IndieWeb Carnival Dec ’25 round-up
Many thanks to all the contributors to this month’s IndieWeb carnival. The prompt asked you to tell us _where you see the IndieWeb in 2030_ , inviting writings on what the IndieWeb means for you, how you see its near future, what you think about its orientations, all with a view to realisable aims or critiques for the next five years.
I had a great time reading all your submissions, listed below with a short summary,1 in the order in which I received them. There was variety in the contributions, but also several common threads that I have attempted to highlight in this round-up without overshadowing individual contributions. I found them insightful and have no doubt everyone else too will feel similarly.
If you are one of the contributors, or are just here for the round-up, and have not done so already, it would mean a lot to me if you could please leave a note in my guestbook.
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_**Chris**_ Writing on the _Outer Web_ (what a great name) in ‘2030’ Chris reflects on how the fundamentals of the IndieWeb will (and should) remain intact while calling for a ‘denser and more discoverable’ web in the coming years. An interesting idea Chris proposes is a ‘related posts’-style section at the end of every post, except with links to _others_ websites with related content instead of our own.
_**Andrei**_ In ‘Cyberpunk 2030’ we find an assortment of troubles plaguing the internet today – including the IndieWeb – from platform moderators upending projects to codebase maintainers who are ‘just as toxic … as Elon Musk himself, except they’re poor.’ The constants that can elevate the IndieWeb, says Andrei, are the people who make it up – people who can be their true selves and value connections with other people like them.
_**Cameron Jones**_ Looking ahead in three flavours – wishfully first, then realistically and finally with pessimism – Cameron introduces a host of new ideas in ‘Three predictions for the web’, from event pages and fora to interoperability and state crackdowns on the pseudoanonymity of the web. I do not want to spoil anything in this dense and rich article but I would recommend a cup of tea and a pocket book to take notes.
_**Anthony Nelzin-Santos**_ Adding a unique twist to the contributions this month, Anthony writes to us from a dystopian 2031 in ‘They said the web was dead’, long after the internet as we now know it is no more and Apple and Google have monopolised their replacement _newnet_. However, older OSes and insecure connections can still help you hook up to the ‘world wild web’ as you use the Internet phone book to explore the so-called _indieweb_. Alright, now go read this in full and, like me, pine for a sequel.
_**Juha-Matti Santala**_ Reflecting in his ‘rocky and ever-evolving’ relationship with the IndieWeb, Juhis writes in ‘Where are we going, IndieWeb?’ that the IndieWeb is just one alternative to the CorpoWeb, not the only one. It should continue to be more aspirational in nature, he recommends, but it should not gatekeep, and doing that means thinking about a balance between commercial and DIY set-ups: when it comes to technicalities Juhis points out that it is ‘really difficult to reduce these to a minimum without turning the entire thing into a commercial-ish service.’
_**Bobby Hiltz**_ is new to the IndieWeb, which means he is in the unique position of being able to address one of my prompts to hold a mirror up to the IndieWeb folk. Unsurprisingly, there is a _lot_ to think about in ‘IndieWeb 2030’, from how we should look at the IndieWeb as an alternative rather than a competitor to working on the existing, weak documentation for newcomers to IndieWeb sites not being ‘fun’ enough. There is healthy criticism here that is worth reflecting on for everyone who wants the IndieWeb to keep getting better and stay meaningful. And finally, predicts Bobby, Gen Z are around the corner and we are in for some fun times.
_**Manuel Moreale**_ Continuing the trend of holding a mirror to the IndieWeb, this time from deep within it, Manu writes, ‘Where do I wish to see the IndieWeb in 2030’. The web is a mess, he says, and we should stop ‘pretending that the fault for all this digital mess lies entirely on the shoulders of a few mega corporations.’ He hopes that by 2023, in a web that is likely still as messy, we will, at least, have realised that the people matter more.
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Looking to the past to gain a better understanding of the future is both sensible and clever, which is why so many people have approached this carnival theme in that way. While we have looked inwards aplenty so far, gaining lots of insights in the process, we have up next essays that propose a more thorough plan for working over the next five years, that seek to engage with the conflicting emotions of an AI-driven future, that hope for openness and flexibility and suggest that the IndieWeb has already captured the zeitgeist.
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_**Paul Watson**_ Offerring a unique perspective on how things used to be back in the day, in ‘Where do I see the IndieWeb in 2030?’ Paul reflects on a unique old ISP practice that just might help lower the bar for newcomers to the IndieWeb. But in 2030 Paul believs things might not be all that different from now.
