astro and Pages CMS using Astro’s default blog starter, and made it available publicly, so feel free to clone and follow along.

I’ve been a fan of Astro for a while, and Pages CMS works well alongside Astro’s content collection feature. Content collections make globs of data easily available throughout Astro, so you can hydrate content inside Astro pages. These globs of data can be from different sources, such as third-party APIs, but commonly as directories of Markdown files. Guess what Pages CMS is really good at? Managing directories of Markdown files!

Content collections are set up by a collections configuration file. Check out the src/content.config.ts file in the project, here we are defining a content collection named blog:

import glob from 'astro/loaders'; import defineCollection, z from 'astro:content'; const blog = defineCollection( // Load Markdown in the `src/content/blog/` directory. loader: glob( base: './src/content/blog', pattern: '**/*.md' ), // Type-check frontmatter using a schema schema: z.object( title: z.string(), description: z.string(), // Transform string to Date object pubDate: z.coerce.date(), updatedDate: z.coerce.date().optional(), heroImage: z.string().optional(), ), ); export const collections = blog ;

The blog content collection checks the /src/content/blog directory for files matching the **/*.md file type, the Markdown file format. The schema property is optional, however, Astro provides helpful type-checking functionality with Zod, ensuring data saved by Pages CMS works as expected in your Astro site.

Pages CMS Configuration

Alright, now that Astro knows where to look for blog content, let’s take a look at the Pages CMS configuration file, .pages.config.yml:

content: - name: blog label: Blog path: src/content/blog filename: 'year-month-day-fields.title.md' type: collection view: fields: [heroImage, title, pubDate] fields: - name: title label: Title type: string - name: description label: Description type: text - name: pubDate label: Publication Date type: date options: format: MM/dd/yyyy - name: updatedDate label: Last Updated Date type: date options: format: MM/dd/yyyy - name: heroImage label: Hero Image type: image - name: body label: Body type: rich-text - name: site-settings label: Site Settings path: src/config/site.json type: file fields: - name: title label: Website title type: string - name: description label: Website description type: string description: Will be used for any page with no description. - name: url label: Website URL type: string pattern: ^(https?://)?(www.)?[a-zA-Z0-9.-]+.[a-zA-Z]2,(/[^s]*)?$ - name: cover label: Preview image type: image description: Image used in the social preview on social networks (e.g. Facebook, Twitter...) media: input: public/media output: /media

There is a lot going on in there, but inside the content section, let’s zoom in on the blog object.

- name: blog label: Blog path: src/content/blog filename: 'year-month-day-fields.title.md' type: collection view: fields: [heroImage, title, pubDate] fields: - name: title label: Title type: string - name: description label: Description type: text - name: pubDate label: Publication Date type: date options: format: MM/dd/yyyy - name: updatedDate label: Last Updated Date type: date options: format: MM/dd/yyyy - name: heroImage label: Hero Image type: image - name: body label: Body type: rich-text

We can point Pages CMS to the directory we want to save Markdown files using the path property, matching it up to the /src/content/blog/ location Astro looks for content.

path: src/content/blog

For the filename we can provide a pattern template to use when Pages CMS saves the file to the content collection directory. In this case, it’s using the file date’s year, month, and day, as well as the blog item’s title, by using fields.title to reference the title field. The filename can be customized in many different ways, to fit your scenario.

filename: 'year-month-day-fields.title.md'

The type property tells Pages CMS that this is a collection of files, rather than a single editable file (we’ll get to that in a moment).

type: collection

In our Astro content collection configuration, we define our blog collection with the expectation that the files will contain a few bits of meta data such as: title, description, pubDate, and a few more properties.

We can mirror those requirements in our Pages CMS blog collection as fields. Each field can be customized for the type of data you’re looking to collect. Here, I’ve matched these fields up with the default Markdown frontmatter found in the Astro blog starter.

fields: - name: title label: Title type: string - name: description label: Description type: text - name: pubDate label: Publication Date type: date options: format: MM/dd/yyyy - name: updatedDate label: Last Updated Date type: date options: format: MM/dd/yyyy - name: heroImage label: Hero Image type: image - name: body label: Body type: rich-text

Now, every time we create a new blog item in Pages CMS, we’ll be able to fill out each of these fields, matching the expected schema for Astro.

Aside from collections of content, Pages CMS also lets you manage editable files, which is useful for a variety of things: site wide variables, feature flags, or even editable navigations.

Take a look at the site-settings object, here we are setting the type as file, and the path includes the filename site.json.

