Don't build your castle in other people's kingdoms • Hacker News Board

Re: Don't build your castle in other people's kingdoms

#71

Post by aunty_helen » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 5:37 PM UTC

> OnlyFans ALMOST banned porn which would have left content creators out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Only Fans (under heavy pressure) reversed the plan… for now.

This is the problem, at face value this happened and is now being used as evidence for the article's premise (which I enjoyed and agree with).

In reality it was a viral marketing move by onlyfans to promote porn on their website. You can't just come out and say to a bunch of Dads hey we got porn come take a look. But you can say hey we're banning all the massive amounts of porn we've got! oh no oops no we're not, all the porn you know and love is still there. We're sorry (TM)

Just like how no wives at some school are getting jelous how their husbands are looking at another mum's onlyfans... but I see paid articles about this all the time.

Re: Don't build your castle in other people's kingdoms

#72

Post by cowpig » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 5:37 PM UTC

jonny_eh wrote: post #28

Don't open your store in a mall. What if the mall closes or raises your rent?! (sarcasm!)

This is a facile comparison.

If your local mall was attempting to secure a de facto monopoly on all commercial real estate within driving distance, and was doing so by offering subsidized rents in the short-term funded by billion-dollar funds that demand a return on their investment, then you would have taken a few steps closer to, without having arrived at, an honest analogy

Re: Don't build your castle in other people's kingdoms

#73

Post by tommek4077 » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

sneak wrote: post #12

anm89 wrote: post #3

This lesson extends to almost everything in life. Too many people wrap up their goals and aspirations to things that are really someone elses thing at the end of the day. It frequently doesn't end well. This is a really great article.

Sadly you can't build apps that can send notifications on the most popular phone on the planet without subjecting yourself to arbitrary censorship by Apple and a 30% cut of revenues. You also can't build apps that use decentralized backends that receive notifications on that platform. All notifications have to come from the centralized app developer. Sharecropping is beginning to be the only way.

This is so great on the last android versions. I can shut all your noisy messages down. You think they are important, they are not.

Re: Don't build your castle in other people's kingdoms

#74

Post by gjvc » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 5:47 PM UTC

wise words

Re: Don't build your castle in other people's kingdoms

#75

Post by golemotron » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 5:47 PM UTC

The same message as this: https://blog.codinghorror.com/are-you-a-digital-sharecropper...

Re: Don't build your castle in other people's kingdoms

#76

Post by josephcsible » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 5:55 PM UTC

jonny_eh wrote: post #28

Don't open your store in a mall. What if the mall closes or raises your rent?! (sarcasm!)

If the mall kicks you out, or raises rent so high you can't afford to stay, there will be other nearby places to go, and it's easy to retain your customers when you move somewhere else. If Apple kicks you off of the App Store or YouTube bans you, it's way, way harder to keep your users or audience.

Re: Don't build your castle in other people's kingdoms

#77

Post by josephcsible » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 5:56 PM UTC

Kye wrote: post #68

lapinot wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The power relationship between a mall and a store has nothing to do with the one between you and some multi-billion dollar evil corp.

Simon Property Group isn't any more moral than Google or Amazon.

The point is that Simon's ability to harm you is way lower.

Re: Don't build your castle in other people's kingdoms

#78

Post by legrande » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 5:56 PM UTC

I never liked digital/virtual sharecropping. Hosting your own site might mean people can't discover you as easily, but if it means a service like Youtube/OnlyFans doesn't pull the rug from under your feet, then self-hosting is essential. I operate a BBS that has been going strong for over 15 years, and it's all self-hosted, well sort of (it's on a VPS) but the VPS provider is well-known and renowned and unlikely to go under anytime soon. The VPS provider also has many customers they wouldn't give up too easily.

That said: I have prepared myself if my BBS gets banned for whatever stupid reason. I've practiced and developed my own drill to get everything up and running again under a new provider should that happen. It's important to do this, because communities don't like down time and will go elsewhere like Discord etc if they notice a bunch of downtime on your server(s).

Re: Don't build your castle in other people's kingdoms

#79

Post by josephcsible » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 5:58 PM UTC

okhuman wrote: post #49

This message applies to your repo on Github too.

Not nearly to the same extent, though. It's easy to move your repo over to GitLab or Savannah or something if need be.

Re: Don't build your castle in other people's kingdoms

#80

Post by josephcsible » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 6:00 PM UTC

jnwatson wrote: post #52

This is the libertarian fantasy: just build the entire platform yourself and you don’t have to deal with the pesky decisions of other companies. Yes, you have to choose your dependencies carefully, but where does it end? Steam could go away tomorrow. The game engine you license could go out of business. Your hosting provider, your DNS provider could kick you off. If you don’t entertain new platforms, you are leaving…

> Steam could go away tomorrow.

Sell your game on your own website too.

> The game engine you license could go out of business.

Use a FOSS engine, so even if the original maintainers totally abandon it, someone else can fork it.

> Your hosting provider, your DNS provider could kick you off.

You can switch to a new hosting/DNS provider transparently to your customers.