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Always Own Your Platform (2019)

alwaysownyourplatform.com

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Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#141

Post by webmaven »

FormerBandmate wrote: post #75
Method-X wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For most regular non-tech people this is true. I think it’s best to control your own platform but you can still leverage Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, etc to grow your brand and make sure they’re onboarded to your own platform of sorts.

Videos on YouTube will get 800x more views than views on yourownvideowebsite.com (assuming you aren’t a major Hollywood studio). Donald Trump went from 90 million followers on Twitter to 3.2 million followers on his own Twitter clone, and he has such a loyal following that people literally committed treason for him. Network effects are impossible to ignore

> Donald Trump went from 90 million followers on Twitter to 3.2 million followers on his own Twitter clone, and he has such a loyal following that people literally committed treason for him. Network effects are impossible to ignore

You're not wrong, but please note that those are Trump loyalists that followed him to a service that Trump didn't actually use until quite recently:

https://www.pcmag.com/news/trump-makes-first-post-on-truth-s...

It kind of seems that far from being ignored, network effects were the main reason Trump was using Twitter in the first place.

Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#142

Post by cehrlich »

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.

One thing I'd be curious to know is how large the current open platforms are compared to those of 20+ years ago. The internet as a whole is so much bigger that it's hard to maintain a sense of scale.

For example, how many people are using Matrix now, compared to IRC 20 years ago? IRC had 10M users in 2003 [1], Matrix has 28M 'global visible accounts', but who knows what that means.

Maybe it's ok for these platforms to remain 'small', growing slowly. Sure we'd all love to win the fight for a free internet tomorrow, but it's also important to maintain a realistic perspective.

Disclaimer: Usenet is still growing, but I presume that's just alt.binary - According to Wikipedia [1] it had 15M daily posts in 2010, and 171M daily posts in 2021.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_(protocol) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet

Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#143

Post by rapnie »

mrtksn wrote: post #140
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.

I've heard of Mastadon, even tried it but couldn't get any value of the contents on it. The last time I looked at it, most of the content was about Mastadon and welcome messages. I was expecting to see some crazy stuff like flat earthers or antivaxxers but even that was not available. I'm also not sure that I used it correctly, maybe I needed to find servers or something. Anyway, my point it is that the lack of disco…

> I'm also not sure that I used it correctly, maybe I needed to find servers or something.

You needed to find people to follow. Unlike corporate social media content is not pushed to you by algorithms. You have to build your own social network manually. Not doing so you have an empty personal timeline, and a too busy global timeline that is full of irrelevant stuff to you.

> Anyway, my point it is that the lack of discoverability is not just a marketing issue but it seems like baked in these platforms. Something is not there yet and that's why it's not growing like crazy.

Strange as it may sound on HN, but I am happy it is that way. There is a different culture now on the fediverse, and it is one that likely won't survive that 'crazy growth'.

Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#144

Post by sneak »

gerdesj wrote: post #36
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”

From your comment you seem to think that Google somehow owns your arse. Perhaps you use them for your email and other functions and fail to see over the top of their walled garden? There is no doubt that Google largely own Search and several other functions but they really don't own the internet as a whole. Often we see sad articles on HN about how the monster in the room twats someone into oblivion thanks to a stupi…

What GP meant is that Google owns the email of all the people you would send mail to, and can decide that all messages from you go unseen by your recipients.

Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#145

Post by Santosh83 »

8bitsrule wrote: post #55
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 peopl…

They haven't shown up because non-tech people don't demand it. They cave in and use one of the managed solutions like wordpress dot com, squarespace etc. A group of devs need to create a solution even without demand & set about popularising it, which is very hard, when most people are satisfied with cloud solutions and don't see the danger that their data could be lost or vendor captured or censored arbitrarily. The second issue is network effects, where these cloud services provide exposure to your content and provide you exposure to related content, which as a self hoster, you must do for yourself.

Combined, both problems seem to be remarkably hard when viewed at closeup detail, especially when pitched to "point and click" users with minimal willingness to hack at the command line.

Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#146

Post by spidey1 »

luckydenvermint wrote: post #83
mawise wrote: post #4

Haven[1] is your own platform for publishing privately when you're not trying to "build an audience" [1]: https://havenweb.org

Interesting. How's that differ from PostHaven [1]? [1]: https://posthaven.com

Looks like havenweb can be self hosted and posthaven doesn’t offer that.

Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#147

Post by rapnie »

Method-X wrote: post #65
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…

For most regular non-tech people this is true. I think it’s best to control your own platform but you can still leverage Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, etc to grow your brand and make sure they’re onboarded to your own platform of sorts.

> to grow your brand

Well, yes, if that is what you want to do. If you just want to be you online, and not 'grow a brand' it is best having a platform where you are in more control of doing so than these corporate advertising platforms that are indeed tailored to building brands.

Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#148

Post by mrtksn »

rapnie wrote: post #143
mrtksn wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard of Mastadon, even tried it but couldn't get any value of the contents on it. The last time I looked at it, most of the content was about Mastadon and welcome messages. I was expecting to see some crazy stuff like flat earthers or antivaxxers but even that was not available. I'm also not sure that I used it correctly, maybe I needed to find servers or something. Anyway, my point it is that the lack of disco…

> I'm also not sure that I used it correctly, maybe I needed to find servers or something. You needed to find people to follow. Unlike corporate social media content is not pushed to you by algorithms. You have to build your own social network manually. Not doing so you have an empty personal timeline, and a too busy global timeline that is full of irrelevant stuff to you. > Anyway, my point it is that the lack of di…

That doesn't make sense though unless there's a directory of recommendation engine or search engine for interesting people. Otherwise it means that I'm supposed to follow people that I already know, which is ridiculous because I don't want yet another channel to see the same stuff I already see.

On HN there's the front page where interesting stuff is curated algorithmically and smart people that I don't follow or know perviously make interesting comments on that stuff. Mastadon doesn't seem to offer anything like that.

Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#149

Post by spatley »

lmm wrote: post #105
spatley wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The day cloudflare starts filtering individual pieces of content, I would get out fast. FB, twitter, et. al. show me what they think will keep me looking at them for as long as possible. It is only coincidence that it is sometimes content I actually want. If I can get all my friends to just post by RSS I don’t need or want anything else those platforms do.

How are you defining "filtering individual pieces of content"? Cloudflare kicked off The Daily Stormer and acknowledged that they were doing so as their own choice for political reasons.

That is the very issue I consider. The Daily Stormer block was done to an entire business which is a different thing than prioritizing some posts over others from the same source. It is worth discussing cloudflare’s decision to block the Stormer. But that is different than Facebook’s optimization AI choosing to not show me posts from people I choose to follow. Both are potentially concerning and complex, but I consider them to be separate topics.

Re: Always Own Your Platform (2019)

#150

Post by hsn915 »

Santosh83 wrote: post #145
8bitsrule wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 peopl…

They haven't shown up because non-tech people don't demand it. They cave in and use one of the managed solutions like wordpress dot com, squarespace etc. A group of devs need to create a solution even without demand & set about popularising it, which is very hard, when most people are satisfied with cloud solutions and don't see the danger that their data could be lost or vendor captured or censored arbitrarily. The…

The command line is half the problem. The solution should not require command line chops. Should just be a GUI.
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