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you don't have to hitch your wagon to closed-off silos
2025-10-15
Lately, I have seen more and more people talking a bit about the "small web", discovering the idea of building personal websites and wikis (like this one!), and getting off these huge corpo-platforms like Facebook, Reddit, and the like.
There has never been a better time to consider building your own corner of the web, and joining up on decentralized platforms that are run not just for profit, but for people. I'm going to explore a little about the ethos behind why you should be considering making this move, without going into a lot of technical details, because I'm also working on a "small web" section for the Wiki that will be explaining a lot of this in more detail.
We'll take a quick look at what the "small web" is, what "decentralized platforms" means, and how it all relates to you - we're going to assume that you are someone who is tired of the big corpo-platforms and wants to make a switch to something a little more independent, private, and free of the BS so many of these huge platforms have become known for over the years.
I'm glad you asked! I'm not going to delve too deep into the technicals since our Wiki entry explains this much better and in more detail, but I am going to give you a high-level overview here.
What most folks online usually refer to as the 'small web' include things like:
Instead of posting all their thoughts behind an account on some huge platform, you will find personal websites and blogs like the one you're on right now. Sites that are hand-crafted in HTML and CSS by people who want to build their own little corner of the internet and stake their claim, and truly own their identity. When you run your own website, you control it and the content contained within, and what you say goes - from how it looks, to the kinds of thoughts you write on it. No other platform's rules apply to you on your own website, and you aren't beholden to their design choices - you can make it look as minimal and cozy, or as off-the-wall and crazy as you want. It's up to you!
Sometimes, you'll find a Wiki or "Digital Garden" hosted on personal sites, similar to the one we've got going on right here. These are living knowledge spaces that evolve as their creator learns and adds to them. I use mine to document everything I learn about that I find interesting, things I am building, and just generally things that I find fascinating or relevant to my life. These knowledge spaces are curated by their creators to help them keep their thoughts and things they've learned in order, and put together in the hopes that other people will come across them and learn something new, as well!
You can never tell when one of the "corpo-platforms" are going to change something, shift ownership, or change the platform in some huge way, or even just shut down when profit goes down. Socializing on open platforms that run on open-source protocols, such as the Fediverse or Nostr are great ways to keep your identity yours, and not tied to some corporate-owned platform such as Facebook that can shift with the tides in how it is moderated or how it functions. You can choose to use an indie platform that aligns with your values, and move your data around as you see fit - putting you in the driver's seat of how your social media works.
Maybe you want to change up how you view the internet, and build on an even smaller protocol than what the bloated WWW has become. There is an excellent alternative out there called Gemini, a highly minimal web experience that focuses on text content, without images, videos, or other attention-stealing types of media. Gemini uses a stripped-down sort of Markdown called Gemtext to build pages. It is very easy to learn, and simple to get a Gemini capsule (the Gemini-equivalent of a website) up and running on your own server. I am going to do a rundown on setting up a presence on Gemini pretty soon on the Wiki.
Things like forums that specialize in a certain topic or set of topics, mailing lists, or custom-built platforms that try to resist scale-driven incentives and maintain more tight-knit interactions are what we call 'micro-communities', and they have been making a bit of a comeback over the last few years as people get tired of the "corpo-platforms". This kind of community could be something like a forum that discusses their favorite video games or programming languages, a mailing list where conversations go down among members, or a chat site where people discuss things about different topics. The implementation isn't as important as the idea, which is people getting together to discuss and have conversations about stuff they're passionate about.
Communication among community members and friends has become another part of the internet where "corpo-platforms" have begun to take over. One of the most prominent examples is Discord, where there is a 'server' for almost every topic you can think of. Small web equivalents where friends and community members can get together for a chat include things like Matrix, IRC, Signal, Campfire, and other options. These are open-source and trustworthy, and you don't have to worry about your conversations being scanned and data-mined by the company running the service, Privacy Policy shenanigans that can change at the last second, and things of that nature. Your communications should belong to you, and not some big company!
Finally, another huge part about participating in the Small Web is true ownership over your data. It is important that you truly own your data instead of it being locked behind the walled garden of some huge company such as Facebook. With all of these options, such as running your own site, participating in the Fediverse or micro-communities, or anything else of this nature, you are the one in control of your data, and you can migrate it other platforms, change it how you want, or straight-up delete it at any time of your choosing.
This is a small breakdown of how the Small Web works as a concept, and the freedoms it gives you. We're going to be expanding on this in a bigger way on the Wiki entry about the small web, as well as how you can begin building your own presence on the small web with some tutorial points and helpful advice.
I hear all the time about how the internet was better in the 90s and early 2000s. This is because many people believe that the internet is now effectively 5 or 6 websites all owned by these huge corporations such as Facebook, Google, and the like. The opposite is true, however. While a huge majority of people do use those big corpo-platforms because it is "easy", "more convenient", and honestly, just what they're used to (I won't even begin to go into how network effects work here since that is worth a post of its own, though it is also a huge reason), the Small Web never really left. It has been here the whole time, with people building their own little gardens in the background, ignoring what's going on with the big corpo-platforms.
There's an expression I like about people who are "internet peasants" and "internet landlords". The internet peasants are the ones who are shackled to Facebook, Discord, and the other big platforms, whose accounts can be deleted or the entire platform shutdown on the whims of the company who hosts it. The internet landlords are those who object to having their online identity owned by these big platforms, and aim to carve out their own space on the internet. I encourage you to not be an internet peasant if you currently are chained to these bigger platforms, and come join us on the small web by becoming an internet landlord, building your own space online, and letting your imagination run wild with all the possibilities you can create, and the brand new sorts of interactions you can have.
It's waiting for you - check out some of the links I've dropped here, look for the Small Web entry in the Wiki that I'm working on to come soon, and hopefully, if you don't already run your own space online, you will be joining the ranks very soon. I look forward to seeing the Small Web continue to grow and flourish!