Thoughts on Webmentions

I read Terence’s post about webmentions and thought I’d add my two cents. I removed webmentions, brid.gy, and any ActivityPub functionality a few months ago for a few reasons.

Before the internet had a bit of a meltdown over something similar, it occurred to me that some people wouldn’t want their replies on my website. It’s a permanent copy they cannot access, can’t edit, and might not even know exists. As someone replying to a toot or skeet(?), I’m not sure I’d opt into it if I had the option. I often edit and delete things. So, it bothers me that I can’t update something I’ve said without writing another reply.

Why, then, would I put others in that situation?

I also considered the value of it all. Who was benefiting from this? Were readers finding the discussions across various networks useful when reading the things I posted? If they weren’t, I was doing this for myself. At that point, given the many valid concerns people have about when and where their comments appear, it wasn’t a good enough reason to keep doing it.

Lastly, I questioned whether I was dragging people into a mess of conversation where, depending on how far these mentions went, they became part of a discussion on a site they didn’t often visit. One where they couldn’t reply or discuss their opinion in greater detail. That didn’t seem fair.

I see the value of keeping records of conversations. We can interact with readers on our websites on our terms. But, in the end, the answers to these questions made it clear that the cons outweighed the pros.

In the end, I decided to shut it all off.

I want to be clear that I’m not trying to shame anyone who decides to enable webmentions. If the answers to anything above differ for you, taking a different approach may make sense. Consider some of these outcomes and those raised in Terence’s post before you go down that road.

I misspoke about what aspects of webmentions I was turning off for my site. I should have been more specific that it was the syndication of comments and reactions across sites, not webmentions as a whole.