I joined the IndieWeb, here's what I learned • Hacker News Board

Re: I joined the IndieWeb, here's what I learned

#151

Post by mghackerlady » Mon, Jul 20, 2026, 3:23 PM UTC

savolai wrote: post #38

safety1st wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They realize it's "unworkable for 90% of users" and they don't care. Part of the Indieweb philosophy, like Libre software, is to "scratch your own itch" - no one's paying you. You do the stuff that's interesting to you. It's not a business. The point is not to take over the market. The planet needs fewer marketing pinheads, not more. I would like it if we passed various laws that killed off a lot of the marketing pin…

the irony is that the scratch your own itch mindset also explains why indieweb struggles to grow. there’s nothing wrong with building software for yourself. but if your stated goal is giving everyone ownership over their online identity, then usability stops being marketing and starts becoming part of the mission. good ux isn’t selling out. it’s removing accidental complexity so more people can benefit from the ideas…

ownership requires a bit of toiling to be meaningful, though. If everyone can have something, then nobody has it because it stops being something to be had

Re: I joined the IndieWeb, here's what I learned

#152

Post by mghackerlady » Mon, Jul 20, 2026, 3:24 PM UTC

cookiengineer wrote: post #96

mock-possum wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course https://xkcd.com/2501/

Haha, I had to laugh a lot about this. This is essentially DNS, every single step of the way. Hosting wouldn't be hard if ISPs weren't so hostile with carrier-grade NATs, if HTTP/S wouldn't rely on DNS primarily, if legitimization were using actually mTLS instead... and all of the things usually break because of DNS and (lack of) proper standardization. DNS in its current form is such a shitshow of RFCs overriding RF…

At this point, I want to see the next indieweb thing be forgoing domains entirely, instead passing around IPv4 addresses and keeping your own indexes in a markdown file or something

Re: I joined the IndieWeb, here's what I learned

#153

Post by MichaelZuo » Mon, Jul 20, 2026, 3:58 PM UTC

mghackerlady wrote: post #149

MichaelZuo wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So then why are so many, so eager and committed, to overturn the big platforms if “most people”… “have nothing interesting to say.”?

because the ones who have interesting things to say and want to say it for themselves number many, despite being very small in the face of the unwashed masses

Huh?

How does having their own place away from the “unwashed masses” relate to overturning the big platforms?

Re: I joined the IndieWeb, here's what I learned

#154

Post by trekz » Mon, Jul 20, 2026, 3:59 PM UTC

andros wrote: post #126

superkuh wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried manually typing a handful of common feed URLs relative and absolute, a firefox feed auto-finder extension, and a quick ctrl-f for feed in the source. But I guess if running an application is required for your webpages I'm better off not subscribing. That's not my kind of jam but it is understandable if your blog is for profit or it's purpose is to get you a job or something.

That's why I created a modal that explains the different RSS feeds for subscribing and their possibilities. My blog is over a decade old, and I've never used advertising, had sponsored articles, or tried to monetize it (except for asking for donations to maintain the server). I've written freely, sharing knowledge, creating tutorials, and developing courses. Your comment makes me lose the motivation to keep doing it.

I think he just means that you should add an autodiscovery link tag pointing to your RSS feed URL. Then it will automatically be picked up by RSS readers. See https://www.rssboard.org/rss-autodiscovery.

As unnecessarily snarky as this person is being with you, don't let a HackerNews comment stop you from being an great person.

Re: I joined the IndieWeb, here's what I learned

#155

Post by mghackerlady » Mon, Jul 20, 2026, 4:21 PM UTC

MichaelZuo wrote: post #153

mghackerlady wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because the ones who have interesting things to say and want to say it for themselves number many, despite being very small in the face of the unwashed masses

Huh? How does having their own place away from the “unwashed masses” relate to overturning the big platforms?

the people who want to overturn big platforms seem a lot larger than they really are. Think of how many people genuinely like facebook. It seems impossible to us, but there are hundreds of millions who still actively post and interact who see no problem with facebook

Re: I joined the IndieWeb, here's what I learned

#156

Post by andros » Mon, Jul 20, 2026, 4:22 PM UTC

trekz wrote: post #154

andros wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I created a modal that explains the different RSS feeds for subscribing and their possibilities. My blog is over a decade old, and I've never used advertising, had sponsored articles, or tried to monetize it (except for asking for donations to maintain the server). I've written freely, sharing knowledge, creating tutorials, and developing courses. Your comment makes me lose the motivation to keep doing it.