_**Khürt Williams**_ Reminiscing that ‘the web was distributed by default’ before social media pushed us to surrender our agency, Khürt writes in ‘An Island in the Net in 2030?’ that, going forward, we should embrace tools that ‘could rebuild what we’d lost’ and the fact that we have not already done so points to an active choice on our part to disregard a more open web. This is a timely argument that questions why people positioned to help the wider web adopt precisely such tools – like Wordpress theme developers – are simply not embracing the standards that can help them do just that. Khürt provides a comprehensive pathway for achieving this by 2030, reminding us that ‘autonomy isn’t a luxury. It’s fundamental.’
_**William Jansson**_ On the IndieWeb ‘the barrier to entry is still relatively high’ writes William in his contribution to the IndieWeb Carnival. I like how this piece talks about the general idea of ease that it predicts by 2030 but with conflicting feelings. But the noise and chaos of an AI-powered web of the future will spur humans on in their search for ‘smaller, quiet spaces and genuine human connection’ because there is more to the IndieWeb beyond achieving technical ease.
_**Bekah**_ Less proselytising but more awareness of the IndieWeb as an alternative is one of Bekah’s hopes for the IndieWeb in 2030. Besides this, she calls for helping servers on the Fediverse and offers examples of a variety of tools because having such choices ‘encourages openness’. Public behaviour can subsequently dictate corporate response. I really liked that Bekah also discussed something I’ve previously been interested in2 myself: that the IndieWeb is an important but little-recognised part of our shared history. She hopes archiving as a practice grows in the future. There are a lot layers I see in this essay and I am tempted to address them all, but instead I will urge you to go read it with a critical eye instead.
_**James**_ The IndieWeb is whatever it means to us all at a given point in time. A call for continued openness and flexibility is central to James’s thoughts about the IndieWeb in 2030, which correctly recognises that in this carnival ‘we’re discussing and making the culture with its own medium’ and that we are all here largely because we see this space as our own, to do with it what we will. But pertinent questions are raised: how many tools are too many, is expansion generally the right direction for the IndieWeb to go, and must we not try to make being in the IndieWeb more than just the act of getting on board?
_**Chris Shaw**_ ‘We all depend on wifi,’ writes Chris, ‘but very few of us are visiting the IEEE 802.11 website to see how it works.’ A fun analogy to the point that in the next five years AI will reduce the ‘technical hurdles’ in setting up a website. Without worrying about the nitty gritty of it, many more people will take to the indie web, says Chris, making sure to point out to the difference between the ‘indie web’ and the ‘IndieWeb’. The latter will continue to weave and advocate for its principles as it guides the former. This piece offers a very grounded outlook with which to end this month’s carnival.
_**Alexey Staroselets**_ If you seek a contribution with lots of juicy predictions, Alexey has you covered. From digital minimalism and IRC to e-ink and LoRa, in ‘Where do I see the IndieWeb in 2032’ we have an ambitious checklist for all the IndieWeb needs to (try to) be in the next five years: ‘diverse, uneven, decentralised, fragmented, and bizarre.’ I love that Alexey’s choice of picture to go with this article is one that pictures children’s seriousness in playing their games. _Is that comparable to our exploits on the IndieWeb?_
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Did we mention the IndieWeb is all about the people who make it up? Well, if you did not spot it before, you should be seeing it plain as day by now: if there is something we can all agree on, apparently, it is that the people on the IndieWeb are at the centre of it. Not the protocols, not the platforms, not the practices, but the people.
This is all fitting, in my mind, for a community that loves to talk about itself, for people who enjoy writing about themselves and so on. There is not much wrong with that, but as the next few contributions show, this tendency can shape how the IndieWeb itself grows abstract in the next few years, positions itself in comparison with the CorpoWeb, remain welcoming, eclectic and even opinionated, ultimately going on to seek a better definition for itself.
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_**Sara Jakša**_ Dissecting the technical debt and the technical graveyard of the IndieWeb, full of projects started but going nowhere, abandoned, not as publicised as they ought to be and disproportionately reliant on the drive individual developers have to see their work out in the world, Sara writes in ‘The IndieWeb in 2030: The Code, The People and Me’ that ‘the IndieWeb community will probably become less cohesive in the next five years … with some social norms, actions and values that will allow us to band together’. What Sara values most, in the middle of all this, are the people on the IndieWeb.
