Background
What if a website refused to spy on you?
Elsewhere on the Web, social media companies and “surveillance capitalists” wield unprecedented power, not just to predict behavior, but to control it. This site skips those tools and leans on Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS).
The choices behind the site draw on Buddhist principles: avihiṃsā (non-harming), adinnādāna (not taking what isn’t freely given), nekkhamma (renunciation, or simplicity), and santutthi (contentment). They guide my intent to skip the attention-mining and data extraction that has become standard. You don’t need a wisdom tradition for any of this, though. It’s basic human decency.
I’m not claiming sites built any other way are wrong. This page just lays out the thinking behind my choices. Both the site and this page keep changing.
Drupal as an Ethical Base
This site runs on a content management system called Drupal. The Drupal community’s values and principles line up with mine. It’s one of the largest free software communities anywhere, with more than a million contributors. Drupal powers websites for local groups like the University of Minnesota and the Animal Humane Society, along with Doctors Without Borders and the ACLU.
Read more about using Drupal as an ethical base
Accessibility
Drupal takes accessibility seriously. That’s part of why so many governments and nonprofits pick it, along with universities. I share that commitment. As I built this site, WebAIM helped me check the work.
Newsletter
Email today comes loaded with spy pixels: small images that report back when you opened a message, where you opened it, and on what device. I skip them. My newsletter goes out through a Drupal module called Simplenews, which sends mail without watching what you do with it. I don’t need to know if you read the newsletter or click the links. The information is yours, freely given.
Forms
A lot of “free” form services collect more than the form asks for, then pass that information along to whoever pays. This site uses Drupal’s built-in forms and contact tools. Fill one out or leave a comment, and what you send won’t end up bundled and sold somewhere else.
Events
I sometimes offer free yoga and meditation sessions here. The popular event-signup services sell signup data to whoever bids highest. I use Drupal’s webform module instead, so people can sign up without handing their information to a third party.
Podcasts
I host my podcast, Pretty Good Meditation, right on this site through Drupal’s Podcast module. It publishes a podcast RSS feed, and the big directories pick the show up from there: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and a handful of others.
Search
Drupal’s built-in search lets visitors look for content here without involving a corporate search engine. I don’t save what people search for. The big search companies do, and they use it to analyze behavior, then sell those analyses to marketers and others who want a say in what you do next. This site stays simple enough that the built-in search works fine. No data harvest required.
RSS
If you’d rather pull updates on your own terms, try RSS, or Really Simple Syndication. It’s an open standard. Subscribe to my feed and you’ll get headlines, descriptions, and direct links back to the posts. Plenty of tutorials walk through the setup. For an open-source reader, Vienna RSS and Tiny Tiny RSS both work well. I use rss2email, which pipes the feeds into your inbox.
Creative Commons
The content here, unless noted otherwise, lives under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Words and pictures alike. Creative Commons exists to clear the legal path for sharing knowledge, and I’m grateful for what they do.
One More Thing
If something here helps you make different choices on your own site, take it and run. If you spot a tool I should know about, or a place I’m fooling myself about how clean any of this really is, send me a note. I’m still working it out too.