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Always Own Your Platform (2019)

alwaysownyourplatform.com

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Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#21

Post by al_borland »

azangru wrote: post #14
benoliver999 wrote: post #8

Really hard for non-techies; even a hosted WordPress isn't easy to use. I've been asked a few times 'I want to write online, what do I do?' and it's hard to find easy to use answers that don't involve vendor lock-in. Or me having to provide support forever. SSGs with plain text files are brilliant once you are set up, but it's a big hurdle getting there. Best I can do is try to find platforms with sane exit strategie…

> Really hard for non-techies Yes; but it’s not like even that many techies host their own content. I love how Jeremy Keith copies everything he tweets to his own site [0]. Wanted to check how he set it all up; but his site isn’t open-sourced. [0] - https://adactio.com

Looks like it's the other way around. He posts on his site and it syndicates to the other platforms.

https://youtu.be/X3SrZuH00GQ?t=852

Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#22

Post by bin_bash »

dibujante wrote: post #12
azangru wrote: post #9

> Facebook, Google, Twitter, Medium, and YouTube entice us to give them our creative work. It's time to take it back ... Stop giving away your work to people who don't care about it. Host it yourself. So, youtube, right? Where would you host your videos if you had a mind to take them back?

I would simply spend millions of dollars serving my own viral videos.

paid for with what, patreon?

Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#23

Post by heywoodlh »

> Distribute [your content] via methods you control.

I'm being nitpicky but it feels off to me to call people out on owning their own platform but then use Cloudflare's CDN instead of running their own. And if they did run their own CDN, they would probably have to use AWS or another worldwide cloud provider and not own the hardware. And if I were Richard Stallman I would probably come down on you for using proprietary chipsets in your hardware instead of totally open source hardware. And you can just keep going deeper and deeper with this train of thought. So what level of ownership is acceptable to this website's author? I feel like the right balance of "ownership" is super subjective.

I love a lot of traits of the "old-school" web and am a huge believer in self-hosting as much as possible. But imo yelling at people while on your high horse doesn't encourage anyone.

Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#24

Post by wolpoli »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #19

What's always blown my mind is the trend for businesses to fail to understand this. Building your entire company around AWS means a future competitor also already has full control of your company and access to your data. And I think the most hilarious example is Microsoft, a trillion-dollar level company which chose to hand over the entirety of the web (by switching to Chromium) and mobile (by abandoning WinMo for An…

Microsoft tried to continue to maintain their own browser for years without any market share to show for it. For whatever reason, the browser just couldn't match the level of polish in Google Chrome or Apple Safari.

This current situation is stable for Microsoft - the fact that Microsoft is gaining market share with Edge means that Microsoft could threaten to fork Chromium, thus keeping Google in check there.

...as for mobile. I agree and wish Microsoft good luck.

Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#25

Post by azangru »

al_borland wrote: post #21
azangru wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Really hard for non-techies Yes; but it’s not like even that many techies host their own content. I love how Jeremy Keith copies everything he tweets to his own site [0]. Wanted to check how he set it all up; but his site isn’t open-sourced. [0] - https://adactio.com

Looks like it's the other way around. He posts on his site and it syndicates to the other platforms. https://youtu.be/X3SrZuH00GQ?t=852

Even better! The true POSSE spirit!

Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#26

Post by rapind »

heywoodlh wrote: post #23

> Distribute [your content] via methods you control. I'm being nitpicky but it feels off to me to call people out on owning their own platform but then use Cloudflare's CDN instead of running their own. And if they did run their own CDN, they would probably have to use AWS or another worldwide cloud provider and not own the hardware. And if I were Richard Stallman I would probably come down on you for using proprieta…

Just like security, you settle for the risk you can afford and are comfortable with.

The cloud muddies your grasp of the risks though. A lot of these cloud offerings (like k8s) are incredibly complex, and therefore have a lot of attack vectors, and a lot of points of failure. We depend on layers built on layers, built on layers. You can't really eliminate all of these dependencies, but you can eliminate / reduce some of the highest risk ones (topmost layers).

Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#27

Post by azangru »

hammock wrote: post #18
azangru wrote: post #9

> Facebook, Google, Twitter, Medium, and YouTube entice us to give them our creative work. It's time to take it back ... Stop giving away your work to people who don't care about it. Host it yourself. So, youtube, right? Where would you host your videos if you had a mind to take them back?

YouTube can be used as a host yet not as a platform. Make all your videos unlisted and just use video player on your website.

But that’s not owning your platform. What if youtube decides that your video is in violation of some community guidelines and deletes it?

Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#28

Post by 3np »

benoliver999 wrote: post #8

Really hard for non-techies; even a hosted WordPress isn't easy to use. I've been asked a few times 'I want to write online, what do I do?' and it's hard to find easy to use answers that don't involve vendor lock-in. Or me having to provide support forever. SSGs with plain text files are brilliant once you are set up, but it's a big hurdle getting there. Best I can do is try to find platforms with sane exit strategie…

May be worth considering: Lightweight ActivityPub writing platform, straightforward to self-host but there are also managed hosts: https://writefreely.org/

Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#29

Post by neoromantique »

heywoodlh wrote: post #23

> Distribute [your content] via methods you control. I'm being nitpicky but it feels off to me to call people out on owning their own platform but then use Cloudflare's CDN instead of running their own. And if they did run their own CDN, they would probably have to use AWS or another worldwide cloud provider and not own the hardware. And if I were Richard Stallman I would probably come down on you for using proprieta…

Having CF handle your CDN proxying is still much better than just using some all in one platform. At least you own your data and can migrate it if need be.
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