SitePoint Weekly: Centralized Station

Rollup.js, Jamstack API design, SAFE TECH Act, Rust Foundation, and why free plans might cost your business too much

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SitePoint Weekly #19
Centralized Station

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The Loop
Just published on SitePoint

An Introduction to the Rollup.js JavaScript Bundler

Craig Buckler

Rollup.js is a next-generation JavaScript module bundler from Rich Harris, the author of Svelte. Like webpack, Snowpack, or Parcel, it compiles multiple source files into a single bundle. But Rollup.js is a focused alternative that aims to make custom configurations easier to manage. Add this tool to your kit with this tutorial.

Build a Rest API for the Jamstack with Hapi and TypeScript

Camilo Reyes Take a look at REST APIs from a Jamstack perspective. Learn how to evolve an API without breaking clients with the help of Hapi and a few other tools.

Asynchronous Programming Using Async/Await in C#
Kerem Ispirli

Learn what asynchronous programming is about, how to use the async and await keywords, avoid deadlock pitfalls, and refactor blocking C# code.

Setting Up a Modern PHP Development Environment with Docker
Tom Butler

Docker provides one of the best ways to set up your PHP development environment. Let's walk through how to do it properly.

7 Tips for Writing Clear, Human-friendly Microcopy

Michiel Mulders Want to win more users and convert more paying customers? Learn seven ways you can use UX microcopy to improve retention and meet your goals.

Lightweight Autocomplete Controls with the HTML5 Datalist

Craig Buckler Too many options in your HTML Select list? Try a Datalist! Learn how to work with this lightweight, accessible, cross-browser autocomplete form control.

Create Powerful CSS Animation Effects without JavaScript

Paul Ryan Web animations don't always require JavaScript. Learn some amazing CSS animation tricks you can perform to add polish with just a small amount of CSS.

How to Use WordPress as a Headless CMS for Eleventy

Craig Buckler You want to offer static-site benefits to clients, but they want — or can't switch from — WordPress. Learn how to use Eleventy to offer the best of both worlds.

The Fastest Way to Build Notifications For Your App

Courier gives you one API to reach users across every channel – email, SMS, push, Slack, and more. Design notifications with a drag & drop editor, set delivery rules, and manage user preferences. Start for free.

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The Rundown
Top technology stories this week

The future of Section 230 remains one of tech's top stories — as it should be while changes are up in the air. It is, after all, the open web's imperfect but primary pillar of defense in the homeland of Big Tech.

The latest developments come with a proposed Democrat bill, the SAFE TECH Act, that offers Section 230 changes that are first-glance palatable. It purports to leave 230 in place while exempting a range of content from its protections — ads or posts that violate civil or human rights, antitrust law, or constitute online harassment and cyberstalking. But that's far from all.

From TechCrunch's Taylor Hatmaker:

First, it would fundamentally alter the core language of Section 230 — and given how concise that snippet of language is to begin with, any change is a big change. Under the new language, Section 230 would no longer offer protections in situations where payments are involved.

[...]

That might not sound like much, but it could be a massive change. In a tweet promoting the bill, Sen. Warner called online ads a “a key vector for all manner of frauds and scams” so homing in on platform abuses in advertising is the ostensible goal here. But under the current language, it’s possible that many other kinds of paid services could be affected, from Substack, Patreon and other kinds of premium online content to web hosting.

One of Section 230's authors, Senator Ron Wyden, may not constitute the most impartial source but is not hedging his opinion on this one.

“Unfortunately, as written, it would devastate every part of the open internet, and cause massive collateral damage to online speech,” Wyden told TechCrunch, likening the bill to a full repeal of the law with added confusion from a cluster of new exceptions.

And that's not wrong. There's no functional difference between exempting such a broad and ill-defined swathe of content from protection and repealing 230 altogether. The end result is that all content that exists online and depends on any liable entity to remain online will require direct moderation. This is the very least that is certain to occur, and the consequences of that will reach across the web and across the decades.

We don't need to depend on the word of Ron Wyden speaking in defense of his own legacy. Mike Masnick of Techdirt is incisive, the experts in Gizmodo's story are countered only by single-interest groups, and the EFF — an entity you'd hardly mix up with a QAnon cult — has what is essentially a shrine to 230 on its site.

