The IndieWeb is for Developers

First and foremost let me state that this post is not about excluding people from the IndieWeb community. I am not here to be a gatekeeper. Rather, I am trying to call attention to a disconnect I see in how I’ve seen the IndieWeb movement promoted and how the IndieWeb community presents itself.

What Even is the IndieWeb?

The movement (officially?) describes itself this way (emphasis theirs):

As I understand it, it’s a movement about gaining independence from the corporate silos that have come to dominate most people’s experience of the web—hence indie. And in this sense, it is absolutely for everyone. I think that everyone would be better off extricating themselves from the corporate web—although I think it’s debatable whether that should always take the form of having a personal website, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

There is another facet to the IndieWeb mentioned in the above definition: a community of sites connected by open standards. Here “open standards” refers to a number of protocols and formats beyond the basic open standards upon which the web is already built (HTTP, HTML, and CSS). The IndieWeb standards, per the site’s building blocks category are formats and protocols such as microformats and webmentions.

How Does One Join the IndieWeb?

When I see people promote the IndieWeb, they focus on the corporate independence. The IndieWeb is, as Jeremy Keith recently put it, having your own website… If someone has their own website, then they’re part of the indie web. It doesn’t matter if that website is made with a complicated home-rolled tech stack or if it’s a Squarespace site. He goes on to say that technologies such as webmentions are unimportant; the IndieWeb technologies are not required to be part of the IndieWeb. And yet, the IndieWeb website focuses almost entirely on these technologies, which can be pretty alienating to anyone who is not a programmer (and even to some who are).

On the getting started page there is a list of IndieWeb services. What makes them “IndieWeb services”? Whether or not they implement “IndieWeb features”, apparently.

• Micro.blog launched with IndieWeb support from day 1…
• Blogger …can be setup [sic] to do a lot of IndieWeb features.
• [Wordpress] too can be setup [sic] with some IndieWeb features…

Seems to me that it is not sufficient to have your own website, the website must implement some “IndieWeb features” like webmentions or IndieAuth.

Now you may say that I’m being unfair. It is possible for Jeremy’s expansive definition of the IndieWeb to be true and for the community to choose to promote services that offer more independence than others. While a Squarespace site offers more independence than posting on Facebook, it still ties you to Squarespace; Wordpress, on the other hand, is more portable than Squarespace, so Wordpress makes the cut and Squarespace doesn’t. But there is no evaluation of how much freedom these services offer, the focus is entirely on how easy it is to set up “IndieWeb features”, which strongly implies that the IndieWeb is defined by webmentions, POSSE, microformats, and so on.

If we then turn our attention to the key principles for the IndieWeb, we find a list of principles that are, by and large, only relevant to people building for the web:

1. Own your data
2. Use & publish visible data for humans first, machines second
3. Make what you need
4. Use what you make
5. Document your stuff
6. Open source your stuff
7. UX and design is more important than protocols, formats, data models, schema etc.
8. Modularity. Build platform agnostic platforms
9. Longevity. Build for the long web
10. Plurality
11. Above all, Have fun

With the exception of the first and last principles—and possibly the penultimate principle—these are all developer-focused principles. (I’m not at all clear on what Use & publish visible data for humans first, machines second means, so maybe that’s also relevant more broadly.)

Browsing the IndieWeb website, I find it very hard to escape the feeling that the IndieWeb is about formats and protocols, not simply about having your own website. And I’m not the only one.

In every single one of these examples the authors recognize that implementing IndieWeb features is a significant barrier preventing the IndieWeb from being adopted more widely. And by implication, without features like webmentions and POSSE, you’re not on the IndieWeb. If none of these features were necessary to join the IndieWeb, then implementing them wouldn’t be a barrier to non-developers.

Wishing Doesn’t Make it So

So while it may be true that we’d all like the IndieWeb to be for everyone, that does not seem to be true. It could become true, if more user-friendly tools for making a website implement IndieWeb features. Services like micro.blog and the IndieWeb plugin for Wordpress let you add webmentions and IndieAuth to your website without having to actually build them yourself or wire up an abstruse process connecting multiple services to your website. And while it would be grand for these features to just be built into more user friendly platforms, maybe it’s also worth asking: is the IndieWeb even necessary to achieve the goal of a more independent web? I’m not so sure it is.

Do We Need the IndieWeb?

Personally I think the IndieWeb is doing itself a disservice by focusing so heavily on these technologies it’s developed. I can see that they’re often meant to replicate the features we’ve grown accustomed to from corporate platforms in a way that works across independently operated websites. Webmentions recreates the likes and replies that we’re used to from social media on your website. IndieAuth replaces the “sign in with your Google/GitHub/Twitter account” authentication flow using your own website.

I suppose if you want complete control over all of your data and identity on the web, you may need these features. For complete control, you can’t just rely on the goodwill of your Mastodon instance’s admin; for complete control, you have to post everything to your own website and then push it out to other places (this is POSSE), and in order for that to work well, you need a way to receive likes and replies, otherwise you’re not fully participating in the services to which you syndicate your “notes”. Hence, the “need” for webmentions.

But what if I don’t desire that level of control? If I don’t want people liking or replying to my blog posts, if I don’t want to use my website for authentication, if I’m content to just toot away on Mastodon where my toots are deleted after a week, do I need webmentions, IndieAuth, and POSSE? I don’t. Am I any less independent of the corporate web than the people whose sites implement all of these feature? I don’t think so. I have my own website on my own domain, which I can host basically anywhere that hosts websites; the only social media I use is Mastodon, on a small instance where I know the mods; I have an email address on my own domain, which means I can move from provider to provider without having to ask my contacts to update their address books with my new email. Seems pretty independent to me. The only corporations involved are generally small and easily replaced.

I think Jeremy Keith is right, that all that really matters is having your own website. However big or small, however you make it, whatever you choose to put on it. I just don’t think that this is what the IndieWeb is actually focused on. The IndieWeb feels like it’s something by developers, for developers, because it focuses so much on implementing certain features.

If IndieWeb features eventually get integrated into enough tools that they effectively become part of the fabric of the web, great! Until then, I think the IndieWeb is still just for developers, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find a measure of independence anyway.