THE SOCIAL SMOLNET
by Ploum on 2026-03-20
https://ploum.net/2026-03-20-social-smolnet.html
It might have been an email thread. Or a lobste.rs comment. It was a
discussion about yet another attempt at a new decentralized social
protocol. And we reached the conclusion that with blogs and email, we
already had a decentralized social network. We only needed to use it.
This was the last push I needed to implement in Offpunk the social
features I had imagined years ago. Share and Reply. Available since
Offpunk 3.0.
Offpunk 3.0 Release (ploum.net)
https://ploum.net/2026-02-09-offpunk3.htmlOffpunk.netgemini://offpunk.net
Share
=====
Are you reading something interesting in Offpunk and want to share it?
Well, simply write it:
> share
or
> share myfriend(a)example.com
A new mail containing the URL to share will be opened in your email
client of choice (as determined by xdg-open). The title will be the
title of the page. You only need to add some text to explain why you
want to share that page.
Reply
=====
Ever read a blog post and wanted to send feedback or a simple thank you
to the author? Simply write:
> reply
Reply will try to find a mailto link by exploring the page, root pages
and, since 3.1, potential "contact" pages. It sometimes works really
well. Often, the mail address is obscured or hidden. That’s not a
problem. You only need to find it once because Offpunk allows you to
save it for the page or the whole online space.
Give an email address as an argument to reply and it will be saved in
Offpunk for the page or the whole online space.
https://ploum.net/files/offpunk_reply.png
If you come across an email address that may be of use in the future but
don’t want to react now, use "save":
> reply save author(a)example.com
or, if you want to use autodetection:
> reply save
Yes, it is enough
=================
It looks like nothing. It looks like trivial. But for me, this really
transformed Gemini/Gopher and the Small Web into a social network. As I
use neomutt+neovim as my mail client, I don’t leave my terminal. I
simply write "reply", neovim opens, I write "Thank you for this nice
post", :wq, ,and voilà. The mail will be sent during my next
synchronization.
My disconnected email workflow (ploum.net)
https://ploum.net/2026-01-31-offline-git-send-email.html
Almost as easy as clicking a "like" button but way more personal. Even
easier if, like me, you dislike touching a mouse or opening a browser!
Replying to my own post in Neovim
https://ploum.net/files/offpunk_neomutt.png
This is the Social SmolNet
==========================
In less than two months, I already used this feature to react to 40
different online spaces, not counting that I’ve used it multiple times
with some people.
40 saved reply addresses (41 but the first line is wrongly counted)
https://ploum.net/files/offpunk_replies41.png
I even started using Offpunk as an address book for my blogger friends.
Instead of laboriously autocompleting their email addresses, I go to
their blog/gemini capsule/gopher hole and write "reply".
The biggest lesson I take is that "social networks" are not about
protocols but about how we use the existing infrastructure. Microsoft
and Google are working hard to make sure you hate email and hate
building a website. But we don’t have to obey. We can enjoy writing
lightweight HTML and sending quick emails to each other. We have the
right to read, write, and have social fun without Javascript and
centralized platforms. We have the duty to keep this torch lit.
In the meantime, if you receive from me very short emails reacting to
some of your posts, now you know why.
But, of course, feel free not to reply!
Do not apologize for replying late to my email (ploum.net)
https://ploum.net/2026-02-11-do_not_apologize_for_replying_to_my_email.html
HOW I FOUGHT MY SMARTPHONE ADDICTION
by Ploum on 2026-03-13
https://ploum.net/2026-03-13-phone_addiction.html
In a poignant Gemini post, Kevin Boone wrote about his anxiety to go out
of his house without his phone. (This is the Gemini protocol, totally
unrelated to the Google chatbot.)
Phone anxiety (larsthebear.me)
gemini://larsthebear.me/phone_anxiety.gmi
Web version of the former
http://larsthebear.me/phone_anxiety.html
Around 2018, I had the same epiphany: I was unable to get out of my
house without my phone. In fact, I was so addicted that it was hard not
to take the phone with me even inside the house or, God forbid, into the
bathroom!
