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Always Own Your Platform (2019)

alwaysownyourplatform.com

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Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#91

Post by donatj »

I was just wondering the other day why video podcasting wasn't more popular?

Back before YouTube was really used for series, I used to follow a decent number of video diaries essentially, RSS shows, with Miro (a video podcast player that doesn't exist anymore). Ask a Ninja, Hope is Emo, Rocket Boom, Scriggity - to name a few.

I mean, sure YouTubes ad model is probably a big part of it, I'm just surprised that aren't more channels that syndicate via RSS as well. I think the desire is there though in a lot of the community, fed up with the algorithm choosing what they actually end up seeing despite their subscriptions.

Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#92

Post by cmg »

sanderjd wrote: post #60
lancesells wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 plat…

> It's really hard to be better than Twitter.

It is, but right now people don't care as much about privacy as features and community. It's not what people who focus on openness or privacy want, but it's the reality. Where are the celebrities and brands? Where are the conversations happening? Where are my friends? This is the challenge.

Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#94

Post by rvz »

Exactly. Gab and Mastodon have done exactly that and are self-hosting. Whether if they are alternatives to Facebook, Twitter, etc is another story.

Both are failures in that regard and it is not early days.

Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#95

Post by sneak »

Facebook (Instagram) and Twitter convince you that getting followers is growth. All you're doing is donating content to them and giving them advertiser profiles so that they can sell your own audience back to you. Algorithmic timelines mean that "your" followers/subscribers see what the owners want them to see, and not the stuff from you that they explicitly subscribed to.

This website is good advice. Stop sharecropping for billionaires.

Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#96

Post by sneak »

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.

Slack and Discord are the de-facto realtime communication systems for open source projects, though. I wish it weren't so.

Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#97

Post by wcedmisten »

digitallyfree wrote: post #59
neoromantique wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you don't mind me asking, how do you have your own infrastructure configured?

I just recently set up my own blog on a DO droplet, which is fairly vendor-portable if I need to change cloud providers. I had always assumed that serving content over a non-commercial connection would have some issues, although this was more of a vague doubt in the back of my mind.

Do you worry about having greater exposure to (possibly malicious) outside traffic on your home network? Does your private ISP plan provide enough resources for hosting content?

Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#98

Post by bacon_waffle »

nmilo wrote: post #47
altdataseller wrote: post #5

Sounds cool in theory but almost impossible and impractical. For example, you can have a newsletter but google could decide your domain belongs in Spam forever. There goes that “owned platform”

The bin forever? I don't know anyone who gets their news and blog posts straight from Google search. Google can't stop you from putting up an RSS feed, sharing the link to friends, or posting it to content aggregators like HN or Reddit, which I think are far more important for building a real audience than Google search.

I interpreted the reference as being to Google's email product, not search.

As a techie (but not email expert), I have tried to run a couple small mailing lists for community projects over the years, and wound up giving up because of gmail/hotmail/etc's aggressive spam filters catching too many of our legit emails.

Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#99

Post by heywoodlh »

webmaven wrote: post #78
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…

> 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. Infrastructure isn't a platform, and vice versa. If Cloudflare started to make editorial decisions about which web traffic to "promote" to users, there would be hell to pay.

> Infrastructure isn't a platform, and vice versa.

I gave this some thought and after a bit I disagree with this.

Wasn't Parler an example of infrastructure being used to editorialize _against_ specific opinions and ideas?[1] As I understand it, they were kicked off of AWS and refused by multiple infrastructure providers for hosting content that was perceived as offensive and potentially dangerous. Is that not an example of infrastructure being part of the platform?

*I want to make clear I do not use Parler at all and am in no way stating I am either for or against it -- I just think it's an interesting example.

I would love to hear your perspective, though, on that.

To clarify, though, my original point is that "owning" your "platform" is subject to your values and experience. Do you agree with that? I actually have zero problems with anyone using Cloudflare, CDNs, etc, I just think it feels self righteous to encourage people to call out others for not owning their own content (which the original website does).

[1] https://time.com/5929888/amazon-parler-aws/

EDIT: forgot to add the link :)

Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#100

Post by heywoodlh »

rd07 wrote: post #87
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…

I think hosting a website in a low powered computer like Raspberry Pi can be an alternative to really own our platform. Granted, it can't handle big traffic, but it is cheap enough to built and maintain yourself.

Totally agreed. And what you said is in-line with my original thought that "owning" your "platform" is super subjective and opinionated. Some people think that infrastructure is part of your platform and some don't!
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