What Are the Core Commitments in The Yesterweb's Manifesto for a New Web?

The Yesterweb's "Manifesto for a New Web" sets out three core commitments drawn from two years of the project's community organizing. They are presented as expectations that participants uphold "to the best of their ability," not as rules or guidelines, and are offered as a basis of unity for individuals or groups who want to move in the same direction while keeping their own focus, interests, and missions. The site's excerpt names two of the three commitments in detail; the third is not described in the available material.

Commitment to Social Responsibility and Partisanship

This commitment treats safety and self-defense as basic necessities of any community. It starts from the recognition that a single social space cannot accommodate everyone, because antagonistic beliefs are inevitable.

• Where diversity of opinion stops: Difference of opinion is respected up to bounds that reflect oppressive intentions, such as discrimination based on age, sex, gender, class, nation/race/ethnicity, religion, or disability.
• What happens when conflict appears: The community is expected to understand the situation and "take the side of the oppressed at any cost."
• Intent versus ignorance: When it is unclear whether harm was intentional or accidental, the community should investigate through dialogue to tell malice from ignorance — since ignorance can be resolved with education.

Commitment to Collective Well-Being and Personal Growth

This commitment frames a healthy community as something that requires sustained social effort, not a one-time setup.

• Selflessness and sacrifice: Sustainable amounts of both are expected, ideally from all individuals.
• Attention to collective health: Members should take compassionate account of the personal growth of everyone involved in a situation, whether actively or passively.
• Communication skills: The manifesto asks participants to train their ability to listen and empathize, to strive patiently for unity and dialogue rather than division and debate, and to approach conflict with the intention of resolving it.
• No purely oppositional goals: The community should not create goals purely out of opposition or antagonism toward something; instead it should work in a positive direction. (The excerpt cuts off at this point.)

How the Commitments Fit Together

The site describes the manifesto as a general template that can be applied to any community at a foundational level, and it pairs the manifesto with a separate "Social Etiquette" section. The stated mission is to work with the guidelines established by the manifesto and the social etiquette to "progressively transform the culture of the internet and beyond."

If you are considering adopting these commitments for a community of your own, the practical test is whether members accept them as shared expectations rather than enforceable rules — the manifesto's own framing. The full text of the third commitment and the Social Etiquette section are on yesterweb.org, since the available excerpt does not cover them.