Manifesto

A Manifesto for a Decentralized Web

I want a web that can't be owned.

Not "owned" in the PR sense. Owned in the structural sense: a handful of platforms deciding what is visible, what is profitable, what is "safe," what gets buried, what gets banned, what becomes culture, and what becomes noise.

I don't accept that as the final form of the internet.

I came up in the era of taking things apart—hardware, software, sentences. I still trust what I can inspect: plain text, open formats, view-source honesty. I still believe good tools should feel like old steel: simple, durable, repairable. No hostage plugins. No subscription leash. No black-box dependence disguised as convenience. Software with principles, not just features.

The centralized web is a mall with velvet ropes.
The decentralized web is a city: messy, alive, uneven, full of tiny lights.

I'm for the city.

1) Protocols over platforms

Platforms want captivity. Protocols want interoperability.

Give me HTTP, RSS, email, IRC, ActivityPub—anything that lets people meet without asking permission from a gatekeeper. Anything that keeps identity, distribution, and conversation from collapsing into a single corporation's database and mood swings.

A healthy web is made of many servers, many voices, many weird corners.
If one node disappears, the network should keep breathing.

2) Personal sites are not nostalgia. They are sovereignty.

A small website is a home address in public space. Not a rented room in someone else's building.

Your domain is a flag planted in reality: this is mine, this is where I speak, this is where my work lives. No algorithm decides if my words deserve reach. No "creator program" decides if my art deserves to exist.

Small sites are where the web stays human:

imperfect layouts

strange obsessions

honest archives

longform thinking

unoptimized beauty

The "professional internet" wants everything to look the same.
Culture comes from the opposite.

3) Freedom is a technical requirement

Freedom is not a vibe. It is architecture.

If your work can be deplatformed instantly, it isn't free.
If your audience can be throttled by a ranking system, it isn't free.
If your files live in a proprietary cloud that can lock you out, it isn't free.
If your identity is "an account," it isn't free.

I'm for tools that respect the user:

self-hosting when possible

open source when it matters (which is often)

local-first data

exportable everything

formats that outlive companies

I want systems that treat people as owners, not product.

4) Digital art is not content. It is resistance and craft.

The web is the greatest gallery ever built—and we let it become a feed.

I'm for the web as a workshop: a place where art and code mix, where photography and typography and sound and essays and comics and experiments can exist without being flattened into "engagement."

Digital art should not have to audition for algorithms.
Culture should not have to fit inside template cages.

A personal site is not just a page.
It's a studio.
It's a zine.
It's a small cinema.
It's a notebook with sharp edges.

5) Decentralization is also an ethic: keep it legible

Make things that can be understood.
Make things that can be repaired.
Make things that can be forked.
Make things that don't demand blind trust.

I distrust systems that require faith.
I prefer systems that can be audited—by reading, by testing, by community pressure, by time.

"Trustless" doesn't mean cold. It means honest.
It means no single point of failure—technical or moral.

6) We are not users. We are participants.

The centralized web trained people to scroll, react, comply.
The decentralized web asks something harder: to build, to curate, to link, to host, to write, to learn.

That's fine. Hard is good.
Hard means you own your tools.
Hard means you can leave.

I want a web where leaving doesn't erase you.

So here's the stance:

I'm for the small, the independent, the stubborn.
I'm for the weird little sites that never trend.
I'm for open protocols and open formats.
I'm for privacy, autonomy, and the right to publish without permission.
I'm for art that doesn't beg.
I'm for culture that doesn't flatten itself to fit the feed.
I'm for a web that feels like people again.

Not polished. Not centralized. Not obedient.

Distributed.
Resilient.
Alive.

p murad, jan 2026