Tags: ownership

My Web Values: Why I Quit X and Feed the Fediverse Instead | Cybercultural

1. Support open source software
2. Support open web platform technology
3. Distribution on the web should never be throttled
4. External links should be encouraged, not de-emphasized

This page is under construction - localghost

I see the personal website as being an antidote to the corporate, centralised web. Yeah, sure, it’s probably hosted on someone else’s computer – but it’s a piece of the web that belongs to you. If your host goes down, you can just move it somewhere else, because it’s just HTML.

Sure, it’s not going to fix democracy, or topple the online pillars of capitalism; but it’s making a political statement nonetheless. It says “I want to carve my own space on the web, away from the corporations”. I think this is a radical act. It was when I originally said this in 2022, and I mean it even more today.

Own what’s yours

Now, more than ever, it’s critical to own your data. Really own it. Like, on your hard drive and hosted on your website.

Is taking control of your content less convenient? Yeah–of course. That’s how we got in this mess to begin with. It can be a downright pain in the ass. But it’s your pain in the ass. And that’s the point.

For Love of God, Make Your Own Website - Aftermath

Unfortunately, this is what all of the internet is right now: social media, owned by large corporations that make changes to them to limit or suppress your speech, in order to make themselves more attractive to advertisers or just pursue their owners’ ends. Even the best Twitter alternatives, like Bluesky, aren’t immune to any of this—the more you centralize onto one single website, the more power that website has over you and what you post there. More than just moving to another website, we need more websites.

The web we want: A beginner’s guide to the IndieWeb · Paul Robert Lloyd

This is a terrific presentation from Paul. He gives a history lesson and then focuses on what makes the indie web such a powerful idea (hint: it’s not about specific technologies).

The next decade of the web | James’ Coffee Blog

Things can be different:

The core value of the IndieWeb, individual empowerment, helped me realise a fundamental change in perspective: that the web was beautiful and at times difficult, but that we, the people, were in control.

IndieWeb principles · Paul Robert Lloyd

I really, really like Paul’s idea of splitting up the indie web principles into one opinionated nerdy list of dev principles, and a separate shorter list of core principles for everyone:

1. Own your identity An independent web presence starts with an online identity you own and control. The most reliable way to do this today is by having your own domain name.
2. Own your content You should retain control of the things you make, and not be subject to third-parties preventing access to it, deleting it or disappearing entirely. The best way to do this is by publishing content on your own website.
3. Have fun! When the web took off in the 90’s people began designing personal sites with garish backgrounds and animated GIFs. It may have been ugly but it was fun. Let’s keep the web weird and interesting.

The creator economy trap: why building on someone else’s platform is a dead end — Joan Westenberg

Craig and Jason are walking the walk here:

1. Build your own damn platform.
2. Treat social media like the tool it is.
3. Build your technical skills.

The indieweb is for everyone

The internet has always been made of people, but it has not always been people-first. The indieweb reminds us that humanity is the most important thing, and that nobody should own our ability to connect, form relationships, express ourselves, be creative, learn from each other, and embrace our differences and similarities.

Ben’s ode to the indie web:

One could look at the movement as kind of a throwback to the very early web, which was a tapestry of wildly different sites and ideas, at a time when everybody’s online communications were templated through web services owned by a handful of billion dollar corporations. I’d prefer to think of it as a manifesto for diversity of communications, the freedom to share your knowledge and lived experiences on your own terms, and maintaining the independence of freedom of expression from business interests.

Personalization

A look at how personalisation works in digital interfaces and real-world objects.

ChatGPT is not ‘artificial intelligence.’ It’s theft. | America Magazine

But in calling these programs “artificial intelligence” we grant them a claim to authorship that is simply untrue. Each of those tokens used by programs like ChatGPT—the “language” in their “large language model”—represents a tiny, tiny piece of material that someone else created. And those authors are not credited for it, paid for it or asked permission for its use. In a sense, these machine-learning bots are actually the most advanced form of a chop shop: They steal material from creators (that is, they use it without permission), cut that material into parts so small that no one can trace them and then repurpose them to form new products.

