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This is missive number 4 of Dealgorithmed, the newsletter for the people who still love and care about the web. Created by Manu, and dispatched from somewhere in Italy on Feb. 15, 2026, 2:37 p.m.
I wanna take a moment to reflect on two topics: communities and personal internet.
I’ve been following with a certain level of curiosity what the people at Metalabel are building, not because I have any particular interest in joining a new platform, but because I’m a big fan of seeing other people’s experiments in the context of digital spaces where humans can exist and interact with each other.
After listening to the podcast episode and reading the post, I’m left with more questions than answers (maybe it was intentional), but I also found myself quite perplexed with the whole endeavour. And that’s not a new feeling for me, since it’s what I feel every time I learn about some new attempt to rebuild the internet, whatever that means.
I’m perplexed because what makes the internet special is precisely the fact that it’s not a place someone else carefully designed. It’s not something someone with a plan built and then released to the masses so that they could join. I’d argue the internet is awesome precisely because it’s not that. The idea of starting your own internet feels oxymoronic: the internet is awesome because it’s not yours.
This is not new in the tech world. Tech people keep thinking that the only solution to tech issues is more tech, new tech, different tech. And in the process, we move from one digital space to the next, hoping to find there what we didn’t find in the previous space.
Which brings me to the topic of communities. In her post, JA lamented the fact that when a platform dies, communities die along with it, because communities don’t migrate. I don’t entirely disagree with that thought, but I also think there’s a correlation between the size of a community and the strength of the connections between the members. A very small community, formed on a platform, will easily outlive the platform itself if the members of that community are invested enough in the health of that community. Conversely, if you grow a community to the point where most members don’t know each other, then the death of the platform will inevitably mean the end of the community as well.
One thing that’s obvious to me, though, is that in the process of growing a community, a meaningful shift happens: the community becomes more about the space itself than the people who inhabit it. Which is why I think the only solution to the modern digital chaos is to downsize, to get back to a scale where you do have at least an idea of who the people you interact with are.
Time and a manageable scale are the ingredients for community building, and both run in the opposite way to what the capitalist-fueled internet wants, since the goal is to grow as much as possible, as fast as possible.
— M.
February’s IndieWeb Carnival is still running. The topic is “Intersecting Interests”. The host is Zachary Kai.
Andrea started a fun blogging challenge, with his post about silly things he hates. We all have things we hate, so I’m sure it’s not gonna be hard for you to come up with a list of your own.
I'm a 30 year old woman interested in data protection, tinkering around with my devices, writing some website code here and there, blogging, and being creative with pixel art and other little doodles. I have some chronic illnesses (Ankylosing Spondyloarthritis and Crohn's disease) that I sometimes write about, too.
Definitely check out The Authoritarian Stack (or the archived version if it is still down at release, but I hope it will be back up by then!); it maps a network of US tech firms, funds, and political actors privatizing core state functions for their own gain and lessening democratic power. It's based on an open-source dataset of over 250 actors, thousands of verified connections, and $45 billion in documented financial flows.
The little bump you might have on the outer part of your helix on your ear is called a Darwin's tubercle. I have one.
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin.
A restaurant my wife and I loved hosted a vegan fine dining event called 'Monkey Monday' every couple months, which was great for special occasion date nights; it can be hard to find fancy food in restaurants when you're vegan. Unfortunately, the restaurant closed due to internal issues, so the Monkey Monday is no more. We miss it.
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This was issue #4 of Dealgorithmed. You can subscribe or unsubscribe.
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