On webmentions (and decentralisation in general)

The internet was originally built to survive a nuclear attack on the US. By design it was a distributed network connecting many computers through different paths, making it resilient in the event of a disappearing connection or computer. In recent years, however, much of the web has become more and more centralised.

A centralised approach is easier to reason about. Everything is stored in the (conceptually) same database, accessible through a uniform query language. Think Google, think Facebook, think Disqus. All offer a single sign-on mechanism into their ecosystem which allows users to react on stories, both within their apps, as well as outside in places when other proprietors have included a bit of the Google/Facebook/Disqus/… code. But in the end all the data is stored in a central store, not owned by that user, not owned by the owner of that blog, but owned by a large company that stores information for million’s of other sites. Companies (and/or their services) come and go, even big ones, and when one of these companies pulls the plug not just a few comments and replies are gone, but an unthinkable amount. Even when they would search for a cooperation with the likes of Archive.org, API’s that delivered the integrated experience would be gone.

The answer has and for many sites still is a comment section on their own website. But this requires moderation, spamfiltering and/or add the requirement for users to register first (partly to make sure the comments are ‘serious’).

But when you are an author and leave your comment at someone else’s site, that input will be lost when that site is gone. Wouldn’t it be better if you could react from your own account? Like when you react on Twitter or Medium from your own account to someone else’s micro-blog-post, but then actually on your self-controlled outlet?

Ideally, you react from your own place. Leave your insights at your domain. And notify the blog about your insights regarding (a part) of an article. There used to exist pingbacks, but it has been found prone to DDoS attacks.

In the beginning of this year webmentions became a standard, coming with a better specification on how to prevent becoming a participant in a DDoS network. And it comes with a Vouch extension creating a network of trust to combat spam. It is worth implementing.

It is important to keep the web decentral. It is important to not allow ideas and thoughts to be owned by a few companies, companies that have the power. I’ve been posting my articles / thoughts / posts at this very domain since july 2003. Before I had already experienced the effect of disappearing hosts at several ISP’s, and free, as in gratis, hosting options (like, most famously, Geocities. It would’ve been gone if I wouldn’t have taken care of it.

But the ‘nice’, self-reinforcing power of more social & currently mostly centralised networks is that of interaction. Until now it was hard and problematic to implement this properly. Let’s see if that changes. I’ve scheduled an upgrade of my blog soon :)

Image by Matt Brit (CC-licensed)