From The Superhighway is a newsletter dedicated to bringing you the best kept secrets of the indie web.

• ?:What's the indie web?

  >:The indie web (or alt web, or Web 1.5, or whatever you want to call it) is composed of any site on the Internet that isn't governed by The Platforms™.

• ?:What are The Platforms?™

  >:As far as this site is concerned, A Platform™ is any website that hosts user-created content and does at least one of the following things:

  • relies on the sale of ads and / or user data to generate revenue;
  • delivers content to its users exclusively or primarily through algorithmic feeds;
  • cannot sustain itself with its own revenue (and as a result relies on speculative investment to survive);

  The criteria above include the vast majority of popular websites on the modern internet. That state of affairs is what this newsletter seeks to change.

• ?:Why should I care about the indie web?

  >:Because there is a desperate need to remind people that the Internet was, once upon a time, a genuinely amazing place.
  
  I don't want to romanticize too much - Web 1.0. was not a cultural utopia - but it was a place that was chiefly about people sharing things with each other primarily because they believed there was value in the things they were sharing, and not because they were trying to divine the whims of an algorithmic god for clout.
  
  What most people don't know is that on the edges of the modern Internet, that old Web is being reborn. On a daily basis, people are starting to realize what The Platforms™ have taken from us - and they're starting to take it back. This newsletter seeks to show you how they're doing it.

• ?:What kind of "secrets" are going to be in this newsletter?

  >:Websites with cool art. Forums dedicated to niche discussion of horror authors. A site that is designed like a Nintendo DS. Sites that let you use Kidpix in your browser.
  
  In other words, anything that's creative, entertaining, or thought-provoking - the sort of stuff that The Platforms™ are increasingly uninterested in cultivating.

• ?:You have a Patreon. What's that about?

  >:To be clear: the newsletter itself is and will always remain free to the public.
  
  But the Patreon serves several purposes:

  1. I, (meaning me, ajazz), put a lot of effort into finding these sites, reaching out to the creators, building the newsletter from scratch, etc. It would be nice to be modestly compensated for some of that labor.
  2. Another thing I'd like to do with this newsletter is build a community of people who want to share, discuss, and promote the indie web. The primary Patreon bonus you get for subscribing is access to the Discord, and the $3 barrier to entry is extremely helpful for keeping the membership at a managable size for one person to moderate (and for keeping bots, trolls, and posers out).
  3. Most importantly: the Patreon is for transparency about how this operation runs. I will never run ads, and I will never sell your data. The closest thing to "sponsorships" that you'll ever see here is the newsletter's official webring (membership in which is included with your Patreon subscription). You will always be able to see exactly how much I make (if anything), and in the event this blows up, the Patreon provides a way to sustainably pay the bills for this thing long-term.

• ?:I know of a cool thing on the web! How do I submit?

  >:Great to hear! There's just a few guidelines to keep in mind:

  • Like I said above, the cool thing must not be on A Platform™ - this means no Twitter, no Tumblr, no Instagram - and yes, not even Bluesky.
  • Substack is permitted - for now. I am suspicious of their long-term resistance to enshittification, but for the moment they remain a mostly-positive force helping to bolster written content on the modern web. (I will definitely show preference to non-Substack blogs, though.)
  • The thing you submit has to be SFW. I may be open to NSFW submissions in the future, but I am uncertain of the legality of dropping hog into people's inboxes, and I would rather not find out the hard way.
  • I will not be able to give a personalized reply to every submission emailed to me.
  • I reserve the right to deny a submission on the grounds that I think it's lame or uninteresting.

  If you think your thing fits that criteria, feel free to send it over to me.