Thread · 6 tweets · 12 Oct 2020

The Web has become dominated by proprietary aggregation technologies: AMP, Apple News Format, Facebook Instant Articles, MIP, and now Web Bundles. These formats cater to the needs of large platforms; not users, not publishers. It’s unsustainable. We need to change this.

I’m delighted to announce the first draft of Content Aggregation Technology, or CAT: nytimes.github.io/std-cat/. CAT offers: 1. An open door to working through consensus. 2. A framework to assess aggregation tech. 3. Some requirements for better aggregation.

Why consensus? The proprietary formats are being imposed unilaterally by leveraging dominance, eg. through a search engine, a device, a browser. Instead of using power to force people to use a format, we want to build it together, for everyone — the way the Web was built.

Why a framework to assess the tech? Because even if it feels meta, it’s important to capture the perception of the people who actually end up having to deal with this tech. This makes the view from the trenches harder to ignore.

And the requirements? Well, it turns out that the Web already has an amazing foundation for aggregation: it’s called hypertext. Unless you want to dominate the Web there’s no reason to go against it! Some small additions are all we need to make kick-ass Web experiences awesomer.

You can read the announcement and proposal to @wicg_ from a group of publishers here: discourse.wicg.io/t/proposal-con… We want to figure out the next steps together — ideas and feedback are very welcome, please post to the thread!