- name: site-settings label: Site Settings path: src/config/site.json type: file fields: - name: title label: Website title type: string - name: description label: Website description type: string description: Will be used for any page with no description. - name: url label: Website URL type: string pattern: ^(https?://)?(www.)?[a-zA-Z0-9.-]+.[a-zA-Z]2,(/[^s]*)?$ - name: cover label: Preview image type: image description: Image used in the social preview on social networks (e.g. Facebook, Twitter...)

The fields I’ve included are common site-wide settings, such as the site’s title, description, url, and cover image.

Speaking of images, we can tell Pages CMS where to store media such as images and video.

media: input: public/media output: /media

The input property explains where to store the files, in the /public/media directory within our project.

The output property is a helpful little feature that conveniently replaces the file path, specifically for tools that might require specific configuration. For example, Astro uses Vite under the hood, and Vite already knows about the public directory and complains if it’s included within file paths. Instead, we can set the output property so Pages CMS will only point image path locations starting at the inner /media directory instead.

To see what I mean, check out the test post in the src/content/blog/ folder:

--- title: 'Test Post' description: 'Here is a sample of some basic Markdown syntax that can be used when writing Markdown content in Astro.' pubDate: 05/03/2025 heroImage: '/media/blog-placeholder-1.jpg' ---

The heroImage now property properly points to /media/... instead of /public/media/....

As far as configurations are concerned, Pages CMS can be as simple or as complex as necessary. You can add as many collections or editable files as needed, as well as customize the fields for each type of content. This gives you a lot of flexibility to create sites!

Connecting to Pages CMS

Now that we have our Astro site set up, and a .pages.config.yml file, we can connect our site to the Pages CMS online app. As the developer who controls the repository, browse to https://app.pagescms.org/ and sign in using your GitHub account.

You should be presented with some questions about permissions, you may need to choose between giving access to all repositories or specific ones. Personally, I chose to only give access to a single repository, which in this case is my astro-pages-cms-template repo.

After providing access to the repo, head on back to the Pages CMS application, where you’ll see your project listed under the “Open a Project” headline.

Clicking the open link will take you into the website’s dashboard, where we’ll be able to make updates to our site.

Creating content

Taking a look at our site’s dashboard, we’ll see a navigation on the left side, with some familiar things.

Blog is the collection we set up inside the .pages.config.yml file, this will be where we we can add new entries to the blog.

Site Settings is the editable file we are using to make changes to site-wide variables.

Media is where our images and other content will live.

Settings is a spot where we’ll be able to edit our .pages.config.yml file directly.

Collaborators allows us to invite other folks to contribute content to the site.

We can create a new blog post by clicking the Add Entry button in the top right

Here we can fill out all the fields for our blog content, then hit the Save button.

After saving, Pages CMS will create the Markdown file, store the file in the proper directory, and automatically commit the changes to our repository. This is how Pages CMS helps us manage our content without needing to use git directly.

Automatically deploying

The only thing left to do is set up automated deployments through the service provider of your choice. Astro has integrations with providers like Netlify, Cloudflare Pages, and Vercel, but can be hosted anywhere you can run node applications.

Astro is typically very fast to build (thanks to Vite), so while site updates won’t be instant, they will still be fairly quick to deploy. If your site is set up to use Astro’s server-side rendering capabilities, rather than a completely static site, the changes might be much faster to deploy.

Wrapping up

Using a template as reference, we checked out how Astro content collections work alongside Pages CMS. We also learned how to connect our project repository to the Pages CMS app, and how to make content updates through the dashboard. Finally, if you are able, don’t forget to set up an automated deployment, so content publishes quickly.

[hackingblogs]

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[sailahina]

I get why people are bummed about Twitter but the longest I was active on Twitter was for like...four months? And I kept waiting to enjoy it but all that happened was I'd fight with strangers online and find things to be angry about.

I know losing it as a journalistic/news source is shitty, but honestly I'm glad to see it go. It's just a breeding ground for hatred.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Frank Wilhoit described conservativism as “exactly one proposition”:

There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.This is likewise the project of corporatism. Tech platforms are urgently committed to ensuring that they can do anything they want on their platforms — and they’re even more dedicated to the proposition that you must not do anything they don’t want on their platforms.

They can lock you in. You can’t unlock yourself. Facebook attained network-effects growth by giving its users bots that logged into Myspace on their behalf, scraped the contents of their inboxes for the messages from the friends they left behind, and plunked them in their Facebook inboxes.

Facebook then sued a company that did the same thing to Facebook, who wanted to make it as easy for Facebook users to leave Facebook as it had been to get started there.

Apple reverse-engineered Microsoft’s crown jewels — the Office file-formats that kept users locked to its operating systems — so it could clone them and let users change OSes.

