@alexisbushnell
Isn't #Ghost self-hostable?
@elena

Friday the Thirteenth
Fits into haiku so well
Superstitious thoughts

#Haiku #OneHaikuADay #WritersCollective #writingcommunity #BackToHaiku #Spring #Summer #Friday #FridayThe13th #Superstition #Superstitious #Mind #Occult #Wicca #Witch #Ghost #Goblin #Warlock #Pagan

June 13, 2025

@andypiper BIG FAN of both @johnonolan ‘s #Ghost and @pfefferle ‘s #ActivityPub for #Wordpress plugin - happy to give them shoutouts at any opportunity ❤️✨🚀

Actually, I have another #FediForumFriday post but this time a question; can anyone explain to me the pros and cons of blogging on my own website vs something like #Ghost?

I have checked their website comparison but the cost stuff doesn't impact me cos my website costs less than $9 a month to run, even with the plugins (most of the ones I use are free).
The advice always used to be "your own website is always better" - is that still true? Or am I old?

Tagging @elena who may have opinions!

Destroying Autocracy – June 12, 2025

Welcome to this week’s “Destroying Autocracy”.

It’s your source for curated news affecting democracy in the cyber arena with a focus on protecting it. That necessitates an opinionated Butlerian jihad against big tech as well as evangelizing for open-source and the Fediverse. Since big media’s journalism wing is flailing and failing in its core duty to democracy, this is also a collection of alternative reporting on the eternal battle between autocracy and democracy. We also cover the cybersecurity world. You can’t be free without safety and privacy.

DA comes out on Thursday and is updated through the end of day on Friday. Then we start over. So take your time in perusing it and check back in over the weekend.

FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And will often involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists. Fuck ’em.

Featured Item

Fediverse favorite and video pro, Elena Rossini has done the ecosystem an outstanding favor by producing a phenomenal promotional video. She is:

Introducing the Fediverse: a New Era of Social Media

I make a cameo appearance at the end. 😎

We start and end with good news to make the middle bearable.

The response to Russia’s War Crimes, Techno Feudalism, and other douchebaggery

The Kyiv Independent reports:

US accuses Russian of laundering millions, helping Moscow obtain sensitive technology

DarkReading reports:

‘Librarian Ghouls’ Cyberattackers Strike at Night

OpenAI Bans ChatGPT Accounts Linked to Nation-State Threat Actors

Open_Future has:

Europe Talks Digital Sovereignty

Heise reports:

Digital sovereignty: EU launches its own DNS service with practical functions

Tech Policy has:

Public Sector Triage of the Federal Government’s Data Hemorrhage

Tech Oligarchy Imperils Democratic Information Flows

And everything else to do with democracy.

The Register reports:

Apple AI boffins puncture AGI hype as reasoning models flail on complex planning

Nordjyske reports:

Digitaliseringsminister vil mindske brug Microsoft i eget ministerium

Denmark tells Microsoft to get fucked. Well half-fucked for now.

Bloomberg Law reports:

DOGE Access to Government Personnel Data Blocked by Judge

Until the SupremeC^nts reverse it.

404 Media reports:

Wikipedia Pauses AI-Generated Summaries After Editor Backlash

Neutral

Balfour Jarnasob says:

Trusting your own judgement on ‘AI’ is a huge risk

The Guardian reports:

‘No smartphones before 14; no social media until 16’: The Anxious Generation author on how to fight back against big tech

The Evil Empire Strikes Back

TechCrunch reports:

Trump administration takes aim at Biden and Obama cybersecurity rules

404 Media reports:

Airlines Don’t Want You to Know They Sold Your Flight Data to DHS

GitHub is Leaking Trump’s Plans to ‘Accelerate’ AI Across Government

Pariah States

The Guardian reports:

Frequent TikTok users in Taiwan more likely to agree with pro-China narratives, study finds

DarkReading reports:

China-Backed Hackers Target SentinelOne in ‘PurpleHaze’ Attack Spree

The Register reports:

Chinese spy crew appears to be preparing for conflict by backdooring 75+ critical orgs

AP New reports:

US-backed Israeli company’s spyware used to target European journalists, Citizen Lab finds

Big Media

The Nerd Reich reports:

Politico’s $50M Peter Thiel Problem

The San Francisco Standard reports:

The ICE agents disappearing your neighbors would like a little privacy, please

Citation Needed opines:

It matters. I care.

Indeed!

Big Tech

The Guardian reports:

US attacks on science and research a ‘great gift’ to China on artificial intelligence, former OpenAI board member says

Misogyny in the metaverse: is Mark Zuckerberg’s dream world a no-go area for women?