I had this discussion with Matt Baer, Write.as creator, and he told me
that he had started to consciously go for short walks without his
smartphone. I thought it was a good idea. I started to leave my phone at
home for short walks. I disabled notifications. I even invested in an
e-ink smartphone and, later, in a Mudita Kompakt.
Se passer d’écran avec un téléphone e-ink (ploum.net)
https://ploum.net/se-passer-decran-avec-un-telephone-e-ink/index.html
Une vie sans notifications (ploum.net)
https://ploum.net/2025-09-02-mudita.html
At first, not having a phone was a real source of anxiety. For me, the
anxiety was not about being able to call someone or being called. It was
really about missing notifications, about not knowing if I had a new
email. It was about not being able to "feel like I was doing something"
if I had to wait a couple of minutes somewhere.
What is even more scary about this particular addiction is that the
anxiety of being without a phone is not only internal: it is also highly
socially inflicted. What mother asked me: "What if there was an urgency
for me or your father?" To which I replied: "I’m not a medic and I live
30 minutes away from you. If there’s an urgency for you, telling me
about it is not urgent and will not help."
But, quickly, the feeling to be without a smartphone changed from
anxiety to liberating. I felt really happy not to have a phone on me
while outside. I was rediscovering my old way of getting lost in my
thought, of sometimes talking to myself to clarify an idea. Which is
less weird these days because everybody assumes you have an ear bud and
are on the phone with someone else. In fact, when walking alone, I’m
often on a call with myself.
It may seem weird, but instead of scrambling for my phone to find a
direction or the name of that actor that was in that movie, I made peace
with the fact that "I didn’t know something." I look around for clues
about a bus schedule, I ask strangers for directions. I let my
subconscious work in the background to surface the forgotten name half
an hour later. And I appreciate that. Sure, there are times when things
would have been easier with a smartphone. But nothing insurmountable.
I became more and more allergic to any kind of notifications, even from
other phones. I feel them as constant aggression. In part because I was
addicted, in part because those are, by definition, designed to disrupt
your thought. That’s the whole purpose of a notification.
And we are only starting to understand the damage those are doing to our
cognitive abilities.
How Much Cognitive Damage Does A Phone Notification Actually Do?
(carlhendrick.substack.com)
https://carlhendrick.substack.com/p/how-much-cognitive-damage-does-a
These days, I use a Mudita phone which has a side switch to put it
completely offline (a kind of hardware enabled airplane mode). Every
night, I pull that switch. Some days, I realise I totally forgot to put
my phone online in the morning.
When I go outside, I ask my wife: "Is there any reason for me to take my
phone?" If there’s none, which is the usual case, I don’t take it. This
ritual has two purposes: it allows me to consciously choose whether to
take my phone or not and to remind my wife that I don’t have my phone
with me.
My only exception is when I go cycling. I remember how my friend Thierry
Crouzet broke his hip in the middle of the woods. So I take my phone,
just in case. This is not problematic because you cannot mindlessly
start checking your phone while pedalling. It’s just a little weight in
my jersey pocket.
Un auteur se fracture le fémur pour faire parler de lui
(gemini.tcrouzet.com)
gemini://gemini.tcrouzet.com/2019/8/un-auteur-se-fracture-le-femur-pour-fai…
Web version of the former
https://tcrouzet.com/2019/08/28/un-auteur-se-fracture-le-femur-pour-faire-p…
I would like to say that I’m cured of my smartphone addiction, but this
is not true. Put a smartphone with a shiny coloured screen in my pocket
and it would probably not take more than a few days for me to return to
what is the new social norm. I’m an addict and will stay an addict my
whole life. But at least I have put in place enough guardrails to be
free of smartphones and feel a lot happier about it.
Of course, this only applies to my smartphone. We will talk about my
laptop another time…
