Venkatram asks …where do you see the IndieWeb in 2030, just five short years from now?, a seemingly simple question which invites a not-so-simple answer. Before replying, I thought it would be worth reviewing what the indieweb is and has become since I explored the term getting on for five years ago.

Let’s start with the “official” definition:

The IndieWeb is a people-focused alternative to the “corporate web”.

We are a community of independent and personal websites based on the principles of: owning your domain and using it as your primary online identity, publishing on your own site first (optionally elsewhere), and owning your content.

This still seems fairly solid, even if it’s grounded in a set of late-2010s concerns and view of the web. Ceding one’s social media content to proprietary, locked down corporate platforms like Twitter and Facebook was an ongoing worry back then, exacerbated by our increasing awareness of big tech’s role in events such as Brexit and the Myanmar military’s atrocities against the Rohingya people. That’s why, I think, this definition of the indieweb emphasises “personal” and “ownership” — it’s trying to recreate social media through the medium of the website.

I would argue the fediverse has solved these problems, and that trying to recreate social media on websites through protocols and processes such as POSSE and webmentions is no longer necessary. I can set up my own fediverse server, or join one that broadly aligns with my values and choose to move to another should that change, taking my social graph with me. If the server shuts down, I can download an archive of my content.

Syndicating every post from my site to social media is possible — and is quite satisfying — but seems quite a lot of work for very little return. Blogs are formally self-contained entities which are easily shared through separate protocols and platforms, such as other websites, email, RSS and, yes, social media, rather than through a stitched together, Frankenstein’s monster version of social media. This is how blogging communities have been formed for decades.

Furthermore, we could argue that keeping public streams separate from an archive of “real”, self-contained writing allows us to sidestep social media’s structural problems, such as its synchronicity and commodification. There is value in the traditional, separated website and blog formats.

However, there is no doubt a people-focused alternative to the “corporate web” is as important now as it was 5-10 years ago. That corporate web has expanded — we still contend with X and Facebook, as well as services such as Substack and Beehiv. Some may appear to offer more ethical alternatives, but they share the same underlying problems: VC-funded growth, vendor lock-in and the marketisation of what they crudely term content. Ultimately, all are inimical to writing as a whole, and, when we consider their normalisation of fascism and hyper-individualism, democracy itself.

For me, an updated definition of the indieweb needs to respond to a more relevant set of problems. Here’s what I’m going with:

The IndieWeb is a people-focused alternative to the “corporate web”. It consists of creative websites such as blogs that are not published on closed, corporate platforms characterised by VC-funding, scale and marketisation.

It’s opinionated, but I think these times demand we take a stance. It’s also flexible enough to include smaller, but-still-centralised platforms, such as Pika and Bear, even if I do think community-powered self-hosting is ultimately the healthiest approach to publishing websites.

I’ve also tried to move away from the individualism of the original definition (your domain, your own website etc.), which I think reflects the ontological sway of social media. This allows for joint publication efforts, which I’ll touch on in the next post. I better get a move on — I see I’ve only got 33 hours or so to actually answer Venkatram’s question 😁