Towards a More Open Web

Tuesday, January 2, 2018 :: Tagged under: personal culture engineering blog_meta. ⏰ 4 minutes.


Hey! Thanks for reading! Just a reminder that I wrote this some years ago, and may have much more complicated feelings about this topic than I did when I wrote it. Happy to elaborate, feel free to reach out to me! 😄


Hooray for turtles.

Credit: Pxhere

I've started blogging more. I've also invested more recently in tooling around modifying this site. This was never a bad idea for me to do, but there is a reason behind it: I'm consciously trying to move away from my dependence and contribution to an internet modeled on feudalism, where all the power is held and gated by Facebook, Google, and Amazon. I don't think this is good for me, and I don't think it's been good for societies, generally.

This isn't a new observation, and I'm not the only person to take action for it. Here are some other articles that inform this set of choices:

Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web by Parimal Satyal, describes the problem with excellent examples, offers suggestions for ways forward.

How to Stay Internet Friends Without Facebook or Twitter by Jon Mitchell describes a similar path I'm taking: posting more on a personal blog, sharing (and logging into) less on those networks, using alternative services, relying on tech like RSS.

The Web Began Dying in 2014, Here's How by André Staltz describes how web traffic has been routed over the years and identifies 2014 when the web became less of a "Web" and more of braid of three major tangles.

The Web We Lost by Anil Dash is an old favorite of mine, describing the culture around web services and it more readily encouraged value generation through mixing/accessibility and user protections.

What have I done so far?

What am I doing in addition? What's on the roadmap?

Exceptions?

There are a few exceptions I'd like to note:

A process

Like going vegetarian or vegan, one can transition slowly. I tried quitting Twitter a few years ago and it absolutely didn't last. But now I'm in a better place and ready for more of a marathon than a sprint. If you have the means and/or desire to break from the centralized internet, I encourage you to consider it. No single person picking up litter will clean an entire city, but if enough people in the city do it…

Thanks for the read! Disagreed? Violent agreement!? Feel free to join my mailing list, drop me a line at , or leave a comment below! I'd love to hear from you 😄