The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project reports:

Telegram, the FSB, and the Man in the Middle

Verso Books asks:

Is the AI Bubble About to Burst?

If only.

Dutch News reports:

Dutch government websites still reliant on US cloud services

Fortune reports:

‘Sovereign AI’ is political branding. The reality is closer to digital colonialism

404 Media reports:

A Researcher Figured Out How to Reveal Any Phone Number Linked to a Google Account

Senators Demand Meta Answer For AI Chatbots Posing as Licensed Therapists

Zero Party Data reports:

“Localhost tracking” explained. It could cost Meta 32 billion.

Business Insider reports:

Mark Zuckerberg has created the saddest place on the internet with Meta AI’s public feed

And the least private. What a c^nt.

Cybersecurity/Privacy

DarkReading reports:

Next-Gen Developers Are a Cybersecurity Powder Keg

GitHub: How Code Provenance Can Prevent Supply Chain Attacks

Gartner: How Security Teams Can Turn Hype Into Opportunity

The Conversation reports:

Tracking apps monitor remote employees’ performance — and invade their privacy

The Register reports:

Peep show: 40K IoT cameras worldwide stream secrets to anyone with a browser

DeepSeek installer or just malware in disguise? Click around and find out

This is what happens when you use Chinese software and AI. You get what you deserve.

Fediverse

Elena Rossini has this regarding the video in our featured item section:

My Fediverse Promo Video: Frequently Asked Questions

The Fediverse report has:

Fediverse Report – #120

Bounce, and how the Open Social Web is continually changing

Hamish Campell asks:

Why does any of this matter?

ActivityPub for WordPress has:

6.0.0 – New Kids on the Block

The IT Blog shares:

PeerTube and Platform Control

Peertube starts a series:

Flutter application development: feedback (1/2)

This is very interesting if you are a developer.

TheNewStack reports:

Bringing Joy Back to the Web: Fediverse vs. Centralized Apps

Mastodon has:

Trunk & Tidbits, May 2025

We Distribute reports:

Bandwagon is Bringing Music Sales to the Fediverse

Fedihost shares:

Getting Started on Lemmy

I would recommend PieFed or mbin.

ActivityPub for WordPress announces:

Our 2025 Roadmap: Building the Future of WordPress Federation

This has the potential to double the size of the Fediverse (or more) in the long run.

Ben Werdmuller says:

Welcome to the new Werd I/O

Other Slightly Federated Social Media

The Fediverse Report has:

ATmosphere Report – #120

Is Bad Behaviour Spoiling the Move from Big Tech?

TechCrunch reports:

Bluesky backlash misses the point

None of this would matter if Bluesky were not a company trying to take money and in debt to VCs.

CTAs (aka show us some free love)

• That’s it for this week. Please share this edition of Destroying Autocracy.
• Follow me on the Fediverse. Or this site via the button in the footer. Or via RSS.

Keep fighting!

Ringleader, Battalion
Reuben Walker
Follow me on the Fediverse

#120 #ActivityPub #AI #Autocracy #Bandwagon #BigJournalism #BigTech #Bluesky #Democracy #Fascism #Fediverse #Ghost #Lemmy #Mastodon #Nextcloud #Peertube #StopChina #StopIsrael #StopRedAmerica #StopRussia #SupportUkraine #TechnoAnarchism #TechnoFeudalism #WordPress

https://battalion.mobileatom.net/?p=1944

Who watched the Super Mario movie recently?
Right, it's me!
Couldn't overpass Lumalee's cuteness

#cute #Lumalee #Mario #nintendo #cartoon #fanart #blender3D #b3D #digitalart #artist #artwork #Halloween #blendercommunity #3Dmodeling #render #textures #ghost #movie #supermario #cage #cute #character #blender

🏕️ my adventures in #selfhosting - day 177 (VPS stress test edition) 📈

Dear Fedi friends,

You might have noticed I've been a little quiet on here since launching my Fedi promo video. What happened?

Well well well, the unexpected victim of my viral toot / video was... my beloved #GoToSocial account.

Approximately 12 hours after posting about my video - a toot that got 1200+ boosts - for some reason federation broke on this account. I was still posting messages and replying but getting zero interactions.

So yesterday evening, thanks to the amazing help of people on the GoToSocial Matrix help room, I was told to upgrade to the latest version of GoToSocial. And that fixed the problem, yay.

If you don't mind, I'll copy and paste parts of 2 messages I had tried to publish Tue & Wed:

((( message from Tue evening )))

Thank you for all the amazing feedback you shared today re: my Fediverse promo video. I’m really touched.

