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host your own website.

You appear to advocate replacing the YouTube silo with a site built on IndieWeb principles. I want that to be a viable option. But one thing that IndieWeb is currently missing is a recommendation engine. How does a viewer watching a video on someone's own website go about discovering related videos on other people's own websites?

host your own website.

You appear to advocate replacing the YouTube silo with a site built on IndieWeb principles. I want that to be a viable option. But one thing that IndieWeb is currently missing is a recommendation engine. How does a viewer watching a video on someone's own website go about discovering related videos on other people's own websites?

To run a web server on a personal domain (aka "IndieWeb"), you first need to be technical enough to do so, and then you need to pay a recurring fee for a domain and hosting. In many cases, this hosting can't be on a Raspberry Pi or other machine in a subscriber's home for any of three reasons:

• The router puts the home network behind a NAT, and the user isn't technical enough to know how to forward a port.
• The ISP blocks common inbound ports (particularly 443, 80, and 25), or the ISP places an entire neighborhood behind a NAT in order to conserve IPv4 addresses.
• The ISP warns and then disconnects home users who "run a server" without first paying to upgrade to business service.

No Communist Party in China setting up a search engine with a US brand to never find results on Tiananmen square, a funny bear or words like term limits.

In the era of "forums and web sites" (which I take to mean between when home ISPs began service in the early 1990s to when Facebook left closed beta in September 2006), what search engine not beholden to a large company existed? Governments and brands don't need to coerce away the actual speech; they just need to coerce away the ability for prospective viewers to find such speech. Getting your speech discovered in the first place is the one problem that IndieWeb hasn't solved yet: "None currently."

IndieWeb is not a "service" but just a branding for returning to personal websites. It consists of a handful of protocols that a personal website may implement:

- microformats, which sits on top of HTML's class attribute
- Webmention, which travels over HTTPS
- IndieAuth, a simplified replacement for OpenID that also travels over HTTPS

IndieWeb is not a "service" but just a branding for returning to personal websites. It consists of a handful of protocols that a personal website may implement:

- microformats, which sits on top of HTML's class attribute
- Webmention, which travels over HTTPS
- IndieAuth, a simplified replacement for OpenID that also travels over HTTPS

IndieWeb is not a "service" but just a branding for returning to personal websites. It consists of a handful of protocols that a personal website may implement:

- microformats, which sits on top of HTML's class attribute
- Webmention, which travels over HTTPS
- IndieAuth, a simplified replacement for OpenID that also travels over HTTPS

"why" and "Getting Started" would probably be the best entry points in my opinion.

To join the IndieWeb, as I understand it:
1. Start your own website on your domain.
2. Configure your CMS's HTML output to use microformats2 classes.
3. Configure your CMS to send and receive Webmention requests, so that you can leave replies to others' pages and show others' replies to your pages.

"why" and "Getting Started" would probably be the best entry points in my opinion.

To join the IndieWeb, as I understand it:
1. Start your own website on your domain.
2. Configure your CMS's HTML output to use microformats2 classes.
3. Configure your CMS to send and receive Webmention requests, so that you can leave replies to others' pages and show others' replies to your pages.

People have been building the protocols to support this at https://indieweb.org/ and http://activitypub.rocks/.

If you're not ready to host your own software, public installations of Mastodon are a decent alternative - https://instances.social/list

people hosted websites by spinning up an Apache instance that spoke HTTP and would serve their content to anyone who asked. And so there was never that big of a stink about censorship-by-nonprovision-of-services

How did people become "anyone who asked" in the first place?

there's no reason that the next big thing in social networking can't be designed as an open protocol, with no central point of control

The IndieWeb community is trying to build a more protocol-centric social web. Each IndieWeb user registers a domain and buys hosting to hold his or her own posts, and IndieWeb sites use Webmention requests (similar to pingbacks) to notify other sites that replies have been posted. Right now, the biggest missing piece of IndieWeb is a recommendation engine to suggest related works by other authors.

Hardware capability is through the roof now.

