More than ever, it's imperative to provide safe places. Moderation tooling hasn't been a major priority for a lot of the server softwares common in the fediverse, and that's unfortunate, if understandable -- oftentimes priorities and efforts for open source projects focus on technical aspects more than interface design.

We're coming up on the end of the year, and Letterbook has come a very long way. We have architecture and data models that will carry us for a long time into the future. We have a growing set of core backend functionality. We have a logo, colors, and seeds for a visual identity and language for Letterbook as a product. We've conducted moderator experience research, and we're actively designing and building moderation and safety features based on that research. I will always want this project to move farther and faster, but this has been a good year. So let's take stock of what we have and don't have, because I think that will illuminate our most pressing needs.

First, let me wish a happy birthday 🎂 to this toot. As much as any single thing can be, this is where Letterbook began. From the start, this was a project with an ambitious scope. It's been slower than I wanted, but it's starting to come together as usable app.

Like a lot of other people, I joined the fediverse at the end of 2022. I had primarily used Twitter until that point. There were always a lot of tradeoffs involved in the choice to use Twitter, but thanks to Musk they ceased to be worthwhile. There are likewise tradeoffs in making my home on the fediverse. It's far from perfect. But of all the options, I believe the fediverse has the most upside, and by far the most future potential. That potential exists mainly in the more democratized nature of the network. Anyone can, in theory, run their own server and set their own terms for engaging with the rest of the fediverse. Letterbook is one such server. I started it recently as an attempt to bring that theory closer to practice.