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Always Own Your Platform

alwaysownyourplatform.com

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Re: Always Own Your Platform

#161

Post by Zak »

ender7 wrote: post #125

Also, unavailable to most people. Yes, I suppose it was kind of nice when the internet was only available to the tech-savvy, to those who didn't mind maintaining a second job as a Unix administrator. But for people who just wanted to _write_, it was not welcoming. Yes, you can go to wordpress.com and sign up for your own blog, but then you're just on the wordpress platform, and subject to their whims. If your plan wo…

If you get your own domain for that wordpress.com hosted site, you're free to move to other hosting if you need to.

One option is to learn enough to do it yourself on a barebones server, but that's not the only option. A google search for "wordpress hosting" turns up several turnkey solutions that a person without a lot of tech background could move to if they were sufficiently displeased with something wordpress.com did.

I think this is a good model for the hosting/platform piece of the puzzle. I'm not sure anyone has a great answer for discoverability yet

Re: Always Own Your Platform

#163

Post by diminoten »

MickerNews wrote: post #43
jawns wrote: post #27

From the Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20190324154559/http://alwaysowny... > You know, it wasn't that long ago. There was RSS. There were blogs. There were sub-groups and communities. The weirdos found each other. The non-weirdos found each other. It wasn't perfect. But it was distributed. It was ours. > It was yours. > Now? The original dream of the web is dying. Facebook, Google, Twitter, Medium, and…

Are you seriously trying to say that he can't make this point unless he builds his own twitter? https://i.imgur.com/iBAIRqF.png

Why would this person use Twitter, and why wouldn't the reasons he comes up with for using Twitter not also be valid for using Facebook or Medium as well?

Re: Always Own Your Platform

#164

Post by lone_haxx0r »

gambler wrote: post #60
soulofmischief wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? HN probably has the largest proportion of people who maintain their own websites out of any other major aggregator community.

>HN probably has the largest proportion of people who maintain their own websites ...on AWS.

Of course, no one is 100% independent. You could recursively find lack of independence:

You have your own website but its hosted on AWS

You host your website on your own servers, but they're in $COUNTRY

You have a guerrilla controlling a de facto state where your server is, but you still depend on the submarine cables.

You have a worldwide totalitarian dictatorship so you can host your website freely, but you depend on the sun for keeping the servers alive.

Your worldwide totalitarian dictatorship has mastered interstellar travel, but you're still in $YOUR_UNIVERSE.

Your scientists discover how to control the multiverse, but they're all going to big crunch eventually.

Re: Always Own Your Platform

#165

Post by quanticle »

amelius wrote: post #152
coding123 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why give the platform all that seo. In the long past era we used to have a bunch of random webshops. Now sellers can barely survive unless they are on Etsy eBay or Amazon. We gave them all that free SEO and now we are wishing we didn't.

> We gave them all that free SEO and now we are wishing we didn't. Isn't a search engine required by law to be non-biased? So if you move to a different (or your own) platform, search engines should still allow people to find you just as easily.

>Isn't a search engine required by law to be non-biased?

No? Why would you think that? Google routinely puts its own properties at the top of search results.

>So if you move to a different (or your own) platform, search engines should still allow people to find you just as easily.

Even if search engines were required to be unbiased, that conclusion still wouldn't follow. The hidden assumption there is that you're the only one selling that particular good or service. In practice, though, you're not. If a user is searching for, say, shoes, what search result is better for them? A link to Amazon or eBay, where there are hundreds of types of shoes? Or a link to your shop, which has a much more limited selection?

There's a reason that people shop at Walmart instead of small general stores.

Re: Always Own Your Platform

#166

Post by mpa000 »

EamonnMR wrote: post #158
neilv wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't recall it being hubris. What happened when Web browsers appeared is that there was a brief period when a university (usually you were at a university) would host your pages, and you could believe the decentralized dream (if you heard that part), but there was a sudden commercial gold rush, and motivations switched to greed (not hubris). You didn't want to see X happen; you wanted you to get the money for X ha…

This is a very interesting angle, care to expand upon it? Which gold rush ideas do you feel where institutionalized?

I've not fleshed out his angle on this, but the first thing that came to mind was the gamification of every social interaction. "Ratio-ing" on TWIT comes to mind. There was a time when we measured threads by the level of social engagement (response) rather than like/share and it was a good thing to have hundreds of replies and sub-conversations.

Re: Always Own Your Platform

#167

Post by mrmuagi »

Moru wrote: post #157
jwr wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem is not with being tech-savvy but with not wanting to spend anything. It isn't difficult to create a ready-made self-maintaining decentralized publishing tool in the form of a VPS image that people could run. But then people would need to pay for hosting the VPS (single dollars per month) and probably for the software, so that somebody maintains it (also single dollars per month). I think people ar…

Also, what happens when I'm not around to pay those peanuts? All gone? Not acceptable to most people.

This is a weird line to argue from... What guarantees any platform you use (yes, even including wordpress) won't delete you data or terminate your service agreement? Even more laughable, if it was unfairly terminated, how can you argue when you are dead?

If you want longevity -- and want a VPS, just load up your vps (in the case of DO) wallet, pre-purchase out your domain name for a few years in advance and sit back. That's the best you are going to get, without paying somebody specifically. If you are popular enough, your stuff will be archived anyway.

But for heavens sake, if you actually have a need for post-life longevity for your content, put it in a will. Plan for death.

Re: Always Own Your Platform

#168

Post by PeterisP »

llao wrote: post #150
PeterisP wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A comment function doesn't necessarily require a database lookup for every request, you can cache the blog page for a second or two so that it doesn't collapse when getting a hundred requests per second.

Yes and that makes things magnitudes more complex than just serving a static HTML page.

Not really, it's just basic configuration of nginx or something like that. Putting up nginx with microcaching in front of your webserver is literally a five minute task. If you have no idea on how to do it, then it's going to take half an hour with some tutorials, so even in that case it's not that much more work than serving a static HTML page.

Re: Always Own Your Platform

#169

Post by anderspitman »

vkou wrote: post #143
anderspitman wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the spirit of the post is going ahead and host your PC game on steam or whatever platform you want, but also host it on your own site so you're not completely beholden to a third party.

When you have no way of turning more then single-digit percentages of your Steam sales into your-channel sales, the difference between 'completely beholden' and 'not completely beholden' is academic. Can you handle a loss of 90% of your income? If not, it doesn't really matter that you have a side gig mowing lawns, in addition to your day job.

I suppose it depends on the circumstances. If the conditions under which steam no longer becomes viable are extreme enough, making a ruckus on Twitter would probably drive considerable traffic to your site.

Re: Always Own Your Platform

#170

Post by Vordimous »

ender7 wrote: post #125

Also, unavailable to most people. Yes, I suppose it was kind of nice when the internet was only available to the tech-savvy, to those who didn't mind maintaining a second job as a Unix administrator. But for people who just wanted to _write_, it was not welcoming. Yes, you can go to wordpress.com and sign up for your own blog, but then you're just on the wordpress platform, and subject to their whims. If your plan wo…

So I have been putting together a way for people to more easily make their own blogging platform. It would kind of mimic a blog or social media platform, but since everything is committed to a repository using the JAMstack it could easily be converted to a fully managed platform. Any feedback would be wonderful. https://your-media.netlify.com/post/make-your-own-media/ Everything is owned by the end user. This is only providing a recipe for people to use. I will also mention that https://www.stackbit.com/ is doing basically the same thing but more from a “Make life easier for Website designers” perspective.
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