A couple of days ago in an informal discussion in the #indieweb chat channel about how different people view #Mastodon, the #fediverse, or #Bluesky, and services like #Bridgy & #BridgyFed quite differently, I noted¹ that one big unspoken difference was how things on the web last over time, from the traditional persistent web, vs the newer and growing ephemeral web.

There is the publicly viewable #OpenWeb that many of us take for granted, meaning the web that is persistent, that lasts over time, and thanks to being #curlable, that the Internet Archive archives, and that a plurality of search engines see and index (robots.txt allowing). The HTML + CSS + media files declarative web.

Then there are the https APIs that return JSON "web", the thing that I’ve started calling the ephemeral web, the set of things that are here today, briefly, gone tomorrow. I’ve previously used the more provocative phrase js;dr (JavaScript required, Didn’t Read) for this #ephemeralWeb, yet like many things, it turns out there is a spectrum from ephemeral to persistent.


One popular example on that spectrum that’s closer to the ephemeral edge is anything on a Mastodon server running v4 (or later as of this writing) of the software. (I’m not bothering to discuss the examples of walled garden social media silos because I expect we will continue to see their demise² over time.)

For example, the Internet Archive version of the shutdown notice for the queer(.)af Mastodon server, is visibly blank:

https://web.archive.org/web/20240112165635/https://queer.af/@postmaster/111733741786950083

Note: only a single Internet Archive snapshot was made of that post.

However if you View Source, you can find the entirety of that #queerAF post duplicated across a couple of invisible-to-the-user meta tags inside the raw HTML:

 "**TL;DR: Queer[.]AF will close on 2024-04-12** …"  

[.] added to avoid linking to a dead domain.

Note: such meta tags in js;dr pages were part of the motivation to specify metaformats.

To be clear, the shutdown of queer(.)af was a tragedy and not the fault of the creators, administrators etc., but rather one of the unfortunate outcomes of using some ccTLDs, country-code top level domains, that risk sudden draconian rules, domain renewal price hikes, or other unpredictable risks due to the politics, turmoil, regime changes etc. of the countries that administrate such domains.


Nearly the entirety of every Mastodon server, every post, every reply, is ephemeral.

When a Mastodon server shuts down, all its posts disappear from the surface of the web, forever.

Perhaps internet archeologists of the future will discover such dead permalinks, check the Internet Archive, find apparent desolation, and a few of them will be curious enough to use View Source tools to unearth parts of those posts, unintentionally preserved inside ceremonial meta tags next to dead scripts disconnected from databases and an empty shell of a body.  

All reply-contexts of and replies to such posts and conversations lost, like threads unraveled from an ancient tapestry, scattered to the winds.


If you’re reading this post in your Mastodon reader, on either the website of your Mastodon account, or in a proprietary native client application, you should be able to click through, perhaps on the date-time stamp displayed to you, to view the original post on my website, where it is served in relatively simple declarative HTML + CSS with a bit of progressive enhancement script.

Because I serve declarative content, my posts are both findable across a variety of services & search engines, and archived by the Internet Archive. Even if my site goes down, snapshots or archives will be viewable elsewhere, with nearly the same fidelity of viewing them directly on my site.

This design for longevity is both deliberate, and the default for which the web was designed. It’s also one of the explicit principles in the IndieWeb community.

If that resonates with you, if creating, writing, & building things that last matter to you, choose web tools, services, and software that support the persistence & longevity of your work.

#persistentWeb #longWeb #LongNow

This is post 10 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts

← https://tantek.com/2024/035/t2/indiewebcamp-brighton-tickets-available
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Post glossary:

API (Application Programming Interface)
  https://indieweb.org/API
Bluesky
  https://indieweb.org/Bluesky
Bridgy
  https://brid.gy/
Bridgy Fed
  https://fed.brid.gy/
ccTLD (country-code top level domain)
  https://indieweb.org/ccTLD
curlable
  https://indieweb.org/curlable
declarative web
  https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/webvision/full/#thedeclarativeweb
Internet Archive
  https://archive.org/
js;dr (JavaScript required; Didn’t Read)
  https://tantek.com/2015/069/t1/js-dr-javascript-required-dead
JSON
  https://indieweb.org/JSON
longevity
  https://indieweb.org/longevity
Mastodon
  https://indieweb.org/Mastodon
metaformats
  https://microformats.org/wiki/metaformats
permalink
  https://indieweb.org/permalink
principles in the IndieWeb community
  https://indieweb.org/principles
progressive enhancement
  https://indieweb.org/progressive_enhancement
reply
  https://indieweb.org/reply
reply-context
  https://indieweb.org/reply-context
robots.txt
  https://indieweb.org/robots_txt
social media
  https://indieweb.org/social_media
silo
  https://indieweb.org/silo
View Source
  https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/devtools-user/view_source/index.html


¹ https://chat.indieweb.org/2024-02-13#t1707845454695700
² https://indieweb.org/site-deaths