IPv4 address space, by contrast, is not. Nor is IPv6 routing; I haven't seen evidence that an IPv6-only website can become successful in gaining and keeping readers.

My smartphone has more storage, more processing power, and more bandwidth than the machines hosting IRC servers not that many years ago.

But it's missing one thing: the ability to accept incoming connections on IPv4. Most cellular ISPs put their subscribers behind carrier-grade NAT, as do even home ISPs in some countries. These ISPs give the same public IP address to a whole neighborhood and will refuse to forward inbound port 443 on your neighborhood's IP address to your machine.

people hosted websites by spinning up an Apache instance that spoke HTTP and would serve their content to anyone who asked. And so there was never that big of a stink about censorship-by-nonprovision-of-services

How did people become "anyone who asked" in the first place?

there's no reason that the next big thing in social networking can't be designed as an open protocol, with no central point of control

The IndieWeb community is trying to build a more protocol-centric social web. Each IndieWeb user registers a domain and buys hosting to hold his or her own posts, and IndieWeb sites use Webmention requests (similar to pingbacks) to notify other sites that replies have been posted. Right now, the biggest missing piece of IndieWeb is a recommendation engine to suggest related works by other authors.

Hardware capability is through the roof now.

IPv4 address space, by contrast, is not. Nor is IPv6 routing; I haven't seen evidence that an IPv6-only website can become successful in gaining and keeping readers.

My smartphone has more storage, more processing power, and more bandwidth than the machines hosting IRC servers not that many years ago.

But it's missing one thing: the ability to accept incoming connections on IPv4. Most cellular ISPs put their subscribers behind carrier-grade NAT, as do even home ISPs in some countries. These ISPs give the same public IP address to a whole neighborhood and will refuse to forward inbound port 443 on your neighborhood's IP address to your machine.

people hosted websites by spinning up an Apache instance that spoke HTTP and would serve their content to anyone who asked. And so there was never that big of a stink about censorship-by-nonprovision-of-services

How did people become "anyone who asked" in the first place?

there's no reason that the next big thing in social networking can't be designed as an open protocol, with no central point of control

The IndieWeb community is trying to build a more protocol-centric social web. Each IndieWeb user registers a domain and buys hosting to hold his or her own posts, and IndieWeb sites use Webmention requests (similar to pingbacks) to notify other sites that replies have been posted. Right now, the biggest missing piece of IndieWeb is a recommendation engine to suggest related works by other authors.

Hardware capability is through the roof now.

IPv4 address space, by contrast, is not. Nor is IPv6 routing; I haven't seen evidence that an IPv6-only website can become successful in gaining and keeping readers.

My smartphone has more storage, more processing power, and more bandwidth than the machines hosting IRC servers not that many years ago.

But it's missing one thing: the ability to accept incoming connections on IPv4. Most cellular ISPs put their subscribers behind carrier-grade NAT, as do even home ISPs in some countries. These ISPs give the same public IP address to a whole neighborhood and will refuse to forward inbound port 443 on your neighborhood's IP address to your machine.

I acknowledge that a recommendation engine is the biggest missing piece of the IndieWeb paradigm. But in theory, an IndieWeb site would submit new pages to some aggregator service in Webmention format. This splits the roles of hosting and aggregation.

I acknowledge that a recommendation engine is the biggest missing piece of the IndieWeb paradigm. But in theory, an IndieWeb site would submit new pages to some aggregator service in Webmention format. This splits the roles of hosting and aggregation.

Setting up your own domain is beyond most people.
[...]
What more can you reasonably ask for?

I could reasonably ask for making setting up your own domain easier.

Sources: "personal-domain". "Why web sign-in#But everyone has an email address", and "Getting Started" on IndieWeb.org

Setting up your own domain is beyond most people.
[...]
What more can you reasonably ask for?

I could reasonably ask for making setting up your own domain easier.

Sources: "personal-domain". "Why web sign-in#But everyone has an email address", and "Getting Started" on IndieWeb.org

Setting up your own domain is beyond most people.
[...]
What more can you reasonably ask for?

