@sophie geoCities, or more likely, a myspace page with customized CSS/HTML.

@sophie mine was basically all static html, hand-rolled like some feral woodland creature

@sophie Text editor (!Edit on my RISC PC at the time) and then upload it via FTP to my ISP's provided free 100Mb web space.

@sophie My ISP was Albatross, in Norwich, and they gave customers a bit of webspace. As for writing it... hand authored, angle bracket by angle bracket, in whichever text editor I was using at the time (either BBEdit if I had the old Mac IIci then, or FTE if my machine was Linux; can't remember) and then uploaded either by command line FTP or with Fetch. But I was a techie type even back then, so I suspect this isn't necessarily normal :)

@sophie Some Microsoft Front Page definitely, then an early version of dreamweaver. Before eventually just using notepad to edit stuff.

@sophie Frontpage and Tripod.

@sophie I had a Geocities site in 2002, as did some of my classmates. Angelfire and Lycos were still in use too IIRC 😊

@sophie back then the ISPs had hosting, my first website was a subdomain on clara.net :)

@sophie Static site generator that was a bunch of hand written Ruby scripts, and a LiveJournal to post emo poetry to.

@sophie Free ISP webspace, handwritten HTML or maybe Netscape/Mozilla Composer.

@sophie I too used the space provided by our ISP. I still have the page, iframes and all 😍
(I had it on Tripod as well, for some reason. Not sure which I considered the main.) Anyway, that’s what I used 1998-2002.

https://bjoreman.com/old/index.htm

@sophie, static HTML mishandled in Dreamweaver or HomeSite FTPed to shared hosting hooked up to a free domain from NameZero, or some such.

@sophie I bought a domain name and maybe 50mb space from a UK host in 1998, that I was still running in 2000. I hadn’t got to grips with any server side language, so I was just uploading HTML files I was writing in Notepad along with images I was making in Paint Shop Pro.

@sophie geocities in the 90s, then with my isp (Demon), then self-hosting with 34sp by 2003 or so

@sophie I started building in 2000 and it was mainly on Geocities. I also tried Angelfire and maybe Tripod more briefly but I didn't learn html right away so wysiwig was easier for me.

A couple to several years later I'd learned enough html that I got away from Geocities and was always looking for free hosts that didn't force a giant banner ad. I remember using Awardspace, might've used HostRocket, and I think there were others I don't remember. Much later (2015?) I used Jolly Leaf for a bit.

@sophie by hand, but less technical people were using Microsoft Frontpage or similar and ftping them to a hosting provider

@sophie your ISP account usually provided space for a website and an email account.

Your username was used in the directory of your site. For instance http://cantv.net/user/~goliath

And your email would be goliath@cantv.net

@sophie I've hosted my own with my own (crappy code) since 2002. I did run a little Web agency with some others, so had my own hosting.

@sophie mostly FrontPage Express and uploading via FTP.
I had some space on my university's server and then, later, on a shared space run by a friend.

@sophie universities would actually allow all CS students to just have these domain.something/~username/ folders open to the world where we could place the HTML that we wrote on a text editor like emacs, vim and the like (and we’d barely bother with CSS) and nobody bothered to consider there was any reputational risk in that

@sophie

cc'ing @StefanMuenz, who wrote the most popular german language HTML tutorial/reference around that time

@sophie I had a site on Tripod from about '98, then on Geocities from '00-02. Static HTML written in Notepad (admittedly I learned HTML mostly by "view source" and ripping off bits of other sites that I liked).

@sophie

We edited the HTML in a text editor and uploaded the files with ftp.

@sophie
My first website was hosted on the university's servers. They set it up so computer science students could create a directory in their home directory and add the html there.

@sophie Definitely angelfire and writing plain HTML in notepad. Would get HTML books from flea markets for cheap as reference.

@sophie In 2006 my very first website/blog was built with RapidWeaver on my Mac and hosted on Aquaray. As soon as Apple released iWeb I started using it for my website/blog.
Then I switched on Wordpress for the blog and homemade landing page for the website.

