The internet was born out of the cold war and the need to invent a computer network that was resilient enough to withstand a nuclear strike.  The world wide web was born out of a desire to allow anybody anywhere to publish content and link to the content published by others via a decentralized hyperlink protocol.  This combination of a decentralized network and decentralized content publishing changed the world.  No longer were people stuck inside the traditional media content silos of broadcast radio and television networks.  No longer did they need to limit themselves to the existing content silo apps such as America Online, CompuServe or Prodigy.  On the web, nobody owned the network or controlled enough of the content to corner the market on thought.  The browser was neutral, based on open standards.  Email too.  It was a new world.

And then Google built a search engine so much better than the others that it became the de facto home page for the internet.

And then Apple launched the App Store model into the world and encouraged people to go back to using dedicated content apps instead of the web browser.

And then Facebook showed up and figured out how to leverage human social networks to build the ultimate content silo app.

After a brief flowering of a decentralized, open, internet accessed primarily via the web browser, companies basically figured out how to recreate America Online.  Meaning, they figured out how to create proprietary apps to monetize user engagement in closed content silos.

If you think of it as a business model instead of comparing the actual technology implementation, Instagram is just America Online but with an emphasis on photo sharing.  Facebook is AOL too.  Sorry kids, TikTok as well.  All of ’em.  They are all some variant or another of how America Online worked.  Each is a closed content silo that is  accessed by a proprietary application just like those old dialup services.  Aside from obvious improvements in bandwidth and capabilities, the only differences I can see are that the computer has a small touch screen instead of a big CRT, the modem is cellular, and the users trade their demographics and freedom to the silo instead of paying a monthly fee.  Otherwise, these are the same picture.  If you post or engage using a proprietary application to a closed community and content silo, it kinda doesn’t matter if it’s pics or videos or just your witty thoughts.

We collectively broke out of online service content silos but new silos arose and penned us back in, essentially breaking the internet and most of society in the process.  Sucks.

I have thought long and hard about how to escape the silos and I am not alone in doing so.  There are a number of efforts afoot to establish a vibrant Fediverse and/or a thriving IndieWeb and I say bravo, yes, exactly what we need, where do I sign up?  These efforts face some long odds.

First off, participating in these new communities and sharing content in new ways can require more technical savvy than most users possess.  The average smartphone owning social media addict is not likely to register their own domain, configure an IndieAuth endpoint, and join the IndieWeb.  They may signup for Mastodon, BlueSky, Discord, and other alternatives to the sites they know but quickly have questions about how to continue.  It’s more work than the algorithm heavy engagement machines.  There is no algorithm to feed you.  You don’t just download the “Fediverse” app and sign up.  The whole concept requires a Wiki page just to explain.  This is what we call a higher barrier to entry in the software design space.

Second, even if the user is brave enough and curious enough to go boldly into them thar hills, they are not likely to have a community of people they know joining them on the other side.  On the old internet, one had no choice but to forage and explore, and that is true with this fledgling modern decentralized internet as well.  Back then, a lot of the AOL users found the decentralized web to be challenging.  Without an app telling them where to go and organizing things to encourage them to interact, users were unclear about what to do next.  The modern “AOL User” might be a daily IG or TikToker, but they have the same problem.  They are used to an app interface that is designed to feed them content.  The open internet doesn’t do that.

Finally, even after a person elects to leave the silos, setup their own blog, integrate it into the indieweb and start publishing and living in the fediverse, there is the critical mass problem that until enough people do so, they will not have the same lively level of social interaction that the silos have historically provided.  And do you think Meta or Google or Apple or TikTok are going to do anything to foster content sharing, cross-site social interaction, or anything else to assist here?  Of course not.  Even as their content silos are overrun with bots and generated content slop, propaganda and misinformation, and the like, they are still earning billions by selling their users to advertisers.  They already conquered the open web and penned us all back up in closed silos, why would they ever change the model?  It works for them.

And yet…  I think it’s the only option we collectively have left.

So, having thought long and hard about it, I’ve started to take some actions.

I would like to write and be read.

I would like to produce video content and be watched.

I would like to record music and be heard.

