Alongside these official responses, a loose collective of developers and techno-utopians that calls itself the IndieWeb has been creating another alternative. The movement’s affiliates are developing their own social-media platforms, which they say will preserve what’s good about social media while jettisoning what’s bad. They hope to rebuild social media according to principles that are less corporate and more humane.
Excited to see that the IndieWeb “hobby” I’ve been spending a lot of my time on for the past few years has made it into The New Yorker!
Fellow educators, teachers, specialists, instructional designers, web designers, Domains proponents, programmers, developers, students, web tinkerers, etc.,
Want to expand the capabilities of what your own domain is capable of?
Interested in improving the #OER tools available on the open web?
Want to help make simpler, ethical digital pedagogy a reality in a way that students and teachers can implement themselves without relying on predatory third-party platforms?
Are you looking to use your online commonplace book as an active hub for your research, writing, and scholarship?
Bring your ideas and passions to help us all brainstorm, ruminate, and then with help actually design and build the version of the web we all want and need–one that reflects our values and desires for the future.
I’d like to invite you all to the 9th Annual IndieWeb Summit in Portland, Oregon, USA on June 29-30, 2019. It follows a traditional BarCamp style format, so the conference is only as good as the attendees and the ideas they bring with them, and since everyone is encouraged to actively participate, it also means that everyone is sure to get something interesting and valuable out of the experience.
We need more educators, thinkers, and tinkerers to begin designing and building the ethical #edtech, #OER, and interactive pedagogy systems we all want.
Come and propose a session on a topic you’re interested in exploring and building toward with a group of like-minded people.
While on-site attendance can be exciting and invigorating for those who can come in person, streaming video and online tools should be available to make useful and worthwhile virtual attendance of all the talks, sessions, and even collaborative build time a real possibility as well. I’ll also note that travel assistance is also available for the Summit if you’d like to apply for it, or you’re able to donate funds to help others.
I hope you can all attend, and I encourage you to invite along friends, students, and colleagues.
I heartily encourage those who don’t yet have a domain of their own to join in the fun. You’ll find lots of help and encouragement at camp and within the IndieWeb community so that even if you currently think you don’t have any skills, you can put together the resources to get something up and working before the Summit’s weekend is over. We’re also around nearly 24/7 in online chat to continue that support and encouragement both before and after the event so you can continue iterating on things you’d like to have working on your personal website.
Never been to an IndieWebCamp? Click through for some details about what to expect. Still not sure? feel free to touch base in any way that feels comfortable for you.
Crowther offered everyone who shared at least a certain volume of data with his forest initiative the chance to be a co-author of a study that he and a colleague led. Published in Science in 2016, the paper used more than 770,000 data points from 44 countries to determine that forests with more tree species are more productive.
I suspect a similar hypothesis holds for shared specs, code, and the broader idea of plurality within the IndieWeb. More interoperable systems makes the IndieWeb more productive.
High-level bodies such as the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and the European Commission have called for science to become more open and endorsed a set of data-management standards known as the FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) principles.
Something like this could be applied to IndieWeb ideas and principles as well.
Thanks to everyone who’s worked on and supported this great little IndieWeb and Domain of One’s Own friendly CMS that has made my life happier and all the better for its existence. Kudos especially to Ben Werdmüller, Marcus Povey, and Erin Jo Richey.
I’ve been to a number of WordCamps over the past year, and invariably, in the registration process I’m asked for my Twitter handle and the majority of the time that Twitter handle is printed on my name tag.
Why are we doing this?! It’s not TwitterCamp. It’s a W-O-R-D-C-A-M-P!! Why can’t we ask for and put our own domain names (running WordPress, natch…) in our registration and on our name tags?! Let’s get with the program people… Twitter is nice, but obviously WordPress on a domain name we own and control is far better.
This is the sort of name tag I’d much rather support!
