Kev Quirk has a new post about integrating blogs with social media and because I’m no better at minding my own business than the average conservative I have opinions of my own.
First, here’s Kev’s opinion in his own words…
But one thing I was asked yesterday, and have been asked many times in the past is…
How would I integrate a blog with X service
X Service
here is usually Mastodon (which uses the ActivityPub protocol). The short answer, dear reader, is that I don’t think you should integrate.
So far, so good. Kev goes on to explain that he has tried to integrate with other services, that it’s a pain in the ass, and that he gets mosts of what he needs by linking to his posts from other services and providing an “email me” button at the end of each post.
I agree with all of this, but I’m going to come at this from a different angle.
It is not a website operator’s job to integrate their website with external services.
Listen: Kev Quirk already provides an Atom feed. I provide full-text RSS. If Facebook and Instagram can’t or won’t use that, that’s Mark Zuckerberg’s problem. If Mastodon can’t or won’t provide interoperability with RSS and Atom, that’s a failure on Eugen Rochko’s part, and if Twitter won’t accept feeds from external websites you need to take it up with Elon Musk — and while you’re at it, remind him to start taking his fucking meds again.
As far as I’m concerned, the integration of websites with external services is a solved problem. We have RSS. We have Atom. For Nyarlathotep’s sake, we even have JSON feeds. What more do you people want?
Oh, I get it. You think static blogs should implement ActivityPub. Well, that’s not going to happen. I certainly don’t get paid enough for such foolishness, so I’m not going to do more work on my end just because you don’t want to get your brains dirty wrapping them around XML. If I can cope with XML, then so can you.
Instead, I have a better idea. Use what website operators and bloggers already provide instead of making further demands on them. Fix your damn silos instead of accusing us of running silos. Expand your skillsets and learn how to handle XML as well as JSON. Make your services welcoming to independent website operators and bloggers by allowing them to specify feeds from which to pull blog posts.
Manton Reece managed it with micro.blog. What’s your excuse? Don’t even think of belaboring the obvious by telling me that if I want micro.blog I know where to find it. That’s just you excusing your own reluctance to integrate your parasocial media silo with the open Web, and I’m not buying it.