Your work is not just content

Social media platforms provide value to independent creatives by allowing them to fully focus on creating instead of having to figure out how to share their work. Sadly, however, these same platforms reduce creative artists to content creators. When we label artwork — be it short- or long-form writing, illustration, photography, music, or video — as content, we turn unique works into interchangeable slop for consumption by users. I believe that the corporate web's focus on user engagement plays a large role in this degradation, and that the independent web might offer a solution.

Don't forget to like and subscribe

Likes, hearts, and follower numbers are widespread on social media platforms, but these numbers give us wrong incentives. Although "liking" is the simplest way to convey enjoyment, these engagement numbers can quickly encourage toxic comparison. This numbers game — reinforced by the immediate feedback of analytics tools — might persuade us to stick to what works, just to optimise the number of clicks or views we receive in return. Engagement becomes a target as platforms expect us to grow these numbers over time, which encourages deceptive practices like clickbait and tacky thumbnails^[1]. People might even resort to buying engagement for their work, just to give off the appearance of popularity. This makes the experience on these platforms worse for everyone involved.

Some platforms, including Instagram, allow their members to hide the number of likes on their posts. Looking into discussions on this setting, I came across a Reddit thread where some commenters admitted that they see hidden likes as a sign that someone's work is unpopular. Hiding these numbers apparently also encourages others to scroll through the list of "likers"—taking extra steps to gauge how popular something is. The number of likes themselves even influences some people's opinions: artists are taken less seriously if they have a low number of likes, regardless of the quality of their work. These are just a handful of cherry-picked anecdotes from one thread, of course, but it had not crossed my mind before that these numbers could have such influence.

Finally, even if you manage to build a legitimate following on these platforms, the platforms themselves ultimately still decide if followers should be notified of new work or not. People who have actively indicated in the past that they want to know when someone publishes new work, are sometimes—for often unclear reasons—not notified at all. Additionally, "The Algorithm" might not pick up work when it breaks opaque, unwritten rules. This might persuade artists to let arcane guidelines dictate their work for the off-chance of going viral. Some artists lose agency over their work: look at the popularity of self-censoring through algospeak: for example, unaliving as a well-known alternative for "killing" to avoid demonetisation.

Maximising eyeball-time

Recently, we started letting ourselves get bombarded with automatically selected, fast-paced videos through TikTok-style platforms. Personally, when I have a quiet moment where I have nothing to do, I sometimes fall into the trap of wasting lots of time on these platforms myself. I had to put some screen time limits on these apps just to snap out of mindlessly scrolling. At this stage, in the way videos or tweets are consumed, they are indeed just "content" — as I'm sure I couldn't tell you what I just watched or read after scrolling on these apps for fifteen minutes.

The largest problem with this use of algorithmic recommendation, where the previously mentioned Algorithm decides what you watch, is that it is terribly effective. We're hooked, all while the corporate web decides who deserves our attention. Platforms serve us content that optimises "user retention", just to maximise ad revenue. This revenue is not maximised for artists—content creators get the smallest possible piece of the pie—but for the platform providers themselves. Even worse: platforms started to create their own watered-down content so that real creators can ultimately be cut out of the loop. Spotify has often been accused of creating "fake" bands, commissioning tracks so that they can reduce the slice of the real artists' pie even further. As Spotify controls their own "curated" playlists, they can replace real works with their own commissions in an attempt to reduce the amount of royalties they have to pay out.

Finally, these platforms are not only exploiting their content creators, but are also harmful to the content consumers. The corporate web doesn't care what content people are consuming as long as they manage to maximise eyeball-time, even if those eyeballs belong to vulnerable youth. Children get recommended sexualised, self-harm, and suicide-related content, even when using accounts specifically meant for kids. Now that some kids get their first smartphone as soon as they turn ten years old, this issue is more concerning than ever.

Moving to the "independent web"

The large, corporate web slowly turned our work into content for their own benefit, but I believe that the small, independent web can help turn the tide. The small web has the potential to empower artists to reclaim their work using their own place on the web, where they are not at the whims of big platforms and do not need to maximise meaningless engagement numbers.

This is all easier said than done, however: if you have already built a large audience on these platforms, it's not easy to move away. This is especially the case if you rely on revenue generated on these platforms. Creating a website yourself is also not for everyone; although it's a lot of fun and a very satisfying hobby to pick up, it requires a bit of effort to set everything up. There are some easy-to-follow guides on how to use WordPress, static site generators, and hosting through GitHub Pages; but these things take time, which some would rather spend elsewhere. These are complex challenges that have no straight-forward solution, but I try to give some tips below to make a potential transition go smoother.

Create once, publish everywhere

A common reason why people claim they are not able to move away from social media is because "everyone is on them." Leaving social media platforms would mean losing touch with a potential audience. If all people are reading on Medium or Substack, how could they possibly find your work on the independent web? A good middle-ground is using both: you could publish it once (on your own website), and share it everywhere else (manually or automatically) — making clear through a disclaimer that the original post can be found on your website, that you are not active on the platform that they're currently on, but that they can contact you through mail or through your website.

From algorithmic recommendation to human curation

In an ideal scenario, we would use AI techniques like algorithmic recommendation for good. The theory behind these techniques is fascinating, but sadly, the techniques themselves are mostly used to optimise for user retention and ad revenue. Imagine if we would use these techniques to recommend work that is just outside of our bubble or comfort zone, expanding our views to break echo chambers. The next best thing that we can do right now, however, is moving from "algorithmic recommendation" back to "human curation."

I often find new blogs to read by people that link to each other through blogrolls or webrings. If we want the independent web to succeed, we need to use our websites to link to people that inspire us; preferably linking to their own independent place on the web if they have one. Help your audience find other creators by sharing the work that you enjoy!

One step to facilitate human curation is to provide an RSS feed for your website. Also try to use an RSS reader yourself: there's no algorithm to decide what you're going to see next, just a good old chronological list of your own curation. You can keep this as simple as possible: I currently use newsboat to check if the feeds I follow have new updates, and I'll go visit their website to read their work.

Support independent artists

Reach out to the people whose work you enjoy, send them (e)mail, and show you care by commissioning or buying their work if possible! Use Patreon-like platforms to provide recurring support or donate through Buy me a coffee or Ko-fi. It's ridiculous to think that we spend more on a single morning coffee compared to what we give back to artists that bring us regular joy. If more people support independent artists, less creators will have to rely on corporate sponsoring.

Stop calling your work content

Ultimately, the first true step is to move away from corporate language that strips away the humanity from creative work. You are more than "just a content creator." Own what you do, even if you don't think you deserve the title yet. You do not need to be published in print to be a writer, as long as you find joy in writing and consistently try to do so. You're a painter if you love to paint, even if you haven't made a sale or commission. With a bit more self-confidence, we can step away from umbrella terms like content and creator, doing our part to step away from this degradation of creative work.

Patrick Van der Spiegel is a Belgian computer scientist and PhD candidate in Artificial Intelligence. You can find his work at patrick.vanderspie.gl.