@haverholm I'm glad you asked because I was wondering the same thing. Yesterday I posted about how infuriating it was to spend hours doing normal tasks and after I finally got a blog post up, Wordpress sent me a questionnaire asking how they could improve it. I told them to get rid of AI and read Ed Zitron and Cory Doctorow. Or I suggested they offer the old non-AI version as a option. Here's something I wrote about AI:
proustsaidthat.blog/2025/05/11the-microsoft-doom-loop/

@nspsegal I think there's a slash missing in your URL: https://proustsaidthat.blog/2025/05/11/the-microsoft-doom-loop/ Giving it a read now.

@julian Could be. How far along is their fediverse implementation?

Also, do you have experience migrating large-ish sites from one to the other? Because I'm involved with one group blog that would need to have 15 years or so worth of posts and podcast series moved from an ancient WP install...

@nspsegal Not a bad piece. I try to avoid Microsoft as much as possible, but they deliver infrastructure for my day job. It has been so depressing to follow how they just forced Copilot on *their paying customers*.

Suddenly the entire educational institution has implemented guidelines and advice on how students and staff can use "AI" in their work. Not guidelines *against* it, because it has been normalised through the software the workplace provides.

See also https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-destroying-the-university-and-learning-itself

@nspsegal Me, I dodge the bullet by using Linux and open source software. So far, LibreOffice hasn't drunk the "AI" kool aid.

Wordpress straying down that path is not a great sign of things to come, but I remain hopeful of a not entirely idiotic future.

@morph @julian My first reaction is that Hubzilla is more slanted toward the federation part than the blog and site building focus of WP, but actually — that's not a drawback. Yeah, I'll have to give it a try.

@haverholm @julian
It's indeed usable as CMS. There's of course not that supply of themes and fancy stuff like for WP.

@morph TBF most of the WP themes are bloated frameworks anyway. @julian

@haverholm @julian
I saw some amazing sites people have built on their Hubs.

BTW ... what is the magic that this thread is located in the activitypub.space #nodebb forum? Didn't the conversation start with a common Mastodon post?

@morph Re: magic sauce — I think it's as simple as me using the ActivityPub hashtag in the original mastodon post? I can't say for certain, just a guess.

Or maybe @julian commenting pulled in the thread? Federation, guys. It's weird and wonderful.

@haverholm @julian
Indeed it is. Viva La Föderation!

@morph I hadn't even seen the forum post version until you mentioned it. Below my toot it says "[#]activitypub shared this topic about _ hours ago", so I suppose it is in fact an automated, hashtag based aggregation? @julian

@morph @julian They haven't federated my edit to the post, though. Now I will always be remembered as the guy who can't tell "to" from "too"

This is my platonic ideal of a WP install file, courtesy of the Internet Archive's Wayback machine.

I wish somebody would just fork at this version, only implementing security updates between then and now.
@woe2you @davidgerard

@julian I knew vaguely of the NodeBB AP implementation, thanks for the reminder And the follow issue was easily fixed! @morph

@julian One thing confuses me a bit. Registration for NodeBB works just locally (with Email, Github, Google etc.) and creates a new AP handle, right? Not by use of your existing one. That's just in use by following the forums' categories.
@haverholm

@julian I saw there exists a YunoHost package and of course now I want to run a node. I just have to figure out my ressources. They say it eats up to 1.5GB RAM. o.O
But won't that be much lower with the very few people on board which are to expect? Or will nodebb reserve the memory?

@haverholm Apologies for the typo. The weird thing is that lately I haven't been able to cut and paste things between one site and another. I don't know what that's about.

@haverholm Unfortunately, I'm not tech savvy, and I rely on my IT person's advice. From what I can tell, Libre Office has incorporated Apple's old Pages program, and that has taken on AI. However, Microsoft has now added a button to undo the AI function. I guess scathing critiques are useful.

@haverholm

I have this fantasy that all the unemployed brilliant tech people will join forces and create better options...