Replies · February 2, 2025 0

the social web is the web

I’m right there with Dave on this.

Support for links is the basic requirement of the web, the same way we say feeds are required to be a podcast. If you don’t support links not only aren’t you the web, you’re anti-web.

building the web like we mean it

Dave’s reflections on the state of the web resonate with me. The web, at its core, was meant to be a living, interconnected network of thoughts, experiences, and perspectives, each thread woven together through hyperlinks and shared exploration. But what we see today is something different: silos masquerading as open platforms, walled gardens that claim to be part of the greater web but exist only to trap, contain, and extract.

This shift betrays the foundational ethos of the web. When platforms refuse to allow deep linking, when they isolate themselves under the guise of user experience or proprietary advantage, they erode the very thing that made the web revolutionary: its fluidity, its permeability, its ability to connect disparate ideas and voices.

Dave’s use of Very 1984 to describe this phenomenon is apt. In Orwell’s dystopia, language itself is reshaped to control thought, reducing the scope of what can be imagined or expressed. Today, these so-called “web” platforms engage in a similar kind of reality distortion—they co-opt the language of openness while actively undermining it. They speak of connection while closing doors. They promise discovery while walling off the pathways that allow it to happen organically.

What happened to the network of writers, the decentralised spirit of creation, and the culture of linking and cross-pollination? We watched as it was gradually subsumed by the business models of oligarchs—those who view the web not as a commons but as a series of enclosures, a place where they can own, control, and monetise human interaction. The early promise of a participatory, people-powered internet has been commodified; its soul traded for engagement metrics and ad revenue.

But the web isn’t just a technology—it’s a philosophy. And that philosophy hasn’t disappeared. It’s still here, in the independent blogs, in the federated spaces, in the self-hosted sites of those who refuse to be assimilated into the silos. It exists wherever people choose to link freely, to write outside the constraints of algorithmic visibility, to create and share not for clicks but for the sheer joy of it.

Building the web, like we mean it, means resisting the gravitational pull of the platforms that seek to own the space. It means choosing open protocols over walled gardens. It means linking generously, supporting the independent creators who keep the spirit of the web alive. It means remembering that the web was always meant to be a shared project, a living thing that thrives on connection and conversation, not containment.

If a platform discourages linking, it’s not really part of the web. If it thrives on isolation rather than integration, it’s not web-able—it’s just another control system wrapped in the aesthetics of participation.

So let’s keep linking. Let’s keep writing in the open. Let’s keep the web weird, wild, and deeply interconnected—like we mean it.


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