Several years ago, I heard about GNU social. That sounded like an interesting change from the centralized giants like Facebook and Twitter, so I installed it on a spare server. It was… interesting: not great, not terrible. Shortly after, I started hearing about this Mastodon thing, which was basically GNU social but prettier. I gave in and installed it on my laptop as a trial, and was immediately blown away. It wasn’t just nicer looking, but polished and professional. I loved it.

Free Radical is now on Mastodon v3.5.0.

For FRZ’s fifth anniversary, I’m thrilled to announce that we commissioned the amazing @Wetdryvac@hackers.town to design a gorgeous new logo for our site. For a limited time, we’re making Free Radical anniversary five merch available from our online store, with 100% of profits through the end of April, 2022, going to charity. Check it out, buy some beautiful, sure-to-be-collectible loot, and make the world better. Everybody wins!

Today I received this email:

From: Victor Coutand

Subject: Questions About CCPA Data Access Process for freeradical.zone

To Whom It May Concern:

My name is Victor Coutand, and I am a resident of Nice, France. I have a few questions about your process for responding to California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) data access requests:

1. Would you process a CCPA data access request from me even though I am not a resident of California?
2. Do you process CCPA data access requests via email, a website, or telephone? If via a website, what is the URL I should go to?
3. What personal information do I have to submit for you to verify and process a CCPA data access request?
4. What information do you provide in response to a CCPA data access request?

To be clear, I am not submitting a data access request at this time. My questions are about your process for when I do submit a request.

Sometimes a creator loses touch with how people use their creation. I worry that Eugen Rochko has found himself in a bubble and doesn’t understand why the rest of us like Mastodon.

Eugen and friends released the new official Mastodon for iPhone app, and users noticed that it doesn’t show local or federated timelines. He responded:

The omission is intentional and I do not intend to add these types of timelines into the app. […] The fediverse is diverse because you can follow anyone from any server. The local timeline plays no role in that and doesn’t even exist in ActivityPub as a concept. Being able to choose a different server has always been about trust for the service provider and rules.

I’ve blocked signing up for FRZ accounts with Tutanota email addresses.

The service itself is fine, but it seems to be aggressive about deleting unused addresses. As a practical matter, this has led to a lot bouncing notifications, users getting locked out of their accounts when they can’t reset their passwords, and other technical issues.

Free Radical is now on Mastodon v3.4.1.

Free Radical is now on Mastodon v3.4.0.

Free Radical was born 4 years ago today. Thank you so much to all my friends who’ve made this such a fun and rewarding project! Each of you has brightened my world a little in your own way.

Free Radical is now on Mastodon v3.3.0.