Here’s my pitch for a Dumb Twitter app: The app forces you to tweet at the original 140 character tweet length. You can reply. You can’t like or retweet. You most certainly can’t quote tweet. There is no private DMing. Linear tweet stream only.
Adam, as you describe “dumb Twitter”, I can’t help but think about many of the design decisions that Manton Reece has made while more consciously designing and building micro.blog which specifically leaves out reposting, likes, and quote tweets as you’ve indicated. Admittedly micro.blog is still relatively small in scale compared to Twitter, and perhaps that size also helps guard against some of the toxic behaviors seen in Twitter. However, I might also suggest that since people are paying for a product and/or using one that has their personal identity built right into it with their own custom domain name, they are far less likely to proverbially “shout from their front porch” at passerby.
I notice you have a micro site which you were using with a micro.blog account, though I suspect you may have given up experimenting with them? Admittedly there is a bit of a technical hurdle in dovetailing either a WordPress or WithKnown site into the platform, but even tying RSS feeds from these platforms into the system isn’t too difficult.
I suspect that as a proponent of DoOO, you may find it fruitful to take another crack at micro.blog which, to a great extent, is really just a DoOO platform for the broader public. For a small monthly fee it allows users to bring their own domain name and get inexpensive hosting to own their own content including articles, status updates, photos, and podcasts. Otherwise, for free, you can use your own site (as you started to) and interact with the community by syndicating your content into it via RSS instead of crossposting via other means they way you’ve done with Twitter in the past.
I might suggest you try using your WithKnown site with micro.blog instead of WordPress, particularly as Known supports webmention out of the box. As a result, anything you syndicate into the system will automatically provide you notifications of any replies. You could then have just the “dumb Twitter” you wanted along with a solid DoOO solution at the same time. Ultimately you’d be using the micro.blog interface as a feed reader to scroll through content while posting your content from your own site.
I’m happy to help if you need any getting set up or experimenting. There’s a lot more power and value in the hybrid set up that micro.blog provides than it gets credit for.
As I’m thinking about bookclubs and Hypothes.is, I sort of wish that Ruined by Design was either online or in .pdf format so that I could use a Hypothes.is group to highlight/annotate my copy with their tool for my bookclub. I’m curious if there are any non-academic bookclubs using it in the wild?
Obviously it’s great for reading native digital content, material in the public domain, or Creative Commons content, but how could one work on participatory annotations for more restricted copyright material? Is there a Hypothes.is plugin for the Kindle, Kindle apps, or other e-readers that may work with copyright material?
Some of us have thought about doing it before, but perhaps just jumping into the water and trying it out may be the best way to begin designing, testing, and building a true online IndieWeb Book Club.
Here’s the description of the book from the publisher:
The world is working exactly as designed. The combustion engine which is destroying our planet’s atmosphere and rapidly making it inhospitable is working exactly as we designed it. Guns, which lead to so much death, work exactly as they’re designed to work. And every time we “improve” their design, they get better at killing. Facebook’s privacy settings, which have outed gay teens to their conservative parents, are working exactly as designed. Their “real names” initiative, which makes it easier for stalkers to re-find their victims, is working exactly as designed. Twitter’s toxicity and lack of civil discourse is working exactly as it’s designed to work.The world is working exactly as designed. And it’s not working very well. Which means we need to do a better job of designing it. Design is a craft with an amazing amount of power. The power to choose. The power to influence. As designers, we need to see ourselves as gatekeepers of what we are bringing into the world, and what we choose not to bring into the world. Design is a craft with responsibility. The responsibility to help create a better world for all. Design is also a craft with a lot of blood on its hands. Every cigarette ad is on us. Every gun is on us. Every ballot that a voter cannot understand is on us. Every time social network’s interface allows a stalker to find their victim, that’s on us. The monsters we unleash into the world will carry your name. This book will make you see that design is a political act. What we choose to design is a political act. Who we choose to work for is a political act. Who we choose to work with is a political act. And, most importantly, the people we’ve excluded from these decisions is the biggest (and stupidest) political act we’ve made as a society.If you’re a designer, this book might make you angry. It should make you angry. But it will also give you the tools you need to make better decisions. You will learn how to evaluate the potential benefits and harm of what you’re working on. You’ll learn how to present your concerns. You’ll learn the importance of building and working with diverse teams who can approach problems from multiple points-of-view. You’ll learn how to make a case using data and good storytelling. You’ll learn to say NO in a way that’ll make people listen. But mostly, this book will fill you with the confidence to do the job the way you always wanted to be able to do it. This book will help you understand your responsibilities.
