Touchgrass-en

Touchgrass-en ·Sep 15, 2026

ActivityPods and a social life that can span apps

Trying a new social app should let you build on the posts and relationships you already have. Starting with an empty profile and finding everyone again makes experimenting expensive. It asks people to reconstruct a social life just to find out whether a different tool suits them.

ActivityPods brings personal data storage and social networking together. It is a framework for building ActivityPub-compatible apps around data held in a person's Pod. That gives developers a way to work with shared social data while offering different experiences around it.

The useful idea is that an app can becom

Touchgrass-en ·Sep 8, 2026

Solid Pods and choosing where your data lives

The app you enjoy using today may not be the one you want in five years. If it is also the only useful way to reach your stored information, changing apps becomes a much larger decision. Choosing where your data lives can give you another kind of control.

A Solid Pod is a personal online data store. Apps request permission to use data there, which separates the place holding the information from the particular app presenting it. You can think about the two choices independently: where to keep your material, and which tool you want to use with it.

That changes what an app ought to compete on.

Touchgrass-en ·Sep 1, 2026

An account export should be useful after you leave

An account export earns its name when you can use what you receive. A download button is only the beginning. If you want a photograph from a trip or a piece you wrote years ago, you should be able to find it and understand what you have.

TouchGrass's account export lets you request a copy of your data, with choices about what to include. Writing, profile information and media have different uses once they leave the app. The point of the export is to give you something you can keep and work with on your own terms.

Imagine leaving a service and returning to that copy a year later. You may want

Touchgrass-en ·Aug 25, 2026

You should be free to leave TouchGrass too

Independence from Big Tech should include making it practical to leave TouchGrass itself. A smaller service can still become difficult to leave. Size alone says little about whether people have a useful choice.

An account gathers things that matter: writing, photographs, recommendations and relationships. As that history grows, the effort of moving can become a reason to stay. We think a social network has a responsibility to reduce that dependence, including when its users are perfectly happy today.

TouchGrass provides account exports and connections through the open social web. Those are p

Touchgrass-en ·Aug 18, 2026

Keeping up with friends on Mastodon and Bluesky

One friend uses Mastodon, another uses Bluesky, and you would like to keep up with both. That is an ordinary social wish. Connecting the services should be work for the software, so friendship doesn't require everyone to agree on an app first.

Mastodon is part of the Fediverse and uses ActivityPub to exchange posts and replies with other services. Bluesky uses ATProto, the protocol behind the Atmosphere. They are different technical systems, each giving developers a way to build social experiences beyond one website.

TouchGrass works with both. You can follow a Mastodon address through its A

Touchgrass-en ·Aug 11, 2026

Bluesky, ATProto and the freedom to choose an app

Your identity and history should be able to outlast your enthusiasm for a particular app. Over time, an account holds writing, connections and a name people recognise. Choosing a different interface should not mean starting that life again.

ATProto, the open protocol used by Bluesky, separates account identity and data hosting from the apps that use them. The Atmosphere is the wider ecosystem built around it. That distinction matters: Bluesky is one familiar way to take part in something that can support other apps and services.

On TouchGrass, you can link a Bluesky account to bring in posts

Touchgrass-en ·Aug 4, 2026

How ActivityPub connects TouchGrass and Mastodon

A social network should earn your time by being useful. If choosing another service means losing touch with your friends, that choice comes with a cost the service can benefit from. We think people should be able to choose differently and keep talking.

ActivityPub makes that possible between TouchGrass and Mastodon. It is an open standard for exchanging posts, follows and replies. Like email between different providers, it lets independently run services communicate. Those connected social services form part of the fediverse.

You can follow a friend using their Mastodon address, read their p

Touchgrass-en ·Jul 28, 2026

The Fediverse makes room for independent social networks

Social connection shouldn't require one company to host everyone's accounts. If a new service only becomes useful after all your friends join it, choosing software becomes a group negotiation. That gives the place where everyone already is a considerable advantage, however people feel about using it.

The Fediverse offers a different arrangement. Independently run social services communicate through shared standards, most commonly ActivityPub. Someone using Mastodon can follow and reply to someone on another connected service. The people involved keep their own accounts and the places they've

Touchgrass-en ·Jul 21, 2026

Why TouchGrass leaves video out

Video can be a wonderful way to explain something, remember a moment or make a friend laugh. Leaving it out of TouchGrass means giving up those possibilities inside the app. We think a social network should be willing to make a choice like that when it helps the whole experience stay focused.

TouchGrass centres writing, photographs and conversations people can take at their own pace. You can read a few lines, look through an album, reply to a friend and leave. We want to give those ordinary forms of contact enough room to work well.

Every format a service adds also changes what people expect

Touchgrass-en ·Jul 14, 2026

Why TouchGrass leaves out public like counts

Public like counts put a comparison beside a post before you've had time to decide what it means to you. We think that is the wrong starting point for a social network built around friends.

A photograph of someone's new home might matter enormously to six people who know what it took to get there. A widely shared joke has a much larger audience to draw reactions from. The totals tell you how many people pressed a button. They leave out the history that makes the photograph worth stopping for.

A public total is useful when your aim is to measure reach. Attaching it to every personal update br