Try to do that today — say, to make a runtime so you can use your iOS apps and media on an Android device or a non-Apple desktop — and Apple will reduce you to radioactive rubble.

- Let the Platforms Burn: The Opposite of Good Fires is Wildfires

[vexinglyvague]

For all of five seconds I considered getting Threads, then I remembered why I left Facebook about a decade ago:

Why on earth would a Twitter-clone need my health data, financial info, and other sensitive data? And all of it linked to me? What a scumbag app

[pinetreesandtea]

Clone Wars characters and their favourite apps

Ahsoka Tano

TikTok

The space version of TikTok ofc, but a redacted version bc she’s in the war

She’s either have no account and free to scroll to her hearts content, or one of those accounts with no profile and a number username

Would constantly harass everyone to watch TikTok’s she finds funny

Would be all over TogrutaTok LMAO

Pinterest

She’s a Pinterest girlie for sure

I like to think she scrolls through Pinterest during travel and longggg hyperspace trips

When everyone is busy and she can’t really bother anyone

Same as TikTok, it allows her to get a peak of normal everyday life

Secretly loves cottagecore

Has boards of aesthetics, combat poses, recipes she plans to make but never gets around to doing, outfits, and memes ofc

Friendship bracelet patterns.

LinkedIn

This one’s a bit interesting think about but I think she likes to look for gossip on there somehow 😭

“Hmmm… this senator is beefing with this engineer?”

Minecraft

If you’ve seen my Clone Wars Minecraft post that iykyk

Animal Crossing Pocket camp

Rip the free app but I feel like she’d LOVE the game

Would immediately get Animal Crossing Rex into her camp

Snapchat

I think she’d purely only have Snapchat only for the clones and the other padawans

Her location tracking would obviously be off but her highest streak would be with Fives

Their streak would only be broken bc of missions

Anakin Skywalker

TikTok

He’d only download the app because he got annoyed with Ahsoka sending him hundreds of TikTok’s and unable to watch them

Instagram

To keep up with Padme’s posts

Made an anonymous fan account for Padme

Also to keep up with his public image lol

Would be one of those people leaving the most diabolical comments on reels under another anonymous account

Has a 4th account pretending to be rich house wife from Naboo or Coruscant

Twitter

Under yet another anonymous account and amassed quite the following due to how diabolical he is

Might’ve doxed some people

Facebook

Just to keep up with his fellow Jedi knights and masters

Comments on every single post on Obi-Wans page and trolls the dude

Block blast

No comment

Roblox

Once again, he’d only have this game to purely troll and bully children 😭

Obi-wan Kenobi

Doesn’t have TikTok despite Ahsoka’s insistence

BUT he will patiently sit with Ahsoka and let her show him all the TikToks she wants❤️

LinkedIn

Gets into beef with people and academics

He claims that it keeps his wit

But mainly uses it to keep track of the academic/professional world

Whatsapp

To keep in touch with all his off world friends

Has a group chat with some clones

Goodreads

I just KNOW this man has hundreds and thousands of book reviews on there

Might get into the occasional witty back and forth with another reviewer

Will giggle and sip tea as he purposely aggravates someone and starts beef with said person

YouTube

Guided yoga and meditation

Follows cooking videos

Space version of Liziqi is his favourite YouTuber

Garden videos and videos about different cultures

Candy Crush

He has it at FULL brightness and full volume

A clone will be walking down a hall passing his quarters and hears “DELICIOUS” “DIVINE”

Facebook

Is in a Jedi master Facebook group

Responds to Anakin’s with the most disrespectful and diabolical comebacks

Reposts the cheesiest memes (gets a lot of hate from Anakin when he posts these)

Posts nature pics and pretty sunsets

Gets into back and forths with Mace Windu, Kit Fisto, and Quinlan Vos, all of them are willingly doing it for fun

Rex

WhatsApp

Is involved in numerous clone group chats

Likes to keep up with his bro’s

Snapchat

Begrudgingly got it because Ahsoka wouldn’t stop annoying him about it

His snaps are essentially pics of hyperspace and redacted paperwork

YouTube

Watches those military vids that details about weapons and combat

Air soft vids!!

