De-monopolising the web with wisdom & art

Over the years there's been a major shift in how the internet works. More and more, big platforms like Reddit, Quora, TikTok, Facebook (to a lesser extent now) and Instagram (to name a few) have become the primary way we share, create and connect with each other. In decades gone by, we still had big platforms (think MySpace or Friendster), but they existed more alongside the federated internet: blogs and personal websites.

Today? Mega-corporations have a monopoly over the internet, our lives, our creations.They have a hold over what we post, comment, -even what we think and see via algorithms (which is only set to get worse with the rise of LLMs). This is a huge problem. A huge chunk of our wisdom, our creative spirit and intellectual property is in the hands of huge corporations who can control the visibility of what we create, remove it without permission or de-prioritise it in ✨ "the algorithm" ✨, or even worse: abuse your data to train artificial intelligence.

Considering that a lot of our art, lived experiences, connections, wisdom and knowledge is often hosted on these centralised platforms, this is very worrying. Especially when you consider that a lot of the companies hosting this stuff are deep in the pockets of Trump's America. Look at how much more hostile they've made it for vulnerable groups on these platforms already. Do we really trust these guys to foster our creativity, communities and growth? Especially when these same platforms continue to proliferate and prioritise the growth of AI generated slop over authentic human creativity? I don't think so. I don't even trust that they will let our ideas and art stay visible/discoverable, assuming they don't end up outright removing them eventually.

So what do we do about this?

Truth be told, there's not an awful lot we can do to combat a bunch of monopolies like this. They have a lot of power, but crucially: they dont have all of it. Now obviously, the vast majority of us rely on traditional monopoly social media platforms to get seen, to share our ideas and build community with others. For many of us, this won't be changing any time soon.

Notice how now days, the internet has become so shitty and dead that we search: "[question here] reddit" in Google to try and get some sort of an answer? Sometimes, if we're lucky we find what we're looking for. Now what if we tried posting about this outside of the monopolised web? What if we wrote a blog post about how that bug appeared in our code and what our version of the solution we found looks like? With full reference to the original, of course.

Or how about when we post our art, what if we still posted on those big platforms we're so used to, but we also posted more content to personal blogs? Or even the fediverse?

The fediverse and blogs

What if we tried, where possible, to post our content on federated platforms and blogs? Platforms free from or at least much further away from the profit incentive? Platforms closer to the original spirit of the internet back in its heyday.

Even if its only a little bit, posting outside of huge centralised platforms, especially about a solution for a niche coding problem, or about how to get past that tricky level in a game, or that really beautiful fan art or OC you made- is resisting the tech monopoly. Youre decentralising your art and ideas in spaces that are more resistant to censorship, spaces that YOU are more in control of.

If you use the combination of the fediverse AND a personal blog: you've got the best of both worlds! You get to take advantage of an audience that isnt driven by an algorithm, and you get to share your content via your platform of choice. Seems like a pretty good deal to me.