The time to build is now
When the web was the Wild West, just about anything was possible if you had the tech. There were no borders on the internet, and even when money started moving around, you could setup shop in Basingstoke and have a paying customer in Dubai.
But the web’s changing. In some ways it’s growing up. But with that maturity is coming a locking-down, and I’m not simply talking about legislation.
I would consider myself an internet anarchist. Maybe even — heaven forbid — an internet libertarian (although libertarianism in the real world is one of the worst political takes you can have). But by that I mean I practice self-governance and I want minimal regulation. Now, recent changes in UK law are going to make setting up your own shop and doing your own thing online harder, which kills that pioneering spirit I and nerds my age grew up with.
Of course I’m 100% here for keeping kids — and frankly vulnerable people — safe online. But I’m not sure that’s the intent of this new authoritarian legislation that forces websites to verify users’ ages.
For one thing it doesn’t protect adults who might fall prey to scams, abuse, or worse. People who may have access to the internet but are cognitively impaired, or simply desperately lonely and incredulous.
But in making it so hard to fake your age with an ID printed at Max Spielmann, the UK government has put bits of the web behind glass that only a large company with a government contract can unlock.
Meanwhile Cloudflare are inserting themselves between customers and AI scrapers (bots that crawled the web in search of text to steal and train on). And while I trust Cloudflare and believe their hearts are in the right place, as John Siracusa pointed out on the latest episode of ATP, that presupposes the CEO is always going to be trustworthy or that the company’s priorities don’t change in order to allow an AI company with deep enough pockets to be allow-listed and carry on scraping.
We’ve seen how politicians who don’t get tech have knackered the web. That was just overeager and incompetent law making, nothing malicious. But the surveillance state that is the UK would love nothing more than to add yet another CCTV into the world, especially if that CCTV is made by a company headed by a friend of the party (I’m making that up out of whole cloth, to be clear… but we know from the PPE scandal and the Track & Trace failure that this is a colour our elected officials can paint with).
Look, this isn’t a doom and gloom post and I’m not suggesting everything be deregulated and we all fend for ourselves. OK, maybe there’s a little bleakness or the sense of something impending. But we’ve got enough of that in the world right now.
What I am saying is that experimenting, trying out a new model; or building an independent offering is going to get harder — and that’s by design. Right now we’re still able to spin up an idea and mostly get by on doing what we know to be right: getting rid of harmful content when it arises, protecting people from fraud, and not selling customer data.
But the web is constricting like a wool sweater in a tumble dryer. The fibres are tightening, bit by bit, as they become fused together. (WordPress powers over 40% of the web, for example). And the web is changing for lots of other reasons too, as it has always done.
So I think now might be the last best time to start something new. I don’t think it’ll be this easy forever, and by getting a head start on your project, you might find it easier to deal with further regulation — legitimate and well-meaning as it might be — when it arises.
And to reiterate a point in case it wasn’t clear. I’m 100% in favour of keeping kids safe on the internet. That just isn’t the point of the Online Safety Bill, and we need to hold the line.
A free and open web is vital for a modern, connected society to function. It’s how those under threat can band together and find a common voice. It’s how new creators can share anonymous personal stories without being identified. It’s where we can call out bullshit. And importantly it’s where we can practice civil disobedience against illegitimate laws.
Let’s keep building the web. Our web.