This post originally appeared on The Fulcrum.

It's your weekly curation of the essential news in the Open Media Network and Fediverse development communities with a focus on devastating big tech via Techno Anarchism.

There is a lot of coverage of the shitshow that is ShitHub this week. And that makes me so happy I moved to Codeberg several years ago.

Our CSS section is full as well, which also makes us happy.

FYI, we officially began development work on our Manade project this week with a co-op. It's on the Bonfire platform and you will hear more about it over the coming months. I hope to have something you can build off of in 2027.

As usual, we aim to provide actionable content you can use to destroy Techno Feudalism each week. It has the additional benefit of weakening authoritarianism.

IMHO, the best way to do that is to use tools from the Techno Anarchist Manifesto to build your own site(s) to participate in the Open Media Network. Then you should share it (them) via Real Simple Syndication (RSS), the Fediverse, and possibly a newsletter or podcast. This approach is similar to what some call the IndieWeb and its POSSE philosophy.

The second best strategy is to have accounts on the Fediverse and use the hell out of them. And do the same with a RSS feed reader.

We publish TPF on Fridays so you can enjoy it over your weekend.

There's good stuff in all of our categories, so please take the time to enjoy and bookmark the items most relevant to your goals. We hope you are inspired to create new ones.

Or you can jump straight to your favorite section.

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

 


 

Eventuallymaking writes:

We could see a European digital identity taking shape, based on standards like interoperability (open formats), reversibility (the ability to easily retrieve one’s data), and the digital commons I mentioned earlier.

We could imagine conditions in public tenders that de facto eliminate US products.

Finally, we can imagine Europe becoming a hub for digital ethics, attracting global talent who want to contribute to projects serving the general interest rather than the stock price of a giant.

In short, open source is not a magic wand for Europe to stop being a digital colony. We will have to go further. This will require courageous public procurement, massive funding of digital commons, and strict legal protection against extraterritorial laws.

Why Open Source Won’t Be Enough to Free Us from Big Tech

Terry Godier writes:

The platforms will keep mutating. The feeds will keep filling. The slop will keep rising. The grief is real and you are not wrong to feel it.

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.

You do not have to wait for someone to rebuild what you lost.

You are standing in it.

An essay about what persists: The Boring Internet

This is what we preach, promote, and practice every week.

 


 

CMSs

 

Agaric Coop shares:

Publish once in Drupal, Syndicate Everywhere

Starlightnet announces:

Makko 3.0 Beta

Flatpress has:

Happy 20th, FlatPress! A guest post by Edoardo Vacchi

Arnold Gamboa explains:

Why I Won't Build Your Website in WordPress (And What I Recommend Instead)

This is why WordPress, Drupal, etc. desperately need to de-clusterfuck-ify. Unfortunately, because of AI, it’s not going to happen.

See:

Matt Mullenweg Assembles Trusted Group to Overhaul WordPress.org and Five for the Future

Simon Reeps shares:

Some new Faircamp development insights

Ghost

First Draft Media shares:

Ghost now comes with RTL newsletter support!

A Whole Lotta Nothing is:

Announcing Social Comments for Ghost

Jannis Fedoruk-Betschki explains:

AI deploys software. It doesn't operate it.

Yet another reason not to use AI in the first place.

Build Awesome

Kitty Giraudel explores:

Optimizing Images with Eleventy on Netlify

Micro.blog

Manton Reece announces:

Major new version of Inkwell for Mac

Back to top 👆🏼

 


 

Tools

 

MNT shares its:

MNT April 2026 Update

Great news and a good hardware company. I just bought a monitor from them to send some money their way until I need my next Linux computer.

Chat

DeltaChat announces:

The sovtechfund is investing nearly €500K into chatmail

Browsers

Brian Kardell examines:

Browsers and Language Features

Polypane announces:

Polypane 29: New network panel, snippet store and Chromium 148

RasterWeb! says:

Firefox is out, LibreWolf is in!

Cloud

PixelUnion shows us:

Albums Without Limits: How Immich Lets You Organise and Share Your Photos Your Way

Writing

LibreOffice has:

LibreOffice project and community recap: April 2026

Twenty Years On, ODF Is Still the Only Open Standard for Office Documents, and the Only One Governments Can Trust

Thank you, on behalf of ODF

Announcing the new LibreOffice website!

