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.

I was admittedly skeptical of 2024 being a return for personal blogging. That said, I’ve been following breadcrumb trails from one blog post to another for the past couple days and finding some of the best stuff I’ve read in forever.

It’s starting to remind me of the days on the web when things weren’t built to show you everything you could read. Instead, it helped you find something you actually wanted to read. It feels early, but we’re making progress.

I’ve shared a few posts related to this that I found insightful recently but here are some others from the last week or so:

• Build your Neue Internet
• Make a Damn Website
• Where have all the websites gone?
• Your site, your home, your web

Follow me, if you will, on a journey. This is largely a brain dump but there’s a point and an idea in here somewhere.. I think.

This whole thing started with a post by Cassidy Williams.

She talks about how everyone metaphorically disappeared from the internet post-“social media™”. Personal blogs and websites became harder to come by and human curation was replaced by algorithms and this “For You” page nonsense.

When I say “I don’t know where everyone went,” I know everyone’s out there surfing the web, of course, but it feels like it’s a different place now. When the algorithms are determining everything we should be seeing, it’s a much less personal internet.

It’s a great read, please check it out.

It got me thinking (and posting):

Can we just make a new indieweb search engine that uses tags and requires people submit their own site to be a part of it? Literally just make a page with a search bar and type in whatever kind of blog/site you’re looking for. Ship it.

The replies came in and they pointed to examples of this or variations of it anyway. Matt Stein even shared a link to an article that had a list of them.

Some of these sort of archive what I had initially imagined but they’re overwhelming in a lot of ways too. Landing in a page of thumbnails, links, or tags isn’t the most user friendly. There’s also no source of truth to all of it, no standout example for others to follow. It’s potentially hundreds (or thousands?) of sites spread across dozens of lists.

So I return to my original question: could we not create a single engine that these sorts of websites could hook into with a focused, minimal, user-friendly design akin to early (useful) Google? Could it federate? What about ActivityPub? Is there a scalable way to retain the human curation of it?

I don’t have answers to these questions. My hope is that maybe something like this prompts a discussion about it. Chris McLeod shared a post of his along the same lines from a few years ago. We can’t be the only ones thinking of this, right?

Several people have pointed me towards searchmysite.net, which is almost exactly what I had in mind. I ran a couple searches and found some really interesting sites already. I’m excited to dig into it more.