Joining the Indie Web

I don't remember how I found it but I learned about the Indie web from this blog post. The Indie Web is a movement to reclaim your authorship and blog from the clutches of corporations. It's not a move back to the 'good ol' days' rather a way of putting your data back into your hands. In other words, don't be the product.

As a Data Scientist, I process lots of data every day. I use whatever we collect or is available from Kaggle datasets to build demos and POCs. I can get A LOT done by doing that. Imagine if you were a Facebook Data Scientist and was able to collect all the data that your users post everyday, for free. Wouldn't you monetize it? Sure you get to use the platform for free because all your friends are on it but you end up buying more crap in the long run because some FB Data Scientist has optimized a model from your data and 1000's of of other peoples.

This is why the Indie Web resonated with me. I'm going to reclaim my data and control. So this week I cut the cord with Google Analytics and Disqus. I'll extract my comments from Disqus and try to port them over somehow (static generators don't do comments very well), but I'm going to start keeping my data right here. I'll have to cut ties with TinyLetter too, I haven't figured out a replacement yet.