I would like to create images and be seen.

I would like to do all of these things without giving any of my information, or information about any audience I may have, or any of my money or support to Meta, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, TikTok, or any advertisers who are affiliated with them.

Aha.  A challenge.

I have an advantage in that I know how the internet works at a relatively deep technical level.  It is my job, after all, to build software systems which inevitably are delivered via the internet.  Has been for a very long time.  Also, I was an enthusiastic participant in the decentralized web that came before everything got marketed as “the cloud” and turned into closed apps delivered via walled garden app stores.  If anybody can do it, it ought to be me, right?

I’m gonna be honest here.  I have always hated social media sites because I have always felt that our human social relationships should not be corralled by corporations so we can be exploited and monetized.  I have posted thoughts and images and videos and the like to social media sites and apps thousands of times but I have never actually wanted to use any of those apps or sites.  I have always resented social media companies, apps, and sites for being exploitative and basically evil.  I am therefore stoked to try to do this.

But wait, there’s more.

I would ALSO like a way to securely and easily message my friends without using proprietary messaging apps.

Can it be done?  Can a person in the 21st century use the internet to socialize, learn things and entertain themselves without using proprietary apps or platforms and without limiting their interactions to a small subset of people?

I honestly think it can be done.  Just follow a few rules.  Use open source software, host my own work wherever possible, avoid any algorithm I don’t explicitly choose and understand, and avoid any sites or services that track or sell information about their users to advertisers.  Also, don’t ever used app-based messaging platforms that each recreate AOL IM to establish another variant of the silo problem.

The first thing I have (already) done is to stop engaging with the major silo apps.  I never use Twitter/X anymore, thanks Elon, and I have only logged on to the various Meta properties a couple of times in the last 6 months because I needed to contact somebody or access some older content I posted in the past or because some other site I use was configured to use Facebook Login.  If you avoid Meta you avoid FB, IG, Threads, and WhatsApp and I’ve historically used all of those except Threads.  No more of that.

I have long paid for web hosting for this blog and other websites via a company called Bluehost and that’s great, I have a Linux server with command line access and the whole thing has been pretty damn reliable for the last 20+ years.  That said, I have had reasons to want to migrate off of using a hosting company and taking matters a little more into my own hands for some time now.  Also, I have had a desire to get rid of WordPress and switch to a static site generator.  This last weekend I started working on exactly that, setting up a server at home with the simple goal of getting an IndieAuth endpoint up and running to allow me to authenticate to websites that support the protocol.  I’m happy to say that it’s working, so that’s cool.  I can now login to websites using the identity of the ryansutter.net domain by authenticating against a server in my own basement.  Dope.  Next I plan to look into moving this entire blog to my own server and hoping use the Eleventy static site generator instead of WordPress.

I’ve joined BlueSky, Mastodon, and PixelFed and next up I plan to set up two-way integration and interaction between those accounts and this blog.  My hope is to publish here, have posts syndicate to the Fediverse platforms, and have comments/likes/activity from those platforms reflected here on my site.  This is the way I always wanted social media to work, connecting the little piece of the internet that I own and control to larger communities of interest, rather than forcing me to choose between posting on my platform (and being unseen) or posting on a platform I don’t want to post on.

In addition to all of the above, I have long ago switched my primary web browser to Brave which is Chrome but with enhanced privacy, built in ad blocking and built in tracker blocking by default and I am researching various ways to make email an actually useful part of the picture.

It’s still early days for decentralized social media, the user counts are pretty low, most people aren’t doing this yet, and it’s unclear at the moment how much of a future some of these new platform even have.  That’s OK by me.  I’d rather start leveraging these new tools, having fun, and seeing what happens than spending time fueling a dystopian misinformation hellscape controlled by billionaires.  I have some other ideas about what to do next but it’s late and I’m gonna post this and call it a night at 1800+ words.  Suffice it to say, I think this self-owned, indie, decentralized social network concept is just getting started and is the only thing that can rescue us from the Zucks and Musks of the world.  This is the first time I’ve ever been excited by the idea of posting to or engaging with social media instead of feeling resentful and dirty.

I for one am here for it.