Indieweb, small web, cozy web

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.

Like any DIY community there is some terminology to learn.

POSSE

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.

There are a lot more thinkpieces:

• The Unbearable Sameness of the Modern Web
• The Dark Forest and the Cozy Web
• Jeff Huang on durable websites targets professors.
• We can have a different web

There are also many schools of thought. I think that cozy web is probably the most general term, and there are various communities of affinity within it.

2 Building the cozy webs

There are many tools that might fit with varying smoothness into a small web machine: Static websites, blogs, feed readers…

3 Indieweb

A particular sub-school with an artisanal/classic design feel and some lightweight additional design features to encourage engagement in the manner of the classic blogosphere. Pairs well will low-lift infrastructure such as static sites and blogs. Keywords: “webmentions”, “micropub”, “indieauth”, “POSSE” (publish on your own site, syndicate elsewhere), “microformats”. I do not know what all of these mean because I am a primitive cave-blogger.

• misc static site recommendations, e.g. hugo.
• indy auth.
• microformat metadata by example.

4 The email-o-sphere

See email-o-sphere for more on the email-o-sphere. That is a slightly different school again.

5 In the fediverse

The federated social networks of the fediverse are a different approach to the problem of sovereignty on the internet. There are points on connection though; you could syndicate your blog content to the fediverse via e.g. Lemmy or integrate activitypub into your blog via bridgy etc.

6 DIY socials

The DIY socials section explores various ways to create and manage your own social networks, emphasizing user control and privacy, so it is affiliated with the cozy web I supposed. See DIY social networks for more on this.

7 Discovery

8 As digital nostalgia

See the internet back in my day.

9 Incoming

• Some argue monopoly search engines make the internet boring.

• IndieWeb - Open Collective

  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.