The challenge we face in the open social web is enticing people off the silos with fun toys to play with that from the start don't rely on a bigco to run it. The back-end is a server you could run for $20 a month on Digital Ocean for example. But the logical network isn't tied to the physical server. We use URLs or DNS to find other nodes. They can be hosted anywhere. The reason to run lots of servers is to demonstrate that it's only as centralized as the web itself, from day 1. You can browse other people's subscription lists as you can in twitter-like networks. But it's made of feeds. The really simple ones. #
The penalty for ABC and Disney should be we stop watching their stuff.#
Last update: Friday September 19, 2025; 11:38 AM EDT.
You know those obnoxious sites that pop up dialogs when they think you're about to leave, asking you to subscribe to their email newsletter? Well that won't do for Scripting News readers who are a discerning lot, very loyal, but that wouldn't last long if I did rude stuff like that. So here I am at the bottom of the page quietly encouraging you to sign up for the nightly email. It's got everything from the previous day on Scripting, plus the contents of the linkblog and who knows what else we'll get in there. People really love it. I wish I had done it sooner. And every email has an unsub link so if you want to get out, you can, easily -- no questions asked, and no follow-ups. Go ahead and do it, you won't be sorry! :-)