I think he just means that you should add an autodiscovery link tag pointing to your RSS feed URL. Then it will automatically be picked up by RSS readers. See https://www.rssboard.org/rss-autodiscovery . As unnecessarily snarky as this person is being with you, don't let a HackerNews comment stop you from being an great person.

Thank you!

Re: I joined the IndieWeb, here's what I learned

#157

Post by fernly » Mon, Jul 20, 2026, 4:37 PM UTC

I've done, and still do, regular blogging. I have a domain, and everything I post is mine. However it can't be "indieweb" because I used Wordpress. Hence my current blog is dependent on a corporation, as were a couple of older ones that were built in Blogger (and still exist, last updated nearly a decade ago).

That dependency is because isn't feasible for me to own my own server. If I did, it would either be virtual, in amazon's or microsoft's cloud, or it would be real hardware but still in some corporate server farm. It just wouldn't be practical for me to own (and maintain) a physical server with an UPS and permanent uplink to the net.

Re: I joined the IndieWeb, here's what I learned

#158

Post by superkuh » Mon, Jul 20, 2026, 5:33 PM UTC

andros wrote: post #126

superkuh wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried manually typing a handful of common feed URLs relative and absolute, a firefox feed auto-finder extension, and a quick ctrl-f for feed in the source. But I guess if running an application is required for your webpages I'm better off not subscribing. That's not my kind of jam but it is understandable if your blog is for profit or it's purpose is to get you a job or something.

That's why I created a modal that explains the different RSS feeds for subscribing and their possibilities. My blog is over a decade old, and I've never used advertising, had sponsored articles, or tried to monetize it (except for asking for donations to maintain the server). I've written freely, sharing knowledge, creating tutorials, and developing courses. Your comment makes me lose the motivation to keep doing it.

I didn't mean to imply that your blog seemed commercial. I meant that there was no need for commercial patterns on your personal blog like putting links behind JS. Things like that have justification in commerce but rarely in personal stuff so I wanted to leave that conditional just in case your blog was for commerce so as not to offend.

If that's just the way you like things, sure, that's what personal sites are for. How you like it. I apologize for implying otherwise (it must come off that way since two different people took it that way). I just really dislike the web as 'executable application distribution layer' model and try to stick to websites that are HTML pages.

Re: I joined the IndieWeb, here's what I learned

#159

Post by andros » Mon, Jul 20, 2026, 5:43 PM UTC

superkuh wrote: post #158

andros wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I created a modal that explains the different RSS feeds for subscribing and their possibilities. My blog is over a decade old, and I've never used advertising, had sponsored articles, or tried to monetize it (except for asking for donations to maintain the server). I've written freely, sharing knowledge, creating tutorials, and developing courses. Your comment makes me lose the motivation to keep doing it.

I didn't mean to imply that your blog seemed commercial. I meant that there was no need for commercial patterns on your personal blog like putting links behind JS. Things like that have justification in commerce but rarely in personal stuff so I wanted to leave that conditional just in case your blog was for commerce so as not to offend. If that's just the way you like things, sure, that's what personal sites are for…

I accept your apology; it must have been a misunderstanding.

I believe that in my case, the use of JavaScript is justified because it's information that doesn't require a separate page; there are just a couple of configuration buttons. On the other hand, the page is rendered using HTML over WebSockets, and what you're experiencing is the vanilla SEO version... hut of course, that's just my opinion.

Re: I joined the IndieWeb, here's what I learned

#160

Post by yoz-y » Mon, Jul 20, 2026, 5:50 PM UTC

MichaelZuo wrote: post #123

yoz-y wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh. “Won” who? For a long time I was sad about the lost web, but it turns out most people on social media that has replaced the web have nothing interesting to say. I am sad about local groups and forums, but that is not something that IndieWeb is trying to solve. The other problem is businesses that have retired to Instagram. which I find baffling.

So then why are so many, so eager and committed, to overturn the big platforms if “most people”… “have nothing interesting to say.”?

Three different groups of people, with some overlap between the first two:

    - people with their own websites
    - privacy activists and /or anti-capitalists 
    - almost everybody on the planet

The second group is especially loud. Which is normal, silent activism doesn’t really make sense.

I seriously doubt that people who clamor for the death of Facebook and the likes do it so that indie web is full of macha latte labubu car tastings and supplement and gambling shills.