I always wanted to make my own site, however never really finished for several reasons. While trying to delve deeper into my leftism, I decided to take it more seriously.
I feel like a hypocrite constantly complaining about problems and not trying to at least fix them. It doesn’t make sense to complain about evil corporations while also partaking in it. And obviously I can’t completely get rid of them but I can lessen my impact and also inspire people to do the same. I want to be more intentional with what I consume and It's time to put my money where my mouth is.
One of the main reasons I’m interested in partaking in creating my own site is because you’re fully in control. That’s also what drew me to sites like Spacehey in the first place. I love the fact you’re able to customize everything, it feels alive and breathing. Full of so much personality, I love it. Words can’t express the excitement I feel when I’m browsing other people’s sites and seeing their creativity show.
I also enjoy a good puzzle. Even though coding is difficult and makes me crash out sometimes. The joy I have when something finally clicks for me, feels like a drug.
What does this have to do with my political views?
- People can’t silence you. There’s no one that can censor you or take down your content.
- Social media was made for short term forms of content. While blogs allow for more nuanced discussions.
- You own your content! God forbid if neocities go down, I’ll have a copy of my site and just reupload it (even better if you have your own domain name).
- Not feeling attached to a platform. Because I own my content, I don’t feel tied down. If a social media site has values I don’t agree with, it’s nice to know I don’t have to remain there. If anyone values my content, thoughts/ideas, art they would visit my site. For example:
- Instagram changed their terms of service probably a year ago, stating that when you upload content to their platform that you are giving them permission to use it as if they’re the original creator. Which led many artists to leave the platform in search for a more art friendly place.
- Artist youtuber is currently fighting with the site’s ai. In order to get rid of air slop, Youtube implemented an AI moderator(insane). Which instead of going after ai, it’s demonetizing actual creators. At worse permanently deleting creators accounts
This leads me to my next point. A digital home.
I notice that this constantly happens, where social media fails or has controversy, people search and move to another site, and then that site fails and history repeats. When are we going to realize that the solution is probably just creating personal sites?
I want to emphasize that all my points also apply to web revival sites. Look at sites/apps such as unspace, lunarhaven, spacehey. I bring this up because this can literally happen to any site. The site can go down, the developers could be problematic, the site can be neglected, ownership can change, you can be banned for no reason, and users are left wondering on where to go next. I feel secure knowing I’ll be here on my corner of the web, and you can visit me whenever.
I hope in the future instead of sharing our social media accounts, we would share our sites and use RSS feeds to stay in touch whenever someone posts a bulletin, blog, site update, etc. This allows people to stay connected regardless of what ecosystem they’re in (instagram, facebook, twitter). Basically using our independent sites, as our social media profile.
I do want to mention that I don’t think independent sites can completely replace social media, as it has one thing I couldn’t find a replacement for, direct messages. But alas, I’m still doing research so who knows.
At the moment I’m currently working on getting my own domain aka getting a digital address/identity, and looking into backend web development ❤️.