Activity tagged "better web"

Read:
"Coming home".
Mandy Brown in A Working Library. Published .
Some weeks ago, I quietly shipped a new content type on A Working Library, such that I am now writing short, social-shaped posts on my site and then sending them off to the various platforms. This is not a novel mode of publishing, but rather one borrowed and adapted from the POSSE model (“publish on your site, syndicate elsewhere”) developed by the IndieWeb community. While one of the reasons oft declared for using POSSE is the ability to own your content, I’m less interested in ownership than I am in context. Writing on my own site has very different affordances: I’m not typing into a little box, but writing in a text file. I’m not surrounded by other people’s thinking, but located within my own body of work. As I played with setting this up, I could immediately feel how that would change the kinds of things I would say, and it felt good. Really good. Like putting on a favorite t-shirt, or coming home to my solid, quiet house after a long time away.
Posted:

On "What I learned in year four of Platformer"

Really cool to see Casey Newton's update on how things are going over at the Platformer newsletter after they left Substack. A lot of it resonates with my own experiences:

It also feels like more honest, durable growth than we saw in 2023. ...
 First and foremost, we have an honest-to-goodness website now. One where we can easily modify the design, add new features, and grow our offering over time. One reason why I write so often about the decline of the web is that I love websites as products. And our new setup gives us almost unlimited flexibility as Platformer evolves. ...
Another key benefit of leaving: We’re much less vulnerable to platform shifts than we were before. I had long worried that Substack’s unprofitable business would eventually lead it to make decisions that were not in the best interest of our readers or our business. (Besides not removing literal 1930s Nazi content, I mean.) I still have that worry for my friends who choose to build their businesses on Substack anyway. But whatever happens, it will no longer affect Platformer, and that gives me me real peace of mind. ...
It’s a decision I’m proud of — because it’s a decision we made as a community. ... Having principles can be annoying and expensive. (And make you insufferable to talk to at parties.) But it beats the alternative.

It's also cool to hear that Platformer has enjoyed solid growth, which I know a lot of people worried about when leaving the promised network effects of the Substack ecosystem:

I’m proud to report that despite leaving Substack, revenue was up about 11 percent year over year. 

Not many newsletters operate on the scale of Platformer (mine certainly included), so I'm sure their experience is unique in many ways, but it's great to have another success story from a newsletter choosing to go the even more independent route.

"What I learned in year four of Platformer".
Casey Newton in Platformer.
Ever since Platformer left Substack in January, readers have been asking us how it’s been going. Today, in keeping with our annual tradition of anniversary posts (here are one, two, and three), I’ll answer that question — and share some other observations on the state of independent media over the past year.
Listened to:
"Algorithms and Oligopolies with Thomas Germain" (Podcast).
Ed Zitron in Better Offline. Published .
The open web is still there. It's still being built, and thanks to the good services, it's still growing, and it's still accessible and it's still cool. If we can realign these search engines, or maybe there is a future Google competitor (it is not SearchGPT), I think that, I don't know, we could find it again. I think that there could be if these companies were realigned so that they could actually, I don't know, index the Internet. There is plenty of original, human-created content out there. It's just that Google and Being and all of these sites have kind of defaulted on that position of showing us it and we have to search for it through social networks. It's why as an independent journalist it's tough to build a following because all of the algorithms people are built to rely on are broken now.
Posted:

XOXO and that feeling

At the recent XOXO conference, I spoke about that burning feeling I get right in my upper abdomen when I’m overwhelmed with excitement or inspiration or drive to do something.

I mentioned that I’ve been feeling this a lot over the last few years, even as I too am witnessing what many of us think about as “the web” rotting right in front of our eyes. Working outside of that rot pile, and perhaps motivated by it, there are so many people who are excited about the potential for a better web.

I don’t travel much, partly because even short trips sap my energy in a way that requires a long recovery. But even as my low battery alarm is beeping away, I am feeling that burning feeling very intensely. I met so many people at XOXO who feel it too (whether about the web or a different passion).

I wish I could bottle the feeling of being surrounded by hundreds of people like this. People like Erin Kissane, who will just do the thing that needs doing because no one else is doing it. People like Gita Jackson at Aftermath, the people at 404 Media, and all of the others who are writing what needs writing, even if it means using a model for their businesses that people told them couldn’t possibly work. The too many people to name who I talked to who also feel the feeling of needing to write or draw or film or paint or code or sing or dance or photograph or tell stories because they too fear their heads might explode if they don’t.

XOXO, Molly

P.S. For those who weren’t able to attend, the video of my talk should be available online shortly.

Read:
"Disenshittify or Die".
Cory Doctorow. Published .
The new good internet is in our grasp: an internet that has the technological self-determination of the old, good internet, and the greased-skids simplicity of Web 2.0 that let all our normie friends get in on the fun. Tech bosses want you to think that good UX and enshittification can’t ever be separated. That’s such a self-serving proposition you can spot it from orbit. We know it, 'cause we built the old good internet, and we’ve been fighting a rear-guard action to preserve it for the past two decades. It’s time to stop playing defense. It's time to go on the offensive. To restore competition, regulation, interop and tech worker power so that we can create the new, good internet we’ll need to fight fascism, the climate emergency, and genocide.
Posted:

This was one of the best podcast episodes I’ve listened to in a long time. Put it on if you’re feeling despair about the state of the internet and tech industry.

"Enzittification with Cory Doctorow & Brian Merchant".
Ed Zitron in Better Offline.
In the third live-to-tape episode of Better Offlive, Ed Zitron is joined in-studio in Los Angeles by Cory Doctorow and Brian Merchant to talk about the forces that have turned the tech industry away from innovation - and how we might turn the tide against them.