Who really owns the content you post online? In this episode, we dive into Known, an open-source social publishing platform built around a simple but radical idea: you should be able to publish photos, notes, stories, and updates with the ease of social media—without giving up control of your data, your domain, or your digital identity.
Known bridges the gap between the convenience of mainstream social platforms and the sovereignty of self-hosting. It offers a responsive, mobile-friendly publishing experience, supports multiple content types, and makes sharing easy with tools like bookmarklets, hashtags, rich text editing, and custom HTML. The result is a platform that feels modern and accessible while still giving users full ownership of their site and content.
A major part of that ownership comes through custom domains, privacy controls, and multi-author support. Whether you want a private journal, a collaborative publication, or a public personal website, Known gives you the flexibility to decide how your content is shared and who can participate. It also supports multiple feed formats like RSS, JSON, XML, and KML, making your content portable and machine-readable rather than locked inside a proprietary app.
We also explore Known’s connection to the IndieWeb movement, a broader effort to create a web where independently owned sites can interact directly with one another—much like email works today. Instead of depending on a central platform to mediate social interaction, Known helps turn your own website into the center of your online presence.
If you’ve ever wondered whether social media convenience must always come at the cost of ownership, this deep dive into Known shows that there is another path: an open, decentralized social web where your content truly belongs to you.
