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Medium bans user for Chrome extension that opened articles in incognito mode

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Re: Medium bans user for Chrome extension that opened articles in incognito mode

#61

Post by mcv »

bluGill wrote: post #54
mcv wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is hard for non-technical people and I want to hear what they have to say. I agree, so maybe we should work towards making it easier for them. I was thinking about spending my Christmas break fixing Friendica bugs, but now I'm suddenly thinking about building my own ActivityPub blogging platform (though no doubt one already exists). But of course that's not going to be enough; it needs to be trivial to deploy…

Please avoid building another platform. Odds are there is something that is close that needs a lot of help. I know sometimes there is a project that looks good but the maintainers are impossible to get along with. Thus there is sometimes a need to start over. Most of the time though what platforms need is more people to help out: fix bugs, write documentation, translate the UI, run UX tests. That is all the thankless…

Sounds like a vote to stick with my promise to help Friendica. I've got to admit my main issue with it is that it's in PHP. A lot of these platforms seem to be, and I'd rather work on something in, for example, Svelte+Node.js or something.

Re: Medium bans user for Chrome extension that opened articles in incognito mode

#62

Post by henrylim96 »

pedro_hab wrote: post #50
mhb wrote: post #37

How does Medium link what some person does as a project to some person who puts content on Medium? What's their authentication mechanism for doing this linking? Maybe he just said "Yeah, that's me."?

He probably wrote an medium article on it. lol

No. I was too lazy to write an article for that The only place I mentioned it was on my Twitter (https://twitter.com/henrylim96/status/1529055034385780737) and on my GitHub.

Re: Medium bans user for Chrome extension that opened articles in incognito mode

#63

Post by DoItToMe81 »

drcongo wrote: post #24
james_pm wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why move from one corporate entity to another? Substack will end up going down the same road in time. Get your own domain, fire up a CMS and start publishing on something you control and own.

Quoted post unavailable.

I've never met a normal or relatively normal person who viewed Substack that way. Most people have the knowledge to separate a handful of blogs from the way a site runs.

Re: Medium bans user for Chrome extension that opened articles in incognito mode

#64

Post by mrzool »

onionisafruit wrote: post #58
mrzool wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This. You're not on Reddit, pal.

“This” is fine as long as it isn’t the only content of the comment. It is simply a signal that the following text isn’t meant to contradict what they are replying to. It’s a simple shorthand for “I wholeheartedly agree, and furthermore …”

I find it irritating, but I can see your point.

Re: Medium bans user for Chrome extension that opened articles in incognito mode

#65

Post by NotPractical »

Brajeshwar wrote: post #16

If you are a builder/creator (even hobbies, with 2 users) and generate contents, please get your own domain. Either you use a service/tool or otherwise but own the content. If you use a service and is important enough, take backups. Own your content, use eveything else as tools. These days, the question I usually ask is, "Can I walk out of this and what do I have to do if I need to?"

Domains are super cheap and easy to get. Everyone should have one (especially anyone who calls themself a hacker). Ideally you would also self-host your servers, but having your own domain is the most important thing, because you can always change your hosting provider, whereas it is impossible to go back in time and rewrite all of the links to your old (now deleted) medium.com blog. "Owning" a domain just means you get to route DNS lookups for that domain to any IP address of your choosing, which can be your own IP, Amazon's IP, GitHub's IP, or any other IP.

GitHub Pages (or GitLab Pages, if you prefer) will host your website for free. You don't even have to know HTML to make your site look fancy, just basic Markdown; GitHub will run your Markdown files through the Jekyll static site generator by default (this can be disabled by adding a blank ".nojekyll" file to the root of your repository).

Assuming you have a GitHub account and that you only need to serve static (HTML/JS/CSS) files, launching a site with your very own domain name is as easy as:

1. Buy a domain from the registrar of your choice

2. Create a repository called ".github.io" and a "index.md" or "index.html" at the root

3. Go to /.github.io/settings/pages" rel="nofollow">https://github.com//.github.io/s..., select the "master" branch as the publishing source, and enter your domain (excluding the "www.") under "custom domain"

6. Go to your domain registrar's website, and find your DNS settings. Create four "A" records pointing to GitHub's IP addresses: "185.199.108.153", "185.199.109.153", "185.199.110.153", and "185.199.111.153". Create a "CNAME" record pointing "www." to ".github.io"

Then if GitHub decides to block/censor/ban you, all you have to do is switch to a different provider (or potentially self-host). If your registrar blocks you, you can transfer your domain to another one.

