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Squarespace to Go Private in $6.9B All-Cash Transaction with Permira

investors.squarespace.com

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Re: Squarespace to Go Private in $6.9B All-Cash Transaction with Permira

#371

Post by tga_d »

TylerE wrote: post #322
zoul wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a positive example, Mastodon seems to work fine.

Other than playing whack a mole to block all the neo nazi and other hate filled instances, which are legion.

It's definitely a thing, but IME hosting a small instance, it's really not that bad. My advice for new admins would be to 1. find a small, decently up-to-date block list as a starting point (I can recommend FediNuke [0]), 2. check the #FediBlock hashtag (using any Mastodon UI or the RSS feed automatically generated) once a day or so for any warnings about bot attacks, or any other things you would like to be super proactive about, 3. promptly respond to the (likely very infrequent) reports you get from your users.

I could see why this might not scale as well to instances with thousands of users, or if a user is a frequent target of harassment (where opt-in federation might be the only solution), but for our lab, the existence of all the nazi or whatever instances has been resolved via a simple "Oh, these again. click, click, click There, the whole instance is banned." a few times a year. I have a suspicion that Dunbar's number or lower might be the optimal size for any federated social media instance, since knowing every user on my instance makes it a lot easier to tailor the little effort I have to put in.

[0] https://seirdy.one/posts/2023/05/02/fediverse-blocklists/

Re: Squarespace to Go Private in $6.9B All-Cash Transaction with Permira

#372

Post by fragmede »

mattmaroon wrote: post #312
arrosenberg wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People hate on PE for good reason - they often make money by destroying good businesses. They sell off the valuable parts for profit, load the debts on what is left, and declare bankruptcy, leaving employees and customers holding the bag. PE is good business for the raiders, bad business for the raided.

That’s a strange cartoony impression that people here have but not generally what they do, even in the case of LBOs which I assume is what you’re referencing but only a small part of what PE firms do. They generally buy businesses that are managed poorly, manage them well, and fix them. And when they part one out like you are referencing, it’s usually a bad business. While what Eddie Lampert did to Sears/K-Mart was c…

it's like saying drugs are bad. there are definite harms done by cocaine, but penicillin has saved the world. PE'a easy to hate because, as a group, there are hateful things that happen. we don't have any mechanism for not letting the group be represented by an outlier individual.

Re: Squarespace to Go Private in $6.9B All-Cash Transaction with Permira

#373

Post by vincnetas »

pavlov wrote: post #172
renegade-otter wrote: post #60

The gold rush is over - private equity is going to squeeze every little drop from the companies that have been built and we will move on to Web 3.0 - which will be just like web 1.0 - self-hosting, link directories, newsletters, and guestbooks.

"Web3" was hijacked by cryptocurrency promoters as the marketing term for various get-rich-quick token schemes. (Generally what made them "web3" was simply that some venture capitalist had bought a bunch of the tokens early and would get to dump them on Coinbase.) If there's going to be a web 1.0 revival, maybe it needs to jump straight to version 5 to leave enough of a gap from the taint of blockchain...

tangential. when i was learning to program BASIC, one of advices that i got is to number your lines with 10 increment. 10, 20, 30 etc, so later you don't need to rewrite a lot when you need to insert some line. Yes you had to number your lines. I didn't question why though.

Re: Squarespace to Go Private in $6.9B All-Cash Transaction with Permira

#374

Post by DANmode »

bragr wrote: post #303
zoul wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a positive example, Mastodon seems to work fine.

Mastodon effectively democratizes the moderation to the huge group of server admins - who do a massive amount of unpaid labor. It definitely keeps some people away, and burns others out.

I'm still focused on the "effectively" part, since the other part has always been endemic to the Internet (and communities!).

Re: Squarespace to Go Private in $6.9B All-Cash Transaction with Permira

#375

Post by DANmode »

TylerE wrote: post #322
zoul wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a positive example, Mastodon seems to work fine.

Other than playing whack a mole to block all the neo nazi and other hate filled instances, which are legion.

