Audio for morning commutes:
Thanks to the open web, it’s more viable than ever for creators to take back ownership and control of their work, their audience, and their livelihood. No one knows this better than Molly White, a researcher, writer and software engineer. This episode was recorded live at SXSW 2025.
Still a bit more than halfway through it, listening on, it's safe to say I enjoy this one also because I agree with a lot of her points, but some things still leave me slightly unsettled. Maybe three issues for now: At first, "we are all content creators" with every piece of stuff we post anywhere on the 'net. Really? There's a reoccurring quote out there I end up with then and now which is more or less like "we tell stories to join the conversation", and in many ways I can relate with this much more. Never seen myself as a content creator, let alone publisher of anything valuable out there - just a mere nerd writing stuff on the interweb to maybe get into this or another conversation. Focussing on ones own role of a content creator, of trying to keep followers and an audience, despite all my agreeing with the idea of digital sovereignty in there, feels way too much like a one-way, like basically being focussed on my own stuff and ensuring people can read all of that easily everywhere - rather than considering the other way 'round and focussing on also making sure I can read stuff others wrote. Then, she somehow lost me with still posting to Twitter even while it sucks and she might be banned there sooner than later. No criticism on my end, I get her point but I just very much disagree with that perspective for a whole load of reasons, digital sovereignty included. And maybe finally, however, talking the other way 'round and practically handling this idea: Hoping for the (AP) Fediverse to somehow get more serious about that. Not just as in being able to somehow move accounts and contacts between instances of the same software but actually by being able to, like, move all my content and conversations and contacts seamlessly from one server to another without losing anything or causing a lot of friction for either myself or server administrators or my friends (refusing to call them readers or followers or contacts at this point). There's still room for improvements here, and I'll now shut up, stop ranting and be listening on. There's a lot of valuable stuff in there anyway.