Kev Quirk has a new post about integrating blogs with social media, and because Iâm no better at minding my own business than the average conservative I have opinions of my own.
First, hereâs Kevâs opinion in his own wordsâŚ
But one thing I was asked yesterday, and have been asked many times in the past isâŚ
How would I integrate a blog with X service
X Servicehere is usually Mastodon (which uses the ActivityPub protocol). The short answer, dear reader, is that I donât think you should integrate.
So far, so good. Kev goes on to explain that he has tried to integrate with other services, that itâs a pain in the ass, and that he gets most of what he needs by linking to his posts from other services and providing an âemail meâ button at the end of each post.
I agree with all of this, but Iâm going to approach this from a different angle: It is not a website operatorâs job to integrate their website with external services.
Hereâs why: Kev Quirk already provides an Atom feed. I provide full-text and headlines-only Atom feeds. If Facebook and Instagram canât or wonât use our feeds, thatâs Mark Zuckerbergâs problem. If Mastodon canât or wonât provide interoperability with RSS and Atom, thatâs a failure on Eugen Rochkoâs part, and if Twitter wonât accept feeds from external websites you need to take it up with Elon Musk—and while youâre at it, please remind him to start taking his fucking meds again.
As far as Iâm concerned, the integration of websites with external services is a solved problem. We have RSS. We have Atom. For Cromâs sake, we even have JSON feeds, but most feed readers donât seem to bother with those. What more do you platform devs want?
Oh, I get it.
You think static blogs should implement ActivityPub.
Well, thatâs not going to happen.
I certainly donât get paid enough for such foolishness, so Iâm not going to turn my personal website into a personal web app for your convenience.
As Janet Jackson put it in 1986, What have you done for me lately?
Nor am I willing to do more unpaid work on my end just because you donât want to get your brains dirty wrapping them around XML. If I can cope with XML, then so can you. Be grateful you donât have to use Visual Basic 6 and classic ASP in the bargain.
Instead, I have a better idea. Use what website operators and bloggers already provide instead of making further demands on their time and energy. 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. Whatâs your excuse? Donât even think of belaboring the obvious by telling me that if I want micro.blog I know where to find it. Thatâs just you excusing your own reluctance to integrate your parasocial media silo with the open Web, and Iâm not buying it.
For Hellâs sake, stop pushing IndieWeb integration on people who just want to make a website, while youâre at it. Most of their recommendations havenât been workable in years, but they donât properly maintain their wiki by archiving outdated recommendations. Nor do they pay me to clean up after them. This is convenient for me, incidentally, as it spares me the emotional labor of pretending I donât hold them in contempt for being part of the Internet gentrification problem.