Tŵt Blog

It's true. Tŵt Cymru is Exiting the EU. In celebration of the five year anniversary of Brexit, toot.wales is moving from France to the UK!

Never again will your Youtube preview card be in French. With our freedom from the oppressive EU wonks your toots are no longer required to be free from malformation or abnormal curvature. Finally, we can plough wasted millions into what's most important, the National Toot Service!

In all seriousness, we are growing and we want to be sure our service is meeting the needs of the community. This change also includes the long-overdue relocation of the non-profit management from the States to the UK. So, what are we doing?

At Tŵt Cymru, our mission is to provide a safe, welcoming, and inclusive space for Wales and the Welsh at home and abroad, along with the wider community of Welsh learners and people with ties to Cymru. Central to this mission is fostering a culture of civil discourse, where users can connect and express themselves without fear of harassment, hate, or harm. This is a commitment we take seriously, to ensure the safety and well-being of our community.

Recently, Meta Platforms announced significant changes to its policies and governance, explicitly allowing forms of speech that were previously deemed unacceptable due to their incivility or potential for harm. While we respect each platform’s right to define its own policies, these changes stand in direct opposition to Tŵt Cymru’s values. Specifically, the decision to tolerate previously prohibited speech creates an environment that risks amplifying harm, undermining trust, and marginalising already underserved communities.

Since Threads signalled their desire to federate, we have treated them like any other domain with which we connect. The recent changes in policy, governance, and stated approach by Meta’s leadership (in effect, the threads.net server admin) means this domain now represents a space which explicitly allows harm.

After thorough review, we have decided to defederate from the Meta Fediverse service threads.net on January 19th, 2025. This means users on Tŵt Cymru will no longer see or interact with threads.net content or accounts. If you prefer for your account to be hosted by a service that may remain connected to threads.net we recommend reviewing the larger servers at https://fedidb.org/network and enquiring as to their connectivity with threads.net, and migrating your account before the date above. If you need help migrating, please email help@toot.wales

Promoting your blog feed is easy on toot.wales!

Verify Your Site

On your blog site, add a link to your profile using the following specific HTML

<a rel="me" href="https://toot.wales/@myusername">Follow me on toot.wales</a>

You can put anything you like in the link text, “Follow me on Mastodon”, “Find me on Tŵt Cymru”, “Dilynwch fi ar Tŵt”, or use one of our icons from https://blogs.toot.wales/toot/dolen-i-link-to-twt

If you're using Wordpress, you'll need to add a Custom HTML block, or add the link as normal then go into Code editor mode to add the rel=“me” part.

You can get the code for your personal link at https://toot.wales/settings/verification

This announcement has been superseded by https://blogs.toot.wales/toot/why-twt-cymru-is-defederating-threads-net

What is Federation, What is ActivityPub?

Tŵt Cymru operates a range of communications services that use an open, decentralised social networking protocol called “ActivityPub”. ActivityPub provides a method for software services to enable creating, updating, and deleting content, as well as delivering notifications and content.

The Fediverse is the collection of social networks and applications that can communicate with each other using ActivityPub, while remaining independent. Users on different communities, social networks and apps can send and receive updates across the network, creating an open, social web.