The Twitter meltdown made me realize something important: I’m a seriously prolific content creator. And I’ve been giving away all that content free to a platform that not only profits from it but treats me like garbage unfairly when it comes to sharing said profits. Meaning, they don’t share a dime. When I downloaded my Twitter archive, it hit me like a ton of bricks that most of that content was not sitting in my website, so they could just disappear if a billionaire decides to cut me off from the platform.

According to tech journalists, platforms are dying. I personally think they’re more resilient than that and people underestimate how reluctant people are when it comes to getting their hands dirty, building their own home on the Internet. They’d much rather use a ready-made platform where the tools are all ready to do this.

Still, with Twitter still melting, Facebook losing relevance, Reddit turning off many of its power users, we really need to stop putting ourselves in the position where we will be at the mercy of corporations and their business decisions.

Most of the time, these decisions are made solely in their own interest, not yours. Sure, using platforms can help us reach wider audiences, especially in a web overwhelmed by SEO-optimized sites and it’s tough for the little guy to stand out. But let’s not be fooled into thinking they have our best interests at heart, no matter how nice they seem right now.

So, how do we take control?

Well, I’ve been diving into the IndieWeb movement for the last few months, and it’s been a game-changer on how I’ve been blogging. Here’s how I’m doing it.

PESOS and POSSE: Are we in a Western?

We might as well be when it comes to with the IndieWeb movement! People barely know about the movement, so it’s uncharted territory for most. But for me, it has been refreshing and liberating to learn more about.

PESOS and POSSE are methods of publishing your content on the web that will ensure you have control over it:

POSSE (Publish on Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere)

PESOS (Publish Elsewhere, Syndicate to Own Site)

First, get a domain!

Your blog, whether it is on WordPress or Squarespace etc, should be owned by you. Meaning that you need to buy a domain name. With a domain name, each piece of content will have an address with a URL that you can control.

At the time of this writing, my wordpress.com website is still using a staging address — firediarist.wordpress.com. I have a domain name but haven’t gotten around transferring it yet. (Don’t be me.)

Indieweb folks tend to go a step further by favouring WordPress or Ghost as they are both widely-available, open-sourced content management system unlike Squarespace or Wix. As the latter platforms use proprietary systems, your content would be harder to transfer out of because there’s only one platform that uses their CMS. Their own.

With WordPress (even WordPress.com), you can easily transfer to another service that offers WordPress hosting. And there are a bajilion of them out there. (I can’t comment about Ghost as I’m not as familiar with the platform, but it comes highly recommended.)

Which method should you use?

While I use both methods interchangeably, PESOS is more my style.

I tend to have little bursts of inspiration and I often share these on social media because it is quick and easy to do so.

Some of these ideas make great blog posts, some end up in my trusty Obsidian vault as a note or a journal entry, some I don’t even bother to save. PESOS works for me because it enables me to create content spontaneously, quickly and flexibly.

From a logical standpoint (and if you talk to most IndieWeb purists), POSSE is more efficient.

You write a long, detailed post and then break it up into bite-sized pieces for distribution across platforms. It prevents “wasteful” content creation which might not end up on your blog or disappear into the digital ether.

Both methods have their merits. And it really depends on your personality and preferences.

Personally, POSSE just feels more tedious to me. It takes a lot more effort to organise my thoughts into a long proper post and then breaking it down into smaller content pieces. It prevents me from being quick and spontaneous; I’m a much, much slower and inefficient content creator with POSSE.

So, PESOS it is for me!

Next: I talk about how I actually implement POSSE/PESOS on my website.