The internet is more fun when people build and own their own things. And it's getting easier for more people to do that!
I've been struggling with the feeling that the internet isn't as much fun anymore for a while and I recently re-read Enshittification which made me think even more about why this is and what to do about it (yes, linking to an Amazon owned site is probably part of the problem, I know, I know...).
It's easy to wax nostalgic for the good ol' days when the internet was a bunch of fun web pages and weird forums or when Facebook was actually fun or when Twitter was used for posting brilliant insights rather than hate speech and building your personal brand. But what can you do about it?
Cory Doctorow has a bunch of interesting suggestions around regulations for the major platforms that have becoming almost required if we want to allow non-nerds to continue using the internet, but I wonder if we're starting to see a world where self sufficiency is more reasonable for a wider swath of people.
I don't think we can rely on tech giants to be benevolent stewards of everybody's internet experience. Again, this doesn't mean you have to completely avoid them, just don't make them your only points of contact on the internet. Visit random websites built by other humans and more importantly, build your own stuff! It's never been easier.
Sorry, this post is kind of about AI.
For all the opinions out there about AI, it's hard to argue with its ability to help work through problems and build small tools for yourself. I really enjoy building some of my own tools but some things don't hit the right effort/reward ratio for me to take on as a lovingly hand-coded project.
For example, I've wanted to move away from using a Soundcloud widget on the music page of this site. Why? I guess it just felt silly to host my songs on some other site and then be limited in the stats I got from it because I wasn't paying for an account. Maybe I really just wanted to have more things on my site be "mine". Anyways, I had hacked together a little prototype of an html5 audio player that tracked play stats, but I couldn't find the time to justify the effort/reward of building something I'd actually want to use.
So I built it with Claude while I had some free time at the airport last time I was traveling.
It's cool. It works! I haven't finished swapping all my stuff out but as of now I have it set up for the And Or Not and Packets and Waves music on my music page. I also have a nice little dashboard that shows me stats.
I didn't need to do this and I probably wouldn't have prioritized doing it, but AI lowered the barrier of entry for a tool for myself so much it got done. This was also the case when I moved over to self hosting most of my projects, it probably wouldn't have gotten done if I hadn't been able to have ChatGPT working through all the config issues in the background while I did other stuff.
I like doing this stuff, so I'm willing to put in a bit of effort but my point is that:
The internet is more fun, more weird, less hostile, and all around better if more people build their own things
While not everyone wants to put in the effort to do this (which is while giant social media platforms are so appealing) it's easier than ever to build and do non-trivial things yourself
So more people should make things and carve out their own little piece of the internet and share it with others
So go host your own site. Build something weird that makes old Geocities pages look reasonable. It might seem impractical given all how easy it is to use use existing giant platforms but it's never been easier to be impractical.