Stephen ColesNov 20, 2022
Anil
With the revitalization of the open web and the fediverse, it’s worth revisiting all of the parts of the social web that we’ve lost, and reflecting on how we might rebuild them in a Mastodon world. https://anildash.com/2016/08/08/the-lost-infrastructure-of-social-media/
The lost infrastructure of social media.

More than a decade ago, the earliest era of blogging provided a set of separate but related technologies that helped the nascent form thrive. Today, most have faded away and been forgotten, but new incarnations of these features could still be valuable.As social networks grew in popularity and influence,

Anil Dash
Nov 17, 2022 at 1:46amWeb
Show threadRobert CadenaNov 17, 2022
@anildash must be getting hammered? Cloudflare 502 error
Show threadDavid M. Levinson ⁂Nov 17, 2022
@rxc @anildash Mastodone-in
Show threadHoward RheingoldNov 17, 2022
@anildash I got this from clicking your link: Web server is returning an unknown error Error code 520
Visit cloudflare.com for more information.
2022-11-17 01:53:45 UTC
Show threadJames J MalcolmNov 17, 2022
@anildash think you just had the trample of death on your site?
Show threadLuigi de GuzmanNov 17, 2022

@anildash one of the things lost: the article in that URL.

Error 502.

Show threadAnilNov 17, 2022
@Ouij heh, no, I was just tweaking my blog; it’s working now.
Show threadKevin MarksNov 17, 2022
@anildash and here's the list of answers we posted at the time
https://indieweb.org/lost_infrastructure
lost infrastructure - IndieWeb

Show threadColin Hayhurst ✅Nov 17, 2022
@KevinMarks @anildash Indeed it is. Having been around tech since 1988, I am embarassed to admit that I'd forgotten about Technorati. So thanks fot the reminder and od that great article. We @Mojeek are exploring this space right now
Show threadBreakRepairRepeatNov 17, 2022
@KevinMarks awesome! Thank you for this!
Show threadbonstewartNov 17, 2022
@anildash amazing how this is from 2016...i didn't twig until i hit the 'all the advertising $ is moving to FB' section & then i looked at the date. i miss all those arcane pre-2010 blog era features...
Show threadJames J MalcolmNov 17, 2022

@anildash Thanks for writing Anil. This is such an important article. It very neatly outlines the features that online social media provide & challenges us to re-implement them in an open format.

It’s very interesting to think about this in a federated ecosystem. One feature that I would add to your list: #moderation for which I wonder if the #mastodon method would scale.

#socialmedia #opensource #federation

Show threadJames J MalcolmNov 17, 2022

@anildash oh, and I just through of two more features: Direct Messages & Groups (like Facebook groups), including events, chat, etc.

#DM because it’s nice to message (customer support) from a semi anonymous account.

#groups because they used to be so handy to organise a changing group of people in a semi-private way. Now that’s moved to WhatsApp/Signal, but they still lack features to properly organise.

Show threadRoj 🏳️‍🌈Nov 17, 2022
@anildash I don’t know why I expected to get rickrolled in your link 😅. Maybe because it’s one of my earliest social web experiences.
Show threadℹ️❤️🖥 aka Compy-chanNov 17, 2022

@anildash >Technorati

Now that's a name I haven't heard of in ages

Show threadEd SuominenNov 17, 2022
@anildash A great historical summary of what many of us fondly remember.
Show threadwind_rises ✊ Nov 17, 2022

@anildash It doesn’t mention forums, though to some extend they survived, with Discourse being the first to bring Forums 2.0 to the web I guess.

Funny, because I’m actually using your presentation from 2014 in my blog post as I introduce forums-as-a-service for our small not-for-profit members. #autoPromo

Wouldn’t you say that decentralized forums have been vastly impacted by Facebook Groups?

Nomagic - Your life, Your data

Forum for your association!

Nomagic - Your life, Your data
Show threadmicahNov 17, 2022
@anildash A robust roundup of publishing / discovery / interaction technology—the blogosphere era vs. now. Thanks, Anil.
Show threadMark McGuireNov 18, 2022

@anildash
@bonstewart

Similarly, we've lost a lot of public social space IRL. We've become used to the fountain in the mall. We've forgotten that we used to spend time in places where "public" meant something different from "visible to others who have been allowed into this private space".

Show threadmattNov 18, 2022

@anildash I miss the aggregation type, can't remember the name dammit, where each person would just post Whatever to their own site and tag it. Other sites could then aggregate from n*n sites all the posts tagged X, Y, or Z as befit the local interest. Each post named and linked back to the source.

Peeps following X World would see all the X rated things they wanted in one place. Simultaneously the authors kept their own content in their own home.

Show threadDave GuarinoNov 18, 2022
@anildash I'm increasingly interested in "shims" -- using the data/network graph established on the larger platforms to off ramp to other, calmer places. Substack is already doing that (and these emails have exploded in volume the past week):
Show threadnkearneyNov 18, 2022
@anildash Can we include sharing ways of replacing all the other succubusware? The endless tendrils of Alphabet for example? A Google-free world?
Show threadStephen ColesNov 20, 2022
@anildash TrackBack is still operational (though much less commonly used than a decade ago). I still get them every week or so at typographica.org.