This post is a follow-up to my post from last year September life-drawing: not safe for whose work? and I draw upon a lot of the concepts I laid out there. It’s a little longer and rantier than I planned, but that’s never stopped me before. In his post Raw dog the open web! Jason says (quite correctly): Monoculture is winning. The Fortune 500 has shrink-wrapped our zeitgeist and we are suffocating culturally. But, we can fight back by bookmarking a web page or sharing a piece of art unsanctioned by our For Your Page. To do that we must get out there and raw dog that open web. In our current digital landscape, where a corporate algorithm tells us what to read, watch, drink, eat, wear, smell like, and sound like, human curation of the web is an act of revolution. A simple list of hyperlinks published under a personal domain name is subversive. Curation is punk. …and the post goes on to lay out some good and oft-repeated ideas about the Personal/Open/Indie Web (I’m going to use IndieWeb through the rest of this post - I know they’re not completely interchangeable, but life is too short). But there is a problem across certain quarters of the IndieWeb stemming from what I think is internalised behaviour learned from continuous exposure to the mores of Corporate America. If you can’t find certain types of content in the curated collections of links on IndieWeb sites because the curators have adopted wholesale the corporate rules of “what is allowed" then the IndieWeb is just going to be a pallid reflection of the CorporateWeb, but with far less clout. The CorporateWeb’s resolution to keep us safe from what it calls NSFW content has led to the removal of a massive seam of artwork that contains artistic nudity (photos of Michelangelo’s David is the oft-quoted example, but it’s much of “the Western canon” of visual art as well as artwork from other cultures), the deleting of personal photos of people breastfeeding their children, and the censorship of LGBTQ and safe-sex advice intended for people who are feeling very vulnerable and desperately in need of well-researched and unbiased factual information. It’s not just that, as Jason says, “we are suffocating culturally”, the blanket ban on “NSFW content” has been actively harmful to people’s physical and mental health. But, hey, it means that Visa and Mastercard are happy and your app gets allowed on Apple’s App Store — all of which are so vital to the CorporateWeb’s profit margins — so that’s all fine then. I wrote above that I thought that this stems from internalised behaviour learned from continuous exposure to the mores of Corporate America, but I think that’s just one factor. I also think that there is some sort of idea that copying a “No NSFW” policy somehow protects the website owner from litigation. Alas, from what I’ve read of the US legal system I don’t think anything can really protect you from successful litigation in that country apart from extreme wealth, and the use of copied-and-pasted statements like these is just “cargo cult” legalese that gives you as much protection as a four-leafed clover or a rabbit’s foot. With all that said, one of tenets of the IndieWeb is that you’re in charge of — and responsible for — your own website: you get to decide — within the confines of the law, of course — what gets published on there and what you link to, so if you decide that a photo of Michelangelo’s David or of a person breastfeeding their child is not welcome on your site then that’s absolutely your prerogative. Similarly I choose not to display or link to porn on this site, but I display a lot of my artwork that contains artistic nudity: it’s just my personal choice for my site, but it’s a choice that has been thought through, and not just a blanket adoption of the trappings of the CorporateWeb. I’m also not saying that every single IndieWeb site has absorbed US corporate restrictions by some sort of social osmosis. In an update further down her post Cancel Culture on the Personal Web Devastatia writes: People who come to the Personal Web from social media thinking they can impose their Western worldviews are gonna have a hard time fitting in. A lot of my friends on the Personal Web are from countries where the majority of people resent having batshit ideologies shoved down their throats. Your lack of nuance will be your undoing. And from a certain European perspective the US is a country that shoves batshit ideologies about the absolute horror caused by the depiction of nudity (but the depiction of violence is totally fine, mind) down the throats of the whole world through its amalgamated corporate terms & conditions (while somehow simultaneously being the country that is the largest producer of pornography). Anyway, to sidle swiftly back to the point I wanted to explore: how do I get this IndieWeb site, with all its life-drawing etc, listed on IndieWeb directories, webrings, and blogrolls if many IndieWeb people are adopting CorporateWeb attitudes to what is “allowed”? A case in point is a recently-launched webring called the Wayward Webring from Ben