It's the final chapter of the platform's in age. Instead of creating new Twitters and Facebooks, we can develop a system for stuff publishing that is more efficient for everyone.
For the past twenty years, our social networking and social media platforms have existed as separate realms. Each platform possesses its own social graph, keeping track of who you follow and who follows you. They each have their own feed, algorithms, apps, and user interfaces (although they have mostly converged on similar aesthetics over time). Additionally, they have their own publishing tools, character limits, and image filters. Existing online involves constantly navigating between these platforms and their ever-changing sets of rules and norms.
However, we may now be entering a new era. Instead of a few dominant platforms vying for control over all aspects of our lives, apps like Mastodon, Bluesky, Pixelfed, Lemmy, and others are constructing a more interconnected social ecosystem. If this change, fueled by ActivityPub, gains traction, it will fragment all social networks into numerous smaller fragments. All types of posts will become detached from their respective platforms. We will have new tools for creating, reading, organizing, moderating, sharing, remixing, and managing these posts, among other functions.
This transformation is undoubtedly thrilling, but it also raises a complex question. If you are someone who regularly posts content – encompassing everything from tweets to TikToks, whether for amusement or as a profession – what should you do now? For the past two decades, the answer has been relatively straightforward: log in to the desired platform, utilize its tools, and click "publish." Yet, in a more open and decentralized world, how should content creators approach posting?
I believe the answer lies in an idea that dates back a decade, concerning how the internet should be organized. It is known as POSSE: Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Everywhere (alternatively, the "P" can also stand for "Post," and the "E" can be "Elsewhere"). The concept suggests that you, as the content creator, should publish on a website that you own. Instead of relying on an app that may vanish and erase all your posts, or a platform with ever-changing rules and algorithms, you should use your own website. However, people who wish to consume your posts – whether through reading, watching, listening, or browsing – should be able to do so on various platforms, as your content would be syndicated across them.
In a POSSE-based world, everyone would have a domain name and a blog. By "blog," I am using a broad definition, referring to a space on the internet where you can publish your content for others to consume. When you have something to post, you would do so on your blog. For instance, a lengthy blog post might be broken down into sections and posted as a thread on platforms like X, Mastodon, and Threads. Furthermore, the entire post could be shared on your Medium page, Tumblr, and LinkedIn profile. Photos could be posted directly to Instagram, while vertical videos would swiftly be shared on TikTok, Reels, and Shorts. Your post would appear natively across all these platforms, typically with a link back to your blog. Gradually, your blog would become the central hub for all your content – your primary presence on the internet.
Implemented correctly, POSSE represents the ideal approach to posting. As Matt Mullenweg, the CEO of Automattic and a key figure behind WordPress, emphasizes, "As someone publishing, I want as much interaction as possible." (Automattic also owns Tumblr, another major posting platform.) He questions why we must choose which network to share our thoughts on when we should be able to post it once, preferably on our own domain, and have it distributed across platforms like X, Threads, Tumblr, and numerous others, each having its own interfaces and network effects. The essence of POSSE is to exercise ownership over your content and establish a centralized home on the web, both philosophically and logistically. After all, managing multiple identities across multiple platforms is an arduous task.
There are significant challenges to the concept at hand. The first issue pertains to the social aspect of social media: how does one manage the multitude of likes, replies, comments, and other interactions that accompany their posts? The practice of POSSE, while effective in unifying one's posts, tends to fragment engagement into numerous confusing fragments. Additionally, there is the matter of sharing the same content across various platforms. Each platform has its own set of norms, audience, and language. How frequently does one genuinely want to post identical content on LinkedIn and Tumblr? Moreover, at what point does one become indistinguishable from spam?
However, the most immediate concern revolves around constructing a functional POSSE system. POSSE encounters problems right from the beginning: it requires owning one's website, which entails acquiring a domain, concerns over DNS records, and selecting a suitable web host. Unfortunately, this requirement tends to discourage the majority of individuals who would prefer the convenience of simply entering a username and password on a free platform like Meta.
Even individuals willing and capable of tackling the technical aspects often struggle to make POSSE work. Cory Doctorow, an established activist and author with decades of blogging experience, recounts his initial journey with a POSSE-ified blog called Pluralistic. He describes his early process, which involved an HTML template in the default Linux editor using Emacs key bindings. Doctorow would then open the template, save it with a different file name appended with the day's date, and proceed to write blog posts within it. Afterwards, he would manually copy and paste these posts into various platforms such as Twitter's threading tool, Mastodon, Tumblr, and Medium, editing each one individually along the way. He would compile them into a text file, paste them into an email, and send them to a Mailman instance hosting his newsletter. Additionally, he utilized full-text RSS and Discourse for comments, which had its own syndication option for followers.
For a significant period of time, Doctorow spent more time organizing the distribution of his posts rather than writing them, leading to numerous mistakes. Although he has since adopted a more automated system, it still involves extensive Python scripting, multiple browser tabs, and considerably more manual labor than the average person would invest in sharing their thoughts with the world.
While we may envision a future post-platform era consisting of an entire industry dedicated to managing widespread cross-posting, we currently reside in a world dominated by platforms and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Consequently, Micro.blog, a platform catering to cross-posters, serves as a valuable tool. Upon signing up, users gain access to their own blog, which can be linked to their domain, and an automatic cross-posting feature for Mastodon, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Medium, Pixelfed, Nostr, and Flickr.
According to Manton Reece, the creator of Micro.blog, POSSE represents a pragmatic approach to the functioning of social networks. Instead of waiting for an ideal world where every social network can seamlessly communicate and allow individuals to follow one another across Threads, Mastodon, Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms, Reece suggests accepting the reality. The focus should be on posting content on a personal site under individual control and then sharing it with friends on various networks. Cutting off one's content from the rest of the world out of a mere principle should be avoided.
Despite its merits, Micro.blog has yet to adequately address the engagement aspect. Reece expresses interest in developing tools that aggregate and comprehend replies, likes, comments, and similar forms of interaction. However, this remains a considerably challenging endeavor. Nonetheless, it is possible that an entire industry may emerge to tackle this challenge. Reece mentions a tool called Bridgy, which facilitates cross-posting while consolidating social media reactions and attaching them to relevant posts on one's site. However, this endeavor is met with resistance from existing platforms, as they lack the incentive or tools necessary to facilitate the dissemination of engagement data on a broader scale. Nevertheless, there are individuals who believe this issue can be resolved.
When it comes to managing various networks, Mullenweg considers POSSE to be primarily a user interface issue, but one that can be solved. "I have been reflecting on the most suitable UI for this," he explains. "I believe there might be a process where the initial step involves posting to my blog, and then I am presented with opportunities to customize it for each network." According to Mullenweg, POSSE has erred in its attempt to automate everything. "I am truly invested in a two- or three-step publishing process to circumvent this issue."
The new social puzzle only has one piece, which is POSSE. In the near future, a wide variety of reading tools offering various methods of displaying and arranging postings may become available. Additionally, there might be new algorithms for content moderation and even a sector of the economy devoted to them, with people vying to not only write the finest pieces but also arrange them in the most enticing sequence. The next generation of tools might concentrate on unbundling these elements because modern social networks are not isolated entities but rather include a wide range of features.
When asked about his belief in POSSE, Doctorow emphasizes the anxiety every user of the modern internet feels. In the present, he claims, "where the majority of people acquire their news and engage in reading through silos that hold them hostage, I wanted to establish a new platform. Without relying on them, I wanted to use these silos to draw in readers and keep them interested. Currently, it takes a lot of work to get the best of both worlds, but a paradise for content makers may not be as far off as it appears.
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