The Year of the Personal Website · Matthias Ott – User Experience Designer

Especially if you are a designer, an artist, a photographer, a writer, a blogger, a creator of any kind, owning your work is as important as ever. Social media platforms might be great for distributing your content and creating a network of like-minded people around you. But they will always be ephemeral, transient, and impermanent – not the best place to preserve your thoughts, words, and brushstrokes.

Suspension · Matthias Ott – User Experience Designer

But most importantly, always write your most important thoughts on your own site. You can share the link on as many platforms as you like and have conversations with anyone who wants to connect with you and your work. But nobody can take it from you. You are in control. Forever.

Malleable Systems Collective

Modern computing is far too rigid. Applications can only function in preset ways determined by some far away team. Software is trapped in hermetically sealed silos and is rewritten many times over rather than recomposed.

This community catalogs and experiments with malleable software and systems that reset the balance of power via several essential principles…

I’ll be adding those principles to my collection.

The Technium: Ideas Want to be Shared

The books I have written are created from words invented by others, filled with ideas created by others. Even the few new ideas that are new depend on older ideas to work. What I had to say would probably be said by someone else not long after me. (More probably there have already been said by someone I was not aware of.) I may be the lucky person to claim those rare new ideas, but the worth of my art primarily resides in the great accumulation of the ideas and works of thousands of writers and thinkers before me — what I call the commons. My work was born in the commons, it gets its value by being deeply connected to the commons, and after my brief stewardship of those tiny new bits, it should return to the commons as fast as possible, in as many ways as possible.

Meet the Self-Hosters, Taking Back the Internet One Server at a Time

Taking the indie web to the next level—self-hosting on your own hardware.

Tired of Big Tech monopolies, a community of hobbyists is taking their digital lives off the cloud and onto DIY hardware that they control.

Presentable #96: The Employee-Owned Design Agency - Relay FM

If you want to know more about Clearleft’s new employee-ownserhip model, Andy tells Jeff all about it in this huffduffable hour of audio.

Clearleft turned fifteen this year. We didn’t make a big deal of it. What with The Situation and all, it didn’t seem fitting to be self-congratulatory. Still, any agency that can survive for a decade and a half deserves some recognition.

Cassie marked the anniversary by designing and building a beautiful timeline of Clearleft’s history.

Here’s a post I wrote 15 years ago:

Most of you probably know this already, but I’ve joined forces with Andy and Richard. Collectively, we are known as Clearleft.

I didn’t make too much of a big deal of it back then. I think I was afraid I’d jinx it. I still kind of feel that way. Fifteen years of success? Beginner’s luck.

Despite being one of the three founders, I was never an owner of Clearleft. I let Andy and Rich take the risks and rewards on their shoulders while I take a salary, the same as any other employee.

But now, after fifteen years, I am also an owner of Clearleft.

So is Trys. And Cassie. And Benjamin. And everyone else at Clearleft.

Clearleft is now owned by an employee ownership trust. This isn’t like owning shares in a company—a common Silicon Valley honeypot. This is literally owning the company. Shares are transferable—this isn’t. As long as I’m an employee at Clearleft, I’m a part owner.

On a day-to-day basis, none of this makes much difference. Everyone continues to do great work, the same as before. The difference is in what happens to any profit produced as a result of that work. The owners decide what to do with that profit. The owners are us.

In most companies you’ve got a tension between a board representing the stakeholders and a union representing the workers. In the case of an employee ownership trust, the interests are one and the same. The stakeholders are the workers.

It’ll be fascinating to see how this plays out. Check back again in fifteen years.

A future owners test // Cennydd Bowles

I’d like to see more of this thinking – maybe we could call it the future owners test – in contemporary responsible tech work. We mustn’t get so wrapped up in today that we overlook tomorrow.

Autonomy Online: A Case For The IndieWeb — Smashing Magazine

A wonderful introduction to the indie web—Ana really conveys her sense of excitement!