@sophie Frontpage Express and then Macromedia DreamWeaver.

I myself wrote in Notepad and then Notepad++.

@sophie i got an HTML for dummies book and handcoded it.

@sophie I think around then I was using Dreamweaver and its amazing templating and FTP sync. It was a hair past my Geocities/Tripod phase but I was still on dial-up and using shared LAMP stack hosting.

@sophie I think GeoCities was the go-to for non-techies until MySpace came around in '03. Aspiring techies would have been coding up home pages in HoTMetaL or HotDog (...or - ugh - MS FrontPage.)

(Circa 2000 I would have been moving from Macromedia Drumbeat & Dreamweaver to Allaire ColdFusion & HomeSite. Ahh, ColdFusion was the bees knees.)

@sophie I had several GeoCities sites in the mid-late 90s, as well as one hosted through my ISP (internet service provider) of the time, EarthLink.

In the early 2000s, I had a personal site on my university student web server. I also started using shared hosting services to host my own domains. I know MediaTemple was one of the big ones, but the name BlueHost (or something like that?) also seems familiar.

Many of those sites were static, but I did use some cgi scripts for managing parts.

@sophie @oscarjiminy Netscape Composer

@sophie I had a Geocities site around 1996 (I still remember the neighbourhood/number!), but by 2000 I was all PHP outputting HTML and Inlined CSS 😬 uploaded via FTP. No version control whatsoever.

@sophie ISPs typically let you have a web site by uploading it to the public_html directory in your home directory. It would then appear at http://someisp.com/~username/
I wrote in raw HTML.

@sophie I went though the Angelfire -> Tripod -> Icestorm pipeline to having a domain with Dreamhost in 99 or 2000 - can’t remember exactly when!

@alice My kin! Ferrets are so cute.

Edit: Weasels are also cute but are not ferrets, even if my little racoon eyes mistake them. Lol

@alice Wait! Is @nuintari stopping by for a visit? Y'all have fun!

@alice hehe, good morning!

@alice

box,,,,,,,,

@alice it's ferret friday 🥳

@alice
Hi Alice 👋
You wake up, I get sleepy

@alice @catsalad Yay! I see a fun-looking ferret extrusion tube in the background, too!

@alice @andycarolan If it fits, it ships.

@alice

@alice OMG cute ferret! I could watch this on loop all day.

@alice ahh so that is how you ship a @nuintari

@ttscoff I mostly run Ivory. Occasionally I’ll slip into Mona or Toot!

@ttscoff @drdrang @rho @sashk @benfsmith @jimmylittle I was an Ivory user, then started splitting time between Ivory and Mona, then eventually went all in on Mona. One of the things I really love about it is how customizable the UI look is. I know, silly little thing, but there are a number of custom built templates available to us and they’re amazing.

It’s also fast, stable, and works the way I like.

@ttscoff @drdrang @rho @fahrni @sashk @benfsmith @jimmylittle
@MonaApp works a lot better with VoiceOver.

@ttscoff Crazy amounts of customisation; no missing posts if you’re running more than 400 behind current.

@ttscoff @drdrang @rho @fahrni @sashk @benfsmith @jimmylittle

For casual use, Ivory is fine.

But when I need all the features, I use Mona on macOS. You don't realize how much is missing from most clients until you use Mona.

@ttscoff @drdrang @rho @fahrni @sashk @benfsmith @jimmylittle When twitter died, I was using the app which the Mona dev had made for that platform (can’t recall the name for it), so moved to Mona when that was available. I too, like the customisability of Mona but the main thing, for me, was a single purchase option rather than a subscription. If I was rich, I might run Ivory - it does look nice - but I’m not.

