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Can we all stop using Medium now?

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Re: Can we all stop using Medium now?

#291

Post by vonmoltke »

corobo wrote: post #272
vonmoltke wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're really careful with how you do things the IP address could be argued to not be personal information Current guidance (from the legal profession, not the HN peanut gallery) is that IPs are standalone personal data.

You got a source on that if you're going to be referring to the rest of us as a peanut gallery? Everything I know and have found says IPs are classed as personal data only if combined with other data. I've yet to find anything that supports your claim, which is why I changed my mind on this.

> You got a source on that if you're going to be referring to the rest of us as a peanut gallery?

Nothing that isn't privileged information, unfortunately.

> Everything I know and have found says IPs are classed as personal data only if combined with other data. I've yet to find anything that supports your claim, which is why I changed my mind on this.

Recital 30 (https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-30/) says "in particular" when combined with other information, but the addition of that phrase indicates this is not the only case. The accuracy of your statement depends on how you interpret that recital. Based on this case (https://www.alstonprivacy.com/ecj-declares-ip-addresses-pers...) I suspect the broader interpretation is the one that would win over regulators.

Additionally, the information about that case states there is clear agreement that static IPs are personal data, which alone contradicts your belief.

Re: Can we all stop using Medium now?

#292

Post by dasil003 »

irrational wrote: post #258
ralphstodomingo wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>if you manager to somehow self-host your videos... Wait, we've been self-hosting our own videos for years. It's not exactly rocket science. YouTube is convenient, but what it is doing from a technical standpoint isn't that difficult to do on your own server.

Yeah, it’s almost trivial as long as none of those videos get popular...

Re: Can we all stop using Medium now?

#294

Post by jesseschalken »

silveroriole wrote: post #185

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 M…

> 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.

This is an important point. There is a small mental burden users face every time they see a new website and have to understand how it has been laid out and where things are and what they mean. Medium gives users "just the content" in the same familiar layout to streamline the process.

Not to mention the sites that have silly disorienting scrolling effects, with things moving around while they slowly load, or are barely even functional on mobile. Although these tend not to be problems for the average blog.

Re: Can we all stop using Medium now?

#296

Post by zamadatix »

__HYde wrote: post #284
thefounder wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I have no doubt if an alt-right voice wrote on Medium and were controversial enough in their views they'd be deplatformed. But also the way they handle it is just rude. Fuck them. Well fuck alt right too! They can get their own website after all. Why should Medium or any other company have to host their shit? People act like they have some kind of right to have their crap hosted by someone else. Companies are not…

What if they host their own shit on a VPS but the hosting provider bans them. What if their domain name gets revoked by the registrar?

You can either make things a public service, try to codify into law what content a business must and must not engage in faster than content changes, or have some content businesses are not going to host.

And it doesn't have to be universal. E.g. you could decide DNS and internet access need to be a public service but since those two are always available you don't need to try to regulate the content on VPS since self hosting is an option.

Re: Can we all stop using Medium now?

#297

Post by Faark »

jasode wrote: post #287
irrational wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>if you manager to somehow self-host your videos... Wait, we've been self-hosting our own videos for years. It's not exactly rocket science. YouTube is convenient, but what it is doing from a technical standpoint isn't that difficult to do on your own server.

>It's not exactly rocket science. YouTube is convenient, but what it is doing from a technical standpoint isn't that difficult to do on your own server. You've left several comments in this thread talking down to people as if they're ignorant about how to write an HTML5 tag on their own web server. I wasn't the one that downvoted your comment but for some reason, a lot of technical folks like you misunderstand Youtub…

Do you have a trustworthy source for MS "switching" to Youtube? Their self hosted videos of Build 2019 [0] is what they directed me to when i was searching for sessions. I later found Youtube versions through some other source as well (probably a link on HN), but this seems more of a PR move ("we don't do evil walled garden anymore") to me than a technical necessity.

I do agree with your core message, that video is hard and not something a small player should build their own solution for. But saying video is to hard even for Microsoft seems a bit of a stretch...

[0] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/build eg https://mybuild.techcommunity.microsoft.com/sessions/77571

Re: Can we all stop using Medium now?

#298

Post by pbhjpbhj »

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…

T&Cs may say otherwise but if they keep copies then it seems copyright law is probably better here than GDPR (which really covers PII). I'm not sure you could get them to hand over copies though (eg in their backup archives) but you could make them destroy those copies, in theory.

Re: Can we all stop using Medium now?

#299

Post by ralphstodomingo »

irrational wrote: post #258
ralphstodomingo wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>if you manager to somehow self-host your videos... Wait, we've been self-hosting our own videos for years. It's not exactly rocket science. YouTube is convenient, but what it is doing from a technical standpoint isn't that difficult to do on your own server.

Okay, you're clearly missing the point here. Sure, you can upload them videos and put them in a page somewhere, hosted by a web server somewhere. But why would you do that?

The cost of keeping your videos accessible are higher than keeping a typical blog accessible. Storage and bandwidth are obvious ones. How do you get ad networks to monetize your videos, if you want to? How'd you get people to discover your videos, as they are not first-class citizens of a search result page? Where do people even watch videos these days? Everything is on Facebook or YouTube.

You can somehow self-host your videos, but even if you manage to do so, your original purpose for doing it in the first place won't be met, it simply isn't worth it.

Contrast this with Medium, where there are not as many benefits for letting them benefit from your content. Hosting plaintext or markup is trivial, easier to maintain a blog with stuff like Wordpress than to learn how to manage your own server directly to optimize for video. There are a lot of aggregators like HN and Reddit that are populated mostly by blog content, and even if you don't resort to these, your pages are first-class eligible citizens in search results.

Heck, even the policy regarding discussions not being actively shown may hurt your specific type of content. Moderation is tolerable with Disqus, for example.

Re: Can we all stop using Medium now?

#300

Post by srrr »

brokenkebab wrote: post #288
srrr wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

It's better to keep in mind that promises of unlimited traffic usually countered by fine text provisions, which your hosting company will invoke once your website starts to be a nuisance for them. Various companies have different levels of tolerance, and actually it's a sort of problem with these "unlimited" offers that you won't know when it hits.

I asked them and for up to 40TB/month it's okay. This is 80000 views of 10 minutes full hd video. The chance that someone gets this popular is quite small.

If you are really really popular investing in a cdn is likely the only solution and for this you need some money, be it from advertising, donations or memberships. But this is the same on Youtube too, only that Youtube does the advertising for you and takes a cut.

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