XWIKI shares:

Webinar overview: Meet CryptPad, the open-source alternative to mainstream office suites

Creative

Subvert announces:

May 12, We Launch Together.

For you musicians out there.

9to5Linux reports:

Inkscape 1.4.4 SVG Editor Released with a New Palette, Performance Improvements

Linux/Open Android

Open Source Musings shares a:

Quick Tip: Add Web Apps to Your Desktop with GNOME Web

Very useful, if you can get GNOME Web installed.

Ubuntu looks at:

Permissions Prompting: A Deep Dive

It's FOSS shares:

7 Features I Like in Ptyxis (The New Default Ubuntu Terminal)

Phosh has its:

Development News April 2026

PostmarketOS is:

Switching from pbsplash to Plymouth

The Register reports:

Where to buy a non-Apple, non-Google smartphone

9to5Linux reports:

Calibre 9.8 E-Book Manager Improves Content Server, Native TTS Engine, and More

Hosting / Serving

./techtipsy shows us:

How I self-host this blog at home with a dynamic IPv4 address, IPv6 prefix, and a dash of Wireguard

Local First

Bruno Croci explores:

A local-first sync setup for a markdown-based feed reader

Harper

Harper is a solid and free grammar checker that respects your privacy.

Harper

Back to top 👆🏼

 


 

Programming

 

Matthew Tift advocates:

Caring about Software, Caring about People

This is worthy of being a featured article. So, please read it.

That HTML Blog shares:

The Best Introduction Guide to SVG You Will Read

It's FOSS reports:

Typical Microsoft! Turns Out VS Code Was Adding Copilot as a Git Co-Author Without Telling Anyone

Please use V.S. Codium if you have to go this route. Which hopefully you don’t. And fuck Microslop. See below.

Git

Bookstack announces:

BookStack Has Migrated From GitHub to Codeberg

Chris Smith is:

Migrating from GitHub to Forgejo

It's FOSS reports:

Go Away Microsoft! The Netherlands is Quietly Building Its Own GitHub Replacement

Vito Satori reflects:

On Leaving GitHub

Matthew Lang is:

Moving on from GitHub

Why Not Hugo muses:

On GitHub's downfall

Matt Duggan shares:

If I Could Make My Own GitHub

Andrew Nesbit dreams of:

A GitHub for maintainers

Armin Ronacher examines:

Before GitHub

Martin Hafskjold Thoresen explains:

Git Out

If you haven’t got the hint yet, you should say fuck off to ShitHub.

Here’s how:

A Programmer's Guide to Leaving GitHub

Markdown

Thought Asylum looks at:

Fixing Up My Markdown

Odd Evan explores:

Looking for feedback: Chat Transcripts in Markdown

Great site name.

HTML

Jim Nielsen has a good:

Reminder: You Can Stitch Together Lots of Little HTML Pages With Navigations For Interactions

CSS

Mozilla looks at the:

content-visibility CSS property

Polypane explores:

Using safe-area-inset to build mobile-safe layouts

Julia Evans shares:

Links to CSS colour palettes

Khoa's Space examines:

Teeny-tiny Notes

A cute little effect.

CSS Tricks looks at:

Fixed-Height Cards: More Fragile Than They Look

Interesting, but I largely agree with "Most of the time, letting the browser handle the sizing leads to a more resilient result."

Making Zigzag CSS Layouts With a Grid + Transform Trick

Frontend Masters explains:

CSS n of Selectors for Conditional Validation

A little help with everyone's favorite, web forms. ;)

Web Components

Will Browar leaves Tailwind and Nuxt:

Refactor: Kids Money

Really great stuff.

Evil Martians moves:

From React to native web with nanotags: a migration that saved 100 KB

Aaron Gustafson explores:

Visual Validation Feedback for Form Fields

JavaScript

Ujjwal Sharma asks:

What even is Ecma? (Part 1)

Jxself examines:

Shifting the JavaScript Trap

ESLint announces:

ESLint v10.3.0 released

FirtDev promotes their:

Vanilla Web Book

This looks like a great resource.

AI

Hidde's Blog asks:

Open web vs AI: what can W3C do?

The push notifications idea should definitely be explored.

Linear notes:

Output isn’t design

So true. And the same goes for programming.

Other

Slint shares:

Servo with Slint Update: Windows Support

Pears

Unleash the Power of P2P. Empower Developers, Disrupt the Norm!