I suspect that this book will be of particular interest to those in the IndieWeb, A Domain of One’s Own, the EdTech space (and OER), and really just about anyone.
How to participate
I’m open to other potential guidelines and thoughts since this is incredibly experimental at best, but I thought I’d lay out the following broad ideas for how we can generally run the book club and everyone can keep track of the pieces online. Feel free to add your thoughts as responses to this post or add them to the IndieWeb wiki’s page https://indieweb.org/IndieWeb_Book_Club.
Buy the book or get a copy from your local bookstore
Read it along with the group
Post your progress, thoughts, replies/comments, highlights, annotations, reactions, quotes, related bookmarks, podcast or microcast episodes, etc. about the book on your own website on your own domain. If your site doesn’t support any of these natively, just do your best and post simple notes that you can share. In the end, this is about the content and the discussion first and the technology second, but feel free to let it encourage you to improve your own site for doing these things along the way.
Folks can also post on other websites and platforms if they must, but that sort of defeats some of the purpose of the Indie idea, right?
Optionally syndicate them to other services like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.
Optionally mention this original post, and my website will also aggregate the comments via webmention to the comment section below.
At regular intervals, check in on the conversations linked on indieweb.xyz/en/bookclub/ and post your replies and reactions about them on your own site.
If your site doesn’t support sending/receiving webmentions (a special type of open web notifications), take a look at Aaron Parecki’s post Sending your first Webmention and keep in mind that you can manually force webmentions with services like Telegraph or Mention-Tech.
I’ll also try to keep track of entries I’m aware about on my own site as read or bookmark posts which I’ll tag with #IWBCMM (ostensibly for IndieWeb Book Club Mike Monteiro), which we can also use on other social silos for keeping track of the conversation there.
Perhaps as we move along, I’ll look into creating a planet for the club as well as aggregating OPML files of those who create custom feeds for their posts. If I do this it will only be to supplement the aggregation of posts at the stub on indieweb.xyz which should serve as the primary hub for the club’s conversation.
If you don’t already have your own website or domain to participate, feel free to join in on other portions of social media, but perhaps consider jumping into the IndieWeb chat to ask about how to get started to better own your online identity and content.
If you need help putting together your own site, there are many of us out here who can help get you started. I might also recommend using micro.blog which is an inexpensive and simple way to have your own website. I know that Manton Reece has already purchased a copy of the book himself. I hope that he and the rest of the micro.blog community will participate along with us.
If you feel technically challenged, please ping me about your content and participation, and I’m happy to help aggregate your posts to the indieweb.xyz hub on your behalf. Ideally a panoply of people participating on a variety of technical levels and platforms will help us create a better book club (and a better web) for the future.
Of course, if you feel the itch to build pieces of infrastructure into your own website for improved participation, dive right in. Feel free to document what you’re doing both your own website and the IndieWeb wiki so others can take advantage of what you’ve come up with. Also feel free to join in on upcoming Homebrew Website Clubs (either local or virtual) or IndieWebCamps to continue brainstorming and iterating in those spaces as well.
Kickoff and Timeline
I’m syndicating this post to IndieNews for inclusion into next week’s IndieWeb newsletter which will serve as a kickoff notice. That will give folks time to acquire a copy of the book and start reading it. Of course this doesn’t mean that you couldn’t start today.
