How do we break up the Big Tech monopoly on web presences for average people?

[RadDevon]

Long-time lurker, infrequent poster. I'll try to make this as short as I can, but I need to give some background.

I have a friend who is a lady in her late 60s or early 70s. She is a musician and has a personal web site (on WordPress) to promote her gig work. It's nothing fancy, but it does what she needs it to do: she can post photos and updates; it has a music player where prospects can listen to her; people can get in touch with her via a contact form.

She's at a bit of an inflection point. Her web site has been compromised and is serving up a bunch of garbage. She leans on me for help with this stuff, so I'm trying to figure out the best way forward. The options as I see them:

• Clean her WordPress site and turn on automatic updates. This means, at some point WordPress core will undoubtedly get out-of-step with one of her plugins and break her site. Then, we need to either find an alternative plugin that is better maintained or see if we can put a bandage on what's already there.
• Clean her WordPress site, update everything, and leave automatic updates off. In this scenario, she'll be fine until one of the plugins or her version of WordPress is exploited and someone stumbles onto her site with said exploit. Then, it will need to be cleaned up and updated again.
• Adapt her site to a static site. This is the most secure path, but it requires me to build a solution that will make it easy for her to edit the site. That probably means some kind of static site CMS that hooks into a Git repo with CI that rebuilds the site on a push. I'll also need to integrate a service to email submissions from a contact form and lean on cloud services to host the site and for a code forge with build capabilities.

For me, there's no clear winner here. The first two options are different varieties of ticking time bomb. The last one may never be as easy to use as she would need it to be, and it will rely on services that could at any point pivot to enterprise or disappear altogether. I feel like the common answer in nerd circles is that everyone should learn HTML and/or Markdown + static site generators or something of the sort. Basically, everyone should know how to build their own web site. I can agree while also understanding that most people don't care. Many people need a presence on the web for one reason or another but don't want to have to learn the many things required to build and maintain it themselves. I sympathize with them. I use many things on a daily basis that I don't want to know how to repair or rebuild; web just happens to be a thing I do enjoy knowing that deeply, but this won't be the case for most.

I feel like this is the vacuum social media entered into. You want a web presence for yourself or your business? Here's Facebook. Here's Instagram. They take care of all the details for you and just let you worry about the content. You want a space for your community? Here's Reddit. Here's Discord. They've sanded off the jagged edges so you can just start communicating. You need to put video on the web? Here's YouTube. They've figured out all the infrastructure necessary so you can focus on just the video.

The promise was too good to ignore, especially for normies who don't care enough to learn how all the pieces fit together. Over the years, the costs have slowly been escalating. At first, this was all free. Then, they started advertising to us, forcing us to pay with our attention. Then, they needed to invisibly gobble up tons of personal information about us so they could charge more for those ads. Then they needed to stretch their tendrils out across the entire internet to gather that data, not just while we're on their site, but anywhere we go online. Then, they sold our democracies to anyone willing to pay the price. Then, they sold us out to those newly bought governments when we did something they didn't like.

I've been thinking about how you can loosen the stranglehold these companies have over the internet for the average user, and this compromised web site seems like the perfect time to move from daydreaming into practice.

Is this something you've also considered? What approach would you take in this scenario? What have you done when approached by normies who want a web presence or want to jailbreak out of the silos with the one they already have? I'm interested in both specific suggestions for my current scenario and more general thoughts on how we get regular people back onto the open web.

[Melooon]

This is the most secure path, but it requires me to build a solution that will make it easy for her to edit the site. That probably means some kind of static site CMS that hooks into a Git repo with CI that rebuilds the site on a push. I'll also need to integrate a service to email submissions from a contact form and lean on cloud services to host the site and for a code forge with build capabilities.

That's wildly dramatic You could setup a basic static site builder that extracts texts from txt files and processes images from a folder, and converts it all into a simple HTML site that can be pushed to neocities or nekoweb by double clicking a "publish" icon that triggers a local script - on mac you can do all that with little to no code, I'm sure windows has an equivalent - you dont need GIT, CMSs, CIs, Hooks, EGGs, BLTs or Zonks. You also don't need live logic for a form, you can make a form that opens an e-mail client, or you can use a an indie form service.

There's also a 3rd option you overlooked and that's using a local site builder, then publishing it to neocities (using the same script). They are less common today, but for a static site even a very old site builder is fine, my recommendation is RapidWeaver, its prob easier than WordPress, and old copies are provided free by the developer.


Using WordPress for most businesses is wildly overkill and kinda gets you into the deeper issue. Big Tech services are built on what I'd call the 20th century idea of the "agent", that's the idea that someone out there is an expert at doing something you need, and you should defer your needs to them. In some cases, that is a very good plan; I want an expert to be my dentist or surgeon. However personal computers, and by extension the web is founded on a different model; the web is made for individuals; its made for hackers and homebrewers, and you have to take that as the baseline; the web favors those who are willing to learn the web.

