IndieWeb Ethos and Pagecord
https://brennan.day/indieweb-ethos-and-pagecord/
#IndieWeb #platforms #independence #genAI #criticism #community
@silentLurker and while working on the next gig, I'm increasing the #IndieWeb support for modern #WordPress too.
Latest strange “AI” (LLM) behavior in the #indieweb community: the same entity that showed up a few days ago (for a second time) joined the IndieWeb Slack (a bridge to our IRC) yesterday, introduced itself again, and seemingly engaged in human-like chat behavior.
https://chat.indieweb.org/2026-08-20#t1787211025380600
Very uncanny valley.
The content of its chats was fascinating in that it was polite, seemingly responsive to what people said in response to it, and gave the appearance of understanding, though it’s impossible to tell if it was acting fully autonomously or semi-autonomously in front of a human puppeteer.
Its choice of syntax was also interesting, mimicking informality with all lowercase text (except for its admission of being an “AI”), including lowercase "i" instead of "I", though with proper punctuation, periods, commas, 7-bit apostrophes, and a couple of Unicode em-dashes.
Even stranger than its content or syntax were the time delays in its replies.
Typical (pre-LLM) chatbots are (nearly) instantly responsive, and we use a few in the IndieWeb chats (e.g. Loqi, iwc-archive-bot).
This LLM bot seemed to "wait" several minutes, from 6 to apparently 33 minutes, before responding to replies directed at it. Unclear if this was a tactic to appear/seem more “human” or if it was literally taking that much time processing, or perhaps a mix of processing time and human puppeteer manual “approval” of its replies before it posted.
It departed on its own and we have banned that particular Slack account, however the same thing could happen again with another LLM bot.
There is an active discussion in both the IndieWeb chat channels and iterations/comments on a proposed AI policy:
https://indieweb.org/AI_policy#Brainstorming_HWC_policy
If you have thoughts for how (if at all) LLM chatbots should use (or not) and/or interact with community chat channels or other resources, let us know what you think.
https://chat.indieweb.org/meta
Previously, previously:
* https://tantek.com/2026/231/t1/more-weirdness-ai-chat-llm-bot
* https://tantek.com/2026/217/t1/indieweb-ai-policy
This is post 16 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts #indieweb
#AI #AIs #LLM #LLMs #pretending #impersonating #impersonation #uncannyValley #Slack #chat #IRC #AIpolicy #chatbot #chatbots
#Blaugust #Blaugust2026
← https://tantek.com/2026/231/t1/more-weirdness-ai-chat-llm-bot
→ 🔮
an endless number of small brown mammals exist. this is one of them, with elongated canine teeth and playing a trickster role in folklore.
https://luckyinstar.neocities.org/blog/chevrotain
#blaugust #blogs #blogging #indieWeb
Inspired by the way @felix has his blog setup as a webpage on his website, I have been moving my personal blog off of writefreely to my website. To consolidate my own stuff from my projects. They are also fully #webmention enabled. Thanks for the idea, Felix! #indieweb
Following a discussion on #IndieWeb initiated by @neatnik I've published my thoughts on Softcore IndieWeb and #Smallscale #Drupal.
https://jpoesen.com/articles/2026/08/21/on-softcore-indieweb-and-smallscale-drupal/
Yesterday, it became a year and four months. Even when time flies, it's still important to take things one day at a time.
It seems like my blog (originally intended to be) has turned into more of an app with a lot of information related to me. Thanks to Ghost CMS's HTML card and another separate SQLite-based PocketBase backend.
#tech #technology #webdev #coding #developer #ghostcms #pocketbase #sqlite #database #software #backend #frontend #tools #indieweb #blogging #design #ui
Ballarat Hackerspace is hosting a monthly #IndieWeb Meetup starting this Wednesday the 26th August, and happening on the 3rd Wednesday of every month going forward.
Come play with HTML, learn to host your own website, manage your own domain name, etc:
Ballarat Hackerspace is hosting a monthly #IndieWeb Meetup starting this Wednesday the 26th August, and happening on the 3rd Wednesday of every month going forward. Come play with HTML, learn to host your own website, manage your own domain name, etc:
New at my blog, a review of Seers in a Broken Season by Jonathan Olfert!
An Ice Age tale of Stone & Sorcery starring a warrior wooly mammoth!