Puts those bushcraft vids on the side while doing something else like filing out reports

Also a big fan of space version of Liziqi

Has watched videos about Togruta culture etc when Ahsoka first became Anakin’s padawan

Watches Workout vids occasionally

Discord

Keeps an eye on his bros as a mod

Solitaire

Plays the game whenever he’s bored

Facebook

Only got it to witness the snide remarks and friendly bickering between the Jedi

Also in a Clone Commander facebook group where they may or may not make fun of the Jedi but it’s very light

Gets into some banter with Cody

[lanabenikosdoormat]

How do you make your fake tweets? From a shy mutual whose been meaning to ask 😳👉👈

WHICH ONE OF YOU SENT THIS??? Anyways. Hi snookems, lemme give you a quick rundown

A long time ago I would literally take tweets and photoshop fake handles and profile pictures over them, but this was time consuming

I use a (now defunct) app called “Social Maker” which is just a social media clone, where you can make instagram/twitter/facebook/imessage’s with an unlimited amount of characters. It got taken off most app stores though, unless there’s an .ipa file floating somewhere. There’s a bunch of alternatives i can list for folks though

Twinote: app / fake tweets

Tweetgen or Tweethunter: website / fake tweets

Fakewhats: website / fake whatsapp

Superemotes: website / fake discord

Zeobb: website / fake instagram

For usernames I just pick something that comes to mind, or what I think the characters would use, be it funny or just @First_lastname, maybe a title they have - it’s kind of just something I pick intuitively LOL i hope this helps you and anyone else

[ddejavvu]

Facebook and Snapchat all those gross gross apps keep rubbing in my face that they’re now using AI and they’re trying to shove it up my nose at every opportunity, it’s driving me crazy. FUCK OFF AI! Seriously. I don’t want to chat to my AI clone and I don’t want you to show me search terms based on NOT WHAT IM ASKING OF YOU. please bugger off forever

every time i try to search on instagram its ai program is like ohhhh did you want videos of people making pasta?? hmmm want a chicken recipe??? is that what you were looking for??? like no dumb bitch i was searching a hyperspecific username because i'm trying to follow my coworker. what about that says chicken recipe to you.

[ranidspace]

we all hate discord and they're getting worse and worse. can we all agree on One thing to go to BEFORE shit happens?

im nominating [matrix], its decentralized, like email. no matter what homeserver you're in (sort of like an email provider) you join you can communicate with users on other servers (this is not like a discord server, its like a literal hosting server room somewhere). other than that its a pretty good slack/discord clone

(mozilla has their own matrix instance btw, chat.mozilla.org, you can make your own as well and have full control over your data, but yeah make sure you find a good one with features you like)

it also doesnt matter what app you use, they all connect to the same network, you can use whatever app you like

https://matrix.org/ecosystem/clients/

the "idc just give me one" option is Element, one of most popular apps for it

you dont have to switch now. just get prepared and just in case some shit happens to discord that ticks you off badly enough to leave. so we dont have a twitter moment and split off into 10 different platforms

oh and if it does happen, matrix is able to communicate with other apps using "bridges" such as. well. discord, (and slack, signal, skype, telegram, facebook, sms, irc, whatever) but this does have to be enabled by the person who runs the homeserver.

[hackingblogs]

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[theant755]

10 Years of Deviantart

FULL STORY:

So back in 2014, I remember that I created this DeviantArt account on the Nintendo Wii, I didn't post anything at the time because there's no way to post anything on a video game console nor I have a computer at the time. I have the 3DS, but I can only post my drawings on Facebook. That is until I got a phone the next year and got a DeviantArt app to finally post my drawings on the site. I posted my Mixels, Object Shows, and other stuff I was interested in.

I was noticed by the Mixels and the Object Show community and I receive fanart of My OC's and my personas. I was a bit popular, but I did not have 500 followers compared to now. I also would upload photos for my short-lived series; 2 Strong Wrestling. I made humanoid versions of the leaders of the first 3 Mixels, Flain, Craiger & Teslo, and Iza's OC. Well, because I moved to a different apartment from Grandma's house (R.I.P. Grandma by the way), and it was poorly made (which makes sense, as I was 15-16 at the time), I ended up not only scrapping the wrestling league but even deleting photos from DeviantArt (Probably a good thing too because I only want to focus on my drawings and photos). In 2017, my interest in Mixels is… not gone, just faded. At the time I said the reason I stopped doing Mixels fan art was because of “Rule 34 garbage to fetish nonsense, and shipping”. Look, I admitted doing inflation fetish drawings but not as much, I was 17 at the time. Looking back, I was dishonest and did not know the fact that stuff is normal for shows in the media. Long story short, I don't mind lewd drawings, fetish shit, and shipping… AS LONG IF THEY DON'T DRAW UNDERAGE LEWD ACTS, DRAW THE MOST SICK SHIT IMAGINABLE, RESPECT OPINIONS ON SHIPS AND NOT WISH DEATH THREATS TO OTHER PEOPLE! Angry rant aside, I still draw Slark from Aqua Squad because he's not only my favorite OC but he's my first OC ever. That's why he appears in my future drawings. Anyway, I'm still working on my Mixels Remastered, it is still A WORK IN PROGRESS.