Re: Medium bans user for Chrome extension that opened articles in incognito mode

#67

Post by pannSun »

kshay wrote: post #45

When submitting an extension to the Chrome Web Store you’re asked for a written justification for why it needs to run against the sites/URLs specified in the manifest. I’m curious how closely anyone at Google examines these; if this is such a clear ToS violation then maybe it shouldn’t have been approved? (Edit: I’m not asserting that it is in fact a violation, but that its having been approved suggests it didn’t see…

> if this is such a clear ToS violation then maybe it shouldn’t have been approved?

Maybe user software shouldn't be enforcing arbitrary ToS, but should instead obey the user? Do we really want corporations colluding with each-other to enforce their whims over us through their products that we are surrounded by, and are becoming necessary for modern life? What next, disk firmware scanning for copyright violations?

I'm sorry if this comes off as harsh, but I am sick of people using the ToS (that a company can make up at will) as any kind of justification, pro- or against. They can and do write anything they want there.

Re: Medium bans user for Chrome extension that opened articles in incognito mode

#68

Post by JeremyNT »

james_pm wrote: post #4
donatj wrote: post #2

Medium lived long enough to become the villain. It was honestly quite the heel turn, but they’re all in. As far as I am concerned everyone should just move to substack at this point.

Why move from one corporate entity to another? Substack will end up going down the same road in time. Get your own domain, fire up a CMS and start publishing on something you control and own.

> Why move from one corporate entity to another? Substack will end up going down the same road in time. Get your own domain, fire up a CMS and start publishing on something you control and own.

It's quite weird to see people fawning over the latest startup blogging platforms in 2022.

While people have been migrating to/from medium and substack, wordpress.com has been here the whole time, and it's still quite OK. The killer feature it has, of course, is that because it is open source you can export your data and run it yourself should things go sour (or if you just outgrow it).

Whatever features substack/medium/whatever closed source platform may have that you think you really need, the anti-feature of lockin is not worth it.

Re: Medium bans user for Chrome extension that opened articles in incognito mode

#69

Post by mindslight »

ncphil wrote: post #42
brookst wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree in principle, but for people who just want to focus on their project, it’s a heavy tax to learn how domains and content and everything work. Medium’s promise is “you focus on writing, we’ll deal with distributing.” They don’t live up to that promise in lots of ways, but it’s hard to fault someone for not wanting to deal with the tech.

Is learning how to navigate the DMV system in any US state less "heavy"? I think Medium and others contribute to the problem by perpetuating the myth that ordinary folks can't do it/ it's just too hard. How we break through that is something to think about.

Yes, if you just show up to the DMV they will tell you what you need to do. You only need to self-actualize and figure things out ahead of time to get things done faster than multiple iterations of going there and waiting in line. Remember, the DMV has to deal with the below average members of the public.

For the topic's problem, I'd love to see some automated setup app that would take a "VPS host account", and do all of the installation/configuration to support service(s) running Free software to accomplish a high level task (eg a blog). Like a graphical NixOps with precanned configurations.

You'd need to initially cut down the number of options (say VPS account must be at one of 2 hosts, domain must be at one of 2 registrars), but I think the main problem would be trying to straddle so many abstraction levels.

Re: Medium bans user for Chrome extension that opened articles in incognito mode

#70

Post by xtracto »

Brajeshwar wrote: post #16

If you are a builder/creator (even hobbies, with 2 users) and generate contents, please get your own domain. Either you use a service/tool or otherwise but own the content. If you use a service and is important enough, take backups. Own your content, use eveything else as tools. These days, the question I usually ask is, "Can I walk out of this and what do I have to do if I need to?"

I don't understand why people use Medium or similar gated blogging platforms. It is so easy to use Wordpress. You can get a domain name with managed wordpress install ready to roll for less than $50 a year. And you become the owner of your own publications.

Or if you want to do it yourself, just install a Ghost Docker container in some spare space of that $5 Digital Ocean instance, and you are ready to go.

With a $5 DO instance I've got a self hosted recipe book (RecipeSage), Bookmark Service (LinkAce), blogging platform (Ghost) and also use it as a Socks Proxy. I've got nightly backups for $1.5 and everything was as easy as docker-compose up.

I understand non-technical people suffering the issues of internet deplatforming, but for a self-named "The Practical Dev" ?

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