Explaining Myself.
Branding the Non-Commercial Web
08/16/2024
I posted the following in reply to a Threads post last week and kind of like it.
So here it is again at my blog with maybe more context.
What is needed is to brand a non-commercial web and then get people to participate in that brand. Right now everyone has their own idea of it so there is no organized movement that everyone can relate to, to foster one. My website (in profile) is no-commercial and very much what you mean. But for it to be a thing, it needs to interlink with another website like it, and so on, and so on, and so on.
As noted this blab is in response to someone who misses the old somewhat ad-free internet and web of the early days, and is my thought on at least a partial solution. The closest thing we have right now is the IndieWeb movement.
The IndieWeb gets everything right insofar as a rationale goes, but doesn't seem to touch on people's desire for reach, which is a thing that social media and commercial platforms do so well with. Also, I suspiciously note that the movement does not preclude monetizing anywhere that I can see; it just focuses on publishing logistics and data liberty. If there's no loud stand against monetization, who's to say that a web of independent publishers don't wind up enshitifying?
People need to collectively agree on what the non-commercial web is, why it makes sense for a body of information sharing, and then participate in propagating examples of it. Once that happens, reach will be restored.
By Dave for Personal Blog.
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Is it Suddenly Wrong to Post Like This?
08/07/2024
Here is one example of the decay of the WWW's open spirit.
In this post I am recounting a trip I made recently to Wilkes-Barre, PA - my birthplace and the city I ultimately went to high school in - even though I did not grow up there. While recounting, I am throwing up a simple picture of my remaining blood family on my mother's side. Myself, Mike, and Chris (who is officially known as Herbert).
The thing is - it feels bad, almost illegal, to post someone's picture on your blog suddenly.
There might be good reasons to not do something as simple as this today, but I'm racking my head trying to figure out when doing so actually became bad.
Myself, Chris (Herbert), and Mike -- fine, I won't post any last names!
At some point it became bad etiquette at the very least, to outright hostile at worst, to volunteer images of others on an open forum like the web -- though there is much less stigma and understanding for doing so on say, Facebook.
It's not like I can't imagine why it morphed into recklessly rude practice. The web and internet made people cautious over time. People acquired a sense of purposeful privacy and there are in essence understandable objections to having an unvolunteered picture of yourself wind up in a Google image search (hiding from that abusive ex for example).
But, when that we just wouldn't post pictures of others at our personal blogs anymore as a security solution have its day in court as the opt security practice exactly? It bothers me that there is this uncontested ever creeping set of rules that doesn't even actually just stop with posting pictures but really extends to any degree of personal sharing online.
It's a tough feeling to explain. I get it, but at the same time I'd feel somehow better if someone just decreed that we wouldn't share our stories on the open web and made it a national law or something, rather than everyone just sort of quietly and collectively not doing it, until I, up and like an idiot, do it to possibly everyone's aghast.
Whatever, I hope there is a kindred spirit out there who gets what I'm saying here.
As for this nostalgic trip and family reunion, it was my first time back in Wilkes-Barre in what I take to be at least five years at this point -- probably a little more.
It was technically a belated birthday party for my "Uncle Mike" but the keystone event of this was a minor league baseball game between the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders (a Yankee team affiliate) and the Louisville Bats.
While there I found time to tour around Wilkes-Barre's Public Square and harken back to places I worked and even went to school at.
In this picture, off to my right shoulder, is the old Wilkes-Barre Times Leader building where I illustrated for about two years and briefly wrote as a stringer. Some time ago they moved their operations to another address in the city (not far).
By Dave for Personal Blog.
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