Taking back the web.

I think we’ve reached a point where enough of us have had quite enough of a few billionaires down-ranking our links, not showing what we post to the audiences that we’ve worked hard to build over year and years, and yet still tell us that it’s fine for them to steal our hard work to train their ecologically disastrous AI products. If insult couldn’t be added to injury these same few people – and the companies they’ve built on data manipulated out of the population – are now using that same data, plus the power and influence it’s brought them – to buy and change our political landscape.

It’s time to take back the web as something independent.

When I first started building stuff for the web back in the mid 90s it was an exciting chaotic place, often built on little more than passion, curiosity and excitement, it was raw, unfiltered and fun; and while we may never get that innocence back, we can take back the content to our own websites, to platforms that treat creative people fairly and to embrace and fully utilize services like App Protocol and federation through ActivityPub, we can bring back a level of authenticity and honesty, driven by people sharing without having to worry about conforming to what the almighty algorithms want on any given day.

So what am I doing about it?

Well I’ve left twitter and facebook completely, and I’m cutting my use of meta products significantly, I’m now to be found most regularly on BlueSky and YouTube, and I’m now rebuilding this site in the background to make the most of App Protocol integration so I can bring more of my work, microblogging and vlogging here. It’s small steps, but they feel bold – and they’ll get bolder as my knowledge of these new technologies increases.

Come with me…