Yelling at the web clouds
Post prompted by a series of posts I read recently, written by Matthew, So1o, Simone, and Alex and also by posts on the 32bit.cafe.
I wrote some 1000 or so words already that I deleted because in writing that wild rant I realised what my fundamental disagreement is. The official IndieWeb website addresses the most basic and fundamental question right at the top of the homepage: What is the IndieWeb?
The IndieWeb is a people-focused alternative to the “corporate web”.
Love this definition. But what I realised is that there’s a fundamental disagreement on what “people-focused” means. I’m a developer. I work in tech. And yet, when it comes to personal publishing, to owning your own corner of the web, I find the tech side of things to be completely irrelevant. Yes, I do think people should get their own domain name. Does that mean I’m not going to read or think less of someone who, for whatever reason, blogs on a bearblog.dev subdomain? No. Because what I care about is the people. Do I care if you implemented WebMentions? Do I care if your blog uses microformats? No, I don’t. In the same way, I don’t care if your site is served over HTTP/2 or if your server runs NGINX or Caddy.
There’s a great definition of what the Web is on Wikipedia:
The World Wide Web (WWW or simply the Web) is an information system that enables content sharing over the Internet through user-friendly ways meant to appeal to users beyond IT specialists and hobbyists.
Isn’t that a wonderful and aspirational definition? An information system that enables content sharing over the Internet through user-friendly ways meant to appeal to users beyond IT specialists and hobbyists. Way too much effort is spent trying to build the perfect tools. We’re trying to make all these complicated systems to work together in an attempt to build a—allegedly—better platform. But I think in doing that we’re losing track of what’s important and that’s the people.
Funnily enough, the best modern incarnation of that definition of what the web is are the huge social media platforms. Because those, after all, do enable the sharing of content through user-friendly ways meant to appeal users beyond IT specialists and hobbyists. Kinda ironic, isn’t it?
I’ll end up sounding like a broken record but I do think what truly matters is us, the humans. What matters is being moved by good intentions. What matters is sharing the things you’re passionate about not because you might become an influencer, not because of the likes, the comments, or the reposts, but because someone else might enjoy them too and you can bond over them. What matters, if you’re a tech person, is lending your skills to help the people who might want to own their own corner of the web but don’t know how or where to start.
All this can be done with tools that have been around for decades. The HTTP protocol is 33 years old. Email has been around since the 70s. RSS is 25 years old. You don’t need anything more than that, from a technological standpoint, to share what you’re passionate about and connect with others. But what you do need is intentions. You need to be motivated to get your ass off social media and start doing your part for a better Web. Because no matter how people try to spin it, decentralised or not, social media is still social media. I was reading Sophie’s “Twitter reply guys were bad, but Mastodon is no better” the other day and it’s such a great example of this.
To improve the current state of the Web we don’t need more tech. We don’t need ActivityPub. We don’t need microformats. We don’t need WebMentions. We don’t need federation. We just need you to care. We need you to care enough to do your part.