There are two problems there, firstly the web was never intended to be as universal as it is (we are way past fixing that now), the second is people want more than they can have. People don't want to learn to code websites, but they do want a professional website. They don't want to deal with the complexities of setup and protocols, but they do want a highly complex online communication platform. So they defer to agents, they go for a deal that offers them more than they can have for the amount of effort they are willing to put in (and its no different with AI agents by the way, its the same old thing).

To a certain extent, its fine! A Neocities is an agent, MelonLand is an agent, there are lots of indie agents, and there are lots of situations where deferring to an agent is a perfectly good idea; however I think the line starts to be drawn when you look at how much that agent is promising, verses how much you should really have based on your interest and ability; because when it gets out of balance, that's when it starts to lean into the nonsense land of social media and people thinking they need GDPR cookie collection alerts on their info page about a local potluck.

My solution is really dumb, and its basically to say, its like the Boggart from Harry Potter; Big tech sites are like monsters that try to manifest your own insecurities, and then sell you a solution. In reality, if you are a small business, then you're not a multinational corporation, so you should not be pretending to be one, it's ridiculous.

We can't teach everyone webdesign, but we can teach people more realistic expectations about what is expected of them when interacting online. We can teach people its ok to have a messy little site for your messy little business. The more you do that, the more ridiculous looking big tech's offerings start to become.

[RadDevon]

That's wildly dramatic You could setup a basic static site builder that extracts texts from txt files and processes images from a folder, and converts it all into a simple HTML site that can be pushed to neocities or nekoweb by double clicking a "publish" icon that triggers a local script - on mac you can do all that with little to no code, I'm sure windows has an equivalent - you dont need GIT, CMSs, CIs, Hooks, EGGs, BLTs or Zonks. You also don't need live logic for a form, you can make a form that opens an e-mail client, or you can use a an indie form service.

Sure, I could set it up that way, but it's not a very good user experience for the maintainer. For a user who is going to leave their site alone for a long time and then want to add a quick photo or two every 6 months, adding their photos to a directory in an arbitrary location and running some CLI command won't exactly be top-of-mind. These little pieces of friction seem like how the exodus to Facebook happens: they're already on FB every day and familiar with the interface; they just need to click around a bit to find their page and click an "Upload photos" button instead of doing a bunch of weird stuff on their computer that they scribbled down on a notepad once upon a time. (Now, just where did I put that notepad anyway? )

If I didn't want to create something that is comparable, both for her and for the people using her site, to what she has now, the doors are wide open to things like what you're suggesting or even more radical departures like mailing out flyers or buying billboard space, none of which are subject to these same concerns (at least, not in the same way). These feel less like fighting back and more like conceding though. "Sorry but, these attributes of the web are owned by mainstream social media, so if you don't want to be a part of that, you'll have to give them up." But what I don't understand is why?

Mailto links are fantastic… unless the person who wants to contact you is using web mail and hasn't installed a special plugin that makes that work. I've just started helping some older people with computer problems, and I haven't found a single one who is using a mail client on a desktop computer. (It was a shocking revelation to me, but it makes perfect sense; they're already out of their element, so "easy" is the #1 concern.) Popping up an email from a link vs. showing a form also gives a different impression to the end user, which is an important consideration for someone running a business, even if they're not a Forbes 500 company or anywhere near it.

I'd love to use an indie form service, but one thing that has disappointed me greatly about the indie web is that it doesn't seem at all interested in longevity. Sites and services are live one minute and dead the next. I don't trust that a given indie form service will still exist in two years. That's the other edge of the "we do this for the love of the game, not for the money" sword.

There's also a 3rd option you overlooked and that's using a local site builder, then publishing it to neocities (using the same script). They are less common today, but for a static site even a very old site builder is fine, my recommendation is RapidWeaver, its prob easier than WordPress, and old copies are provided free by the developer.

I like this idea in theory, but it also feels like trading one ticking time bomb for another. How much longer does this software work before an OS update kills something that it relies upon? I'm also concerned this would serve users on a phone rather poorly compared to the alternatives, which again is a concern for businesses of all sizes.

I think the line starts to be drawn when you look at how much that agent is promising, verses how much you should really have based on your interest and ability; because when it gets out of balance, that's when it starts to lean into the nonsense land of social media and people thinking they need GDPR cookie collection alerts on their info page about a local potluck.

It feels like this is toothpaste that won't go back into the tube. People have already been conditioned that they can have free, relatively robust, and easy web presences, and that all they have to trade for it is literally everything about them, including stuff that they wouldn't even share with their neighbors. (Don't worry; it's all perfectly normal!) I don't know how you claw them back from that and say, "Actually, you're getting a pretty bad deal, and you can have a better one but with some compromises." It's a devil's bargain, and they won't see that it's a bad deal until it's too late to change it. Ain't nobody doing it for the GDPR banners; they're doing it because it's free, always online, and easy to use.

I do pine for the days when the internet wasn't universal, but I also feel guilty for that because it feels elitist. I don't think the reason I pine for it is because it wasn't universal, and so I don't feel like I want to return to that. The universality lured in the parasites, and the parasites ruined it by converting it into a creepy surveillance mall. It seems like there should be a way to deliver the good parts of social media at a cost that makes sense… but it just seems like any cost with a dollar sign in front is too much for people once they've had a taste of free. How do you pull them off that cliff, or how do you make it free and still sustainable without selling out their privacy?