Next is Object Shows. Back in 2016, various Object Shows were canceled and I thought it was going to be the end of the genre in general, thankly it wasn't the case.

Back then I was watching BFDI, Inanimate Insanity, Object Overload, Object Havoc, Object Redundancy & The Object Show Movie. Well, nowadays… Look, I still watch BFDI & Inanimate Insanity but, I'm just not BIG on Object Shows anymore and that's because they're mostly competition shows. It was accepted back in 2010 through 2015 because it was based on Total Drama Island, but nowadays it's starting to get old and repetitive. I just want something different now. Look at ONE, while I am not a fan of that show (respect my opinion), it was unique compared to other shows at the time. Looking at Modern Objects, I was hooked on that show and again it felt different and unique I was hoping to see more, but sadly, it never came to be (Object Meltdown is probably the closest that we ever get to an “Episode 2” of Modern Objects). Object After Dark is currently my favorite object show right now.

I'm hoping in the future, we get more original object shows and not BFDI clones with 50 to 100 characters that take too long to make. (Look, I don't mind with a lot of characters in shows just getting people to help to write for them.) Again, this is JUST MY OPINION, you don't have to agree with me.

So in 2014, I started my Christmas drawings on Facebook called “Anthony55's 25 Days of Christmas”, where in 25 days, I would post my Christmas drawings of various characters in traditional scenarios. I continued my seasonal drawings with “Anthony55's 25 Days of XMas” in 2015 and “25 Days of Ant-Mas” in 2016. The series took a 5-year hiatus before 2022 with a revival series called “25 Days Til XMas” and was a huge success! The series will follow up with “The Road of XMas” in 2023. And this year… (SPOILER ALERT/NAME REVEALED) 25 Nights of Navidad will debut in 2024!

This year's 25 Nights of Navidad will go all out on the drawings and the scenarios. (Maybe some throwbacks too.)

Lastly, my (slowly) rise…

Back in 2019, I started to draw actual Battle bots and into the 2020s, I started to draw Helluva Boss, Pibby, Unikitty, and The Amazing Digital Circus. Trust me, ever since I started to draw them, I got a rainstorm of favorites and followers. My mission is to get 1,000 followers by 2025.

MY THOUGHTS ON THE CURRENT STATE OF DEVIANTART/ MY FUTURE ON THIS SITE:

So I've been aware of DeviantArt's downfall in recent years.

It all started with the Eclipse debacle, while I honestly don't mind the layout, it kills the vibe of the old DeviantArt style that I remember (I wanted to use them so badly!). Then, the AI slop that this website is supporting the bejesus out of it. AI should be used to save lives, NOT TO REPLACE HUMANS! And let's not forget the overkill of fill-in memes. I don't mind fill-in memes once a while, but when it gets to the point when it's just TOO MUCH, no offense, if you're not going to post your drawings on this site, DON'T HAVE AN ACCOUNT IN GENERAL!

And to the owner(s) of DeviantArt, if you are not going to improve or even care for this website… SELL IT TO SOMEONE ELSE THAT CARES!

#SellDeviantArt!

So… What's next for me? Will I leave this website?

No… but, if DeviantArt announces that they're shutting down, I will move my drawings to other art sites. Other than that, I will still be posting here for the time being.

Thank you all for supporting me for all these years on this website!

[oblivionwonderlust]

i know we hate imperialism here but,

we need to establish a colony on the facebook twitter clone thing, especially because they’re planning on bringing in fediverse support (like tumblr).

there’s a literal fight for the very soul of the app starting, contained somewhat by a lot of the current user base being people who hated twitter but in the next month or so the etiquette and the culture of the platform will be decided.

which is why it is important that, from the start, there’s a pretty sizeable queer and silly user base. building this base before twitter truly burns down will help keep dipshits away.

there hasn’t been a big app in a long time. most current social media have a massive dipshit problem because the culture there was established in the shadow of the gamer-gate era. right now they’re clinging to the dying body of twitter. we must make this new platform as inhospitable to them as possible.

this is important because when the fediverse integration kicks in, people on Threads will be able to interact with Tumblr and vice versa. it is imperative that threads become silly and gay and stay silly and gay.

[high-pot-in-noose]

Okay, after braving the wilds of Threads, I was compelled to try out a couple of other social media apps/sites as well.

I will go ahead and say that, while Threads does indeed need a lot more work, and it does indeed keep track of far more of your information than a site should period . . . the facts remain that this stage is literally just its beta, and Ol' Zuck would have already been tracking that information on you through FB and IG. TBH, if you were already using IG, there's no real reason not to use Threads outside of if you just don't want to.

