Sunday 16 August 2026

Thoughts on the web, small-web and federation

I’ve actually been thinking about this for a while… a couple of years probably. But I ran across a post on mastodon.social that made me stop and pause and think, “OK, what is really the status of things right now, in mid-2026?” The post read:

As attempts to lock down “the #internet” grow, alongside it will grow the rebirth of an age of #zines, #BBS, #mixtapes, #burnedCDs, and other hand-to-hand media. People will bypass restrictions, even if it’s by paper and #sneakernet or #CB radios in the wild. (original link)

So, the web. Yeah, it is a hot fucking mess. I remember when it began dethroning BBS systems in the very early 1990s. It was cool; it offered a LOT of things that DOS-based systems were never designed to do.

It enhanced technology. Yeah, that right there is where things started going horribly wrong wrapped in something magnificently wonderful.

The ability to do things easily, efficiently, and, for lack of a better term, “plug and play” was the byproduct. The easier computers and the web became to use, the less ordinary users needed to understand what was underneath them. That was mostly a good thing, but it also made it easier for ownership to shift away from the user. Eventually we stopped running things and started opening accounts on things other people ran for us.

I read another post that kind of feeds off that thought. It said,

It’s easy to feel secure when a platform is in its golden era. But we’ve watched the downfalls of Twitter, the policy shifts of Reddit, and the changing tides of algorithmic networks. Relying blindly on a centralized portal not owned by you means your life’s work can alter overnight based entirely on a corporate boardroom decision.

The modern web is no longer a place of wonder and discovery. It’s the other side of the tracks. The part of town you probably shouldn’t be in. The “nothing good happens after midnight” underbelly that separates people into four camps: those who don’t care, those who are too complacent to change, those who check out completely, and those who care and try to be mindful and find safe alternatives or practices.

The first camp is those who basically shrug their shoulders and say, “It is what it is.” They literally don’t care and let the chips fall where they may.

The second camp knows things are not right, and might even make a half-hearted attempt to change their habits, but ends up back where they were before because changing is hard, complicated at times, and takes them out of their comfort zone.

The third group has largely checked out. They minimize their online presence as much as modern life permits, although banking, government services, communication, and commerce make completely opting out increasingly difficult.

Then there is the last group. This group is actually more like two factions: one, the small web, and two, federation. They share some of the same basic ethos, but, honestly, they are two very distinct animals.

So, the small web in a nutshell is the human-scaled, independently controlled part of the internet: personal sites, blogs, digital gardens, small communities, independent publications, and creative projects built primarily to publish, communicate, and share rather than maximize growth or engagement. It favors individual ownership, privacy, open standards, hyperlinks, RSS, human curation, and deliberate discovery over corporate platforms, tracking, advertising, and algorithmic feeds. It is not defined by a particular technology, aesthetic, or total rejection of commerce. A site can be modern, multimedia, or commercial and still belong to the small web if it remains independently operated, human-scaled, and oriented toward people rather than metrics, surveillance, and platform control.

That sounds great. It fits into the post I started with: people digging back into what the original internet was and still could be. The BBS, Gopher, IRC, RSS, terminal, etc. The Gemini protocol has made it simple yet more accessible. The small web ethos values independence, human expression, privacy, open standards, and meaningful connection over platforms, surveillance, algorithms, and growth at all costs.

The other alternative is sites that are “federated.” A federated site or instance is an independently operated server that can communicate and interact with other compatible servers through a shared protocol, while retaining its own users, rules, moderation, and administration.

Fairly close to the small web. But not really.

The small web and the federated web share a strong distrust of centralized platforms, but they approach independence differently. The small web emphasizes personal ownership, individuality, human-scale publishing, direct links, and intentional discovery. Federated sites emphasize interoperability: independent servers and communities can communicate with one another through shared protocols such as ActivityPub while remaining separately operated.

Their ethos overlaps around decentralization, user control, privacy, open standards, and resistance to corporate gatekeeping. The key distinction is that the small web does not need to form a network at all; a personal website can simply exist on its own, while federation deliberately connects independent sites into a larger social system. In that sense, the small web favors independence; the federated web tries to preserve that independence while still providing networked community.

So, now understanding basically the three states of the online world, and the four facets of human participation, what is the point?

Good question. I personally find myself torn between all three positions.

Yeah, the modern internet is an enshittified wasteland that is quickly becoming hostile to any sort of real human interaction. Everything is analytics-driven. Likes, karma, upvotes, shares, views, blah blah blah. There is real content on the web, but it is completely buried under the pile of shit we have allowed it to become. The small web is refreshing, but only for that fourth camp I mentioned. Anyone else, at best, will try it and then think, “This is too hard,” “This doesn’t make sense,” and basically give up and go back to their “safe and easy” web.

Federation, on the other hand, presents an interesting position. It basically says, “The small web asks you to build your own place on the internet. Federation gives you a neighborhood to move into. It also offers the convenience and social connection of modern platforms without requiring one corporation to own the platform, the audience, and the rules.”

But here is the conundrum: Federation is in the better position to attract large numbers of people away from the modern corporate web. The small web is better positioned to influence the culture of whatever comes next. So, which is the path to follow? That is the tough question (maybe not for some).

I’ll leave this with my feeling on that as of Sunday, August 16, 2026: The small web is and should be influential in the next phases of the culture of the future of the web. Right now, it’s fringe still. It is nowhere like the BBS scene was in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and that was still fairly niche. My question is: can they get past the (yes, this is harsh) snobbery they present? Some in that camp are so inflexible it’s crazy.

Federation decentralizes ownership, but it doesn’t necessarily change human behavior. You can distribute the servers and still recreate cliques, popularity contests, gatekeeping, pile-ons, moderation wars, and many of the social habits that made corporate social media miserable in the first place.

So, is the problem actually centralization, or is part of the problem social media itself?

That’s a much deeper issue.

The small web changes the behavioral model. Federation largely changes the ownership/network model. Mastodon still asks you to follow people, post into timelines, reply, boost, favorite, and watch notifications. A personal website/phlog/gemcapsule asks you to publish something and let someone deliberately come read it.

So, yeah, I am straddling all three right now. Hedging my bets to see which camp leads the way while keeping one iron in the existing modern web mess. Maybe we’re asking the wrong question when we ask which one will win. Federation may be the thing capable of getting people out of corporate platforms, while the small web may be the thing that reminds us why getting out mattered in the first place.