FBXL Social

The Small Web isn’t about going back to the days of GeoCities. It’s about going forward differently, using modern tech in a non-colonial manner.

It’s not about building clones of Twitter, YouTube, etc. There’s no way anyone can self-host a dozen different services. Instead, it’s about having a single-tenant place on the Web that you own and control without technical knowhow; a place you can add Twitter, YouTube, etc., *features* to.

https://small-tech.org/research-and-development/

#SmallWeb #SmallTech #SingleTenant

@aral I think both approaches have value. Best to think of the current #fedivere as a stepping stone.

The outcome is balence between Client/server as society is a balance between social and individual.

We need to respect diversity in our social change/challenge.

Stepping/bridge :)

#OMN

@witchescauldron Indeed, that’s exactly how I see it :)

@sj_zero Sure, and there’s nothing stopping anyone from installing what we’re building on a raspberry pi and plugging it into their routers. But we can’t expect everyone to do that. That said, I can see us providing preconfigured little devices that folks can just plug in. Been prototyping them. Easier than ever to do today.

@aral

Please stop saying that things like "There is no way anyone can self-host a doze. Different services"

This is simply not true. I am currently self-hosting 19 services.

@adam @aral I think the meaning is that not everyone can do it, just not ideal wording

Like, I can easily run tens of services on my servers, but not everyone can

@SigmaOne @aral Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate the sentiment of moving from choosing between companies that own and control your data (Google, AWS, et al) to moving to everyone self hosting everything, but speaking in absolutes is not helpful in getting there

As for saying that easy-to-use single tenant servers is not self hosting nor being controlled by the hosting provider (e.g., AWS)... well I'm not sure what to say to that. I must be misunderstanding something

@adam @aral I think the point is that non-enthusiasts don't have the capacity or willingness to run and maintain a bunch of services just to avoid the big companies, but there should instead be a single service they can run which has the features they need without the hassle of maintaining separate servers

So essentially things like peertube, a fedi instance, etc. rolled into one easy to maintain and use modular bundle

@SigmaOne @aral Sounds like just improving existing self-hosting solutions. Yunohost and Nextcloud both come to mind. However, I only hear @aral talk about building new things that will compete with the existing solutions.

If the community's efforts are going to be further divided, there should be a compelling reason. What requirement do existing solutions not meet?

@adam @SigmaOne They’re created to host from 1-1,000,000 people. So they’re designed for 1,000,000 people not one. That’s a huge amount of additional complexity.

It’s like telling someone, you don’t have to fly commercially, you can fly your own 747. Now it’s certainly possible; John Travolta does it. But the folks who want more people to be able to fly themselves are designing solutions that look more like drones.

@adam @SigmaOne In the same way, Small Tech and Small Web are about designing solutions for 1. Not 2, not 100,000, not 1,000,000. Single tenant apps, as we call them. That’s what reduces complexity and will make it possible for everyday people to use them.

So, for example, compare the effort of setting up PeerTube (which is designed to support thousands of people) with Owncast (which is designed to support just one). The latter can be up and running in under a minute on a tiny server.