It Has to be Responsive

The 6th of January, 2026

A blog on my website about website stuff, could you imagine something less interesting than this? I think not!

As the era of large social media algorithmic sludge sites wanes, with the ominous looming gloom of government censorship overhead, tired users looking for a better place they can escape to. A lot more eyes are on the Indie Web (or better called, the New Web) these days. While I’m totally thrilled about this, we really have to stick the landing on this one, or we are going to lose our chance at this important moment where the sands of the social internet are shifting.

Am I a market researcher?

No, but it seems like a lot of the big social networking apps are fading a bit in their popularity. One aspect of this is that many people are tired of the AI-generated content they are being force-fed, and the algorithms have become increasingly infuriating as time has gone on. Many of these sites have shifted to short-form video content as well. This short form video is the current meta; there’s not much for a person these days who doesn’t want to make short-form video. I think these things could contribute to a dip in use of these services, but there is one much more serious issue that will keep millions from accessing content on the modern social web: World governments are starting to crack down on these social media mega platforms legally. Lots of sites are outright banned in many places depending on where the user is. A few smaller sites are totally banned where I live, for example. This growing frustration and increasing illegality of the old social sites mean a lot more eyes are on us on the New Web where there is much less algorithm sludge and government bans are much less likely.

Maybe this is a bad time though?

The overwhelming majority of people online in 2026 are accessing the internet through a phone. I know that’s a stat you all don’t want to hear, but the reality is that the popularity of the desktop computer has been on a long decline for many years. As Microsoft continues to alienate its users with Windows 11, I think a horde of more casual users are going to be switching to mobile-only for all their computing needs. Mobile is quickly taking over even in the education sector; many kids these days do their school work on iPads and the like. Right now, the New Web is composed of nerdy people like me who like our computers. However, if we want to be the answer to people’s woes about the corpo web, we have to meet people where they actually are. We have to make our sites responsive so we don’t alienate these asylum seekers.

It has to be responsive!

^{Most of the people who view my site are computer-nerdy types like me, and even from that demographic, 40% of my views are from mobile platforms.}

What can I do?

Dear Webmasters, I think the greatest thing we could do as a community is build some kind of wonderful GUI-based website building app on mobile phones for the purpose of streamlining this kind of thing and getting more people on the New Web; I’m aware that’s a massive task fit for some very knowledgeable types though. As user created spaces online grow more popular, we could see investment put in place to make such an app possible. At the personal level, there are a few things we can do. The most important thing is to simply make our websites render well on mobile. So many views are coming from mobile, and as more normal (non-computery) people try to get involved with the Indie Web, we don’t want them to be greeted with websites that don’t function on their devices.