It’s a messy world out there, if you haven’t noticed. The web is no exception. This vast expanse of cyberspace was originally intended to make it trivially easy for us to network with each other, to share information. I remember the thrill of its initial inception well (yes, I’m that old). I remember sitting in a college computer lab communicating with people from other universities (yes, seriously, I’m that old). This was mind-boggling at the time. I remember spending evenings in AOL chatrooms in the early aughts talking to people in the UK, a place I had always dreamed of visiting. The feeling of your mind expanding as the world was shrinking was life altering. The future was here. The Internet became a dreamscape.
Of course, in addition to having the world’s knowledge at our fingertips, we also realized that commerce could be facilitated by the web. Suddenly, storefronts had no geographic limitations. Opportunity was there for everyone. As usually happens when money gets involved, the web then became weaponized and a battle for your information began. And, so, fast forward and here we are.
Truly Owning Your Content
The concept of digital sovereignty has become a topic of concern and discussion recently as the social networks that were so much fun to use and so useful at their inception have turned on us, creating a surveillance economy based on the presumptuous idea that a marketing team should be able to know everything about me simply because I visit a website, an assumption that there should be no expectation of privacy on the Internet. This invasion of privacy is primarily facilitated by the fact that now, for better or worse, everyone needs a place for themselves on the web, a place (or several places) to connect with loved ones and express their ideas. An overwhelming majority of private individuals choose social media platforms or, for those of us still truly devoted to the art form, blog platforms. Those platforms are often free, and function by assuming a level of control over your data and content in order to monetize their services. Because, if you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.
If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product
At its simplest, digital sovereignty means that your content on the web exists in a place that you control, not subject to the needs or will of a corporation or some other owner of stakeholder. As an example, this site and its blog are hosted privately. I control the server, the code, the site. What I do with it is my decision. My content is not hosted on someone else’s platform, and I am thus completely free to make this space what I choose.
This is a good and worthwhile value, especially as social media continues to make life miserable for us, and shows no signs of slowing down.
The issue with digital sovereignty is that the vast majority of the people who have amazing ideas, and want to put those ideas out there for the rest of us to engage, do not have the technical knowledge to host their own sites. This is a specialized skillset, one that most people don’t have the time to learn. They are busy conducting their research, running their businesses, and going on with their lives to learn how to build software on the web. And thus, the most straightforward path to digital sovereignty is akin to stating that if someone wants to use a car to get around, then they need to be able to build the car. That is simply unrealistic.
Platforms Acting Responsibly
I don’t have an issue with platforms filling that gap. While I don’t use social media to speak of any longer, I do write on Substack, because it fits my needs for a specific audience and a specific project. I can understand why writers and podcasters would make a place like Substack their digital home, assuming the risk that it could become insolvent as a platform and vanish tomorrow, taking their audience with it, because there is value there. The platforms provide the technical know-how, ease of use, and the ability to network more easily. I believe that the platforms, however, need to commit to handling one’s information responsibly. I suspect that the risk of potential insolvency can be a huge gamble to take for many, but there are few other options. To that end, the platforms need to make sure than the user owns their content, and that it can be taken with them, in a standardized format, whenever they choose to leave.
These suggestions are just the beginning. There is great tooling out there that assists content creators in creating spaces on the web, but that tooling almost always is either beholden to a corporation, or requires advanced technical knowledge to manage oneself. Of course, engaging someone such as myself to handle that routine upkeep of a digital space is an option, but it assumes a certain level of project (although if that is your need, please get in touch!).
Platforms should exist to allow a democratized web for content creators, but they should be focused on allowing freedom for those content creators. There seems to be an inherent conflict of interest there. As we grow in awareness of the surveillance economy and begin to push back on it, though, I have hope that platforms choosing to do the right thing will begin to be more commonplace. That will make the web a better place to be, which means that we all win.
Image attribution: Mark Moz under Creative Commons.