URLs are better than handles
One micro-idea that occurs to me in our new era of fragmented social media is maybe we should bring back the primacy of URLs in place of social media handles.
Instead of:
- Instagram: @harrislapiroff I’ll use instagram.com/harrislapiroff/
- Bluesky: harris.social.coop.ap.brid.gy I’ll use bsky.app/profile/harris.social.coop.ap.brid.gy
- Mastodon: @harris@social.coop I’ll use social.coop/@harris
The former in each case requires being part of the “in group” that knows what you’re talking about. You know what Instagram is. You know what Bluesky is. You know what Mastodon is. Without that knowledge, the handle is meaningless.
The latter is an invitation. It says: Not sure what this thing is that I’m linking to? That’s OK – every browser in the world knows how to handle a URL. Come take a look and find out.
URLs are more future-proof. If any of these services disappear, at least a future person will be able to use a service like the Internet Archive¹ to see what was there – unless, of course, the service is a walled garden, in which case our hypothetical future human is no worse off.
And they make IndieWeb websites as much a part of the social web as any other platform. If our social media profiles are just websites with URLs, then chromamine.com fits right in too.
🤞🏼 for its continued existence. ↩︎