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As several people have explained previously, "open web" is a term that already exists, and already has a meaning, and is not the same thing.

The term "social web" was created by the authors of the ActivityPub spec, which is today stewarded by The Social Web Foundation

https://socialwebfoundation.org

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Our society is crumbling and tech is a big reason why. AI? Baloney. I've seen that story before.

You wanna call it the social web, that's your thing. But it's not anything I believe in - because it sounds like just more of the same.

The Open Web signifies we need to break the chains that enslave us. Social Web sounds like some new phrase coined by Silicon Valley warlords to keep us addicted. I'm not buying it and neither should anyone else.

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There's no doubt about it, that most of what we see in tech borders between enshittification and mind control. There's nothing good to say about it. My dream at this point to be disconnected. I would love to ditch my iPhone. I'm working on it.

Yes, I'm 66. But I talk to younger people who feel the same. It's just not cool to be online now. Because being online is a toxic cesspool.

If you'd have called it the open web, at least there'd be a chance to reclaim some of what we had.

# inReplyTo.inReplyTo.inReplyTo.content
I think you're making a huge mistake calling this the "social web". Social web sounds like more of the same.

Instead, you should call this the "Open Web".

Open Web is different. Social Web sounds like something one of the tech oligarchs came up with, to keep people hooked on being online.

I've been a tech entrepreneur since circa '87. I've been successful, but also taken a lot of hits.

Being online just isn't cool like it was when I started (the WELL)

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My biggest point of uncertainty about Ghost 6.0 was whether people were going to "get" the social web integration.

The technology is wonderful, but complex. For many people, terms like ActivityPub, Fediverse, bridge, protocol, server, toot, boost, and Webfinger are alienating and confusing. They subtly imply that unless you understand what all these words mean, this might not be the place for you; in the same way crypto terms—blockchain, web3, wallet, keypair, nonce—are a wall of jargon that scream "you don't belong here" to normal people.

The work of a product team, when working with new technology, is to abstract away as much of this complexity as possible, so that it feels friendly and approachable to new people.

To send an email, you don't need to know what SMTP, IMAP, POP, DKIM, SPF, or DMARC are. To browse the web, there's no requirement to understand HTTP, DNS, servers, SSL, TTL, load balancing, or caches. The most significant impact these protocols have is perhaps that users never have to think about them.

So while building the social web integration for Ghost, we weren't just reasoning about how to make it work and what it should do—we were thinking deeply about how to frame it. What words to use. What to compare it to. How to explain it. How to make it not need explaining at all.

Will people "get it"?

This question consumed more of my mental energy than anything else, right up until the moment we finally hit launch this past Monday.

My personal nightmare would have been if the response to the launch was another chorus of "I don't understand what the point of this is"—"this is too complicated"—"what does [x] even mean?" I've seen it happen so many times before when people try to figure out this tech and how it relates to their lives. The graveyard of technically superior but user-hostile products is vast.

But, I'm thrilled to see—at least so far—that hasn't been the case.

To be sure, there are still points of functional confusion. Chief among them: Why doesn't post X from platform Y show up on platform Z right away? But for the most part, I've been really encouraged by how many people have just jumped right in and started using it, without getting stuck and needing more explanation. They're just... publishing. And connecting. And it's working.

My strongest belief about the social web is that if we want it to succeed, we have to keep lowering the barrier to entry.

We have to keep minimizing the need for arcane language. We have to keep solving the things that people expect to work, but don't, rather than endlessly explaining how the underlying technology works. We have to create more familiarity with concepts people already know.

Let's not forget that email, as a technology, was based on the humble letter. To/from, subject, inbox, outbox—these were all words based on sending physical memos. The metaphor made the transition accessible.

The interface and format of a new technology can often be the single biggest factor in determining its adoption.

After all, for over a decade, we've had artificial intelligence capable of performing some pretty incredible tasks. The moment it really caught fire, though, was the moment it became a chatbox. Not when it got smarter. Not when it got more powerful. When it got simpler.

I think we've taken a big step in the right direction with the social web in Ghost 6.0.

And now we need to keep going.

# inReplyTo.inReplyTo.inReplyTo.inReplyTo.preview.content
My biggest point of uncertainty about Ghost 6.0 was whether people were going to "get" the social web integration.

The technology is wonderful, but complex. For many people, terms like ActivityPub, Fediverse, bridge, protocol, server, toot, boost, and Webfinger are alienating and confusing. They subtly imply that unless you understand what all these words mean, this might not be the place for you; in the same way crypto terms—blockchain, web3, wallet, keypair, nonce—are a wall of jargon that sc

# attributedTo.summary
Founder/CEO @ Ghost.org — Geographically restless. Publishing, open source, and independent business around the world.