4 ms·

I didn't read the article, so feel free to downvote me for talking over the author... A "modern Frontpage" may help, but these days it seems: - creators (incl

I didn't read the article, so feel free to downvote me for talking over the author... A "modern Frontpage" may help, but these days it seems: - creators (including your mum on Facebook) don't want to worry about design, only content - creators want to see feedback from the widest range of people possible as soon as possible, so it feels like conversation - consumers (who are the same people) want to see updates from all their friends, family and the brands they follow right there alongside one another and the feedback to their own stuff So to "reclaim the web" you ALSO need a decentralised commenting system that doesn't require any investment on the part of the user. We have ActivityPub and WebMentions now, but they all require accounts, hosting and management... and they don't come with original content creation. If you put every creator in their own silo (under their own domain name, say), they won't feel so connected, unless that domain also provides near-instant access to the feeds from all their contacts. Facebook and Insta give you a feed of your whole village plus the folks from the village over that you like, instantly. I'm sure the IndieWeb crew do feel connected, but how much effort have they all made to join that party? LOADS, compared with your mum on Facebook. So sure, modern Frontpage, but also easy RSS/Atom + WebMentions + ActivityPub (or equivalent). Personally, I really like Scuttlebutt for this. It has all this stuff, and is offline-first, and will work with interplanetary travel, and you can build calendars and events and stuff on top of it. But it's yet another protocol (and a complex one at that), and getting into the network is a big hurdle still.

Grumbledour 6y ago
But isn't scuttlebutt User centric vs. content centric? So I will only easily find content from people I already know? And I guess I can find new people if they are somehow connected to me, but can I search just for content on the "whole" network? Does this really provide a network effect like medium or facebook, or google search, who offer a large existing network for discovery?
- the_other 6y ago
  Last time I used it: yes-ish. "Tags" are public and posts can be set public (perhaps scoped to the server you're connected to. I don't recall). You can tag bits of content pretty easily (IIRC you prepend a # to any word you like). You then explore the contents of tags like channels. Public posts with tags then show up under those tags. The SSB/Patchwork creators were discussing a while ago that the network was actually content-centric. They described it as "islands of content" around which people navigated. I'm not gonna try to defend that, only to repeat it. Anyway... I think this is distracting from the main point. It doesn't _really_ matter if SSB wins out over HTML+CSS+JS+HTTP+RSS+ActivityPub+WebMentions or not. What matters is encouraging people to leave social media walled gardens by giving them tools and reasons to do so. Or, at the very least, somehow giving the content they create an easy means of escape, and bullying the gardens to open windows onto the wider world that don't involve one-way tactics like OpenGraph.
tjpnz 6y ago
Not all creators want a conversation though. There are plenty of personal pages out there receiving regular updates (in the form of articles) which don't have a comments section. I suspect the same probably goes for a lot of projects on Github.
- the_other 6y ago
  Are those the same people that would benefit from having Frontpage?
InvisibleUp 6y ago
A key feature of FrontPage were "WebBots", which in today's terms would be like drag and drop PHP snippets. It would be easy for such a system to allow for a comments section or whatever is necessary. The greater point about the benefits of some sort of feed, some sort of follow/boost system, etc. is valid though.

Grumbledour 6y ago

But isn't scuttlebutt User centric vs. content centric? So I will only easily find content from people I already know? And I guess I can find new people if they are somehow connected to me, but can I search just for content on the "whole" network? Does this really provide a network effect like medium or facebook, or google search, who offer a large existing network for discovery?

the_other 6y ago
Last time I used it: yes-ish. "Tags" are public and posts can be set public (perhaps scoped to the server you're connected to. I don't recall). You can tag bits of content pretty easily (IIRC you prepend a # to any word you like). You then explore the contents of tags like channels. Public posts with tags then show up under those tags. The SSB/Patchwork creators were discussing a while ago that the network was actually content-centric. They described it as "islands of content" around which people navigated. I'm not gonna try to defend that, only to repeat it. Anyway... I think this is distracting from the main point. It doesn't _really_ matter if SSB wins out over HTML+CSS+JS+HTTP+RSS+ActivityPub+WebMentions or not. What matters is encouraging people to leave social media walled gardens by giving them tools and reasons to do so. Or, at the very least, somehow giving the content they create an easy means of escape, and bullying the gardens to open windows onto the wider world that don't involve one-way tactics like OpenGraph.

tjpnz 6y ago

Not all creators want a conversation though. There are plenty of personal pages out there receiving regular updates (in the form of articles) which don't have a comments section. I suspect the same probably goes for a lot of projects on Github.

the_other 6y ago
Are those the same people that would benefit from having Frontpage?

InvisibleUp 6y ago

A key feature of FrontPage were "WebBots", which in today's terms would be like drag and drop PHP snippets. It would be easy for such a system to allow for a comments section or whatever is necessary. The greater point about the benefits of some sort of feed, some sort of follow/boost system, etc. is valid though.