In this age of digital cacophony dominated by these platforms, no one is looking out for you… but you. It makes perfect sense, then, when individuals tell me they want their website to do the job of “setting the record straight” on who they are and what they do.

Kelly’s vision depends on an evolution of the Internet in which the vast tangle of possible one-on-one connections partition into countless small cliques—each one a fandom or a mini community revelling in the discovery of others who share their quirks. Instead, the social-media giants effectively rerouted these connections through a small number of... See more