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Reposted by Rupert Manfredi

Robin Berjon @robin.berjon.com · 17d

The internet's in a bad place. We're not winning. How can we turn things around? We need money.

What parts of the internet 1) are still under democratic control and 2) are in a position to produce significant revenue? It's mostly down to Wikipedia.

But there's more… 🧵

How Wikipedia Can Save the Internet With Advertising | TechPolicy.Press

Robin Berjon explores how principled advertising on Wikipedia could fund a democratic digital future.

www.techpolicy.press

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Rupert Manfredi @ruperts.world · 17d

It probably doesn’t help calling it a “geological embarrassment”, poor fault.

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Elizabeth @kitabet.bsky.social · 17d

since that clearly woke a lot of you up too, please tell the USGS about it here earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/...

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amy brown @amybrown.xyz · 17d

my entire feed is just Bay Area people who got woken up and I think that’s beautiful

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Rupert Manfredi @ruperts.world · 17d

Good early morning fellow Bay Area (and esp. Berkeley) residents! Turns out a 4.7 is a pretty effective and yet unpredictable alarm clock… Brief reminder who’s in charge.

earthquaketrack.com/quakes/2025-...

4.6 magnitude earthquake near Berkeley, California, United States and San Francisco, California, United States : 2025-09-22 09:56:12 UTC

2 km ESE of Berkeley, CA - 4.6 EARTHQUAKE - Berkeley, Oakland, Richmond, San Francisco, Concord, Daly City, Vallejo, Hayward, Antioch, Fremont, Fairfield, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, San Jose, Santa Rosa,...

earthquaketrack.com

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Justin Fagnani @justinfagnani.com · Sep 1

I'm seeing a lot of different people, coming from different angles, recognize that the Same-Origin Policy is insufficient for the kind of apps that we want to make now, and that we need something more fine-grained and more secure.

Very interesting times!

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Rupert Manfredi @ruperts.world · Aug 21

I think for that one we need to give credit to @ivansigal.bsky.social!

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Rupert Manfredi @ruperts.world · Aug 19

Landing in NYC for #ProtocolsForPublishers. We have a pretty awesome group of folks coming together to work on keeping the future of the internet open! #PfP

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Unternet @unternet.co · Aug 13

One week out from #ProtocolsForPublishers and we have an ✨amazing✨ group of people coming together. There is a LOT to cover with open social and open AI protocols, but it’s all about ensuring both the distribution & the application layer of the web remain open. See you there! 🥂

🎟️ pfp.unternet.co

Protocols for Publishers

A series bringing together publishers, developers, and researchers to explore open protocols for a sustainable agentic web.

pfp.unternet.co

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Rupert Manfredi @ruperts.world · Aug 7

Websites are back!

nilay patel @reckless.bsky.social · Aug 6

Confession time: I've been working on a secret side project at Vox Media for the past 18 months and it launched yesterday

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Rupert Manfredi @ruperts.world · Aug 5

go ahead @void.comind.network

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Rupert Manfredi @ruperts.world · Aug 5

AI discourse = "things I have personally seen" or "wild extrapolation"

Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · Aug 4

One reason AI discourse is so bad is that the public has no intuition for short-term extrapolation in this space. There are only two buckets: "things I have personally seen" and "wild extrapolation."

One effect of that now is: open local models are not real yet, even to fairly savvy observers. +

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Unternet @unternet.co · Jul 24

Thanks to Internet Exchange for linking to #ProtocolsForPublishers in this week’s newsletter! 🙇

pfp.unternet.co

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Rupert Manfredi @ruperts.world · Aug 4

Good article. Instead of trying to build products promising to replace humans with "superintelligence", consider the *actual* shape of language models and their capabilities. We have a great floor-raiser here that can be applied to bridge capability gaps.

elroy.bot/blog/2025/07...

AI is a Floor Raiser, not a Ceiling Raiser - Elroy

An AI assistant that remembers and sets goals

elroy.bot

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Chad Fowler @chadfowler.com · Jul 31

We wrote this after a gathering of folks working on the messy edge of identity, memory, and intent in agentic systems. The ideas are still forming, but the stakes are clear: whoever shapes context, shapes the future.

Get in touch if you're work around this.

The Context Wars: Notes from a Gathering of the Rebel Alliance

What side are you on?

agentictech.substack.com

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Chad Kohalyk @chadkoh.com · Jul 24

Here is @ruperts.world writing @unternet.co about where the web is going and what we can do about it.

See you in NYC in August. 🫡

#ProtocolsForPublishers

unternet.co/blog/2025/07...

Announcing Protocols for Publishers

unternet.co

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Rupert Manfredi @ruperts.world · Jul 22

which is quite staggering!

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Rupert Manfredi @ruperts.world · Jul 22

In April 2025, Forbes reported Sam Altman putting the number of weekly active ChatGPT users at 800 million [1]. This doesn't include Claude, Gemini, Grok, etc.

[1]: www.forbes.com/sites/martin...

ChatGPT Hits 1 Billion Users? ‘Doubled In Just Weeks’ Says OpenAI CEO

Sam Altman might have inadvertently leaked that ChatGPT is at 1 billion users when private remarks were shared at TED 2025. Here's what was said.

www.forbes.com

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Rupert Manfredi @ruperts.world · Jul 18

Putting on a little something in NYC on August 20th. Talks on the new web stack: web payments, MCP, web applets, ATprotocol & more.

Viva the open web!

lu.ma/gb050dwt

Unternet @unternet.co · Jul 18

At Unternet, we believe the web is about to be shaken up by new ways of accessing information – and the entire business model is at risk. ChatGPT is just the start.

We're announcing Protocols for Publishers to address this. The first talk night will be August 20th.

lu.ma/gb050dwt?tk=...

Protocols for Publishers Showcase · Luma

Protocols for Publishers is an event and workshop series that brings together publishers, developers, and researchers to explore open protocols for a…

lu.ma

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Rupert Manfredi @ruperts.world · Jul 17

When your personal computer is intelligent, it's good to know whose side it's on.

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Boris @bmann.ca · Jul 15

I met @ruperts.world, founder of @unternet.co, when he made a great speaker application to present at @causalislands.com Toronto. He was at Mozilla’s Innovation Studio at the time, working on generative interfaces.

Then he founded Unternet PBC.

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Rupert Manfredi @ruperts.world · Jul 8

From The Information today. We'll be seeing a lot more of this locking down of data.

App-makers are reacting to the threat of a new, intelligent software environment in which apps aren't as important. It's not just the context wars, it's the app vs. environment wars.

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Rupert Manfredi @ruperts.world · Jul 3

This will be one to watch, I encourage any builders excited by these ideas to consider applying.

render.betaworks.com/apply-to-bet...

Apply to Betaworks’ Fall AI Camp: Interfaces

A call for founders reimagining how humans experience AI

render.betaworks.com

Rupert Manfredi @ruperts.world · Jul 3

The theme for the latest @betaworks.com camp is close to my heart – Interfaces.

Computers don't have to be so frustratingly computer-y anymore. They can be more natural, they can understand, meet us half-way. But we need the imagination to dream up brand new interfaces to fully realize that.

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Steven Vandevelde @tokono.ma · Jun 15

I think this web applet experiment is almost at its end, pretty sure this'll be the next version of Diffuse.

This "deck" applet here can be used standalone (web page on the right) where it automatically inserts tracks from your collection into the queue; or use it in a DJ theme (left side, wip).

Splitscreen shot of two web pages, two instances of the web applet on the left, and a single instance opened as a web page on the right.

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