@snarfed.org posted a great overview of thoughtful (and sometimes heated) discussions across blogs and the #fediverse about how freely should “public” posts & comments on the web flow across sites:

“Moderate people, not code” (https://snarfed.org/2024-01-21_moderate-people-not-code)

If you are designing or creating any kind of publishing or social features on the web, this post is for you.

It touches on topics ranging from #contextCollapse to #federation to #moderation and everything in between.

Does your choice of publishing tool set expectations about where your content might propagate, or whether it will be indexed by search engines? Should it?

Do the limitations of your server (e.g. js;dr) imply limitations of where your posts go, or whether they can be searched or archived? Should they?

When you post something publicly, are you truly posting it for a global audience for all time, or only for one or a few more limited #publics for an ephemerality?

When you reply to a post, do you expect your reply to only be visible in the context you posted it, or do you expect it to travel alongside that post to anywhere it might propagate to?


On the #IndieWeb, especially for public posts, some of these questions have easier and more obvious answers, because the intent of nearly all public IndieWeb posts is to interact across the web with other posts and sites, typically via the #Webmention protocol. However there are still questions.

Are the expectations for a blog and blogging different from a social media site, whether a silo or an instance on a network?

Is a personal website with posts still just a blog, or does it become something new when you start posting responses from your site, or receiving (e.g. via Webmention) and displaying responses from across the web to your posts on your site? Or is it now a “social website”?

If you have a social website, what is your responsibility for keeping it, well, social? Do you moderate Webmentions by default? Do you use the Vouch extension for some automatic moderation?

Are #POSSE & #backfeed different from federation or are they the same thing from a user-perspective, with merely different names hinting at different implementations?

Do you allow anyone from any site to respond or react to your posts? Or do you treat your social website like your home, and follow what I like to call a “house party protocol”, only letting in those you know, and perhaps allowing them to bring a +1 or 2?

I have many more questions. Each of these deserves thoughtful discussions, documentation of what different tools & services do today that we can try out, learn from, and use to make considered decisions when creating new things to post on and across websites.

This is post 4 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts

← https://tantek.com/2024/022/t1/indiewebcamp-brighton-planned
→


Post glossary:

backfeed
  https://indieweb.org/backfeed

blog
  https://indieweb.org/blog

blogging
  https://indieweb.org/blogging
 
comments
  https://indieweb.org/comments

context collapse
  https://indieweb.org/context_collapse

ephemerality
  https://indieweb.org/ephemerality

js;dr
  https://indieweb.org/js;dr

moderation
  https://indieweb.org/moderation

POSSE
  https://indieweb.org/POSSE

posts
  https://indieweb.org/posts

publics
  https://indieweb.org/publics

reply
  https://indieweb.org/reply

Vouch
  https://indieweb.org/Vouch
 
Webmention
  https://indieweb.org/Webmention

Great article on #POSSE by David Pierce (@davidpierce@mastodon.social @pierce) @Verge:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/23/23928550/posse-posting-activitypub-standard-twitter-tumblr-mastodon

Several key points of POSSE explained in the article:


First, post on your own site:

 “In a POSSE world, everybody owns a domain name, and everybody has a blog. (… a place on the internet where you post your stuff and others consume it.)”
 

Second, syndicate elsewhere, appropriately for each destination:

 “Then, your long blog post might be broken into chunks and posted as a thread on X and Mastodon and Threads. The whole thing might go to your Medium page and your Tumblr and your LinkedIn profile, too. If you post a photo, it might go straight to Instagram, and a vertical video would whoosh straight to TikTok, Reels, and Shorts. Your post appears natively on all of those platforms,”

You can use Bridgy Publish (https://brid.gy/) to POSSE to many destinations, and Bridgy Fed (https://fed.brid.gy/) to #federate to #Mastodon and other #fediverse destinations, directly from your site instead of posting a copy on yet another account on yet another server.


Third, and this is a key piece that distinguishes proper POSSE setups, with original post perma(short)links back to your posts on your domain:

 “typically with some kind of link back to your blog.”
 

All copies link to (your) home.

 "And your blog becomes the hub for everything, your main home on the internet."
 

You have power over your domain (name), not outside silos.


David embedded a screenshot of one of my posts, a reply post:


in which I posted a reply *on my own site*¹ to @Zeldman.com’s tweet (itself a reply to a POSSE copy of one of my posts), and POSSEd my reply to Twitter so it would thread with his reply.

This illustrates another important detail of a proper POSSE setup:

Fourth, post *replies* and other responses from your own site, whether to other #IndieWeb sites, or to others’s silo posts (tweets etc.).

Own your data means owning your replies as well.


David also noted several challenges and good questions about POSSE. Some of these have answers & established practices, others are areas of exploration. E.g.

 "The first is the social side of social media: what do you do with all the likes, replies, comments, and everything else that comes with your posts?"
 
The short answer is #backfeed: https://indieweb.org/backfeed

Backfeed is a concept I first wrote about as “reverse syndication”².

As you syndicate your posts out to #socialMedia silos, you reverse syndicate any responses there back to your original post.

Your site can do this with a service like #Bridgy, which uses the #Webmention standard to forward such silo responses back to your site, and #BridgyFed which does same for responses from Mastodon to your #federated posts.


David asked many other questions, which are deserving of their own posts to help answer, so I’ll leave you with just one more:

 "The most immediate question, though, is simply how to build a POSSE system that works."

The short answer is: just start³.

Even if you have to do it manually (until it hurts), even if you have to edit your posts on a static GitHub site (behind your domain name of course), and then copy & paste to your silo(s) of choice, just start.

By practicing POSSE, even manually, you will learn what aspects of POSSE & backfeed matter the most to you, what aspects actually involve reaching & responding to friends and others you care about.

By doing so you will naturally focus on setting up & making what you need, and you too can join the future of web publishing, today.

Questions? Join us in the chat: https://chat.indieweb.org/ (also on Discord, IRC, and Slack⁴)


This is day 46 of #100DaysOfIndieWeb. #100Days

← Day 45: https://tantek.com/2023/289/t1/bridgyfed-webmention-like-fediverse
→


Post glossary:

backfeed / reverse syndication
  https://indieweb.org/backfeed
Bridgy
  https://brid.gy/
make what you need
  https://indieweb.org/make_what_you_need
manual (until it hurts)
  https://indieweb.org/manual_until_it_hurts
original post link
  https://indieweb.org/original_post_link
own your data
  https://indieweb.org/own_your_data
own your replies
  https://indieweb.org/own_your_replies
permalink
  https://indieweb.org/permalink
permashortlink
  https://indieweb.org/permashortlink
POSSE
  https://indieweb.org/POSSE
silo
  https://indieweb.org/silo
social media
  https://indieweb.org/social_media
static site
  https://indieweb.org/static_site
start
  https://indieweb.org/start
Webmention
  https://indieweb.org/Webmention


¹ https://tantek.com/2023/253/t2/
² https://tantek.com/2010/034/t2/diso-2-personal-domains-shortener-hatom-push-relmeauth
³ https://tantek.com/2023/001/t1/own-your-notes
⁴ https://indieweb.org/discuss