That scare of 'you can't delete Threads without deleting IG!' is not technically incorrect, but it leaves out the fact that Threads isn't actually an independent app at this stage (if it'll ever be) but an off-shoot of IG. Wanting to delete your Threads account without removing your IG would be like trying to remove your basement without taking apart your house.

Also, the gist of the claim that you can't delete ignores that you can deactivate -- it's effectively the same as deleting, but it leaves you the option to come back, and prevents people from being able to snatch your handle.

Also ALSO, you can very much uninstall the physical app from your device, it's just your account will remain yours no matter what.

I don't personally recommend Threads yet since the search function is basic, tags aren't a thing yet, you can't see the posts you've like, there's no explore page or DM function, and they're still working out glitches, but those are things the staff has reported that they're actively working to address. TBH, as far as a straight bird app clone goes, it's already better than, say, Spoutible.

Now, Spoutible is purporting to be trying to be the next Twitter, but after testing out the site and app, I'd say it's more like if Twitter and Facebook had a child, but it turned out the child was actually adopted and just happened to share a number of traits with its parent sites. Spoutible is not under Muskrat's X Corp umbrella nor Zuck's Meta umbrella; they're their own thing.

Their functionality isn't great, but they technically have everything a person would want from a social media app. My main gripes are that I can't change my location to say anything but the United States (I can't select anything but the US despite there being a dropdown list), things that should scroll DON'T scroll unless you finesse it in a very non-intuitive way, and the site itself just feels rather bland. Clean, but bland.

Also, it apparently isn't available for iOS yet? This last part isn't a gripe, just a statement of bemusement. With the type of posts I see on this site, you would think it would be filled with iOS users -- these people just give off that vibe. Do with that information what you will.

The one that really surprised me, though, was Cohost. Let me say this out of the gate -- it's in beta. It's unashamedly in beta, and they have what they're working on right on the side of their main page/your dashboard at all times, but . . . it's in beta the same way that AO3 is in beta.

Cohost is known for trying to be a Twitter alternative even though they loudly reject that claim, but it actually has more in common with Tumblr. The profile page is like Twitter, but the dashboard does posts and reblogs in exactly the same manner as Tumblr, their tagging and liking function is the same, the feed is exclusively chronological, you can save post drafts, and they filter content through a blacklist as well.

Color palletes are part of their paid features at the moment, but considering it has no ads and promises to remain that way, AND the only restriction against 18+ content is that it must be tagged and marked appropriately, that's a small compensation. They're still rolling out features like asks, and DMs aren't a thing yet, but I'm actually really hopeful for this one. It gives me the same energy as when AO3 was first becoming a thing.

It's also primarily filled with furries at the moment, but that's just a matter of fact and something to be taken as a pro or con depending on the individual.

With Cohost and Pillowfort marching steadily forward in their development, I actually feel really good about Tumblrina's being able to find a new and suitable home if Tumblr ever makes itself completely uninhabitable. Really the only downsides to moving over to these two sites right away is that there are still a number of features left that Tumblr does better or has that they don't, and that there's no telling exactly when these sites will be at the state that their staff teams consider officially out of beta.

[eswayne]

5 Half-Baked Predictions about Threads 🪡

🧵 Threads = Google+ It will probably last longer than Google’s foray into a true social network, but Threads is skyrocketing because it’s already building off other Meta products. And, much like Google did, look for Threads to be integrated into everything else Meta: WhatsApp, Oculus, their idea of the metaverse, even the Facebook app itself. 🧵Threads is the savior of Meta’s ad business Meta has lost massive troves of user data due to ad blockers, privacy sandboxes, and iOS App Tracking Transparency. They need more signals, coming in with more velocity. Nothing moves faster than a microblogging network, and Twitter (before acquisition) was making ~10% of their revenue off data licensing. More data = better ad targeting. New platform = new ad units and packages to sell. 🧵 Threads will also save Instagram Kylie Jenner-gate already told us that users (and especially influencers) want Instagram to be the place for photos, not so much Reels. TikTok already has short vertical video boxed out so well, and with Twitter becoming…whatever it is, users were already using Instagram more for *text* than ever before. Threads lets everyone get along: Instagram stays focused on photos, and celeb or influencer “I’m sorry you feel that way” confessions go on Threads, rather than posting screenshots of a Notes app page. 🧵 Threads will NOT put Meta in jeopardy with the FTC The FTC has been giving Meta the side-eye for a long time, mainly for user data privacy and anticompetitive practices. Cloning another social network *would* have been a bad move in this environment, *if* the network you were copying wasn’t already owned by another FTC pariah: Elon Musk. 🧵 Threads = Fediverse “Big Bang” You’ve been sleeping on the fediverse. You’ve vaguely heard about Mastodon or PixelFed, and possibly the ActivityPub protocol. It’s time to dive in and go deep: Threads at least *will* be part of the fediverse, and is arguably already its biggest network. (More here: https://help.instagram.com/169559812696339)

[xumoonhao]

threads is absolutely BAFFLING to me. like u mean to tell me Facebook made a twitter clone app connected to your instagram that has seemingly unfiltered access to every piece of info on your phone and millions of ppl downloaded it w/o a second thought?? we’re in hell

[theculturedmarxist]

What happened to the cycle of renewal? Where are the regular, controlled burns?

