It was 1995 and I was in San Jose at a General Magic Developers conference. It was a weird week for me, since I was distracted by a referendum back home on whether Quebec would leave Canada. But something else stuck out for me that week. Wherever I went, there were billboards for companies with web URLs on them.

I had been following the web, but what really struck me that week was that this was moving out of technical world and into mainstream. Billboards in Canada didn’t have URLs on them, but I could now see that was coming, and it felt like a revolution. There was a feeling that this would democratize communications and let anyone become their own publisher. It would break the bonds on the large gatekeepers to communications: the telecom companies, the newspaper chains and the TV channels.

And it did,… for a while. Community associations and clubs and bands and special interest groups and sports teams and all sorts of other groups set up their own web sites. Everything was exciting, chaotic and dynamic. How do you set up a site? How do people find it? Eventually, how do you keep it secure.

And then, over time, a few big companies offered a simpler experience. With two clicks you could create a Facebook group. And everyone was on Facebook, weren’t they? I remember fighting to keep some groups from ditching their web site and going to a Facebook group. Once they are there, they control us. And what of people who don’t want to be on Facebook?

So, now we are all owned by a few big players: Meta, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Tik Tok, Reddit, Twitter. And, as Cory Doctorow has noted, now that they have got both the users and the advertisers locked in, they are squeezing all of us. Facebook is full of ads, Google is suggesting thing only somewhat related to your search, Twitter is blocking people out and in meltdown.

So, it is time to take back ownership. The web is supposed to be a federation of equal players, not a set of large telecom-like gatekeepers. And that is where the Fediverse comes in. We can set up a new community of sharing and connecting and discussing without the worry that the gate-keeping organization will be bought out by someone with different interests and agendas.

So, here I am. Re-invigorating my blog by hooking it into the Fediverse. Perhaps the second time around we will be a little more jaded and careful about following the shiny baubles. I admit I may be too optimistic, but hope springs eternal.