An Open Social Web for Everyone—Is It Even Possible?

I posed a question the other day when linking to John Scalzi’s How to Weave the Artisan Web:

How realistic is it, though, that the vast crowd that built a following on social media using its straightforward publication and amplification methods; that these people will start to develop and maintain their own websites?

Right now, we’re seeing an increased interest in the independent Web: People flocking to Mastodon, folks talking about RSS, and creating blog directories. But the movement is mainly driven by tech-savvy people. People who know how to code a site, host it, and already have a network outside of big-tech social media.

But artists, musicians, writers, your fourteen-year-old niece and their friends, many of them don’t know how to code or host a website. We have all this amazing technology, decentralised platforms to build social networks, and IndieWeb protocols that enable websites to talk to each other; but that technology still needs to be wired up to form a network, and that requires technical skill.

Unless you find someone to do it for you. And who’s more likely to build a stable and user-friendly platform using IndieWeb technology while there’s momentum? Is it the nerd coding away at night after a long day building software to make your pizza arrive earlier or the VC-funded startup that puts money and a team behind the idea?

Remember when Substack started, and everyone lauded that email is based on open standards that no company can own. But Substack still owns the editor, they own the database that hosts your content, and they sure try everything to make people sign up for their service to read any of your content. And if Substack decides to put their service behind a paywall or close it down altogether, your work is gone unless they provide a way to export all your data. Nobody owns HTTP either, yet we’ve seen previously how open platforms are giving in to the pressure from financiers and retract further and further from the open Web.

And as much as I’d love and genuinely hope to see an independent web materialise and algorithm-driven content distribution disappear entirely, I fear the moment will be hijacked by big money. Because it is so difficult to build.

That’s not to say we shouldn’t try. I really do hope that ethical companies like Micro.blog and Automattic continue to work towards an open Web and carve out a niche for people who care.