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Comparing StartPage to DDG to Kagi Search… Been using DDG as primary web search but exploring others too. Looking for right mix of quality of results and privacy as Google has been failing at both for some time.
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True: I tink #OpenSocialWeb apps could have a “river” metaphor in their UX like Current does for RSS, or like in Manton’s Inkwell app, old posts could just fade off. This fits well with #Calmtech ideas of app design.
“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. In a world of infinite scroll and endless notification, the act of truly noticing something, of giving it the gift of your undivided presence, has become almost countercultural.
The river metaphor isn’t about passivity. It’s about presence. You’re not behind on a river. You’re just wherever you are, watching whatever flows past…”
“Your main feed where content naturally flows. Unlike traditional readers, the River doesn’t stack items into an ever-growing backlog. Content arrives, you engage with what interests you, and the rest drifts past. The Waterline shows you where new content begins.”
Why Not Unread Counts?
Traditional readers show “127 unread articles” and create pressure to clear the queue. The Waterline takes a different approach:
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No numbers create no anxiety
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You see where “new” begins without quantifying it
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Scroll past naturally without feeling obligated
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The line fades as you scroll, merging old and new"
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Some key observations here on search and #agenicweb:
“Because it was always happening. It was never going to not happen. Does Google owe them the traffic? I don’t know. But they did change the terms of the deal. They did weather the storm of introducing AI overviews and then AI mode…And their position is, yeah, we’ll send some traffic to you. And it’s the last step when people want to buy the shoes.
That’s the traffic you’re going to get. And you have to be happy with that. And then for us, people who use Google, the step to, oh, this is an agent.
Now, I’m not using the web. Google is going to use the web for me. And I’m going to just use this interface…
That is the next version of an interface. It’s the next version of an interactive assistant that everyone’s been talking about for years and years and Google is poised to do it. And then it’s also like, oh, but this is going to change how I get information….You aren’t doing searches any more, Google is doing searches….
Google is upending the soft economic agreements of the entire Internet by just doing stuff for people now, and finding ways to do that stuff even if there’s not some formal API to do it, right?
…All of that has just massive implications for how we use computers, how all those companies make money. I think Google, they’ve done so much fighting about search traffic and Google Zero that they’re just like, screw it, we’re doing it. This is so obviously the future.”
From The Vergecast: The post-search Google era begins, May 22, 2026
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A #Calmtech focused RSS reader.
Will check it out but liking the vibe. I do think folks could build an open social web reader with many of these same principals, or at least that could shift into a Calm Tech Zen mode.
https://www.terrygodier.com/currentAnd for those new to the idea of calm tech and calm UX design: https://www.calmtech.institute/calm-tech-principles
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I dig this. A lot. #OpenWeb and #OpenSocialWeb will win long term. And it plays on different rules.
“Every property that made these protocols feel old and uncool to you in 2014 i_s part of what’s keeping them alive in 2026…._But the actual internet — the protocols, the federated services, the plain-text commands, the open feeds, the small servers, the personal sites, the things people built when user and developer were sometimes the same word — is still right there.
It was not demolished.
It was buried under a louder layer for a while.
Now the louder layer is thinning out.”
Read the whole thing here:
https://www.terrygodier.com/the-boring-internet -
I’d lost faith in Firefox management several years back, and #Vivaldi is now my browser of choice. They focus on privacy, customization, and speed, proving a small company can compete with big tech giants. Not open source, but alligned with my values.
Vivaldi wisely filled the “market gap” for a non-big tech, non-AI web browser that firecely protects my privacy.
I use Chrome now only as my “Claude speaks to it browser” and I keep all my real web experience cordoned off like a perimeter against all things LLM.
And version 8.0 is a big step up. Try it out. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/vivaldi-8-0-is-the-anti-ai-browser-update-we-ve-all-been-waiting-for/ar-AA23Lfkf
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I actually agree here. #RSS and especially RSS2 or Atom feeds are the unsung hero for the #AgenticWeb and what I think is a coming agentic social web.
Markdown as a format has seen it’s stock value as a format gone up by about 1,000 fold. RSS in the AI space will see the same ride.
“RSS is the cleanest structured data layer the open web has ever produced. Machine-readable by design, chronologically ordered, with zero algorithmic manipulation. If you need to track a specific domain (competitive intel, regulatory filings, niche technical topics), there’s no cleaner signal.
