Indieweb

• The Broken Promise of Reach

  AI is changing things we take for granted: the relationship between effort and reach.

  For years, the implicit promise of the internet was straightforward.

  Put in the work, create something valuable, and you’d find your audience. Maybe not millions, but someone.

  The effort you invested had a reasonable correlation to the impact you could achieve. A thoughtful blog post might get shared.

  A well-crafted tutorial could help thousands of developers. The work mattered because it reached people who needed it.

  That equation is no longer guaranteed.

  Now we’re in a world where AI can generate endless content at near-zero cost.

  The supply of words, images, and ideas has become functionally infinite.

  So, what happens to the value of any individual piece?

  • Your carefully researched article drowns in a database of a thousand AI-generated summaries.
  • Your authentic ideas are lost in a sea of algorithmic content designed for engagement.

  So, why put in the work if the reward isn’t there?

  The dream used to be building something sustainable or something big enough to matter. Enough to support yourself while doing work you care about. And it still can be, that, a dream.

  We need to return to the act of finding value in the act itself

  Don’t let your self-worth depend on metrics decided by a platform.

  Your entire creative output shouldn’t be measured in likes, shares, and subscriber counts. That’s when they win.

  We can’t hand over the definition of “success” to the algorithms

  The old promise of platforms will provide is broken.

  We’re not going back.

  Now we need to build something new.

  What we build is up to us.

  Feb 8, 2026 / AI / Indieweb / Publishing

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• Why IndiePub Matters More Than Ever

  You might have heard the term IndiePub. It’s short for independent publishing—the practice of creating and distributing your work (books, stories, games, articles) without the financial backing or editorial control of a larger corporation.

  It’s closely related to the IndieWeb movement in software development, which has been advocating for personal ownership of digital presence for years.

  In the last two decades, we’ve watched massive platforms rise to dominance. They promised reach and convenience, and they delivered—for a while. But now we’re seeing the consequences: algorithmic timelines that bury your work, arbitrary policy changes that can wipe out years of audience building, and the degradation of platform quality as engagement-farming content floods every feed.

  This platform decay is exactly why anyone publishing content on the internet should own their own distribution.

  I’m not saying you have to stop publishing on platforms. But you shouldn’t publish there first.

  Publish your work on something you control, your own site, your own domain, and then push it out to the platforms. Your home base stays yours. The platforms get a copy.

  The AI Content Flood Changes Everything

  Now we’re facing something new, with the rise of AI-generated content, these platforms are becoming saturated with noise. Human authenticity is at a premium.

  The irony? Human authentic content is what trained these large language models in the first place.

  So there’s a reclaiming happening here. We’re taking our data back.

  Our authentic human content belongs on the platforms we control. The AI stuff can continue flowing through the corporate channels.

  It’s Never Been Easier

  I’m not going to dive deep into the complexities of book publishing or all the decisions writers face when navigating traditional vs. self-publishing. But I will say this: it’s never been easier to find a way to publish your thoughts and ideas online.

  There are definitely some better decisions you can make about where and how to publish. If you’re wondering whether you’ve made the best choice for the type of content you want to put out there, I created a guided decision-making tool to help answer those questions: blog-picker.logan.center

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  IndiePub matters now more than ever because it’s our primary defense against the commoditization of creativity.

  When everything becomes content for platforms, when algorithms decide what gets seen, when AI can generate infinite variations of “good enough” content.

  Own your words. Own your distribution. The platforms are guests at your table, not the other way around.

  Feb 5, 2026 / AI / Indieweb / Publishing / Creativity

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