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Can we all stop using Medium now?

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Re: Can we all stop using Medium now?

#181

Post by kkarakk »

HatchedLake721 wrote: post #154
sdan wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use DigitalOcean One-click instances, and it essentially makes it for you with all the necessary steps. It's super simple. I used that a while back and now run it on Docker on GCP since DO was a bit expensive.

Right, I’ll also teach my mom some DevOps and Kubernetes along the way since she has to use Digital Ocean and Docker for her knitting blog.

if your mum actually wants to own/monetise her knitting blog SOMEONE will have to do this anyways. Stop putting effort into things that only benefit someone else(Medium). I'm not advocating monetising your hobby but instead that no one else should own content you create and do awkward things with it that you don't sanction or condone

Re: Can we all stop using Medium now?

#183

Post by Radle »

Udik wrote: post #145
ahje wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDPR covers personal data -- not content.

Hm hm, are you sure? And what is the difference between personal data and content? My pictures are pd or content? And if I publish them?

Personal data can be used to identify you. Email, Full Name, Address, Nationality, Spoken Languages etc.

Some of these are very direct like your name and address. But since other personal data can be combined to create an identifying fingerprint of you it may or may not be covered.

There's a gray area in between of course were you really need to check the legal situation, but public content on a public forum is definitely not covered.

Re: Can we all stop using Medium now?

#184

Post by ahje »

orbat wrote: post #176
ahje wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regula... Now, obvliously, the content may contain personal data, or possibly be personal data (if it's pictures of people) and in that case I assume it would be covered.

I'm not convinced your interpretation is correct. GDPR Article 4[1] states that "personal data" means "any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’)", so it covers anything you produce that's somehow related to you. [1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...

Well, as said, if the content itself can be considered personal data then sure.

Re: Can we all stop using Medium now?

#185

Post by silveroriole »

Seems like not many commenters are giving a perspective on why people might like Medium more than going to a personal blog. Here’s mine.

As a reader, I usually don’t care who wrote the post I’m reading. I also don’t care about seeing more content from the same person, which is all I would get on a personal blog; in fact, I would prefer to see related content but different viewpoints from other people, which is what Medium shows me. I want to read them all in the same format, not hop between different blog layouts. I want them all to have consistent like/comment mechanics. As a reader, sorry, I just don’t care about your personal brand or platform. I want to easily read a lot of stuff by different people on a topic.

Never used it as a writer, but why should individuals have to set up their own SEO, comment system, blog system, etc just to post an article? Because they think that they’re so important or controversial that they need a personal space/brand? For most writers I think you get a lot for free with Medium.

Re: Can we all stop using Medium now?

#186

Post by dspillett »

KingMachiavelli wrote: post #92
55555 wrote: post #65

I was writing on Medium because it ranks well in Google. I wrote nearly a dozen really great articles on primarily health and dietary supplement topics. After 2 months they started to rank well and were getting daily readers, as the content was really great. Then I wrote an article on a 'research chemical' and they banned my account overnight. I lost the final edited versions of all content. They did not send me a zi…

I wonder if anything has changed since GDPR passed as I am pretty sure you are suppose to be able to download your content but I'm not sure how that works when accounts are deleted and/or banned. Regarding your situation and concerns of other comments... Many people in this thread point out that marketing and creating an audience is difficult work. But I think obvious-in-hindsight solution is to always keep a backup…

> pretty sure you are suppose to be able to download your content

I'm not sure that such content would count, though I'd have to review the wording of the GDPR to be sure. Its intent is to cover information about you that companies/people have collected or derived - which may not include things you have written about other things.

Even if the GDPRs "right to know what is stored about you" provisions does cover this sort of content, if they have truly deleted the it then they don't have to provide it as they don't have it to provide, and they are not compelled to keep it so that they can provide it on request. I have no idea whether they do truly delete the content in these cases or not, but they might if they've taken it offline due to a generic "inappropriate content" rule: if I deemed something posted to my site inappropriate I would want it properly gone so it couldn't be accidentally made available on my platform again due to some future cock-up on my part. Their ToS and other documentation my offer some clarity on what their policy is here.

As a side note (with somewhat insincere apologies for how snarky I am about to sound): regulations & laws aside, I tend to have little sympathy for people who keep data in an external system with no local (or otherwise independent) backup!

Re: Can we all stop using Medium now?

#187

Post by Udik »

Radle wrote: post #183
Udik wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm hm, are you sure? And what is the difference between personal data and content? My pictures are pd or content? And if I publish them?

Personal data can be used to identify you. Email, Full Name, Address, Nationality, Spoken Languages etc. Some of these are very direct like your name and address. But since other personal data can be combined to create an identifying fingerprint of you it may or may not be covered. There's a gray area in between of course were you really need to check the legal situation, but public content on a public forum is defin…

I'd say that while a single comment on a forum might not be enough to identify you, the sum of your comments can easily do (because of pieces of personal information you let slip in this or that comment); then everything you write must be considered personal data, unless there is a way to tell apart or remove the personal information from your comments.

Think about pictures: the picture of a landscape you took on a holiday doesn't identify you, but other pictures in your library might do (they contain faces, places, etc.). All together, the pictures can tell who you are and where you've been and when and with whom.

Re: Can we all stop using Medium now?

#189

Post by srrr »

fiala__ wrote: post #169
Jerry2 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you write articles on Medium keep in mind you're writing on someone else's website and they don't give a damn about you. You are subject to their opinions about what is appropriate and what isn't. Same can be said about other platforms like YouTube etc. When you produce content for all these mega-platforms, you're nothing more than a sharecropper... a digital one. [0] You really have no rights and you're at th…

The problem with YouTube specifically, is that while blog posts are easy to host on pretty much anything that has a CPU, self-hosting videos at scale is essentially impossible. So while Medium only added a marginal amount of convenience for your average blogger, YouTube straight up enabled the kind of content it hosts.

Is it really Impossible to selfhost videos? My 5€ webhosting has 250GB storage and unlimited traffic and every decent CMS has video capabilities.

I think the hosting is not the problem. But the social features that YouTube provides are not easily replaced...

Re: Can we all stop using Medium now?

#190

Post by ralphstodomingo »

fiala__ wrote: post #169
Jerry2 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you write articles on Medium keep in mind you're writing on someone else's website and they don't give a damn about you. You are subject to their opinions about what is appropriate and what isn't. Same can be said about other platforms like YouTube etc. When you produce content for all these mega-platforms, you're nothing more than a sharecropper... a digital one. [0] You really have no rights and you're at th…

The problem with YouTube specifically, is that while blog posts are easy to host on pretty much anything that has a CPU, self-hosting videos at scale is essentially impossible. So while Medium only added a marginal amount of convenience for your average blogger, YouTube straight up enabled the kind of content it hosts.

This. And even if you manage to somehow self-host your videos, YouTube is also a discovery service for these videos. Think about how many times you looked for a video on a certain topic in YouTube's search bar itself, the recommendations and the Trending tab.
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