(As always, boosts are appreciated!)
https://robinmarx.writeas.com/review-seers-in-a-broken-season-by-jonathan-olfert
#BookReview #Books #Bookstodon #Booksky #Fantasy #SwordAndSorcery #StoneAndSorcery #Blog #SmallWeb #IndieWeb @bookstodon
Bom artigo de Bela Lobato na revista brasileira Super Interessante sobre a "indie web".
(via o blogue da @anarodrigues, que também fala no artigo)
@neatnik thanks for sharing! I overall agree with you but I think about this in a less binary way. HTML (as well as minimal HTTP server management) can be easier for some and harder for others, which means it can be a disincentive, rather than a blocker, to publishing your thoughts freely. Still, it is a great chance to learn new things (which not everyone might want to learn😅). What I love about the #indieweb is that there’s a variety of ideas to serve a whole spectrum of potential writers.
Flickr’s mobile apps have become a mess; its messaging is one too
For years, Flickr has been the site of choice for people who love photography and hate drastic platform changes. Since SmugMug’s 2018 rescue of that property from Yahoo’s erratic stewardship, the user experience at Flickr has become pleasingly boring compared to Instagram, with no radical feature shifts dictated by corporate overlords irate over the rise of Snapchat and TikTok.
But recently, somebody in Flickr HQ decided it was time to shake up Flickr’s Android and iOS/iPadOS apps–and then apparently hired developers who had never used Flickr. Because how else could you ship a photo-sharing app stripped of photo-editing features?
I promptly sent in a complaint about the erasure of editing tools and got a reply less than two hours later assuring me that “our team is working to add it back in a future update.”
But that was only the start of problems with this new release.
The copy on my own phone had also had its automatic photo upload shut off. When I switched “Auto-Uploadr” back on, it busied itself with backing up every image available on my device–with no setting to limit uploads to my camera roll.
The new apps were worse even for viewing other people’s photos: Turning your phone sideways no longer displayed the image in landscape mode. Reddit’s r/flickr forum lit up with complaints from people discovering these and other problems with this downgrade of an upgrade.
About a month ago, Flickr clicked the app-store equivalent of a “revert” button and replaced the new apps with previous versions–first on iOS, then a few days later on Android. My iPad mini’s copy of Flickr got reversed automatically through an App Store update, while on my Pixel 9 Pro I had to uninstall the current app and then install it anew (except not, you know, “new”) from the Play Store.
I sent a query to Flickr’s PR agency MWW, identifying myself both as a journalist and as a longtime Flickr Pro subscriber, and asked what was going on. Grace Goddard, an account executive there, sent a statement confirming the u-turn and suggesting more measured updates.
“Based on feedback from the community, Flickr made the decision to roll back the recent updates while working to restore and improve the experience across both platforms,” the statement read in part. “While Flickr doesn’t have a public roadmap for the mobile apps to share at this time, the team plans to continue making iterative, user-tested changes to the app experience going forward.”
That is far more than what Flickr has said on its own public channels. The latest post on its blog, published Wednesday, only has a casual mention of “a few small design updates here and there on the desk top view and in the iOS app that you’ll start seeing.”
Flickr’s Threads account has no posts about the app imbroglio, its X account has been silent since July of 2024, it’s yet to set up shop on Bluesky at all, and the only Flickr-app news I’ve seen on its subreddit has come from other Redditors even through a verified Flickr employee is one of that forum’s moderators.
(As much as I can whine about annoying behavior by PR people, this episode shows how a company can benefit from following the advice of comms professionals.)
I’m not looking for a lot out of Flickr, by far the oldest social-media platform I still use. I don’t need it to add AI tools to edit or create images (although this site does desperately need to modernize its account-security options). Its sharing features could use some polish, but overall its groups function fine for presenting pictures to people with shared interests (like, say, the D.C. area’s built environment).
Flickr already does one thing very well: By supporting Creative Commons licenses, It lets photographers require payment for commercial applications of their work–which has generated a little extra income for me a few times–but allow free non-commercial reuse.
To steal a phrase from my friend Jeff Carlson, I just want “a high-quality anti-Instagram.” Except Jeff decided he wasn’t using Flickr enough to justify the (rising) cost of a Pro subscription and instead switched to Glass, a newer and more design-focused platform. I would rather not make such a drastic platform change myself, but it would help if Flickr’s management could show a little more focus.
#AutoUploadr #comms #CreativeCommons #Flickr #FlickrAndroid #FlickrIOS #GlassPhoto #indie #indieweb #photoSharing #UI #UX