notes on sustainability, privacy and alternatives to mainstream social media
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Can we decrease our reliance on mainstream social media platforms?
Can personal websites and blogs be a viable alternative?
Is there a different way to be online?
These are some of the questions I've been asking myself for years, while growing increasingly tired of the monopoly of mainstream social media.
I wanted to build my own online headquarters. A place where I could write, connect and network without relying on those same platforms which fragmented the web into disconnected bubbles.
Initially, building my own thing seemed too complicated since I didn't know coding or web design. But, once I started reading about basic HTML and CSS, I decided to try writing bits of code as I went.
This website is the result! Quite rudimentary, but enough for my needs. Since this little experiment captured the attention of other non-tech-savvy people, I wrote a list of the resources I used.
As you can tell from the design, I am not a graphic designer nor someone who has particular skills or experience building websites. Yet, I've been wanting to try building my own DIY online space for years!
Why? I grew up in a time when being online was a luxury, social media was not a thing, and the internet was (or at least felt) less standardised than today.
Websites and blogs were slow and messy (think Homer Simpson's web page), companies were not excessively hungry for personal data, you were your own algorithm, and oversharing was not encouraged by online platforms.
You had to resort to your best research skills to find what you were looking for, but once you did, it felt so good!
To my curious brain, the web felt like this immense portal to otherwise inaccessible knowledge and all sorts of interesting ideas. The web was mysterious, immense and without a real centre. Now, the "mainstream internet" feels like a claustrophobic space fragmented into isolated bubbles, hidden behind social media walls and flooded with unauthentic content.
Nope. I see this project as a way to revive my enthusiasm for the web, exercise patience and, hopefully, gain more independence from mainstream platforms and standardised internet content. Years ago, I stopped partaking in the so-called oversharing culture instigated and promoted by social media and realised how bad this phenomenon has become.
Data privacy is another huge concern for me, and as tech companies have found new and increasingly effective ways to extract personal information from online users, I've started yearning for more privacy and control over my online output.
Another reason to start this project is the environmental impact of all online activities. As someone with a background in environmental studies, keeping my footprint as low as possible is important. With constant access to the internet becoming the norm, the impact of online activities on our climate and environment has increased considerably. Services like music and movie streaming, cloud storage, AI (for those who use it), video conferencing, social media, and increasingly interactive and complex websites have all increased energy and resources consumption as well as greenhouse gas emissions.
The strategy to reduce my (online) environmental impact overlaps with measures to preserve my privacy as much as I can. These include using social media sparingly (I ditched Meta and the bird years ago); using external hard drives instead of cloud services and consuming offline media (physical records, mp3 files that have been downloaded just once, books, DVDs) more. I don't shop a lot online, but I could do better and am working on it. There's definitely room for improvement in all of these areas.
Ditching most social media (I currently have two that I use sporadically) for a simple, static website that serves as my online HQ can also lower my carbon footprint. How? Static websites tend to be greener than dynamic ones, but there's another benefit to a site like this. Compared to many shiny and more functional ready-to-use solutions, this website has many limitations. For instance, posting photos or videos is less straightforward than on social media or blogs. This means that I avoid uploading stuff that I don't find particularly relevant. Less online activity = less energy and resource consumption.
These limitations are also a reminder that a different (but not exactly new) way to maintain an online presence is possible without having to share too much personal information or engage in personal branding. A static and limited website like this can let you showcase your expertise or simply express yourself without asking too much in exchange besides a bit of time and willingness to learn some basic HTML and CSS.
If you're interested in building your own DIY website but have no experience, have a look at these resources I used to build this space.
AI policy: this website is a reaction to the perfectionist and performative nature of social media and the ubiquity of AI. No AI has been used to write content or to build the website, and I plan to keep it this way.
Interesting reads:
Books: "Privacy is power" by Carissa Veliz, "The age of surveillance capitalism" by Shoshana Zuboff, "Digital minimalism" by Cal Newport, "Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now" by Jaron Lanier.
Online resources: Low Tech Magazine, the Indieweb project, the Small Web, to be updated...