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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

#71

Post by nephanth »

djbusby wrote: post #25
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…

That used to be a thing they offered. A dial-up or DSL connection and like 25MB of web-hosting.

Some of them still do. In France, Orange hosts a free 6Gb static website if you're a client; Free offers 10Gb. I dunno about the other isp

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

#72

Post by MattDemers »

xtracto wrote: post #70
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…

Substack is nice because it handles email distribution, has free podcast hosting and RSS feeds for separate "sections" of your newsletter/podcast, and handles payment stuff. I could do the same things for Wordpress, but each of those functions is likely a (premium) plugin, with its own layer of tinkering, installation, config, updates, etc.

When Medium was better, it was easy to get a good domain for the same handle as your Twitter, with a good UI/readable final product. It's changed a lot since and kinda sucks now, but it's a step up from people using Pastebin as their blog.

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

#73

Post by brookst »

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.

DMV is maybe not the best analogy since it’s more or less mandatory and people can’t choose to invest more time/money to do it better.

How about car repair? As a car enthusiast, I think anyone who fails to invest time and energy to really understand how cars work, from cv joints to TPMS systems, is putting themselves at the mercy of repair shops that can be capricious.

And financial planning, and yard care, and zoning policy, and. . .

Point being, life is too complex for everyone to be an expert in everything they depend on. And we all depend on things where we’re not even expert enough to know the implicit assumptions and dependencies we’re taking on.

I don’t think we can break through that. I’d love to be wrong, but I just don’t see a way for people to have deep understanding of every tool they use while still doing the stuff they want to do.

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

#74

Post by brookst »

mindslight wrote: post #69
ncphil wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 al…

So I’m a writer with a deep passion for tropical fruits, and I want to start a blog. How do I find your setup app, or even know that I need it?

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

#75

Post by dpkirchner »

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.

It is hard to self-host properly. Getting started can be easy with a good tutorial but securing your software and server can be difficult, and even the pros often fail. We're still all suffering the effects of unmaintained, insecure Wordpress installs over the years.

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

#76

Post by mindslight »

brookst wrote: post #74
mindslight wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 al…

So I’m a writer with a deep passion for tropical fruits, and I want to start a blog. How do I find your setup app, or even know that I need it?

Yes, I agree that discovery and creating a self-perpetuating critical mass is the hardest aspect of this. Heck, I'm sure some incarnation of this app already exists, but technical people don't need it (so it's not popular here), and non-technical people don't know that they need it. Meanwhile Medium seemingly advertises their own offering on each of their customers blogs.

How to overcome this? Maybe it would be enough to be in some mobile app stores with a distinctive memorable name (despite the horrible UX on mobile), and have a slowly accreting fanbase. Then every time these issues flare up someone would say 'Install LibreZooks to run your blog" in addition to all of those "just use DO and Docker" comments. People do seem to be moving to Mastodon slowly with the current happenings, but decentralized-first stuff can never match the advertising saturation of well funded surveillance companies.

There's also the difficulty that many people these days aren't publishing just to publish, but they're publishing as a side hustle or hoping to get rich. So middlemen like Medium that promise to extract as much as possible and then share a cut have another leg up over "default options" like running Google ads or whatever.

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

#77

Post by sieabahlpark »

411111111111111 wrote: post #59
weberer wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like Nearlyfreespeech.net for stuff like this. For $1.50 per month, they let you easily host static HTML files. You don't have to learn about servers or routing or anything. https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/services/pricing

Why not just use GitHub pages or it's equivalent gitlab alternative when you're already going static files? Super easy to maintain as publishing is always just a commit away and if you're feeling fancy you can pivot to your static site generator of choice later

All fun and games until Microsoft closes your repo on a false dmca claim.

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

#79

Post by jrmg »

djbusby wrote: post #25
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…

That used to be a thing they offered. A dial-up or DSL connection and like 25MB of web-hosting.

Although that wasn’t much better for longevity than Medium or the like.

So much early web lost from URLs like http://www.myisp.net/~username/

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

#80

Post by dredmorbius »

imglorp wrote: post #31
lzauz wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Medium has been the villain for quite some time now. But not so fast about Substack... they recently started showing modals. In the end, running a website costs money. What are you going to do.

Those modals are infuriating. Every time you go to SS for a different article, it will nag you. Does anyone have a uBlock rule to drop them all?

I'm using this in Stylish, a CSS manager browser extension:

  /* Substack modals, nags, etc. */

  [class*="frontend-components-SubscribePrompt"] {
      display: none;
  }
Saved as "Substack" and applied to any page/domain which uses Substack.

Otherwise, for UBO, these two should work:

  ###.frontend-components-SubscribePrompt-module__subscribeDialog--2_6UY.frontend-pencraft-FlexBox-module__flex-align-center--21WCV.frontend-pencraft-FlexBox-module__flex-direction-column--2sph3.frontend-pencraft-FlexBox-module__flex--fK-9V
  ###.frontend-components-SubscribePrompt-module__background--2DQPj
I suspect Substack vary their element names (e.g., the "2_6UY" and "2DQPj" strings in the above list), so that substring matches as I've used in my CSS example should be more robust.

UBO uses the Easylist blocking syntax which ... I can't seem to find documented, so I'm guessing as to the specific patterns. Corrections/clues welcomed.

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