Read a post by Bix Bix (bix.blog)
I’ve changed my mind: I no longer want RSS readers from which you can reply to blog posts via webmention. It completely violates my contention that social media has too little friction; it’s not a flaw an indieweb blogosphere software ecosystem should replicate. One should have to visit the blog...
Bix, I’m not sure I’m 100% sure of your mental model of a bigger system as there are definitely many moving pieces. I don’t think it’s the intention of any feed readers to be sending the Webmentions on the author’s behalf. (This would mean they’d have to save it and have it publicly available on a URL on their site to be able to send a webmention.) The readers in the IndieWeb space are generally meant to use Micropub to publish the replies to the author’s personal website and then that site is responsible for sending the Webmention.

While I suspect that reducing the friction of communicating will cause problems and potentially the attendant spam and abuse, the majority of people aren’t going to post “crap” on their own websites that they own and control.

Because so many websites are reflective of their author’s identities and personalities, I will typically subscribe to their output in a feed reader, but more often than not, read their content natively on their own website. For me that’s a big part of the experience. As an example, one could read Kicks Condor in a feed reader, but why would they choose to?!

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Chris Aldrich

I'm a biomedical and electrical engineer with interests in information theory, complexity, evolution, genetics, signal processing, IndieWeb, theoretical mathematics, and big history. I'm also a talent manager-producer-publisher in the entertainment industry with expertise in representation, distribution, finance, production, content delivery, and new media.

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