Pears

Back to top 👆🏼

 


 

ActivityPub

 

Evan Prodromou says:

Check out "movies.pub"

ActivityPub for WordPress shares:

Radical Speed Month — The Reader Meets the Fediverse

I really wish Ghost was moving forward at this pace.

CybersecKyle demonstrates:

Automating Blog Posts to Mastodon From My Website

Tangled

Kidding, this is not actually ActivityPub but an ATProto equilvalent.

Tangled is the next-generation social coding platform built with ATProto.

Tangled

Back to top 👆🏼

 


 

Fediverse

 

Hamish Campbell has this analysis:

The Meta-Mess of the “Open” Social Web

Spot on. And it's why we are working on our Manade project in addition to our work here. You need to walk the talk so to speak.

Join the Fediverse announces:

Join the fediverse! zine

FediLabs has:

Settings in Fedilab have been reworked to improve the UX

UntrackMe 2.0 will be available soon

Ideally you would avoid most of these sites to begin with.

Holos announces:

A new version of Holos has been released

I like it so far. But, it's definitely a work in progress.

Mastodon announces:

Mastodon's first ever Discovery Week is just a few days away.

Friendica announces:

Friendica 2026.04 release candidate

And NodeBB shares:

NodeBB v4.11.0 Release Notes

Connected Places has:

Federation Has a European Legal Problem

Judges are nearly as incompetent as politicians when it comes to tech.

FR 161 – Conference Edition

Solid coverage of two events.

Phoenix Paulina Schmid looks at:

The Glass Floor of Digital Sovereignty

Betula announces:

Version 1.7.0

And Pachli announces.

Pachli 3.6.1 released

I just downloaded it to my de-googled phone and will check this Mastodon client out.

Bonfire

Bonfire shares:

Our Fediforum demo is up!

If you are interested in our Manade project, give it a view.

Back to top 👆🏼

 


 

More

 

Silverpill explores the:

Fediverse & P2P

LibreSolutions examines:

Fungible Digital Infrastructure for bottom-up resilience and censorship resistance

Monospace Mentor is:

Going back to the roots for our community chat

It’s In My Head says:

Decentralize your communication

If you are looking for a Matrix instance, this might meet your needs.

Bakelight and Roses asks:

Do webrings work?

Let's hope so. I just added two to our footer.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation shows us:

A Bridge to Somewhere: How to Link Your Mastodon, Bluesky, or Other Federated Accounts

Web Mentions

Matthias Ott announces:

Buck­le Up: Webmention plugin for Craft CMS version 1.3.0

RSS

Michael Barrett shows us how to:

Make a RSS app

NetNewsWire announces:

NetNewsWire Now Getting Feed Images from RSS

Andre Franca show us:

How to style a Hugo Atom feed with XSL

Susam Pal moves:

From RSS to Atom

Terence Eden notes:

RSS Feeds Send Me More Traffic Than Google

Other Federated Social Media

Fitz Thiar opines:

WordPress Social? I don’t get it!

BTW, this is neither Tumblr or ActivityPub for WordPress. ???

Elena Rossini reports:

[W Social uncovered: the reality behind the hype](

https://blog.elenarossini.com/w-social-uncovered-the-reality-behind-the-hype/)

In effect it's a corporate, somewhat suss Eurosky clone.

TechCrunch reports:

As X shuts down Communities, Acorn debuts an alternative that puts creators in control

This looks like ATProto's version of Bonfire. And it's a hell of a lot easier to setup. And cheaper. Though less customizable.

Another similar project (but for cities) and built on ATProto is:

Roundabout

Anuj Ahooja is:

Introducing Disperse: A Share Sheet for the Atmosphere

Noah Bogart looks at:

Bluesky Comments

Democracy Tech

Decidim announces:

Decidim Fest 2026 Save The Date & Internal Regulations

eMail / Newsletters

Buttondown muses on:

What email will look like in the future

And has:

Simplified email address settings

Should we bring back email exploders?

This is a terrific history lesson.

Toni Notes notes:

A newsletter should extend a publication, not duplicate it

Good advise for professional publications but a little overkill for personal ones, IMHO.

Kevin Quirk shares:

My Inital Thoughts On Thunderbird Pro

Ghost introduces:

Saved member views

 


 

CTAs

 

And please build something for a community!

 


 

Blasts from the past

Previous Battalion Posts

Previous Symfony Station Posts