The format was never the problem. But the volume was.”
https://rss.app/blog/why-rss-ai-is-the-cure-for-information-overload-zrYKid
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Hey #OpenSocialWeb fans this…
https://www.theverge.com/tech/935674/let-me-get-this-straight-i-post-it-here-and-it-goes-everywhereIs a big…
https://indieweb.social/@imdavidpierce@threads.net/116614596638802210Big…
https://indieweb.social/@imdavidpierce@threads.net/116614596638802210Big…
https://www.threads.com/@imdavidpierce/post/DYnV8NJFBXa…Effin' deal. We are all #TheVerge now.
David continues: “This is just the beginning, too: our team is already working on ways to bring all the federated conversation together and make it so everybody can talk to everybody everywhere. It’s gonna take a minute but it’s gonna be SO cool "
And Nilay is right: “Pretty sure we are the first big media brand to federate content directly. Small test with big ambitions to come!”
https://indieweb.social/@reckless1280@threads.net/116614558056217354And David is right: “The open social future rocks.”
Watch this space.
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I fully endorse this. (What my friend Will wrote, not necessarily what was in the thread bare and sketchy DNC “audit”…
“The path forward is not complicated, but it is hard. Democrats need permanent local media infrastructure. They need always-on organizing. They need persuasive content built for the platforms people actually use. They need trusted messengers who already have relationships in communities. They need to compete in rural areas, factory towns, suburbs, and digital spaces at the same time. They need to stop pushing information out and start pulling people in.
Most of all, Democrats need to stop confusing technology with strategy. Data, AI, targeting, dashboards, and platforms are tools. They are not a politics. Technology can accelerate a strong organization, but it cannot fix a hollow one.”
https://willrobinson.substack.com/p/the-dnc-autopsy-says-the-quiet-part
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I think search has been dead for a while, actually. But it does feel like today was someting of a last gasp. Exactly what that means for the open web built upon search economics, is anyone’s guess. #OpenWeb
“Instead of returning a simple list of links, Google Search will drop users into AI-powered interactive experiences at times. Google is also introducing tools that can dispatch “information agents” to gather information on a user’s behalf, along with tools that let users build personalized mini apps tailored to their needs.”
https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/19/google-search-as-you-know-it-is-over/
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Whatever there was left of the old Republican Party has long been subsumed into MAGA. Last night was one more sign. “There is no Dana, only Zuul.”
“Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) was defeated in a three-way primary against two Trump-aligned challengers tonight…Cassidy was one of the few remaining Republicans in the Senate to vote to convict Trump during his 2021, post-Jan. 6 impeachment trial. (Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska are the other Republicans who took that vote and remain in office.)”
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/bill-cassidy-gets-primaried
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#BridgyFed has become a “load-bearing,” key part of the #OpenSocialWeb making every network it bridges more valuable as it goes.
“Bridgy Fed is a free public service, funded by individual donations and institutional grants. Real people and orgs trust us with their money so that we can keep this thing running. We feel that responsibility acutely, and we’re serious about keeping these projects sustainable for the long haul. Every dollar we don’t spend on hosting is a dollar that keeps us afloat a bit longer.”
If you benfit from it, show them some love here: https://www.patreon.com/c/ANewSocial/posts
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Fully endorse. #bigtech
“Asking platforms to do better won’t work. We need to force their hands..”
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I always read this from #glaad each year: they do all of us a great service for tracking how the major platforms are doing protecting their users - or not. All the more reason for us to build out our own safer, healthier #OpenSocialWeb
“With the exception of TikTok, the 2026 scores dropped across the board. These declines are due to various factors, not all of which is quantified in the SMSI scorecard. Most significantly, both Meta[3] and YouTube[4] continue to maintain their recent anti-LGBTQ policy changes, which have made online environments even more toxic and harmful for LGBTQ people.”
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For my day job my firm does do web development as a key offering. Increasingly I think this is true, the website’s role is shifting dramatically to this:
“Websites As Canonical Sources, Not Just Destinations
Your website still matters. But its job description has changed.
Your website is no longer just a destination. It’s a source. It’s the canonical, structured, well-maintained origin point from which your message gets picked up, interpreted, summarized, and carried elsewhere. The better that source material is, the better it travels.
Think of it this way: Your website used to be the store. Now, it’s also the warehouse. And the warehouse needs to be organized well enough that anyone (human or machine) can find what they need, understand what it means, and carry it somewhere else without losing the plot.”