Following the URL in your bio loads a gambling page.

Is your email still valid as listed?

Re: Squarespace to Go Private in $6.9B All-Cash Transaction with Permira

#376

Post by mschuster91 »

barkbyte wrote: post #357
mschuster91 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who'd guess why, Onlyfans (and related) spammers are the scourge of the Internet these days.

Google is the scourge.

I don't see OF spammers blasting Google with spam, but I see tons of OF (and other porn) spam on Twitter and Reddit.

Re: Squarespace to Go Private in $6.9B All-Cash Transaction with Permira

#377

Post by Corrado »

dawnerd wrote: post #171
xyst wrote: post #137

> Permira, the global private equity firm current Squarespace users about to get gouged

Conveniently after taking over all of Google Domains too! I missed transferring a couple of domains before the cutover and now I’m in squarespace hell trying to get them out. They make it so much harder by putting artificial delays on everything.

I had a couple of .dev domains on Google Domains. Unfortunately, you can't migrate those to another registrar as the .dev TLD is locked to Squarespace. I wonder if they will ever unlock the .dev TLD.

Re: Squarespace to Go Private in $6.9B All-Cash Transaction with Permira

#378

Post by johnnyanmac »

DANmode wrote: post #374
bragr wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mastodon effectively democratizes the moderation to the huge group of server admins - who do a massive amount of unpaid labor. It definitely keeps some people away, and burns others out.

I'm still focused on the "effectively" part, since the other part has always been endemic to the Internet (and communities !).

>the other part has always been endemic to the Internet (and communities!).

Indeed. But unlike machines (and AI, in the future), humans don't scale well. managing a potential audience of 10000 user with a few hundred commenters focused in a few countrie is an order of magnitude different from the millions of users with thousands of commenters and a very well established malicious actors with no respect for community.

It's more work, for more people, for less appreciation. It's also harder than ever to pay for labor as a small community, unless you are very well off.

Re: Squarespace to Go Private in $6.9B All-Cash Transaction with Permira

#379

Post by johnnyanmac »

tivert wrote: post #313
nicbou wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I'd like to see a web 1.0 revival, this won't happen. The traffic is controlled by Google and social networks. Most people don't have the skills needed to run their own website. A lot of valuable content is created by people without these sorts of skills.

>> The gold rush is over - private equity is going to squeeze every little drop from the companies that have been built and we will move on to Web 3.0 - which will be just like web 1.0 - self-hosting, link directories, newsletters, and guestbooks. > As much as I'd like to see a web 1.0 revival, this won't happen. > The traffic is controlled by Google and social networks. Maybe Web 1.0 won't return as the "dominant cu…

there's nothing technological stopping a subculture. It's just that network effects are extremely strong.

That and financial incentives. Substacks seems to be the most successful "web 1" implemenation in the past decade, but that still monetizes the idea (anthetical to a web 1 era).

Re: Squarespace to Go Private in $6.9B All-Cash Transaction with Permira

#380

Post by johnnyanmac »

Larrikin wrote: post #360
idontwantthis wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve thought about making my own homepage to replace my instagram/fb and share my life with my friends, but how would anyone find it? I guess I could email everyone and tell them. I’ve wondered if there is a way I could easily get that to the top of Google for my name, but there are a few famous people with my name.

If you're sharing it with your friends and family, why does it matter if Google can find it? And if they are your friends why wouldn't you share it with them directly? The Internet felt a lot better when people were making the content for themselves and a community that they were part of.

>and a community that they were part of.

well that's the issue. There is no "small community" these days like there would be in the Usenet days. At least not a genreal purpose one for blogging whatever is on your mind. My parents wouldn't really care much about the content so much as supporting me. My friends don't necessarily share all the same interests as me. So you want to seek out like strangers on the internet to bond with.

That's part of why we transitioned to early web 2.0 of utilizing a middleman to host content, and use that to attract a community. The internet grew and people could focus exclusively on what they were genuinely interested in, as opposed to subscribing to users directly.

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