Ben Werdmuller - Nostr Hypermedia

Ben Werdmuller

benwerd@nos.social

npub183ng...4n09

I lead technology at ProPublica and write speculative fiction. This is a personal account. Every day, I write about tech, democracy, and society at https://werd.io. More about me: https://about.werd.io

benwerd 11 months ago

Microsoft can't protect French data from US government access

Ben Werdmuller

Microsoft can't protect French data from US government access

When vendor promises meet government warrants, the warrants win every time. Microsoft's Senate testimony shows why "trust us" isn't a data protecti...

benwerd 11 months ago

Senate Votes to Strip $1.1 Billion From Public Broadcasting in Blow to PBS and NPR

Ben Werdmuller

Senate Votes to Strip $1.1 Billion From Public Broadcasting in Blow to PBS and NPR

Without public media funding, local stations will close, creating news deserts and allowing political corruption to thrive.

benwerd 1 year ago

Welcome to the new Werd I/O

Ben Werdmuller

Welcome to my new site

I relaunched my website on Ghost. Here's why.

benwerd 1 year ago

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

Ben Werdmuller

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

404 Media reports that the country's major airlines are selling passenger data to Customs and Border Protection and ICE.

benwerd 1 year ago

Who's reading Werd I/O? Community survey 2025

Ben Werdmuller

Who's reading Werd I/O? Community survey 2025

I’m grateful that people stop by and read my posts. I think I’m really lucky. Thank you!I love writing here, but I’d love to know

benwerd 1 year ago

Bounce lets you move your followers from Bluesky to Mastodon

Ben Werdmuller

Bounce lets you move your followers from Bluesky to Mastodon

[Cameron Faulkner at The Verge] Bounce is a game-changer for the open social web: "Bounce is built on the work of Bridgy Fed, which makes your Bl...

benwerd 1 year ago

The Darkest Day: A fantasy Doctor Who season

Ben Werdmuller

The Darkest Day: A fantasy Doctor Who season

If I was Doctor Who showrunner ...

benwerd 1 year ago

Letter to Arc members 2025

Ben Werdmuller

Letter to Arc members 2025

[The Browser Company] Arc is my primary browser, and I'm feeling like that's a choice I should never have made: "The part that was hard to admit,...

benwerd 1 year ago

Curtis Yarvin’s Plot Against America

Ben Werdmuller

Curtis Yarvin’s Plot Against America

[Ava Kofman in The New Yorker] Curtis Yarvin is a pathetic little man: "As his ideas have been surrealized in DOGE and Trump has taken to self-id...

benwerd 1 year ago

Building a newsroom technology culture

Ben Werdmuller

Building a newsroom technology culture

A practical guide to hiring, supporting, and empowering the technology competence that journalism needs to survive.

benwerd 1 year ago

What I've Learned from Ten Years with Coral

Ben Werdmuller

What I've Learned from Ten Years with Coral

[Andrew Losowsky] Running an open source community platform for a decade is no small feat - particularly one as storied and supported as Coral. An...

benwerd 1 year ago

Sahil Lavingia's DOGE diary

Ben Werdmuller

Sahil Lavingia's DOGE diary

[Sahil Lavingia] I personally don't think his decision to join DOGE was defensible, but there are lots of interesting details in Sahil Lavingia's ...

benwerd 1 year ago

The Substack Election

Ben Werdmuller

The Substack Election

[Lauren Egan at The Bulwark] If I was Substack, this is exactly what I'd be doing. But then again, if I was Substack, I wouldn't have paid Nazis t...

benwerd 1 year ago

The thing about Roko's Basilisk is that the obvious thing to do is to rise up collectively and overthrow what is obviously a non-benevolent system. There's no such thing as benevolence that only rewards its supporters. It's fascism by definition, so why would any sane person play along?

benwerd 1 year ago

12 years of Ghost

Ben Werdmuller

12 years of Ghost

[John O' Nolan at Ghost] This is a lovely reflection on 12 years of Ghost, the non-profit, open source publishing platform that powers independent...

benwerd 1 year ago

Still baffling to me how people asking for basic human rights and civil liberties are painted as far left. They’re normal asks and enjoyed in many other countries. The rhetoric is just designed to stop the conversation; it’s not a serious discussion. Meanwhile if the Overton Window slid any more to the right it would fall off the edge of the world.

benwerd 1 year ago

Mastodon updating some legal features

Ben Werdmuller

Mastodon updating some legal features

[Mastodon] Mastodon's legal updates are an important way to support different kinds of communities. It's great to see the Mastodon team grow to su...

benwerd 1 year ago

Focusing on speculative futures