It's Time to Be Internet Cockroaches :: The Life of the Traegorn

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It's Time to Be Internet Cockroaches
Posted Mar 18, 2025 - 19:25:57

So I talked about this on my Tumblr and my TikTok (and cross posted stuff to Bluesky and YouTube), but it would be deeply ironic if I didn't post something about it here on my actual blog/site. With TikTok likely being banned in the United States in a few weeks, we're seeing a major social platform go down. A platform where people have built community and connection. A platform people use to get new information, and which has been used to shine a light on current events in ways most people don't normally get to see.

It may just be gone for users in the US.

And this highlights a major issue with the way people currently use the internet -- it's dependent on centralized platforms. Whether it's TikTok, Facebook, Bluesky, and even my beloved Tumblr -- everyone reserves their interactions what seems like less than a dozen sites/apps. And when everything is based on so few sites, it means that in the best case scenario we surrender control of our speech to those companies' moderation policies or they can disappear taking down large swaths of our shared culture, content, and ability to communicate.

And that's why what we direly need right now is to decentralize our internet experiences. You need to build your own shit, and you need to do it now.

This blog that you're reading (whether its on my main site or one of the comics I write/wrote's page) is hosted on my own site. I pay every month for some shared server space, and run my own blog software. For most folks, within a few clicks they can get a Wordpress installation running on it and build their own online presence.

Now, I know that's not feasible for everyone, so the other option is just starting a blog on a smaller blogging site. It's not as good, but it's better than the current system.

Now, you might be asking yourself, how do I follow people when they're all posting to separate websites. The answer is simple: the humble RSS feed.

For those unfamiliar, RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. RSS feeds are effectively a list of updates to a site -- sometimes full text, sometimes just summaries. If you listen to podcasts, you actually use these all the time as they're the backbone of how podcasts operate. All you have to do to follow folks is find a good RSS reader (I use Thunderbird since I already use it as my email client). There are apps for every platform under the sun.

Likewise, we need to start building forums again. We've tried starting this with Nerd & Tie [dot] Social ourselves, and modern forum software is easy to set up. If you can't set one up yourself, but have a friend who can... use it. Build as many small communities as you can across the web.

Because here's the thing, when there are only a few sites, it's easy to destroy them. But when there are thousands -- maybe even millions -- of small communities and sites suddenly you can't easily remove communities from the web.

Now is discoverability harder in this world? Yes. We're reliant far more on word of mouth and exchanging links with eachother. But that's what we exchange for resilience. This is how the old web worked in the 90s and most of the 2000s. We need to rebuild this kind of world, or else we will always be at the mercy and whims of politicians and billionaires.

Which is kind of bad, y'know? Let's make a world where we all have control of our spaces, where we can spread to every nook and corner of the web.

Let's be cockroaches.
- Traegorn

I follow everything through RSS, that's why I saw this. Any platform with analgorithm is actively hiding things you want to see from you.

Well it's good to know the registration system still works.