DON'T WAIT TO BE SERVED.
Algorithms select what appears in a feed. A link on your own page is a recommendation readers can follow when they choose, even if a platform never promotes it.
[ 10 ] REBUILD THE LINKED WEBFIX THE WEB.
FIX THE WEB.
ONE LINK AT A TIME.
The internet is bigger than any feed. Every useful link makes it easier for people to find independent voices, share knowledge and move freely between ideas. Decentralizing the web is a responsibility we can all share.
THIS IS EVERYONE'S WEB
THE WEB IS NOT
THE WEB IS NOT
A SINGLE FEED.
The open web was built so a page could point to another page without asking a platform to approve the connection. A hyperlink is a choice a person makes: this is worth your attention.
No one company should have to introduce us to every thinker, artist, small publisher, technical expert or local community. Search and social platforms can help people discover work—but they should never be the only paths between us.
NO SINGLE GATEKEEPER
PUBLISH → LINK → DISCOVER → CONTRIBUTE → REPEAT
YOUR
WEBSITE
WEBSITE
ANOTHER
VOICE
VOICE
THE
LINK
LINK
OPEN
RESEARCH
RESEARCH
HUMAN
COMMUNITY
COMMUNITY
A MOVEMENT FOR HUMAN DISCOVERYCONNECT.
CONNECT.
DON'T JUST QUERY.
Search can help you find the unknown. But when you discover a writer, a community or a useful project, build a relationship with its source: bookmark it, subscribe to its feed, link to it, return to it, and help somebody else discover it.
Query for the unknown. Connect to what proves valuable.
READ THE OPEN WEB PLAYBOOK ↗WHY DECENTRALIZATION MATTERSEVERY LINK
EVERY LINK
IS AN EXIT RAMP.
Links let readers leave a walled garden and choose their next destination. A web of independent publishers creates more paths to more ideas.
SHOW YOUR SOURCES.
A useful essay points outward—to evidence, disagreements, original work and communities doing the work. Readers can check claims instead of taking anyone's word for it.
KEEP YOUR ADDRESS.
A website with a stable domain gives your work a lasting address that can be linked, cited and revisited. You can change hosts while preserving public URLs if you maintain the domain and redirects.
MAKE ROOM FOR ONE MORE VOICE.
Link to a newcomer, a careful dissenting argument, a local project or a niche expert—not just the biggest account in the room. Build more entry points to the shared record.
THE ONE-LINK PRINCIPLEYOU DON'T HAVE TO
YOU DON'T HAVE TO
FIX IT ALONE.
One thoughtful hyperlink won't rebuild the entire internet. But repeated across personal sites, newsletters, community guides, documentation and reading lists, those decisions create a network of human recommendations that no single feed owns.
We believe linking outward is an act of intellectual generosity. When you help someone find another useful voice, you expand the conversation beyond your own page. When they follow that link, it becomes their decision—not an algorithm's.
Don't just ask people to find you. Help them find each other.
DISCOVER RESOURCES TO LINK ↗EVERYBODY CAN DO THISSEVEN DAYS.
SEVEN DAYS.
SEVEN BETTER LINKS.
You can start today even without a website. Pick a useful action, credit the original author and make it easy for another person to discover their work.
- 01
Link to an independent creator.
Add one specific, annotated recommendation to your website, profile or newsletter.
- 02
Cite an original source.
Replace a vague claim with a direct link to the study, documentation or firsthand account behind it.
- 03
Build or update a blogroll.
Create a small “People worth reading” section. Say why each site deserves attention.
- 04
Subscribe without the feed.
Follow an RSS or Atom feed, bookmark a site or join an opt-in email list.
- 05
Be useful in a community.
Answer a question thoughtfully and link only when the resource genuinely adds value and rules permit it.
- 06
Repair a broken connection.
Update a dead URL on your own site, find the current source, or respectfully report the problem to its publisher.
- 07
Publish something worth linking to.
Write a tutorial, review a claim, document a local story or contribute an original perspective. Link out to the sources that informed you.
A MOVEMENT MADE OF ACTIONS
Invite a friend to take the challenge. Every useful, ethical connection helps rebuild an internet of people rather than only platforms.
DECENTRALIZE.
DON'T SPAM.
Decentralization is not a contest to create the most backlinks. The purpose is to make genuine connections between people and sources. Link to what helps, not what manipulates.
HOW TO BE A GOOD NEIGHBOR ON THE WEB.
- Link to relevant pages, not just homepages. Explain why the destination matters.
- Use descriptive anchor text so screen-reader users and other visitors know where the link leads.
- Link to original research, a useful opposing viewpoint, community resources and small independent sites—not only friends or allies.
- In message boards, contribute substantively and follow each community's linking rules. Don't drop unsolicited promotional links.
- Credit original authors; don't imply endorsements or partnerships that don't exist.
- Check your old links regularly, preserve stable URLs, and point to corrections when a source changes.
- A link is not a guarantee of search placement, AI citation, crawling or AI training inclusion.
A MOVEMENT YOU CAN LINK TO.
Use our public brand mark and plain-text HTML snippets to connect readers to this cause. There is no remotely loaded widget or analytics pixel in the snippets. The mark does not grant permission to imply an official partnership.
BUILD TO RESIST
Cognitive liberty is the right to hear and be heard.
THE WEB ALREADY HAS THE TOOLS.
You don't need a proprietary platform to build links. Start with open HTML, stable page URLs and RSS. Learn more from original standards bodies and independent web communities:
- W3C — Architecture of the World Wide Web ↗ explains the role of global identifiers and hypertext links.
- W3C — Webmention ↗ describes a standard way for one page to notify another of a link; this website does not claim to implement Webmention.
- IndieWeb — Getting Started ↗ offers approaches to independent publishing and site-owned identities.
- Pew Research Center — When Online Content Disappears ↗ documents the problem of link decay using a defined sample of pages.
In Pew's sample, 38% of webpages identified as existing in 2013 were inaccessible when researchers checked in 2023. That is a specific study result, not a claim that 38% of today's entire web has disappeared.
TAKE THE WEB BACK INTO HUMAN HANDSDON'T WAIT FOR
DON'T WAIT FOR
AN ALGORITHM
TO INTRODUCE US.
Publish. Cite. Link outward. Make something worth saving. Help one more person find one more human voice.
ONE LINK CAN BECOME A NETWORKMEET THE
MEET THE
INDEPENDENT WEB.
Our opt-in publisher network gives readers a human-reviewed path across original independent websites. No automatic membership. No paid ranking. Just people building a web of useful destinations.
EXPLORE THE PUBLISHER NETWORK ↗