Indyweb, small web, cozy web
March 5, 2020 — July 22, 2024
The artisanal internet made by hand for humans.
1 Basic idea
Aral Balkan, What is the Small Web?:
The Big Web has “users” — a term Silicon Valley has borrowed from drug dealers to describe the people they addict to their services and exploit. We farm users in server farms. On the Big Web, we can fit thousands of users into a single server and Megacorps “scale” to run thousands upon thousands of servers in their farms.
On the Big Web, you never own your own home. You must rent your home from Megacorps. Most often, you don’t have to pay for your home using money. You pay for it by forfeiting your privacy, freedom of speech, and your other human rights. Collectively, we pay for it by forfeiting a democratic future.1
The mass surveillance and factory farming of human beings on a global scale is the business model of people farmers like Facebook and Google. It is the primary driver of the socioeconomic system we call surveillance capitalism…
The Small Web, quite simply, is the polar opposite of the Big Web. It applies the Small Technology principles to the web.
The Small Web is for people (not startups, enterprises, or governments). It is also made by people and small, independent organisations (not startups, enterprises, or governments2).
On the Small Web, you (and only you) own and control your own home (or homes)…
Another fundamental difference between the Big Web and Small Web is that on the Big Web we trust servers and distrust clients whereas on the Small Web, we distrust servers and trust clients. We treat servers as dumb delivery mechanisms. The client—under the control of the person who owns the site or app—is the only trusted environment.
2 Discovery
Kagi
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This is an independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren’t aware of in favour of the sort of sites you probably already knew existed.
3 Building it
There are many tools that might fit with varying smoothness into a small web ecosystem: Static websites, blogs, feed readers…
Yair Rosenberg, It’s time to take back control of what we read on the internet — beginner’s guide to feeds as DIY internet
4 Indyweb
A particular sub-school of DIY social media with an artisanal/classic design feel and some lightweight additional interactions.
See
- Indywebify hugo.
- misc static site recs.
- Netlify functions allow indy auth.
- eleventy is a site generator that tries to claw back simplicity from scope creep.
- gatsby supports webmentions.
- microformat metadata by example.
5 Micropub
Monocle is a nice-looking reader that is popular for accessing this site. There is a hosted instance online.
6 Quixotic mini blog networks
omg.lol - A lovable web page and email address, just for you
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Before the beginning, we made a wish for a more expressive web. This is the tale of purple desert designs 🌵, silent HTML livestreams, MacPaint toolbars, Mario Kart-inspired JavaScript and our household gaudy drop shadows.
This is Multiverse — a constellation of internet corners, a micro-blogging network
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Publish your site in 5 minutes, no code required. Host on your own domain. Write once, share everywhere.
7 Incoming
Jeff Huang on durable websites targets professors.
Some argue monopoly search engines make the internet boring.
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The IndieWeb makes it easy for everyone to take ownership of their online identity. We believe that people should own what they create — and we build the network that allows people to retain ownership of their work without sacrificing the benefits of social networks.
The IndieWeb is as independent as it is collaborative — projects are driven by individuals, but accessible to everyone. As a loose-knit collective of developers, writers, designers, and activists, we work to create the technology that runs the independent web.
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POSSE is an abbreviation for Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere, the practice of posting content on your own site first, then publishing copies or sharing links to third parties (like social media silos) with original post links to provide viewers a path to directly interacting with your content.