IndieWeb 101: owning your content and identity

A presentation by Salt at FOSSY 2023:

With the upheaval of Twitter many folks have been forced to wonder what would happen if their platform were taken away. Will all of your witty Tweets be lost to time or attributed to someone else? What about your Swarm check-ins, Instagram stories, and other social shares? And why do we have to decide which walled garden to post our thoughts in?

The IndieWeb has been growing since 2013 and strives to create an alternative to content silos and the 'corporate web'. This is achieved through creating a single source of truth for your content and identity aka a personal domain. There are three core concepts that are important to understanding this movement: 'Your content is yours' not FB/Twitter/etc, 'You are better connected' by pushing to multiple services, and 'You are in control' of the content, format, and permanence of your links.

Let's explore what a small-web might look like, discuss questions of content ownership, and see what steps one has to take to join the IndieWeb, together!