Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again

Going more to the topic of the article rather than platform wars:

In moving to Mastodon from X a few years ago, I didn't want my content to be owned by a platform, but I also just don't have it in my to write blog posts, posting threads bit by bit works better for my brain.

So my solution was to write a script that took that any thread I start with a certain hashtag in it, and threadreader-style mirror it to a basic HTML page on my own website[0]. That way, if my Mastodon account ever goes away, all the threads I actually put any effort into are preserved.

[0] https://kalleboo.com/microblog/ I'm intro retrotech so this site is designed/constructed so aside from the videos it works fine on a Mac with a 25 MHz 68040 CPU. All the data is stored in a big JSON file so I can re-format it whenever I want.

They banned Laura Looner for just showing up.

> "...other useful things, but they didnt"

But they did. Nobody pays for X premium just to get a blue tick. Being verified I guess is part of it, but they're paying to get other things including less ads, Grok access, longer posts & videos, communities, media studio, monetization, and other things.

I think the entire attitude of the author coming in to this is wrong. It's zero sum. It's an assumption that you're either gaining from the platform or the platform is gaining from you. This is wrong. The platform has network effects that make everyone well off. Google owns Youtube, yes it gets enormous value from creating/owning the platform. But Youtube isn't exploiting Mr Beast, Mr Beast also gains enormous value from the platform and provides enormous value to the platform, it's a symbiotic relationship.

Sure, it's true at some point that the Platform could, for whatever reason, decide it would rather suck you dry than continue the symbiotic relationship, that does happen.

But here's the core of the problem - by putting yourself half out of the platform, trying to direct people off to your own website, by gating your content etc. You are damaging the platform. All that massive surplus that is created by having everyone in one place sharing in one common way? It won't exist if you're not participating in it.

I can open a shop in the centre of london. I'm going to pay high rents, but I'm also going to gain massive benefits from all the people in London who can come and buy stuff from my shop. It's a win for everyone. You're going to open a shop in the centre of London and when someone walks in the front door you're going to say "Oh well here's all the stuff I sell, but to actually buy it you need to come visit my farm in Norfolk". You see how this doesn't make sense right?

And laying aside whether you should do this, any platform that wants to survive is going to massively penalize your behaviour because you're freeloading, you're damaging the platform. You want surplus but you don't want to let anyone else benefit.

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