I am geek adjacent.
I lie probably slap bang in the middle of two extremes; the uber-geek/dev coder who knows internet coding and all the web server dark arts like the back of their hand, and the ‘Facebook is the internet’ person who uses the flash on their phone when taking a picture of a landscape in the dark.
I have nothing against either person. Well, that’s a lie, I have criticisms of both but they are of no importance here.
Who is it for?
I’ve been blogging for a long time and I’ve seen fads come and go, but the recent movement that is the indieweb is, as far as I can tell, a good thing that should last for a few years.
The thing is, it’s all bit techy.
That is not a bad thing, and I understand and fully support the reasons behind it and behind things like ActivityPub, and ‘the Fediverse’ and services like Mastodon, but the more I read the more I sense two things.
- You need a basic understanding of some technical ideas to get into this world.
- It’s not built for ‘Facebook is the internet’ people.
I’d also posit that:
- Those who disagree with point 1, are themselves technical people who have forgotten what it was like to not know something (aka the curse of knowledge).
- Those who disagree with point 2, who state that that is the entire point, are missing MY point.
Wood for the trees
Dear builders and promoters of the IndieWeb/Fediverse and all that it bestrides, make this easier. Or at the very least get better at communicating what you are offering and how to use it.
It’s easy, they say, just start a blog.
It’s easy, they say, just go to your server and log in.
It’s easy, they say, it’s just lots of connected servers.
And yet when I go to visit some content I need to login to a server that I’m not a part of, or so it seems. The barrier creeps up a little higher.
Please note, I am not anti any of these things, or the people who are creating them and running them. I know they are doing good work, but there is a reason why these things are still fairly (in internet usage terms) small and largely populated by people who are tech-minded enough to grok them (pun semi-intended).
If we really want all of this waves hands in the air to be for all of them waves hands in that direction then it needs to be easier, and require less work to be a part of.
My concern is not that these technologies are too hard to learn; It’s that too many advocates confuse “I understand this” with “this is easy“.
My own bias
I am writing this as someone who has worked alongside software developers and testers for the bulk of my career. I am not a developer, I understand things like Object Oriented Programming and can probably bluff my way through a short discussion on polymorphism, but my work was acting as the go-between, the communicator between the user and the builder (aka the business and the dev team).
Reading articles —about the why the Fediverse is good, why Webmentions are great, how this new independent web will be good for everyone— is something I do (as I do with most everything I read that is tech adjacent) with an eye on how easy it is to understand. Time and time again, this is where I think the Indieweb shoots itself (lightly) in the foot.
If you want mass adoption, if you want the movement to swell and grow, you need to find a way to reduce the complexity of what you are offering.
As an example, which is easier, for the layperson, to sign up for. Mastodon, or Bluesky?
One requires picking a server, with little explanation why, as well as the usual name, email etc. The latter is more straightforward, username, email, password, verification, etc.
Now, I know why this is the way it is, but my point is that a lot of people won’t. Mastodon immediately asks you a question before you’ve learned enough to understand why the question matters.
And that’s a barrier that excludes them from all of this waves hands in the air again.
Can those barriers be overcome with a bit of reading and learning? Absolutely. Whether the rewards justify the effort is another question.
I am trying
I write this as I am slowly moving my ageing blog into this new world, coaxing WordPress into the light. Plugins that bring errors about webfinger endpoints, sites asking for webmentions, only add to the list of things I need to learn and understand, before I try and fix them.
Sure, I could ‘just’ start a new blog but why should I? My blog was here first!
Sure, I could ‘just’ build my own simple blog, self-host it, and push updates manually, but those bridges have been crossed long long ago, why would I want to go back there?
My blog started as hand crafted HTML, in NotePad (before HomeSite came along). If I added a page, I had to update every other page to include it in the navigation (there was no javascript to drop in).
I quickly moved to Blogger when it was launched because it did all of that for me, let me write and publish, and it took care of all the other stuff like permalinks, navigation, hyperlinks et al. It hid all the complexity and that’s why it was so popular.
If the ‘Indieweb/Fediverse’ can nail that, and make the sign up as simple as username, email, password.. then that would be a good starting point.
What can be done?
I don’t think everyone needs to understand WebFinger, Webmentions, ActivityPub and all the rest of the magic that makes this work, any more than I need to understand SMTP, DNS or whatever dark incantations happen between me pressing send on an email and it arriving in someone else’s inbox. I know there is complexity there, and I appreciate the hard work of the people who built it, and of those who maintain it, but most of us just want to type an email address and get on with our day.
I don’t think the IndieWeb needs to be simpler underneath, I understand that that complexity is there for good reasons, but I think there needs to be ways of making it simpler for everyone. Hide the machinery. Find a way to just let people choose a username, an email address and a password and THEN let them discover why all of this waves hands in the air one last time is actually rather brilliant once they’re there.
Because the web didn’t win because everyone became more technical. It won because it became easier.
Blogger didn’t succeed because it taught me how to build navigation menus and manage permalinks. It succeeded because it quietly took those jobs away from me and let me get back to writing.
Perhaps the IndieWeb isn’t about winning. Perhaps that’s never been the point.
If that’s the case, then it’s doing just fine and will continue to be just fine for those who want to delve into it and make it work for them, and there are, and always will be, many people who do just that. I don’t doubt that for one second. I also don’t doubt that a rejection of the way the internet has ended up is a good thing, but surely we want everyone to be able to enjoy an independent internet, away from the META’s and Google’s of the world.
Perhaps that’s the future I’d like to see. Not a return to the old web, nor a rejection of this new one, but something that combines the strengths of both. All the openness, ownership and independence, with just enough polish that people can join first and learn later.
Anyway, I’m off to go and figure out why my webfinger endpoint isn’t working. Wish me luck!
Useful Link
What are your thoughts?