_**Leon Paternoster**_ The IndieWeb is ‘grounded in a set of late-2010s concerns and view of the web’ writes Leon in ‘Defining the indieweb for 2026’, and there is little benefit in ‘trying to recreate social media on websites through protocols and processes such as POSSE and webmentions’. (On a completely unrelated matter, I learnt of Leon’s contribution through a webmention.) Jokes apart, I think there is an excellent point here, and one that is – to my liking – made very directly: there has long been some conflation of what blogs are and where they stand in the grand scheme of internet things and, more importantly, in the scale from personal spaces to public broadcast networks. So Leon proposes an updated definition of the IndieWeb, one I will not spoil for you by reproducing here in full, but it centres on the fact that the IndieWeb is a ‘people-focused alternative’ to the CorpoWeb.
_**Jeff Porter**_ Reminding us, once again, of the crucial difference between the IndieWeb and the indie web, Jeff says in ‘I’m part of the indie web with a small “i”’, ‘I consider this site part of the ‘indie web’, or part of nothing, whichever you prefer.’ If this month’s carnival has taught me anything it is that by various definitions my own site is not part of the IndieWeb either. But I agree with Jeff’s identification of the minimum requirement being to ‘set up a domain … set up hosting, create pages’ and that is all. The terminology can be sorted out another day.
_**Dominik Hofer**_ Reaffirming the thoughts expressed by our previous contributor, Dominik agrees that ‘just having a personal website … makes you part’ of the IndieWeb. But there is a much-needed social aspect that is missing. In ‘A more social IndieWeb’ Dominik suggests a new form of RSS,3 with social components like interactions and discovery, in comparison to the AT Protocol (famously used in BlueSky) and how blogging platforms like Leaflet are implementing this. This is a fascinating read and one that I for one, as somewhat a fan of the AT Protocol, would like to see explored further.
_**scarfdog.paunix.org**_ ‘Give up compatibility with the corporate Web. Flee the corporate Web,’ writes the incognito author of this contribution, ‘Independent web browsers’. They make a unique case for abandoning javascript altogether and view the IndieWeb as one of the few places where you have usable webpages even in the absence of javascript support. While I am not a fan of calls to abandon javascript entirely (I use it on this website), I think this post is important for its unique perspective and because progressive enhancement should be more widespread. If, as they say, ‘by 2030, Ladybird [the indie browser] will probably have become a major web browser player’, then webpages that are usable without javascript will be the standouts compared with CorpoWeb sites that rely greatly on it.
_**Jeppe Winther**_ Not much will have changed by 2030 says Jeppe in ‘The IndieWeb in 2030?’, describing how people will continue to come and go and tech will continue to be created and abandoned, as is in the nature of indie movements. ‘That is a plus not a negative,’ he reminds us, suggesting that if anything needs to change at all, it is how things should be more accessible to newcomers. Jeppe looks back to the 2000s for this when Blogger and its ilk made space for absolute newcomers and not just ‘techminded people’. What can I say? _I agree._
_**Lee Perry**_ In ‘The IndieWeb in 2030’, Lee writes that to be as attractive as social media ‘the IndieWeb has to be easy to join, and easy to participate in,’ especially if it wants to ‘grow beyond the fairly narrow cohort it attracts today.’ But this should be positioned as an alternative to the CorpoWeb, not compete with it – a notion many other contributors agree with. One way to about this is to create an IndieWeb-as-a-service solution. But will it help Lee find a third Burnley fan to talk to? ~~That might be more of a Burnley problem.~~
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That is it for the round-up this time. I hope you enjoyed it and that you enjoy reading these wonderful contributions even more. Lastly, my own contribution to this carnival discusses the sort of AI I want to see (and not) on the IndieWeb in the coming years. If you wrote something for this month’s theme but could not send it to me – or worse, if you did and I overlooked it (I apologise) – please send me an e-mail and I will attach it to this round-up.
Up next is the IndieWeb Carnival for January 2026, hosted by Jeremiah Lee on an undeniably interesting topic: _the meaning of life._ Please consider making a contribution to the carnival if you can so we can keep this wonderful IndieWeb initiative going.
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1. I had to restrict myself this time because I wrote a paragraph for each submission the last time I hosted a carnival, probably leaving everyone with far more to read than they ever expected. ↩
2. See ‘Relics of the future’. ↩
3. Although Dominik calls this RSS 2.0 I suspect it should be 3.0 since the current spec already is the second version. ↩