I could reasonably ask for making setting up your own domain easier.

Sources: "personal-domain". "Why web sign-in#But everyone has an email address", and "Getting Started" on IndieWeb.org

In a web browser? What can you use that isn't JavaScript?

HTML and CSS. And if you absolutely need interaction beyond link navigation, form submission, and checkbox collapse/radio tabs, you can use any language that isn't JavaScript but transpiles to JavaScript or compiles to WebAssembly. Or you can skip a web browser and provide a set of native applications for the end user to download, optionally audit, optionally compile, and install.

On an ISP-hosted web server? What do they give you except PHP?

I wasn't aware that home ISPs were still bundling web hosting now that most subscribers were putting their work in silos such as Blogspot, Tumblr, Facebook, Gab, Twitter, deviantART, and the like. Otherwise you might as well get a $10/mo virtual private server (VPS) from Amazon or any of several other providers and install whatever language you want. Buy your domain and hosting, configure your VPS to run a webserver and get its TLS certificate from Let's Encrypt, and you're set. And if you can't afford that much, third-party shared hosting providers such as DreamHost and WebFaction offer Python and other languages.

What is needed is a good Open Social Media protocol.

It exists.

Needs a bit of open user ids as well.

That too.

So let's say someone does go the IndieWeb route to replace YouTube. What means would you recommend for a small-time video producer to sell preroll ad time and promote the videos to people who have watched videos with similar subject matter?

My distant family, college friends and other people I like keeping up with aren't available by going outside. I can contact them individually, but I love being able to keep up with them, see what they're doing/sharing, and letting them do the same with me.

Subscribe to the blogs written by "distant family, college friends and other people" using RSS, Atom, or the IndieWeb stack's WebSub. Encourage them to subscribe to yours.

Hosting a website with almost all text-based content like /. is possible on the $5/m droplet from digital ocean.

Then what would you recommend for someone whose works aren't "text-based"? Or would you instead encourage freelance photograhers, illustrators, and animators to give up their trade and instead retrain to become writers?

If they're using the website for work then they can bloody well pay for it. Their content is unavailable? Not my problem because I wasn't viewing it anyway.

If a site's owner cannot afford $5/m, then maybe they shouldn't host the site.

Then who, other than the site's owner, would host the site? I don't see each of the billion-plus Facebook members joining the IndieWeb movement and subscribing to a $15 per year domain and $60 per year VPS just to run his own website. Where would a minor even come by that sort of money, especially if other kids have already swallowed up all the lawn mowing jobs in the neighborhood?

Why would they each need their own website? You're presenting a false dichotomy. If facebook didn't exist because of no ads, why are you presenting the only other option being "everyone has their own website"? The other option, one that was prevalent before the ad-infested web, is that groups pool their money together for the $60/year needed to keep the forum open. If a forum cannot get enough paying members, why is that my problem to solve? Maybe the forum shouldn't exist if there's no support for it.

the best quality content is user generated content not full-time writer content.

The prevalence of major platforms built for wide distribution of user-generated content, such as Facebook and Twitter, has led to the use of said platforms for disinformation campaigns, such as the "fake news" battles during the 2016 U.S. election season. In a scenario dominated by user-generated content, who pays for the fact checking?

Who cares? Seriously, who cared before advertising was a thing on the internet? Besides, the disinformation campaigns were about equal for both parties in the US election - they sorta cancelled each other out in that regard. Why would I care that some rich assholes somewhere is annoyed that the media is no longer in control and the users are?

Besides, nowadays, "user-generated content" often includes video for all screen sizes and viewer processing capabilities. When the user who generated the content uploads a high-definition video, who pays to "selectively spin up more VMs" to transcode it to lower bitrates for users of small battery-powered computers or slow or metered Internet connections? Vidme shut down because it could no longer afford to serve the load.

Once again, I don't care. If *YOU* care about watching videos on the internet, maybe you go and put your money into the pot for those sites you care about. The topics I care about can survive with minimal donations. You may prefer to watch a 40m talking head explain 2m worth of content. I can read.

