Link tags: indieweb

Colin Devroe - Blogging is alive and well

The past, present and future of blogs.

The Year of the Personal Website · Matthias Ott – User Experience Designer

Especially if you are a designer, an artist, a photographer, a writer, a blogger, a creator of any kind, owning your work is as important as ever. Social media platforms might be great for distributing your content and creating a network of like-minded people around you. But they will always be ephemeral, transient, and impermanent – not the best place to preserve your thoughts, words, and brushstrokes.

On the current decentralisation movement – Manu

The more I look at this “issue” the more I’m convinced the solution is already right there and it’s called the web. Want to have an unblockable, unbannable user profile? Buy yourself a domain and get a personal website. Want to have a space where you can say and do whatever the fuck you want? Get a webspace and put up a blog.

(Almost) no one cares

Every time I’ve thought “this is a niche subject or random thought, no one will be interested but I’ll publish anyway” someone will let me know that it was the EXACT train of thought they were thinking or thing they were looking for.

How We Verified Ourselves on Mastodon — and How You Can Too – The Markup

It gives me warm fuzzies to see an indie web building block like rel="me" getting coverage like this.

Network effect

Mastodon is not a platform. Mastodon is just a tiny part of a concept many have been dreaming about and working on for years. Social media started on the wrong foot. The idea for the read/write web has always been different. Our digital identities weren’t supposed to end up in something like Twitter or Facebook or Instagram.

Decentralisation, Federation, The Indie Web: There were many groups silently working on solving the broken architecture of our digital social networks and communication channels – long, long before the “web 3” dudes tried to reframe it as their genius new idea.

I’ve been a part of this for many years until I gave up hope. How would you compete against the VC money, the technical and economical benefits of centralised platforms? It was a fight between David and Gloiath. But now Mastodon could be the stone.

Indiekit

Paul’s indie web project is live!

Meet the little Node.js server with all the parts needed to publish content to your personal website and share it on social networks.

You can read the accompanying blog post.

ongoing by Tim Bray · Bye, Twitter

I don’t like making unpaid contributions to a for-profit publisher whose proprietor is an alt-right troll.

Same.

I can see no good arguments for redirecting my voice into anyone else’s for-profit venture-funded algorithm-driven engagement-maximizing wet dream.

Mastodon is a gateway | Andy Bell

I’ve been very guilty of putting all my eggs in the Twitter basket over the last couple of years, especially, and all of that has been destroyed by one bellend billionaire. I’m determined not to make that mistake again and even more determined to make my little home on the internet—this website—as lovely and sustainable as I can make it.

How to Weave the Artisan Web | Whatever

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a site that’s not run by an amoral billionaire chaos engine, or algorithmically designed to keep you doomscrolling in a state of fear and anger, or is essentially spyware for governments and/or corporations? Wouldn’t it be nice not to have ads shoved in your face every time you open an app to see what your friends are up to? Wouldn’t it be nice to know that when your friends post something, you’ll actually see it without a social media platform deciding whether to shove it down your feed and pump that feed full of stuff you didn’t ask for?

Wouldn’t that be great?

ooh.directory

A directory of blogs, all nicely categorised:

ooh.directory is a place to find good blogs that interest you.

Phil gave me a sneak peek at this when he was putting it together and asked me what I thought of it. My response was basically “This is great!”

And of course you can suggest a site to add to the directory.

“You can be a carpenter this time around.” – Lucy Bellwood

A personal website is a lovely thing. Nobody will buy this platform and use it as their personal plaything. No advertisers will boycott and send me scrambling to produce different content. No seed funding will run out overnight.

It takes one person to knock down a silo - daverupert.com

Pour a foundation for your own silo or home.

Word Persons and Web Persons · roytang.net

This resonates with me.

Bird’s-eye View · Paul Robert Lloyd

I love not feeling bound to any particular social network. This website, my website, is the one true home for all the stuff I’ve felt compelled to write down or point a camera at over the years. When a social network disappears, goes out of fashion or becomes inhospitable, I can happily move on with little anguish.

Mastodon is just blogs

Do you still miss Google Reader, almost a decade after it was shut down? It’s back!

A Mastodon server is a feed reader, shared by everyone who uses that server.

I really like Simon’s description of the fediverse:

A Mastodon server (often called an instance) is just a shared blog host. Kind of like putting your personal blog in a folder on a domain on shared hosting with some of your friends.

Want to go it alone? You can do that: run your own dedicated Mastodon instance on your own domain.

This is spot-on:

Mastodon is just blogs and Google Reader, skinned to look like Twitter.

The IndieWeb for Everyone | Max Böck

Spot-on analysis by Max:

Generally speaking: The more independence a technology gives you, the higher its barrier for adoption.

I really hope that this when smart folks start putting their skills towards making the ideas of the indie web more widely available:

I think we’re at a special moment right now. People have been fed up with social media and its various problems (surveillance capitalism, erosion of mental health, active destruction of democracy, bla bla bla) for quite a while now. But it needs a special bang to get a critical mass of users to actually pack up their stuff and move.

inessential: After Twitter

The internet’s town square should never have been one specific website with its own specific rules and incentives. It should have been, and should be, the web itself.

I share Brent’s optimism:

The web is wide open again, for the first time in what feels like forever.

Fediverse

Despite growing pains and potential problems, I think this could be one of the most interesting movements on the web in recent years. Let’s see where it goes.

I’m getting the same vibe as Bastian about Mastodon:

Suddenly there was this old Twitter vibe. Real conversations. Real people. Interesting content. A feeling of a warm welcoming group. No algorithm to mess around with our timelines. No troll army to destory every tiny bit of peace. Yes, Mastodon is rough around the edges. Many parts are not intuitive. But this roughness somehow added to the positive experience for me.

This could really work!

What to blog

Eventually, it becomes second nature: jot down some thoughts and hit publish. Until then, think of it like starting a running habit. The first few days you run, it’s awful and you think it’ll never feel any better. But after a few weeks, you start getting antsy if you don’t run. If you’re not used to writing, it can feel like a slog, but it’s worth getting over that hump.