I’m aware that now that I’ve fixed my RSS feed reading issues, my writing patterns will likely change. I’m already feeling more inspired to blog. That will likely result in some new readers, and that’s great.

However I’m aware that my own RSS feed, the one for this website, is looking a bit weird at the minute. Actually the same issue appears on all the website’s feeds. I made some changes to the website last month. Much needed simplifications to the HTML. The website looks great, but there’s something odd happening with the HTML in the RSS feeds.

In the feed readers I’ve tested, the posts all seem to start with a bunch of the HTML tags showing. Normally that shouldn’t happen. I’ve already added some additional debug logging code in the static site generator. I would fix it now but I’ve run out of build minutes on Github this month. So it will have to be at the beginning of next month, i.e next year!

The feeds will look much better early next year once I’ve had time to fix the render bug. Until then just click through and read on the website, or just ignore the weird HTML tags at the start of each post. It’s December though, I think we can give the posts a pass for being a bit scruffy. Heaven knows I’m a bit scruffy at the minute too, but getting a bit better every day.

Sorry, please bear with me.

Cory Doctorow pens a great piece about the importance of data portability in social networks.

You need to be able to move at low, or better still, no cost. Otherwise the platform owner’s incentives innevitably lead to them squeezing you, treating you worse and worse. He frames it as a network effects problem vs a collective action problem. Such a great way to think about it.

In his own words:

Economists call this the "network effect." Services that increase in value as more people use them are said to enjoy "network effects." But network effects are a trap, because services that grow by connecting people get harder and harder to escape.

That's thanks to something called the "collective action problem." You experience the collective action problems all the time, whenever you try and get your friends together to do something. I mean, you love your friends but goddamn are they a pain in the ass: whether it's deciding what board game to play, what movie to see, or where to go for a drink afterwards, hell is truly other people. Specifically, people that you love but who stubbornly insist on not agreeing to do what you want to do.

I think everything he observes is spot on. And it’s a big reason for why I’ve been writing about how inbound RSS is such a good idea for social networks. It’s not full portability but it gives people a way to stay a bit more independant while still participating in the network, and it uses a very well established protocol. I happen to believe that inbound RSS would also be beneficial to platforms.

One issue I have with Cory’s piece is that it overplays Mastodon’s portability. He makes it sound like it’s just a few clicks away. Last I checked, people who had tried to move, ran into many problems. Do a quick google search and you’ll find many people that were able to move but that lost a lot of things along the way.