The indie-web

I keep reading the same things online about escaping big tech, but to be honest I want to read more about the alternatives. It's all well and good telling people to leave the silos. Unless you can show them something that isn't a part of that system that they want, then it's a losing battle.

The way things are set up at the moment it's a self healing system. People only search for things using google so they get funnelled into the silos, any search you do will lead you back to one of them.

The problem with the indie-web is discoverability. The fact that most of the alternative search engines are trying to replace Google means that they are just doing the same job as google just with crappier results.

It's all well and good having your work available in an RSS feed, but if the people that would want to read it can't find it then you're both stuck.

Directories of indie sites are no good because the bigger they get the less likely you are to find anything worth finding.

I was talking to some friends the other day about what they use the internet for, one predictably had no interest in contributing just wanted to consume. One was a light contributor, and the other was a creator that had no idea how to get people to see his stuff. And I'm out here making this blog knowing that nobody is reading it. Because it amuses me. And so that I can one day look back and say see I did do something.

There are enough pages telling people how to build their own site, it's a solved problem, for the sort of people who can do it. The problem is making a value proposition to the sort of people who lurk, the people who doom scroll, the voyeurs who aren't interested in contributing to the discussion, but just want to watch the aggro. Those are the ones we need to pull out of the silos. Without them the silos can't keep going.

The thing is, now they can feed the masses a diet of AI generated slop they don't need "real" people to create the content.

What's the solution, I'm not sure there is one, yet.

And if on the off chance someone is reading this, I promise I'll keep trying to come up with answers to questions I don't have yet. Just not today.

Stay Lucky.