Like the California settlers who subjugated the First Nations people and declared war on good fire, the finance sector conquered the tech sector.

It started in the 1980s, the era of personal computers — and Reaganomics. A new economic and legal orthodoxy took hold, one that celebrated monopolies as “efficient,” and counseled governments to nurture and protect corporations as they grew both too big to fail, and too big to jail.

For 40 years, we’ve been steadily reducing antitrust enforcement. That means a company like Google can create a single great product (a search engine) and use investors’ cash to buy a mobile stack, a video stack, an ad stack, a server-management stack, a collaboration stack, a maps and navigation stack — all while repeatedly failing to succeed with any of its in-house products.

It’s hard to appreciate just how many companies tech giants buy. Apple buys other companies more often than you buy groceries.

These giants buy out their rivals specifically to make sure you can’t leave their walled gardens. As Mark Zuckerberg says, “It is better to buy than to compete,” (which is why Zuckerberg bought Instagram, telling his CFO that it was imperative that they do the deal because Facebook users preferred Insta to FB, and were defecting in droves).

As these companies “merge to monopoly,” they are able to capture their regulators, ensuring that the law doesn’t interfere with their plans for literal world domination.

When a sector consists of just a handful of companies, it becomes cozy enough to agree on — and win — its lobbying priorities. That’s why America doesn’t have a federal privacy law. It’s why employees can be misclassified as “gig worker” contractors and denied basic labor protections.

It’s why companies can literally lock you out of your home — and your digital life — by terminating your access to your phone, your cloud, your apps, your thermostat, your door-locks, your family photos, and your tax records, with no appeal — not even the right to sue.

But regulatory capture isn’t merely about ensuring that tech companies can do whatever they want to you. Tech companies are even more concerned with criminalizing the things you want to do to them.

Frank Wilhoit described conservativism as “exactly one proposition”:

There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

This is likewise the project of corporatism. Tech platforms are urgently committed to ensuring that they can do anything they want on their platforms — and they’re even more dedicated to the proposition that you must not do anything they don’t want on their platforms.

They can lock you in. You can’t unlock yourself. Facebook attained network-effects growth by giving its users bots that logged into Myspace on their behalf, scraped the contents of their inboxes for the messages from the friends they left behind, and plunked them in their Facebook inboxes.

Facebook then sued a company that did the same thing to Facebook, who wanted to make it as easy for Facebook users to leave Facebook as it had been to get started there.

Apple reverse-engineered Microsoft’s crown jewels — the Office file-formats that kept users locked to its operating systems — so it could clone them and let users change OSes.

Try to do that today — say, to make a runtime so you can use your iOS apps and media on an Android device or a non-Apple desktop — and Apple will reduce you to radioactive rubble.

Big Tech has a million knobs on the back-end that they can endlessly twiddle to keep you locked in — and, just as importantly, they have convinced governments to ban any kind of twiddling back.

This is “felony contempt of business model.”

Governments hold back from passing and enforcing laws that limit the tech giants in the name of nurturing their “efficiency.”

But when states act to prevent new companies — or users, or co-ops, or nonprofits — from making it easier to leave the platforms, they do so in the name of protecting us.

Rather than passing a privacy law that would let them punish Meta, Apple, Google, Oracle, Microsoft and other spying companies, they ban scraping and reverse-engineering because someone might violate the privacy of the users of those platforms.

But a privacy law would control both scrapers and silos, banning tech giants from spying on their users, and banning startups and upstarts from spying on those users, too.

Rather than breaking up ad-tech, banning surveillance ads, and opening up app stores, which would make tech platforms stop stealing money from media companies through ad-fraud, price-gouging and deceptive practices, governments introduce laws requiring tech companies to share (some of) their ill-gotten profits with a few news companies.

This makes the news companies partners with the tech giants, rather than adversaries holding them to account, and makes the news into cheerleaders for massive tech profits, so long as they get their share. Rather than making it easier for the news to declare independence from Big Tech, we are fusing them forever.