The internet is a complex beast, partly an amalgam of technologies and partly another world together, complete with alliances of cultures that themselves already divide into subcultures and regularly do vicious war with one another. What really makes the open web tick is not easy to intuit and grasp, especially not without a background immersed in modern open source culture, or that extends to early web hacking or the primordial hacker culture of microprocessor enthusiasts and phreaks beforehand.

As this second world eclipses the first world and brings with it an ever-changing influx of people working for the new media Overton inputs, we have developed few compelling ways of transmitting this essential understanding on beyond the subculture that remains of a once-dominant online worldview. That is not to say that all of our once-dominant online worldview is worth keeping — there is a lot to be said about where that rosy-eyed optimism got it wrong. But on the technical architecture and legal protections that together support the open web, there's a lot of solid ground. And the keys to understanding why old-world policy carrots and sticks of this kind offer a tempting but all-too-simple salve for current problems is bound up in a few corners of the modern online world.

As we see in Protocol, which sees itself as a sort of premium and thoughtful source of tech news and analysis (and often meets this mark), the reception to this news among a certain set of the commentariat is near-rapturous. The authors describe the proposed modifications as creating "narrow carve-outs for a range of online harms." If you are steeped in the world of political compromise and progress through consensus, I am sure that these seem like narrow carve-outs indeed. To those who understand the open web and its underlying components and drivers, it's hard to see it as anything but a sledgehammer of Asgardian proportions.

This article, one of many more like it, goes on to say that:

"Tech giants including Facebook and Twitter have recently signaled openness to some Section 230 changes. Facebook has even gone so far as to place ads saying it welcomes regulation."

Nobody seems to question the fact that Facebook, otherwise all too ready to almost literally raze the world for another shred of ad revenue, is practically begging for this regulation. For now and for as long as it suits this narrative, Facebook's interest will be interpreted as the human element behind a shareholder-beholden giant begging for its worst elements to be tempered.

But as countless experts with deep technical and intellectual property law understanding convincingly argue, changes to Section 230 of the sort being pursued will entrench these companies through the cost of compliance — a cost only they can bear. Facebook, feeling the dissonance of record quarters against a bloated slot-machine experience everyone hates and a growing inability to break an addiction to perpetuating it, must sense upstart vulnerability in the air.

Upstarts with the appeal to disrupt Facebook from left field provide the user with a lot more power — whether they're the centralized but wild corners of Telegram or the neon-green utopia of the Fediverse, Web3, and decentralization in general, the latter group a dark horse with products maturing at a faster rate than most realize.

Facebook's unblinking engagement in the broad variety of anticompetitive behavior it's under fire for in other news cycles suggests we should not be surprised that it is willing to tear up the bulwarks and defensive moats of the open web itself to prolong its reign. And given where the most credible threats to its dominance come from, it seems prudent for Facebook to embrace a policy that will unravel the economic equation for nascent centralized alternatives while sidelining the uncontrollable, decentralized wave of services as an underbog for hardcore copyleft hackers and criminals.

These developments are disappointing, but not unsurprising. Months ago the Democrats in the House surprised us all with an antitrust proposal that showed surprising insight into the problems and offered plausible solutions. It was a refreshing contrast against the unhinged proposals of its opposition, even if they both ostensibly came from the same anti-oligopolistic position. Here, on a different but intrinsically intertwined matter, we've seen old political battlelines re-assumed, and the chance of policy driven by informed problem-solving shattered.

It's a shame, but those hardcore copyleft hackers will tell you that we should have expected it all along and planned accordingly. They're right, of course. And so we should proceed to plan B, which is to build a web with openness built into and enshrined in its very infrastructure.

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Versioning
Web development, design, and tooling

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The Roadmap
Product, strategy, execution, and work

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Logic Flow
Computing, automation, productivity​, and tools for thought

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The Shutdown
That's all folks — but One More Thing...

I'm not a cat, and I'm ready to proceed: If you somehow didn't catch the lawyer-as-cat video earlier this week, or if you're generally confused by the internet's obsession with cats like me and have made a habit of ignoring these things, you are doing yourself a grave disservice.

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Bling Daddy
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Connect with the community

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Until next time,

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Joel Falconer
Managing Editor