❧ As I build out this new blog I run into familiar issues. If I want people to run across my writing, it would help to be part of some discovery feed. And if I want to invite and foster conversation around the writing, being part of a social network with built-in identity is almost essential.
For reasons of mental hygiene, however, I’m avoiding all algorithmic platforms as much as I can. I also want to own everything about my site for ideological reasons, sure, but more importantly because it’s fun and I want to make my site and its backend as bespoke as suits me. That rules out not just platforms like Substack (which I nevertheless find heavy-handed and stifling) but also open indie platforms like Micro.blog and Bear that still have control of your data.
The compromise I’m circling around is a hybrid system. First, a comments system that uses Google Sign In for identity because (essentially) everyone has a Gmail account and that will let normies frictionlessly drop in a reply to a post. Yes, I let Google’s tentacles in, but just instrumentally. I will end up owning the comments data. Second, and interwoven with these normie comments, will be Webmentions, which with any luck will help bring me into conversation with IndieWeb blogs. That should not just be gratifying in itself, but it should help with discoverability.
The one reservation I have is that in general (and realizing I’m painting in broad strokes), I have found that IndieWeb sites that support Webmention tend to be about, or talk mostly about, IndieWeb development, software development, and related subjects almost exclusively. It’s a highly self-referential ecosystem, it seems to me. The IndieWeb also strikes me as skewing quite progressive and intolerant. It reminds me of my foray into Nostr. I found the tech fascinating, but the conversation there was almost exclusively about Nostr and Bitcoin and skewed overwhelmingly right-wing. That said, it won’t change if more people don’t join in.