Slowclap Design Philosophy: Decentralization

Today’s design philosophy post is about decentralization. Which means that today’s design philosophy post is actually about you.

I know that some of this is just nostalgia, but I think a lot of people miss the early days of the internet. Maybe for you it was Tripod (like me) maybe it was Geocities, maybe it was MySpace. Maybe it was the early days of YouTube or JustinTV.

A time when it felt like you were a part of something.

Of course, none of these were in the actual early days of the internet, and all of them happened at different times for different people, but I hope most of you have still had a moment where you thought to yourself: “Wow, I can just… build something. I can do this.”

We’ve polished that away, under the false pretense that joining some one-click platform provides us ease of use. That it eliminates friction.

I’m not going to sit here and tell you that it’s easier to make your own website than it is to sign up for a social network. That’s obviously not true.

But what I will say is that I think what’s largely happened is the complexity hasn’t been eliminated, it’s just been deferred. If your goal is to find something interesting to read or watch, is that really any easier now? I can certainly find more stuff, but if anything better feels so much further away.

If your goal is to create. . . yes, there are unique challenges. Building a website is better if you learn to write HTML (or Markdown) and make it yourself. There’s an up front cost, and depending on how and where you deploy it there’s also often some recurring costs too. (Though if you’re willing to learn, those costs go way down). Compared to that, making a new social media account and posting on it is much quicker and easier.

But now your stuff is their stuff. We’re trading convenience for ownership, and it’s not actually that much more convenient! I’m not saying that social networks don’t have their uses. Before I moved them here, my design philosophy posts started on Mastodon and Bluesky. A big part of discoverability is being where people are, talking about what you do and how people can support you for doing it. If you’re an artist or writer or indie dev, that’s the job.

And the unfortunate truth is, there’s no platform you can sign up for that makes that job much easier.

Algorithmic discovery isn’t there to help you. It’s there to help the platform. Yes, audience building might go a bit faster if you’re consolidating on a popular platform, but that audience is fragile. It’s not your audience, its their audience.

What’s happened is that the modern internet has turned into a slot machine. It doesn’t matter if you’re part of an audience or looking to build one. It’s gambling either way. Maybe I can game the algorithm to boost my reach. Maybe today video posts get more visibility. Maybe today it’s posting using that brand new feature that just so happens to extract more value from your eyeballs. Maybe today it’s rage. . . Maybe every day it’s rage.

Does any of this help you?

Let me propose an alternative.

Instead of focusing the bulk of your energy on feeding your creativity, your passion, your drive into some content farm that’s there to use you to further its own ends. Build something resilient. Build a website. Then build a community. Your community.

I’m not here to tell you that it’s easier. But I do think I can safely promise that it’s better.

Enter Slowclap

I’ve said in the past that I designed slowclap to function as an “anti-platform”. Most other platforms, whether they be for patronage, social networking, or sharing the stuff you create are all trying to consolidate your work in a place that they own. I’m trying to do the opposite. I don’t think the world needs another centralized social network. Everything about slowclap’s design is about getting you elsewhere. This is antithetical to how businesses on the internet build, and it’s going to be one of the biggest challenges to overcome in turning this platform into something meaningful. If you’re not constantly logging into slowclap to check in on your friends and your community. . . if instead you’re going to their websites and they’re going to yours, how is anyone going to remember to applaud?

I think even well intentioned platforms fall into this trap. It’s much easier to keep people involved and invested if there’s a constant pull to log in and interact with your platform. But I think this is a challenge that’s worth figuring out ways to overcome. I think that, in this case, the hard path is worth it. Yes that means that slowclap is going to be more reliant on you to talk about it. Reliant on you to encourage people to sign up and support the entire community. That’s the point. The only way I can think of to empower you is to give you the power.

I assume that will mean slower growth. I assume that will make buy in harder. But it’s in pursuit of making it easier for you to build a website, easier for you to build an audience.

Easier for you to build a community.

Every design decision I make when adding or implementing new features and changes is filtered through this goal. I want your community to be something that moves with you even if you don’t think slowclap is worth it. I want to get people off bland homogenized content platforms that feed us rage and stifle good conversation in the name of constantly making everything feel loud. I want ad free, non-predatory websites to be the norm, not the exception (at least for everyone that agrees with me that that’s a better alternative).

I want to build a larger community of slowclap supporters that encompasses all of your niche and creative communities. I want to make it easier for you to all find and support each other no matter where you are and no matter where you end up.

I don’t think I can do that.

But I think we can.

It really won’t take much. A few pennies thrown at a website that isn’t drowning you in advertisements, in aggregate, is enough to make that website as sustainable as if they had.

I’m planning to continue to develop new ways of enabling the sort of inter-community growth that makes this possible. But if I’m doing it right, almost all of them will feel invisible. This is normally where another platform would argue that your slowclap page should be the first thing you share, and while I do think it might be a great (albeit simplistic) replacement for those link aggregate pages, I’m not going to do that.

I certainly think you should sign up for slowclap. Tell people about it, and ask people to support you, especially when you’re sharing stuff for free. But I think the first thing you share should be your website. Something you own. Something you built yourself.