Share and repost this article with anyone you think might enjoy participating in the meanwhile.
I’ll start reading and take a stab at laying out a rough schedule. If you’re interested in participating, do let me know; we can try to mold the pace to those who actively want to participate.
I’ve already acquired a copy of the book and look forward to reading it along with you.
Presuming I’m following your question: The plugin is already using Parse This to scrape and import the “name” (aka the post title you’re bookmarking, reading, etc.) from the original website based on microformats, html, OG meta, or even schema before it posts to your site. Some sites may not provide these in which case you may have to supply something yourself. I’ve only seen a very small number of sites return nothing for these.
As I recall, if the post name comes up empty, the plugin will default to the text “a post” so that there’s something there to link to, but you can always go back and change it if necessary. If you’re using the bookmarklet, you can always manually input something as well before publishing.
Let me know if I’ve misunderstood your question and this didn’t cover your use case(s).
The world is working exactly as designed. The combustion engine which is destroying our planet’s atmosphere and rapidly making it inhospitable is working exactly as we designed it. Guns, which lead to so much death, work exactly as they’re designed to work. And every time we “improve” their design, they get better at killing. Facebook’s privacy settings, which have outed gay teens to their conservative parents, are working exactly as designed. Their “real names” initiative, which makes it easier for stalkers to re-find their victims, is working exactly as designed. Twitter’s toxicity and lack of civil discourse is working exactly as it’s designed to work.The world is working exactly as designed. And it’s not working very well. Which means we need to do a better job of designing it. Design is a craft with an amazing amount of power. The power to choose. The power to influence. As designers, we need to see ourselves as gatekeepers of what we are bringing into the world, and what we choose not to bring into the world. Design is a craft with responsibility. The responsibility to help create a better world for all. Design is also a craft with a lot of blood on its hands. Every cigarette ad is on us. Every gun is on us. Every ballot that a voter cannot understand is on us. Every time social network’s interface allows a stalker to find their victim, that’s on us. The monsters we unleash into the world will carry your name. This book will make you see that design is a political act. What we choose to design is a political act. Who we choose to work for is a political act. Who we choose to work with is a political act. And, most importantly, the people we’ve excluded from these decisions is the biggest (and stupidest) political act we’ve made as a society.If you’re a designer, this book might make you angry. It should make you angry. But it will also give you the tools you need to make better decisions. You will learn how to evaluate the potential benefits and harm of what you’re working on. You’ll learn how to present your concerns. You’ll learn the importance of building and working with diverse teams who can approach problems from multiple points-of-view. You’ll learn how to make a case using data and good storytelling. You’ll learn to say NO in a way that’ll make people listen. But mostly, this book will fill you with the confidence to do the job the way you always wanted to be able to do it. This book will help you understand your responsibilities.
Has anyone read Mike Monteiro’s new book “Ruined by Design”? Sounds very IndieWeb in flavor… (or at least anti-silo/anti-corporate)
In the aftermath of white supremacist attacks in New Zealand, there's a tension between reporting on the shooter's motivations and not amplifying his message. This week, On the Media examines how the press can navigate that persistent dilemma. Plus, the debate over whether online archives of jihadi terrorist propaganda should be open to the public.
1. Joan Donovan [@BostonJoan] describes the way the press has evolved in its responses to far-right terrorism, and argues for continued caution in coverage of white supremacists. Listen.
2. Kathleen Belew [@kathleen_belew] describes the White Power roots of the Christchurch attack, and argues that to effectively fight this hate, we must understand the movement in which it grows. Listen.
3. Dan Feidt [@HongPong] of Unicorn Riot [@UR_Ninja] on what alt-right groups are discussing in their secret online chatrooms, and what we learn by reading them. Listen.
As I was listening to the last two segments I was thinking that there are some interesting bits of user interface and ethics hiding in here for the IndieWeb community to examine. They’re definitely worth a listen and some thought for how we design public versus private and what we archive or don’t. Some in the academic arena may want to consider how we make research facing sites that don’t create more harm than good.
