The IndieWeb Doesn't Need to 'Take Off'

There's a corner of the Internet where people have been reclaiming their digital independence by hosting their own websites and promoting the idea of owning your own content. It's called the IndieWeb. The community has its own website, IRC channels, social media presence, etc. as well

Now hosting a personal website and publishing your articles on it aren't new ideas at all. This is pretty much how the World Wide Web has always been. When I got on the Web back in 2001 or so, creating a website and sharing your articles there was one of the few ways to share your thoughts on the Internet. But that has changed greatly over the years. The Web today is dominated by corporate-controlled platforms, the so-called walled gardens. Much of the online discussions today happen through these centralised platforms. While this makes sharing your opinion on the Web effortless, it also undermines the original decentralised nature of the Web. The content is now owned by the large corporations controlling these walled gardens with terms and conditions that change every year and over which users normally have no say.

While corporate-controlled walled gardens have become the primary means of online exchange these days, the IndieWeb community emphasises the original spirit of the Web, where individuals have control over their content and web space. Every time this topic comes up in online discussions, someone inevitably claims that the IndieWeb hasn't taken off!

I feel that such claims about the IndieWeb not 'taking off' are either stating the obvious or, if that's not the intention, completely missing the point. It's like saying that gardening hasn't taken off because most people buy their vegetables at the supermarket. The IndieWeb doesn't need to 'take off' to be valuable to those who participate in it. Maintaining a personal website is about owning your digital presence, embracing creative freedom and expressing your individuality! It's not about appealing to the masses!

I remember how, in the early 2000s, I used to spend my spare time learning HTML and writing my website, one HTML tag at a time. Writing a few lines of code in a text editor and then watching the browser render that code into a vibrant web page full of colours and images felt like an art form. It was doubly fun to find other netizens who shared that same joy of maintaining and publishing their websites. The IndieWeb is about preserving that hacker culture where websites are crafted and hosted not for mass appeal but for the joy of creation and sharing with like-minded individuals.

The IndieWeb doesn't need to go mainstream to be meaningful. It's a celebration of a more personal, decentralised and creative world wide web. For those of us who still care about these values, it is already meaningful.