For individuals: I’m wondering if the #agenicweb means that suddenly something like blogs matter again. Maybe soon they will matter more than the microblogging central sites (IG, FB, X, etc) that subsumed them.
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/your-website-is-a-source-not-a-megaphone/571490/
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This from Josh Marshall rings true on #Redistricting:
“What we have seen over recent months is that Democrats have largely abandoned the mode of the last decade plus in which with one hand they fought the partisan battles of the day and with the other assume the mantle of defending the political norms Republicans have already destroyed. In other words, it was the responsibility of Democrats both to be contestants and referees. Republicans violated norms; Democrats tried to uphold them. That of course meant no partisan battle was ever on equal terms and Republicans almost always won them.
Through the redistricting battle and then with a thunderclap after the Callais decision Democrats have mostly abandoned this stance. There’s no race to the bottom beyond the simple fact that Democratic restraint has been removed from the equation. And that is a good thing. Democrats can release the enervating, demoralizing burden of being the custodians of an already-destroyed consensus.”
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/no-its-really-not-a-race-to-the-bottom-on-redistricting
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Looking over this, glad to see those #AgenticWeb discussions starting at the WC3. I deeply feel both the promise and the dangers to the Open Web and the Open Social Web are very real.
“Let’s first consider the problem at hand. A major reason for the web’s success is that it is open in many ways: it’s powered by open standards, it’s open for everyone to publish on (for fun, fame and/or profit), and it’s open for everyone to read. Perfect.
At the same time, content is increasingly consumed via LLMs and AI agents, which worries websites that care about content quality (like news organisations, governments, or public health information providers) and advertising income….
What could W3C do?
In addition to AI Preferences (IETF) and standards for responsible use of journalistic content (SPUR Coalition), these are some things participants suggested W3C can do…”
See the full article here:
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So Fediverse app #HolosSocial just added support for this in their latest iOS beta:
“Holos Social 1.5.5 (34)- Support for web+ap:// links (fedilinks): to open profiles and posts directly in HolosThis is a big milestone for a key fix myself and Sean wrote about here, to help make remote fediverse content more seemlessly available. EVERY Fediverse mobile app should support this and follow their lead.
https://wedistribute.org/2026/04/the-seven-deadly-fediverse-ux-sins-a-redemption-report-card/
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This from #FindOutMedia is really important.
It’s another example of a podcast and media network building their following directly on the open social web: a network they own, that can’t be taken away by Zuckerberg or Musk or held hostage to Google’s or YouTube’s latest algorithm. They just launched their own fediverse server, and dedicated mobile apps, and each new account joining there is automatically bridged over to BlueSky.
This is the model to keep an eye on. Everyone else with a core media and podcast following: watch and learn from their early work.
I’m looking forward to seeing this brand-new community form here as new fans join the open social web for the first time, much like the community thriving at the #Forkiverse around the Hard Fork podcast.
I’ve underestimaed before the power of focused open social web servers, great to see another example of it forming.
Everyone on the Fediverse and Bluesky, please welcome the Find Out community to the open social web.
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Making the “ruthless” business case for the #OpenSocialWeb, here is Helen Halvack from the Verge:
Helen: “I’ll give you the ruthless business answer of why I’m interested in open social web projects like Surf from the Flipboard team. So platforms like MetaX, they are openly hostile to news content in their algorithms. They have moved away from that.
They are no longer great discovery sources for us. Links in general even. Forget news, just links. They’re not like good places to hang out anymore.
Could you start the Verge now, the way we started The Verge, or you started The Verge 15 years ago? The answer is like probably not, or you would need a lot more money because starting something for free and finding audiences for free is much harder now.
A lot of audience discovery is people buying ads from Mark Zuckerberg, right? I would rather not give money to Mark Zuckerberg. I would rather spend money on journalists in our newsroom, which means the discovery problem, like can we solve it a different way?
…To the point of discovery, I would love to acquire acquisition channels for us where, again, I don’t have to pay to play.
The open social web is a lot more friendly to news. I think there’s opportunity there for how do you get the next cohort of Verge audience. And then as Nilay said, as we think about our website, our product experience, I think there’s really fun ideas about how you create new product experiences that attract people to The Verge, because the open social web, you can surface in all kinds of different ways.
So that would be my cold business answer of, I would rather give our money to the newsroom than be buying acquisition from Meta or whoever.”
From The Vergecast: The Vergecast Vergecast, 2026 edition, Apr 21, 2026