We could make it easy for users to leave a tech platform where they are subject to abuse and harassment — but instead, governments pursue policies that require platforms to surveil and control their users in the name of protecting them from each other.

We could make it easy for users to leave a tech platform where their voices are algorithmically silenced, but instead we get laws requiring platforms to somehow “balance” different points of view.

The platforms aren’t merely combustible, they’re always on fire. Once you trap hundreds of millions — or billions — of people inside a walled fortress, where warlords who preside over have unlimited power over their captives, and those captives the are denied any right to liberate themselves, enshittification will surely and inevitably follow.

Laws that block us seizing the means of computation and moving away from Big Tech are like the heroic measures that governments undertake to keep people safe in the smouldering wildland-urban interface.

These measures prop up the lie that we can perfect the tech companies, so they will be suited to eternal rule.

Rather than building more fire debt, we should be making it easy for people to relocate away from the danger so we can have that long-overdue, “good fire” to burn away the rotten giants that have blotted out the sun.

What would that look like?

Well, this week’s news was all about Threads, Meta’s awful Twitter replacement devoted to “brand-safe vaporposting,” where the news and controversy are not welcome, and the experience is “like watching a Powerpoint from the Brand Research team where they tell you that Pop Tarts is crushing it on social.”

Threads may be a vacuous “Twitter alternative you would order from Brookstone,” but it commanded a lot of news, because it experienced massive growth in just hours. “Two million signups in the first two hours” and “30 million signups in the first morning.”

That growth was network-effects driven. Specifically, Meta made it possible for you to automatically carry over your list of followed Instagram accounts to Threads.

Meta was able to do this because it owns both Threads and Instagram. But Meta does not own the list of people you trust and enjoy enough to follow.

That’s yours.

Your relationships belong to you. You should be able to bring them from one service to another.

Take Mastodon. One of the most common complaints about Mastodon is that it’s hard to know whom to follow there. But as a technical matter, it’s easy: you should just follow the people you used to follow on Twitter —either because they’re on Mastodon, too, or because there’s a way to use Mastodon to read their Twitter posts.

Indeed, this is already built into Mastodon. With one click, you can export the list of everyone you follow, and everyone who follows you. Then you can switch Mastodon servers, upload that file, and automatically re-establish all those relationships.

That means that if the person who runs your server decides to shut it down, or if the server ends up being run by a maniac who hates you and delights in your torment, you don’t have to petition a public prosecutor or an elected lawmaker or a regulator to make them behave better.

You can just leave.

Meta claims that Threads will someday join the “Fediverse” (the collection of apps built on top of ActivityPub, the standard that powers Mastodon).

Rather than passing laws requiring Threads to prioritize news content, or to limit the kinds of ads the platform accepts, we could order it to turn on this Fediverse gateway and operate it such that any Threads user can leave, join any other Fediverse server, and continue to see posts from the people they follow, and who will also continue to see their posts.

Rather than devoting all our energy to keep Meta’s empire of oily rags from burning, we could devote ourselves to evacuating the burn zone.

This is the thing the platforms fear the most. They know that network effects gave them explosive growth, and they know that tech’s low switching costs will enable implosive contraction.

The thing is, network effects are a double-edged sword. People join a service to be with the people they care about. But when the people they care about start to leave, everyone rushes for the exits. Here’s danah boyd, describing the last days of Myspace:

If a central node in a network disappeared and went somewhere else (like from MySpace to Facebook), that person could pull some portion of their connections with them to a new site. However, if the accounts on the site that drew emotional intensity stopped doing so, people stopped engaging as much. Watching Friendster come undone, I started to think that the fading of emotionally sticky nodes was even more problematic than the disappearance of segments of the graph. With MySpace, I was trying to identify the point where I thought the site was going to unravel. When I started seeing the disappearance of emotionally sticky nodes, I reached out to members of the MySpace team to share my concerns and they told me that their numbers looked fine. Active uniques were high, the amount of time people spent on the site was continuing to grow, and new accounts were being created at a rate faster than accounts were being closed. I shook my head; I didn’t think that was enough. A few months later, the site started to unravel.

Tech bosses know the only thing protecting them from sudden platform collapse syndrome are the laws that have been passed to stave off the inevitable fire.

They know that platforms implode “slowly, then all at once.”

They know that if we weren’t holding each other hostage, we’d all leave in a heartbeat.

But anything that can’t go on forever will eventually stop. Suppressing good fire doesn’t mean “no fires,” it means wildfires. It’s time to declare fire debt bankruptcy. It’s time to admit we can’t make these combustible, tinder-heavy forests safe.

It’s time to start moving people out of the danger zone.

It’s time to let the platforms burn.