If you have more than a few million registered users, a 1% donation-rate of $1 per month

Of which the credit card network would pocket 0.30 USD per swipe.

So? Swipe once a year and donate $12.30 instead of $12. When I donate to the SPCA I do a big amount once a year, not a small amount each day.

The Bitcoin miners would pocket even more, as average transaction fees surpassed the equivalent of 55 USD in December of last year, though for the past month, they have stayed between 1 and 3 USD. Who pays for the research and development of a practical micropayment network?

Who cares. I don't need it. The things I am interested in won't need micropayments either. I can pay once a year.

Hosting a website with almost all text-based content like /. is possible on the $5/m droplet from digital ocean.

Then what would you recommend for someone whose works aren't "text-based"? Or would you instead encourage freelance photograhers, illustrators, and animators to give up their trade and instead retrain to become writers?

If a site's owner cannot afford $5/m, then maybe they shouldn't host the site.

Then who, other than the site's owner, would host the site? I don't see each of the billion-plus Facebook members joining the IndieWeb movement and subscribing to a $15 per year domain and $60 per year VPS just to run his own website. Where would a minor even come by that sort of money, especially if other kids have already swallowed up all the lawn mowing jobs in the neighborhood?

the best quality content is user generated content not full-time writer content.

The prevalence of major platforms built for wide distribution of user-generated content, such as Facebook and Twitter, has led to the use of said platforms for disinformation campaigns, such as the "fake news" battles during the 2016 U.S. election season. In a scenario dominated by user-generated content, who pays for the fact checking?

Besides, nowadays, "user-generated content" often includes video for all screen sizes and viewer processing capabilities. When the user who generated the content uploads a high-definition video, who pays to "selectively spin up more VMs" to transcode it to lower bitrates for users of small battery-powered computers or slow or metered Internet connections? Vidme shut down because it could no longer afford to serve the load.

If you have more than a few million registered users, a 1% donation-rate of $1 per month

Of which the credit card network would pocket 0.30 USD per swipe. The Bitcoin miners would pocket even more, as average transaction fees surpassed the equivalent of 55 USD in December of last year, though for the past month, they have stayed between 1 and 3 USD. Who pays for the research and development of a practical micropayment network?

will let you have *ONE* fulltime staff, and that person should ideally be ensuring that everything continues running.

First, how many of these registered users are active, as opposed to users who haven't posted in months? Second, with bills like SESTA/FOSTA eroding safe harbors for site operators, I doubt that one staff member could handle even the legal compliance requirements for moderating a site with three million users.

How to do $FOO? Yeah, experts have chimed in on some forum somewhere already.

Once Google Search and Bing have shut down due to the loss of ad revenue, through what means shall users find the writings of said "experts" who "have chimed in on some forum somewhere already"?

Theres no cost any more to getting an TLS cert

Yes there is. You need a domain, for instance, and it has to be a fully qualified domain name (FQDN), not something like .local from mDNS or .internal from a private DNS server. For example, what would the FQDN of the configuration page of the router, printer, or NAS on your LAN be? Mozilla acknowledged the difficulty of securing such nameless devices on the LAN in "Deprecating Non-Secure HTTP Frequently Asked Questions":

Q. What about my home router? Or my printer?

The challenge here is not that these machines can't do HTTPS, it's that they're not provisioned with a certificate. A lot of times, this is because the device doesn't have a globally unique name, so it can't be issued a certificate in the same way that a web site can. There is a legitimate need for better technology in this space, and we're talking to some device vendors about how to improve the situation.

It should also be noted, though, that the gradual nature of our plan means that we have some time to work on this. As noted above, everything that works today will continue to work for a while, so we have some time to solve this problem.

But since May 2015, when Mozilla published this FAQ, I haven't seen it endorse a solution.

The indieweb people seem to think every householder ought to buy (and continue to renew) a personal domain from a commercial domain registrar. I guess the owner of such a personal domain could allot subdomains of that domain for devices on his own home network and use the DNS challenge of Let's Encrypt to obtain certificates for these devices. Is this practical for most people?