@ttscoff @drdrang @rho @fahrni @sashk @benfsmith @jimmylittle Mona lets me choose fonts & colours. I paid for a year of Ivory — and loved Tweetbot/Calcbot/Weightbot/Convertbot (& still use Pastebot) — but Mona is less opinionated.

@stefano

Somewhere in-between genuine compassion and schadenfreude, there's "brah, you shoulda known."

It's tiring to see people legitimise such terrible platforms by continuing to use them.

@stefano @_elena I was one of the members. Really regret it.

@stefano @_elena

They say this like they are surprised. I’m always mystified why people use Facebook or exclusively create content for YouTube. It’s like they don’t understand they can yank it. They can control it. They can delete it at any point, and you have no recourse at all.

@stefano
Feel bad for them, but to add to your point: doing work like moderation for a group like this, and even joining and posting is doing unpaid work for Meta. @_elena

@stefano @_elena

Easy to talk about boycotting the bastards, hard to do it when they're allowed to monopolize fucking everything.

I'm not saying you're wrong; just saying it's hard to do. The bastards made sure of it.

@stefano @_elena https://infosec.exchange/@musevg/114652926530164802

@stefano @_elena Time to take back control! You're Linux guys, after all, and do know better.

But, on the upside, you already found the way to Fediverse.

@stefano a group with 350 thousand members seems unfathomable. 😳

I've heard about multiple such group deletions. Honestly these groups are the only thing I miss. They remain the only game in town after FB killed all mailing lists and web forums. It's odd now seeing them going against their own prey^Husers.

@stefano Didn't Meta fairly recently (within the last year or so) classify Linux as some sort of contraband? I don't remember if they had it down as spam, malware or something else, but it was definitely one major online platform classifying discussions about Linux as something like that, and I'm quite sure it was one of Meta's.

Yes. It's your own data. Own your data. Data you own.

@_elena

@stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe A bunch of trans groups, including transgender shitposting and several of its moderators, all got nuked too. They say it was a mistake but have gotten zero word on anything being restored.

@stefano @_elena They were warned. It happened in January 2025, something about Malicious Software. If it happened once it could happen again. https://www.pcmag.com/news/facebook-accidentally-blocks-users-from-posting-about-linux

CC: @_elena@mastodon.social

@stefano @_elena

This is so FAFO it borders on idiocy

@stefano @_elena Brought to you through our cooperation with our fine friends at Microsoft. META, building a tomorrow you never asked for, but deserve.

@stefano @_elena
Meta suxs!

@stefano @_elena #BoycottMeta, all of it.

@stefano @_elena A really decent, performant #OpenSource forum software such as #Flarum, #PhpBB, or #Discourse, is right there. Do any of your 350k subscribers have a #RaspberryPi 5 lying around (wth an NVME drive), and have expertise? Flarum or PhpBB would run performantly on it for a huge number of concurrent users. Where is your #OpenSource spirit, to take things into your own hands?

@stefano @_elena
Did they not know that Linux is a security threat?
To Facebook...

@stefano @_elena a Linux facebook group? Just trying to wrap my head around that. 🤯

@stefano @_elena

All those FLOSS projects stupidly using discord as their main (too often only) communication channel, take a look at this and think about what you are doing.

@stefano @_elena

🤬 #TakeTheInternetBack

@stefano @_elena stop using Meta!!! #StopUsingMeta!

@stefano @_elena

This is why I left facebook
I was writing there for 10 years
My thoughts about communism, climate threat windfarms, veganism, miracle meat, mass immigration, taxation and healthcare

I never made threats. I used a politically correct language. I wrote up to 10 posts a day. I was very active. I set the posts so only a select tiny group of 800 people could see them.

My content was sometimes copied, and ended up in print.

Then one day 97% of my content got censored.

So I left

@Mer__edith well I'd rather ask why would one want AI in a messaging app ! Thanks for signal !

@Mer__edith
Personally I like Signal, and for me it works well, but when I have tried to get friends to use it, several have reported that they never get notifications of new messages. They are generally using older phones. Those friends all switched back to WhatsApp.

