Personal websites are the place for comments, not social media channels

22 July 2025

Ava, writing at Ava’s blog:

It’s a bit of a meh look that one of the biggest Indieweb personalities (that I think does an amazing job!) with her own Bearblog and website is not sharing this discussion on them, but on social media instead, limiting its reach to those users. At least POSSE was an option. And that leads me back to what I said above — what’s the point of going here if people are also resorting to Twitter but with different look, but without the numbers and archive built up over years?

Ava’s post is in response to a question posed by xandra, asking what the Indie Web needs the most now. But the matter of hosting discussions with blog posts is something I’ve been grappling with.

It doesn’t seem right that anyone reading one of my website posts has to go elsewhere to make a comment, when that should be happening right here. Because I was thinking, why do I need multiple social media pages, so that all bases are covered should someone not be on this social, but on that social? And what if a person wishing to comment on a post doesn’t have any Fediverse presence?

After years of having post comments switched off, I recently re-enabled them. The reply-guys and spammers arrived within minutes of course, but my CMS has tools to help filter a lot of this junk out. Plus, I still approve all comments before they go public. Bringing comments back achieved two aims, in theory. For one, all discussion is centralised (mostly) on my website, and not spread across multiple social media platforms.

Two: people who don’t have social media presences can still take part in any discussion, because all they have to do is type out a comment. No membership of anything, expect an email address, is needed. Yes, that sets the bar low for junk, but in filters I trust.

One of the things I enjoy about leaving a comment on other people’s posts — though I’m hardly a prolific commenter, because overworked introvert — is including my website on the reply form, where the option is available.

To my mind, it’s always been about the website, not some “outpost” page on a social media platform. I’m not saying everyone should shun social media, because it’s a great place for chit-chat, and having conversations that are only hosted on someone’s socials page.

Of course, to somewhat contradict my argument, I recently federated disassociated, meaning posts go out to the likes of Mastodon, and people can reply there if they want. But then again, those comments ping back to the post in question, so any discussion would be seen in full here.

POSSE is great, but when it comes to discussion on blog posts, let’s also remember KISS: Keep It Simple Sayang. Yes, sayang, because I don’t like calling smart people stupid.

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