I think a lot of our disagreement on this is an issue of differing philosophies. I don't feel like the answer to Facebook has to be Notepad, a library of "under construction" GIFs, and an FTP client hooked up to an Apache server somewhere. I can't see a good reason we can't build something that has the user experience that social media offers (an easy editing experience on top of a robust toolset) but divorced of the toxic incentives. What I struggle with is, how can you get to the "free" part?

It's the shopping mall versus the public square. Both offer places to gather and enjoy the company of other people, for free. One is built to advertise to you and get you to buy things. The other isn't. It exists solely for the public benefit. What is the public square of the internet? How do we build that?

Sorry if I've been overly negative. I appreciate your taking the time to read and reply, and I think your suggestions are good alternatives in some circumstances. They don't feel right to me for this one, but they're all approaches I have used in the past and will use again in the future.

While I'm yelling at clouds, why doesn't someone make a modern site builder application that runs locally on your computer?   

[Melooon]

but it's not a very good user experience for the maintainer.

On my desktop there is an icon, here is a picture of it. When I double click it, it syncs a keeppass file to a web server so I have my passwords updated on my phone.


Yes it took some technical set up, but now that its set up, it just works. That is the entirety of my suggestion for a local static site maker. You put an image in a folder, you double click an icon, and the site is updated. I'm gonna objectively say, that is a significantly better user experience than trying to log into a wordpress interface, forgetting your password, finding your password in a password book, clicking through the alerts telling you to update plugins, finding the image upload section, uploading an image, finding it's not appearing because you didn't check the right setting box, calling your son-in-law to ask why the wordpress is not working, having them login from work to try to figure it out, and eventually getting your image on the site after half a days work.

I am well aware of these people, there are old ladies in the town I'm from who call me up every few months and want me to put a single image on their wordpress site for 50 euro That is not a good user experience, even if that was the experience provided by the most ethically sound, saintly software company on earth, it would still be a crap user experience; and that's the experience the majority of people actually get from most tech.

What I am describing is different for sure, it requires some setup, it's not idiot proof, and it needs some consistency, but it is a much better experience in the long run.

How much longer does this software work before an OS update kills something that it relies upon?

Again this is just a conceptual shift, you keep an old laptop to run old software, it never needs updates, its always setup exactly for the job its doing, and it keeps a laptop out of e-waste. It's no different than having a tool for a specific job, like a drill or a lawnmower. That is your website update tool, it sits there and does its job when it is needed.

an FTP client hooked up to an Apache server somewhere

Why are you so hostile to FTP It's no more complex than dealing with Facebooks interface, it's just a different kind of interface. What you've got is a workflow question, how do you package tools into a workflow that's smooth and clear? That's mostly about education and interface design. For example: FileZilla is a horrific interface for FTP, but there are plenty of lovely FTP clients. I'm gonna ignore your gif comment because that's personal design choice for whosoevers doing a site template, and its irreverent to the workflow of actually making a site.

one thing that has disappointed me greatly about the indie web is that it doesn't seem at all interested in longevity.

The indie web can never have consistency or longevity because its indie. Consistency is a corporate product. The only solution is stable local software that does not change and does not depend on an indie service that will go offline. Again, this is why using old software, possibly dedicated hardware, and basic technologies like FTP is the only way to maintain long term stability.

Your point is correct, you cant have free corporate products. (As an aside: You can have free government products paid for by taxes, if you want your local government to provide websites for small businesses, France tried that in the 80s with Minitel, its sorta worked, but ultimately didn't last.)

The nub of it is, You can't milk your cow and eat it too The lines you're drawing about what you want, verses what is possible, are impossible lines, and they are lines that ultimately serve big tech. You cant have an indie web the behaves like a corporate product. You cant have people that are uneducated in technology using technology as if they were educated. It's not elitist to know what your doing, any more than its elitist to have a drivers license when you go on a motorway.

What is the public square of the internet? How do we build that?

Again this is a corporate idea. A real town square exists in physical space, but the web does not. When you're a company, scarcity is part of your product, you create scarce spaces because scarcity is an asset that can be sold; the concept of creating a scares-physical-like space online is a product creation idea, that's why Meta/Facebook went all in on trying to create its metaverse, it wanted to create space becouse space can be sold. The web by its nature is space-less, it shifts and moves and cant be held down, that's its power, you don't create a square on the indie web, you escape the square.

The indie web only exists because of its fragmentation. The public square your looking for is not a technology, a platform or a service. The public square of the indie web is the shared understanding, education, and desire of people to participate with other people on the web. (And that's also the true form of public square in real life, its not about the place, its about the people, and why they gather there.) The only answer is education, choice, and effort.

[arcus]

I'll eventually reply to the rest of your post when I'm less ill, but for now: Your friend might benefit from Publii or HelioHost. I have no personal experience with either so I can't vouch for how good they are. If you go with HelioHost, check the terms and conditions: Account sharing is banned unless you contact them.

[RadDevon]

Thanks for those, @arcus. I'll look into them. Look forward to your extended reply!