Extra thanks to everyone who helped spread the word on Big Tech platforms - to reach a wider audience. I don’t have any accounts there anymore (not even on LinkedIn) so I appreciate your help with fediverse advocacy 🙏

And special special thanks to all the superheroes who intentionally left the browser tab open on my video to take advantage of PeerTube’s P2P feature, helping offload bandwidth strain from my little server. You rock! 🥹

((( beginning of message from Wed Jun 11 )))

The past 24 hours have been incredible! Thank you for all the boosts to the post about my Fedi promo video (over a thousand!)

It looks like my self-hosted Ghost blog did well with the massive wave of traffic and didn't experience the "Mastodon hug of Death." THANK YOU Varnish cache for it! Total game changer. I could not recommend it more! (As someone who experienced the Mastodon hug of death TWICE before installing Varnish cache) 😅​

So: my #Ghost blog survived. Ditto for my self-hosted #PeerTube (which is on a separate VPS - installed/managed via #YunoHost). The video so far has almost 5000 views - which is pretty good for PeerTube.

✨​ The magic of the fediverse for you ✨​

((( end of pasted messages )))

Since yesterday, I changed the visibility of the video, making it public. And my VPS is surviving, thanks to PeerTube's P2P and various instances mirroring the video (thank you fellow admins, I owe you big time!)

I'm just so grateful for all your nice words and support.

Later today I'll travel to Amsterdam, as I will be speaking at #PubConf2025 about the Fediverse YAY. I'm super honored for this opportunity and I look forward to reconnecting with many other Fediverse advocates who have become friends.

Exciting times 🥹

Wishing you all a lovely day! ✨🚀

#MySoCalledSudoLife #TheFutureIsFederated

Nicely put #Ghost
https://activitypub.ghost.org/ramping-up-for-expansion/
#SocialWeb #ActivityPub #Fediverse

Ghost and Soap in Call Of Duty - Modern Warfare 2 #Ghost #Soap #Cod #CallOfDuty #SimonRiley #JohnMacTavish

Ghost - Call Of Duty #Ghost #CallOfDuty #SimonRiley

@ghost.org Two things on my Ghost 6.0 Wishlist: I’d love an easy way to create a TAGS list page where I can toggle the visibility of tags I'd like to promote. Also, it'd be great to have some kind of media manager for images and PDF files linked in posts. #ghost

The end of the Frisian monarchy, the white widow Queen 🕷️ #kikimora #arachne #magnafrisia #cjmccreery #tobiasforge #crestfallen #piecefield #ghost #respiteonthespitalfields

Ghost pipefish
#gili #giliislands #lombok #diving #scuba #trawangan #diveandstay #giliair #pets #ocean #sealife #marinelife #padi #fish #ghost #pipefish

"Federating #Ghost means publishers no longer have to choose between owning their work and reaching an audience. You post once, on your own domain, and it travels everywhere.
While centralized networks are coming apart as battles rage between the most powerful people on earth who own them, #thefediverse represents an #alternative path.
It's an answer to the question: What if nobody owned this? The same question that #TimBernersLee posed to the world, 35 years ago."

https://activitypub.ghost.org/ramping-up-for-expansion/

https://www.unexplained.ie/article/1258-walking-on-water-mystery-figure-spotted-at-streedagh-county-sligo-1st-october-2022/ #strange #ghost #light #armada #spanish #sligo #ireland #unexplainedie #unexplained

GHOST Song Bracket Battle – Only ONE Track Survives!

In this video, I decided to try something new! I take on the ultimate Ghost challenge — a song vs. song knockout bracket to determine the best track from Papa Emeritus and the Nameless Ghouls! This is not easy, as you can see in the video, but it is very entertaining. Hopefully for you guys too. Now, check it out, and let me know what song did you get on top!

Subscribe to our YouTube channel – don’t miss any new videos!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdvgutRA6yA

"Cursed is he who moves his neighbor’s boundary stone."

#Germany #folktale #folklore #ghost #ghoststory @germany @folklore
https://www.patreon.com/posts/bearers-of-50146725

ANH SHIPER MAY MẮN #chuyenkinhdi #chuyenma #radio #horror #ghost #creepypasta

ANH SHIPER MAY MẮN #chuyenkinhdi #chuyenma #radio #horror #ghost #creepypasta Your browser does not support HTML video. ANH SHIPER MAY MẮN #chuyenkinhdi #chuyenma #radio #horror #ghost #creepypasta #ANH #SHIPER #MẮN #chuyenkinhdi #chuyenma #radio #horror #ghost #creepypasta

https://simsothantai.com/2025/06/10/anh-shiper-may-man-chuyenkinhdi-chuyenma-radio-horror-ghost-creepypasta/