Christel. I heard about it through someone’s blog post and went to check it out, only to see the following rules for inclusion: No hate speech or links to hate speech. No advocating violence against any person or group. Nothing 18+/NSFW visible from the landing page, and labeled as such if you link to it. I’ve absolutely no problem with the first one, but on the second point, well, fuck - that’s my website excluded (a presumption on my part, since there’s no definition of the nebulous term NSFW, but the CorporateWeb certainly lumps artistic nudity into the same category as extreme pornography). Update 2024-08-31: For the record, after emailing Ben he said The restriction on NSFW content is intended as a rough guideline to set expectations about what I will accept. I evaluate submissions on a case by case basis, and suggested that categories such as artistic nudity or a photo of someone breastfeeding their child would be allowed. And it goes on to say that these rules were copied from another IndieWeb webring: Credit for these rules goes to Em Reed of the Low Tech Webring. If anyone reading this is reaching for their flaming torch/pitchfork and thinking of harassing Ben or Em about this then stop that right now - I don’t think either of them are devious agents of corporate US culture, but rather site owners who are helpfully trying to set up some level of protection for both themselves and the people who use their webrings (site owners and visitors). This post will now lay out some ideas of how I think these and other webrings can become more inclusive without sacrificing personal control, which are intended to be helpful. Update 2024-08-31: And indeed I got a reply from Ben (unfortunately after I posted this) saying The restriction on NSFW/18+ content exists primarily to ensure that visitors clicking on a webring link won’t see things they haven’t opted in to seeing which is a good and worthy intention. The remainder of this article is about how I think we can improve such restrictions by adding more nuance. Borrowing from other personal websites — be it snippets of HTML and CSS, or approaches on how to write privacy policies or cookie usage pages — is a long-standing tradition, so it’s absolutely understandable that one person borrows the rules for their webring from another. I’ve done similar things myself many times. But I think that on the IndieWeb you need to take ownership of the entirety of your site, and that includes the tedious stuff - which is why my privacy policy and cookie usage pages are carefully tailored for this site. And I think the same should apply to the terms and conditions that you apply to submissions to a webring. Imagine if every IndieWeb webring cut-and-pasted these same rules for inclusion (which, as mentioned, tends to be how these things propagate): every single IndieWeb art site that had any artistic nudity — or whatever else the owner decided was “NSFW” — would be excluded, and the IndieWeb would simply mirror the CorporateWeb: somewhere that it’s supposed to be a richer and more interesting alternative to. And the IndieWeb would be much poorer for it. My main bone of contention is that while the term NSFW emerged as an unwritten somewhat-helpful convention between internet users back in the days when many people only had internet access at work (the W in NSFW), but as I somewhat sarcastically noted in September life-drawing: not safe for whose work?: The concept of NSFW was eagerly leapt on by HR departments everywhere — with all the grasp of degree and nuance commonly found in HR departments — and its definition instantly became as broad and draconian as possible. Essentially “NSFW” is now a meaningless term. Or rather it means whatever HR departments and social media companies decide it means at a particular point in time. It suits the CorporateWeb legal departments to keep the term NSFW undefined so that they can use it however they want, but if we’re trying to build a better web then we need to be better at definitions. If you own your own IndieWeb webring or directory then I’d encourage site owners to be specific: If you want to exclude sites containing pornography from your webring then say “No pornography” not “Nothing NSFW”, If you want to exclude sites containing a photo of someone breastfeeding their child then say “No pictures of breastfeeding” not “Nothing NSFW”, If you want to exclude sites containing a photo of Michelangelo’s David and thousands of other pieces of artwork then say “No artistic nudity” not “Nothing NSFW”, If you want to exclude sites containing LGBTQ/safe sex advice then say “No LGBTQ/safe sex advice” not “Nothing NSFW”, and so on. …because, as mentioned above, NSFW has been used by corporations to describe all of these things and more. And yes, we will all absolutely judge you on your personal choices on what you agree to include or exclude (particularly if you specifically ban LGBTQ/safe sex advice) but hey, that’s part of being responsible for your own site rather than offloading the responsibility for all that shit to corporate platforms.