There was a spark of recognition on my part as I was listening to the Unicorn Riot segment, but I couldn’t put my finger on it until I looked at the episode notes just after. The interviewee is Dan Feidt (aka HongPong) a member of the IndieWeb community whose Drupal work relating to webmention I’ve always been a big fan of. His work here is far more interesting and valuable however (and that’s really saying something because I LOVE webmention).
Are you building your own website? Indie reader? Personal publishing web app? Or some other digital magic-cloud proxy? If so, come on by and join a gathering of people with like-minded interests. Bring your friends who want to start a personal web site. Exchange information, swap ideas, talk shop, help work on a project…
Everyone of every level is welcome to participate! Don’t have a domain yet? Come along and someone can help you get started and provide resources for creating the site you’ve always wanted.
This virtual HWC meeting is for site builders who either can’t make a regular in-person meeting or don’t yet have critical mass to host one in their area. It will be hosted on Google Hangouts.
i could come up with gmail, sieve, etc email filters for people to install that would forward all facebook emails except password resets. or maybe only notification emails. still seems iffy security wise, and awful UX, but...meh?
quick poll time. hey @aaronpk @chrisaldrich @jgmac1106 @grantcodes @dshanske @tantek and others: if you could get facebook backfeed again by setting up an email filter like this, but it'd be somewhat sketchy security wise (discussion above), and might be inconsistent and incomplete, and the bridgy UI might be weak or nonexistent...would you do it? feel free to emoji respond +1 for yes, -1 for no. also feel free to @-mention anyone else who might vote.
I should have outlined this originally… Likely safer (for Bridgy and the end user) would be to follow the model of posting to WordPress via email (or services like Reading.am which allow posting to it via custom email addresses). Bridgy could provide users with a private hashed email address like 123xyzABC@brid.gy which could be linked to their particular account to which they could manually (or automatically) forward the relevant Facebook notification emails. Upon receipt, Bridgy would know which account sent it and could also match it to the user’s post URL as a check before sending the appropriate webmentions.
This would leave Bridgy free from being the potential source for security leaks and put the onus on the end user. You’d naturally need to have the ability to reset/change the user’s hash in the case that they accidentally allowed their custom email address to leak, although generally this isn’t a huge issue as emails which don’t match the user’s account/endpoints would be dropped and not send webmentions in any case. (In some sense it’s roughly equivalent to my being able to visit https://brid.gy/twitter/schnarfed and clicking on the Poll now or Crawl now buttons. It’s doable, but doesn’t give a bad actor much. You’d probably want to rate limit incoming emails to prevent against mass spam or DDoS sort of attacks against Bridgy.)
A side benefit of all of this is that those who have kept their old email notifications could relatively easily get much of their past missing back feed as well. Or if they’re missing back feed for some reason, they could easily get it by re-sending the relevant emails instead of some of the current manual methods. Perhaps allowing preformatted emails with those same manual methods could be used to do back feed for Facebook or other providers as well?
We could also put together some forwarding filters for common platforms like gmail to help people set up autoforwarders with appropriate keywords/data to cut down on the amount of false positive or password containing emails being sent to Bridgy.
The one potential privacy issue to consider(?) is that this set up may mean that Bridgy could be sending webmentions for private messages since users get both private and public message notifications whereas the API distinguished these in the past. To remedy this, the comment URL could be tested to see if/how it renders as a test for public/private prior to sending. Separately, since Bridgy doesn’t need to store or show these messages (for long?), private messages could be sent, but potentially with a payload that allows the receiving end to mark them as private (or to be moderated to use WordPress terminology). This would allow the user’s website to receive the notifications and give them the decision to show or not show them, though this may be a potential moral gray area as they could choose to show responses that the originator meant to be private communication. The API would have prevented this in the past, but this email method could potentially route around that.
Adam Croom
Scott Kingery
