The Personal Web: A Healthier Version of Social Media
Many people want to still have an online presence, identity, and persona, but don't want to deal with all the privacy, spyware, manipulative, forced fake crap on social media. But what about before social media? Before social media there were websites, forums, blogs, and RSS feeds. They still exist, and they are sort of getting a mini revival with all the current social media mess. The idea is called The Personal Web or Web Revival.
Personal Website
So why even create a personal website in the first place?
A personal website allows you to express yourself much more than an app. An app confines you to a space. It confines your freedom of thought, expression, speech, and rights. Websites don't confine you to a space. They don't confine you to a group, to an ideology, to an echo chamber. You can build your website anywhere and host it on a million of different services. You can literally create anything you want on your website. The possibilities are endless.
Neocities
What about finding people? It seems like nobody creates personal websites and I wouldn't be able to find anyone.
Well many people still create personal websites, and there are tons of people to find. Neocities is one of the most popular hosts for sites and allows for this kind exploration. Neocities is open source, and supported by donations, so its entirely self-funded.
There are a couple caveats though. The interface for exploring sites is kind of crap. The HTML/CSS/JavaScript editor is not the best, but you can even host your website on a different service and still connect to Neocities. The community is kind of a mixed bag, but I mean so is like every large online community. Despite all these, Neocities is one of the few online places where a large community is dedicated to sharing their personal websites with each other.
Webrings/Buttons
What about joining groups and adding friends?
Webrings allow you to explore more personal sites. You can build one, find one, or add one, check out it's index, and find tons of sites hosted on that Webring.
And then of course there are buttons! Buttons allow you to link other content to your site in a cool format. Many people put buttons on their websites for fun. You can put a message, an idea, a meme, a website, whatever you want. You can even design buttons. You can also put people's buttons on your site and people can put your button's on theirs. I think this is way better than the tradtional social media "follow" button, especially due to bot accounts. (Oh yes and the buttons are taken from idelides page ).
Blogs
What about social media censorship?
Well you can write all your thoughts out in these things called blogs. Blogs are often hosted on websites and are much less prone to censorship. Imagine being able to share your thoughts and essays to the world ON YOUR OWN PLATFORM. No need for short witty fake angry microblogs. No need for companies banning your account because they didn't like what you said. You can pretty say whatever the hell you want in whatever format you want and nothing can even get buried because again it's on your website.
Blogging Services
There are many blogging services out there that help you write blogs. Here is a list:
RSS Feeds
Now you may ask what about Social Media Feeds? What about getting content?
You can pretty much add anyone's content and get updates from them through RSS Feeds. RSS Feeds don't have manipulation, it doesn't track you, it doesn't collect your data, it isn't spyware, there are no half baked advertisements plugged in, there isn't this huge AI algorithm involved in controlling you - No you get to decide what content you want and what content you don't want within an RSS Reader. You can even filter words based on content. The RSS Reader throws all the problems that people have with social media feeds out the window.
I like to think of it like food. Social Media Feeds are like getting Fast Food. Yeah, it's cheap, easy, and they want you to think it's good, but it's actually disgusting and terrible for your body. It's fake, it's forced, it's manipulative - you get the picture.
RSS Feeds are like having homecooked premade ready to go meals. You get to decide what you want, how to cook it, the ingredients, how much you want, how healthy it will be, etc.
So this is like Psychological food for your mind. I mean if you eat unhealthy food and don't care of your body for years the effects will show. The same is true for your mind.
There are a lot of RSS Readers out there.
My favorite Fluent Reader . It's available on Linux, Mac, Windows, iOS and Android. It's open source.
For iOS I would recommend Reeder 5 . But I would stay away from consuming content on your phone and stick to laptops in general.
To add one simply go to any website and look for the RSS symbol (looks like the Wi-Fi symbol) and click on it. You could also add "/index.xml" or "/feed" or "/rss" to the end of a blog's URL. After that you will either get an XML file or a file will download to your computer. This means that the site has RSS.
Then to actually add feeds it's really simple. Simply click settings, go to sources, put the url that downloaded the feed within there and click add. That's it! You're done. You can as many as you want, group some, filter some. You can even add some from social media and filter them heavily. Like if you want to add some YouTube channels you could even do that. There are many tutorials out there for creating them too.
Forums
Then of course there are discussions. Forums are the best places built for discussions. Specifically old school forums. On corporate places like Reddit you will get a group all in an agreement of a general ideology no matter what it is. Like every platform creates a mini echo-chamber, and it's more important to agree with the propaganda message or whatever than to actually have any nuanced discussions about it.
If you post on a community forum, you will get lots of different people with many different perspectives. Lot harder to force people into an ideology that way. Feels less fake, less forced, and less controlling.
Some of my favorite old school forums include Agora Road's Macintosh Cafe and Shroomery. Create an account and start reading and engaging with other people. You will find the places a lot less toxic than traditional social media.
Now the truth is most old forums look kind of crap. But services like Discourse and Flarum are making them better and more accessible. These services allow organizations to make forums easily and nicely. I think this is much better than creating a company Subreddit. Subreddits are souless and garbage.
The problem with creating Subreddits is if Reddit goes down, gets hacked, whatever the entire companies' Subreddit will go down. But if they created it using a separate service they will still be online.
Ok, So What's The Catch?
Ok all this sounds good, Personal Websites, Blogs, RSS Feeds, and Forums. What's the catch?
The catch is, building a lifestyle like this is much harder. It's way easier to go on your phone, download social media apps, use social media feeds, and engage in echo-chambers.
You're not going to convince the general population to do something like this, and even if you could most of them are not going to put up with the time and patience required for it. It's like working out vs eating fast food, but if you're able to incorporate the personal web into your lifestyle, the fruit's will be well worth it.