Smarter Every Day Neopoligen Pitch

Transcript

Hey Destin,

I'm Alan, and this is a pitch for a collaboration.

I've been working for the past two years on a free, open-source app to build personal websites. My pitch is to collaborate on a Smarter Every Day video that looks at the app and uses it as a foundation to talk about how social media companies work. And, frankly, how toxic they are.

It would also talk about how the internet and websites work from a technical perspective. Discussing what it means when we talk about "servers". How HTML works and, even better, how approachable it is.

I started college at the dawn of the web and will always have fond memories of those times.

Possible Topics

- What's HTML - The raw material that web pages are built off of

- Making a HTML page on your computer by just opening a file named hello-world.html and typing in it


            - What's CSS - The tools for styling and layouts
            - What's JavaScript - Making the page do things. Clicking buttons to make a counter example. Color slider example
            - What's a website? - A collection of web pages
            - What's a web page? - It's an HTML file that you load into a browser
            - How do you get the pages? That's where servers come in
            - Your computer can be a web server for itself
            - A tour of Neopoligen
            - Making a site
            - Making pages
            - Playing with your own HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in templates
            - How social media networks work
            - Social media site lockin since you can't move your  stuff
            - Owning your content instead of putting it on a social  media site 
            - How algorithms work on social meida sites for engagement and how they aren't trying to give you what's best for you they're trying to get you to spend as much time on them as possible to play more ads which is how they make money
            - In the business world, "If you're not paying for it,  you're the product"
            - In the open source world, "If you're not paying for it,  that's because other folks are dedicating their own time and money to it to make the world a better place"
            - How tracking works. Show the "We and our 756 partners store and/or access information on a devicce" unnder  "we care about yoru privacy" on Spotify screenshot  from 2024-04-21 
            - Being constrained by the tools. E.g. you can only post in certain styles on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter/X
            - How databases constrian what you do. How free form creation on the web is super powerful
            - Anything anybody in the world has ever done on a web page, you can do on your site too since you have  control. 
            - The importance and impact of results
            - How the online ad industry works
            - Tracking
            - Privacy
            - Moderation and censorship 
            - Copyright and fair use
            - CDNs
            - Network Effect/Lockin
            - First Mover Advantage
            - 80/20 principal
            I expect I'll spend at  least the next five continuing to imporove it, but there's enough there now that folks can start using it. You'll need to be a bit of a techie at first, but I'll be making it easier and easier for anyone to use over time.


        
            References
            
        




    
            
Privacy First: A Better Way to Address Online Harms - EFF