Austin’s Homebrew Website Club is on the first Wednesday of the month. This past week it was again at Mozart’s Coffee.

Among several good topics of conversation were some related to the federated Mastodon social network. Zach Faddis shared some of his experiences maintaining an instance. Although the timelines are public, this instance is invite-only and there have been no real moderation issues yet. Regarding another Mastodon instance, Isaiah mentioned the Wil Wheaton ejection which brought up some challenging moderation issues but ultimately demonstrated the importance of owning your own domain.

There was also some good discussion about the dominance of Twitter and Facebook through network effects but also how smaller, sustainable networks with an interest group focus can be more rewarding.

The next Austin HWC is Wednesday, October 3rd at Mozart’s Coffee.

With guidance from Chris Aldrich, I confirmed that the dshanske/twentysixteen-indieweb works great with webmentions on the EFF-Austin site. Thanks once again to David Shanske.

Thanks!!! I will try that one out on the eff-austin site later this week.