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Always Own Your Platform (2019)

alwaysownyourplatform.com

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Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#51

Post by ocdtrekkie »

TranquilMarmot wrote: post #48
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…

The way I see it, Microsoft did that because they didn't view the web or mobile as mission-critical to their success as a business. Obviously they tried to invest in those areas and failed miserably (pre-Chromium Edge was awful, Windows Mobile was doomed to fail against iOS/Android). Here's an interesting breakdown of their profit: https://techbehemoths.com/blog/how-microsoft-makes-billions Azure is a huge cash cow,…

Azure, however, is a platform built atop the web platform. Google, a competitor with Azure, has complete control of the platform Azure is built on. Even if Edge or WinMo aren't successful in their own right, nobody in their right mind should hand the underpinnings of their business to a competitor.

Like, this would be if the US decided to use Russian rocket motors on their nuclear missiles because their best tech expertise was the warhead.

Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#53

Post by codedokode »

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 has not much value as a video hosting. You can host your video anywhere else easily.

Youtube's value is viewers that will accidentally discover your video. Nobody will watch your videos if you publish them at your own website.

Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#54

Post by rubyskills »

jlfyhilfyu wrote: post #49
bumper_crop wrote: post #31

From 2006 to 2014 I owned my own platform. Several actually. But I turned them down after it became a lot of work to maintain. At the time, it wasn't so obvious the web was dying, but in hindsight I probably helped kill it. In the beginning the web was so new, and growing so fast, with new things, amazing sites, and more people getting online. Like all things in life, competition arises, and better sites started gett…

While the damage is severe, I don't think it's permanent. Mastodon is far from a powerhouse, but is chugging along happily with a slowly growing user base. Matrix arrived just in time to help prevent Slack and Discord from becoming the defacto real-time communication systems for open source projects. Even SA is starting to heal now that it's out from under lowtax and his bullshit.

It's funny because you could argue that slack and discord replaced IRC. I wonder if we will have cycles or if commercial hosted solutions will always win this arms race.

Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#55

Post by 8bitsrule »

hsn915 wrote: post #32

As others have pointed out, there's currently no solution that allows common people to self host. There's a minimum level of linux/sysadmin/devops expertise requried to setup and maintain a self hosted website. I've written a somewhat long essay about this problem: https://hasen.substack.com/simple-self-hosting A solution is possible but no one is working on it yet as far as I can tell. Instead, everyone wants to mak…

> here's currently no solution that allows common people to self host.

And there sure as hell should be!

These days, a lot of people seem to be capable of installing a Linux OS on their machines. Their questions and problems have gotten a lot more sophisticated in recent years. A simple site should be hella easier.

I don't understand why such a basic and simple thing hasn't shown-up yet. I constantly run across people that aren't worried about money, just getting text and photos on a simple page and getting them online. The money thing could be a plug-in or something. A Webring plug-in would probably interest more people right away.

Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#56

Post by lancesells »

jlfyhilfyu wrote: post #49
bumper_crop wrote: post #31

From 2006 to 2014 I owned my own platform. Several actually. But I turned them down after it became a lot of work to maintain. At the time, it wasn't so obvious the web was dying, but in hindsight I probably helped kill it. In the beginning the web was so new, and growing so fast, with new things, amazing sites, and more people getting online. Like all things in life, competition arises, and better sites started gett…

While the damage is severe, I don't think it's permanent. Mastodon is far from a powerhouse, but is chugging along happily with a slowly growing user base. Matrix arrived just in time to help prevent Slack and Discord from becoming the defacto real-time communication systems for open source projects. Even SA is starting to heal now that it's out from under lowtax and his bullshit.

I agree with you. But I do think Mastodon and Matrix / Element all have a marketing problem. It's seems to be "here's a clone of a service you use but you own your content".

I'm not saying that they don't do things better but they don't market it that way. To beat Twitter be better than Twitter. Make something memorable and unique, give features that beat the stockholder driven choices of the other guys.

Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#57

Post by goplayoutside »

Pika Pods[0] (no affiliation) is an interesting take on facilitating self-hosting.

They offer a managed service that simplifies deployment of popular foss apps[1] using containerized SELinux. "Self Hosting as a Service"?

Their price estimates (shown on the apps page[1]) start at $1 - $2 per app, per month, a portion of which they share back to the app creators.

Previously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31284512

[0] https://www.pikapods.com/

[1] https://www.pikapods.com/apps

Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#58

Post by gjs278 »

bumper_crop wrote: post #31

From 2006 to 2014 I owned my own platform. Several actually. But I turned them down after it became a lot of work to maintain. At the time, it wasn't so obvious the web was dying, but in hindsight I probably helped kill it. In the beginning the web was so new, and growing so fast, with new things, amazing sites, and more people getting online. Like all things in life, competition arises, and better sites started gett…

No post body was provided.

Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#59

Post by digitallyfree »

neoromantique wrote: post #29
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.

Not just the data, but the infrastructure as well. A CDN lets me host on my own equipment rather than renting cloud compute - and I can change CDN providers anytime I like.

Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#60

Post by sanderjd »

lancesells wrote: post #56
jlfyhilfyu wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the damage is severe, I don't think it's permanent. Mastodon is far from a powerhouse, but is chugging along happily with a slowly growing user base. Matrix arrived just in time to help prevent Slack and Discord from becoming the defacto real-time communication systems for open source projects. Even SA is starting to heal now that it's out from under lowtax and his bullshit.

I agree with you. But I do think Mastodon and Matrix / Element all have a marketing problem. It's seems to be "here's a clone of a service you use but you own your content". I'm not saying that they don't do things better but they don't market it that way. To beat Twitter be better than Twitter. Make something memorable and unique, give features that beat the stockholder driven choices of the other guys.

Ok but going back to the grandparent's point: what is the incentive to do that? It's really hard to be better than Twitter. I know Twitter kind of sucks and everyone here thinks they have too many employees, but the truth is that all of those employees are doing stuff, that despite it kind of sucking, it remains incredibly hard and extremely expensive to actually make something better. I just don't see how these platforms can compete with the primary incentive structure being altruism. It's way too much to ask.
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