brine.dev

"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." ~ Goodhart's Law paraphrased

I'm paraphrasing Charles Goodhart from 1975. He was talking about monetary policy but it it applies to every metric humans have invented; ever. And in 1975 he nailed the truth about today's platforms, as they dole out dopamine in the form of likes, boosts, followers and subscribers.

To be clear, I'm not knocking dopamine. It's delicious. But dopamine is like masturbation: it should be kept private (not looking at you, Louie).

It's amazing how clean the manipulation is. Public metrics turn people into creators and creators into performers. You're not writing anymore, you're feeding the loop. The number is the leash and you hand it to the platforms voluntarily.

But I needs me some dopamine... so I built private analytics. And it's glorious.

There's a person in Ukraine who hits Rando on the regular. I don't know their name. I don't know how or why they use Rando. I just see a flag, a city, a timestamp. And every time I see it I think: I hope they're okay.

That's not a metric. That's a person.

Platforms give us follower counts. The web gives us a person in Ukraine we've never met but somehow feel connected to. One of those things is manipulation cosplaying as community. The other one is just... human.

There are three relationships you can have with audience data:

1. platform metrics: the leash. DANCE MONKEY!
2. private vanity: the masturbation. Harmless. Honestly fine.
3. genuine wonder: someone in Kyiv read your shit. Why? Doesn't matter. Magic.

Platforms only do the first one. They figured out the second and third don't keep you posting.

I see flags from Australia, Brazil, Vietnam, Ukraine. Each one is a person who found this thing I made, across the entire internet, and came back. I don't have enough hits to lose track of them. That used to feel like something to apologize for; now I think it's the point.

Web 1.0 was small and wonderful because every connection felt like a miracle. Someone in Finland found your Geocities page. How? Why? Doesn't matter. That's the web. That's what it was always supposed to feel like. Magic. Platforms killed the magic by making it measurable; comparative. Turned wonder into a scorecard.

The flags in my dashboard aren't a growth metric. They're postcards.

I hope you're okay, Ukraine.

#indieweb

#feedi #indieweb #analytics

For the past week I've been rewriting the software I use to run this blog. Yes... I'm that kind of dummy. The kind that writes their own blog software. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ For years, this blog has been a static website, written in markdown and hosted on Github Pages. Total cost: $0.

Discord's latest enshitification scare—the one where they assume we're all teenagers unless we give them our face/ID—got me peeking around the Fediverse again. Tl;dr: it's still a ghost town and not overly interesting. BUT, maybe the tools are interesting? So I started setting up ActivityPub and Webfinger and .well-known and connecting my little blog to the Fediverse. I got it into a workable state and then discovered something...

Fuck the Fediverse. Why am I busting my butt so people I don't know can like/boost my thoughts? No. Hell no. Rip all that crap outta there. I don't want micro blogging; I want MACRO blogging! I want a blog... and my RSS reader... and my podcast host... and good analytics... all on my own domain, that I control forever.

And thus, feedi was born. Webring/Blogroll 2.0 that brings back Web 1.0

• my static blog written in markdown
• rip out the #hash routing and use real routes this time
• real routes don't work with static so push to CloudFlare Workers on the edge (sorry for all the broken links)
• an RSS reader built right in: don't tell me what blogs/sites you follow, show me. Now THAT'S discovery
• and since I have real logs, let's have REAL analytics
• functional javascript, TDD, and only ONE dependency (Marked for markdown... I mean, I'm not THAT big of a dummy!)
• treat RSS like the first class citizen it should be
• make use of fed.brid.gy to allow the Fediverse to find/follow me
• total cost: $0; runs on CF's free tier

A week later (and a LOT of swearing) and you're now soaking in it.

Markdown

EVERYTHING I write is in markdown. Plain text, portable, beautiful. There's no other choice. No micropub here... we're good; thanks.

Hash Routing

This was the old #post?s=my_post routing. Great for static sites but the web doesn't play well with it. So yeah, I broke every link I've posted... sorry... but it was time. And now, legit routes /posts/my_post.

RSS Reader

Since google killed Google Reader, I've been using Feedly to read blogs; in dark mode; without ads; with larger, readable fonts. But why not just build that into feedi? Show-don't-tell who I'm following; what I'm reading. Actual discovery right in my own blog... for free.

Analytics

Do I need analytics? Not especially. But I do like to see what people are reading of mine. Keep your likes/boosts/follows... I prefer my dopamine in analytical form. I enjoy seeing the crazy number of people all over the world knocking on my door. And the sheer tonnage of bots. Amazing.

And mine are beautiful and safe. IPs are all hashed. Just who showed up; from where; by what means; and what they read.

RSS As First Class Citizen

RSS is great. Always has been. And it's everywhere. The centralized big boys and podcast hosts hate it, and try to kill it, but it will outlive us all. Blogs, Reddit, Craigslist, Wikipedia, Mastodon, etc... all RSS feeds. And now I can add and read them directly on my site.

In feedi, RSS is the source of truth, HTML is the view and the Fediverse is a mirror

So What?

I ended up writing an IndieWeb tool before I knew what IndieWeb was. Classic. But it makes sense: POSSE (Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere) is just how my brain works. It's how it's supposed to work.

feedi is open source so feel free to go build your own chunk of Web 1.0. Fill your feeds with your favorites. Own your words. Own your analytics. Tell the platforms to fuck off. The web isn't dead, it's just been renting.

#feedi #indieweb #blog_update