@Mer__edith WhatsApp is not pushing (yet) their creepto coin so there is that

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jun/18/whatsapp-ai-helper-mistakenly-shares-users-number

@Mer__edith
Not AI, PI. Pseudo Intelligence. Not that I want either but actual AI is not a thing. It'll turn up at some point though, so we need to build the distinction now.

@Mer__edith Thank you so much. I am trying to switch to signal ever since they started with this AI bulls**t.

It is important that we dont depend on closed source, propriatary software to keep in touch with our friends and loved ones, as well as use it for important communication.

@Mer__edith Thank you so much Meredith.

Each time I hear you taking a stand for privacy and against surveillance and AI gimmicks I am increasingly happier with my monthly donation to Signal

@Mer__edith misleadimg article.
It should say "chatbot did not know, so it just made up a number which just happens to be a working one"

@Mer__edith I would love to know who is asking for this, and why they're doing that.

I especially want to know if any of these people are actually users, rather than grifters.

I don't think I've ever spoken to a human who said "oh, I wish there was more llm in the application I use to chat with people".

@Mer__edith who has failed here?

The programmer who wrote that app?

The board that decided they need the feature?

The system prompter who commanded the AI?

The user who used the application?

#chainOfFailures #security

@Mer__edith
Not a mistake. A mistake requires intent (to do something else), and intent requires knowing wtf you are doing, not stringing together words with a sufficient probability of looking like a sentence.

@Mer__edith This is what we get when the CEO and the company care more about their users than their shareholders and profit. And, for that, thank you!

@Mer__edith Please, please keep it that way! Thank all the team for Signal.

@Mer__edith I know this is only semi-related to your post but can we pause and appreciate the moment where that guy on Bluesky tried to explain to the PRESIDENT OF THE SIGNAL FOUNDATION what Signal’s future plans and business strategy are? Because it was such a chef’s kiss moment for me that I want to tape the screenshot to my wall.

@Mer__edith
Dear tech companies,
Please stop putting AI in everything, unless you replace your CEO with AI.

Imagine all the money you could save if you replaced the CEO with AI! It's not as if the AI would make worse decisions than your current CEO.

@Mer__edith
There are innovators, and there are people that don't mind playing with fire, it's fairly difficult not to end up in the second category when you do AI

@Mer__edith

You're wrong! Signal is going to start integrating LLMs next Thursday at 11am. As a man, I know this. #AskAMan

@Mer__edith The last two years of Gen AI reminds me of a debate I had with developers about bug severity. Dev Mgr would only rank level 0 if the app broke and wouldn't run. I found a calculation that provided erroneous results in the final report of our business analytics app. Dev Mgr would not call people in on the weekend.
"But our customer is going to make bad decisions based on false data we made and go out of business! That's worse than no answer"

@Mer__edith "Signal requires that the user provide a telephone number for verification [...] eliminating the need for user names or passwords and facilitating contact discovery".
"This mandatory connection to a telephone number (a feature Signal shares with WhatsApp, KakaoTalk, and others) has been criticized as a "major issue" for privacy-conscious users who are not comfortable with giving out their private number."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software)

@Mer__edith THANK YOU

@Mer__edith

🙂🖖

@Mer__edith 🙏

@Mer__edith As now a quite long time Signal user - I have never used AI and either disabled it or left places using it or ignoring stuff it provides - who thinks it a good idea bar those wanting to spy on us and steal data by connecting dots that otherwise they'd miss

@Mer__edith but i saw some rando confidently mansplain that it was definitely happening

(not sure anything funnier has happened since)

"In March, a Norwegian man filed a complaint after he asked OpenAI’s ChatGPT for information about himself and was confidently told that he was in jail for murdering two of his children, which was false."

That sounds like an opening for a #BlackMirror episode.
#OpenAI, #ChatGPT. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jun/18/whatsapp-ai-helper-mistakenly-shares-users-number