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Steven Saus has written a blog post about why you should never rely on social media. In his latest post on the topic he points out that:
[...] If you don’t personally own your website and data, you don’t have a website or data. Quite simply, you cannot rely on someone else for you to have a website, platform, or social media presence.
[...] I now know, in my gut, how fragile my access to the services Google, Facebook, and Twitter supply are.
Because – and I cannot stress this enough – my ban from G+ was due to something I supposedly posted to G+ when I was unable to post to G+. Hell, I still don’t know what got me in trouble in the first place.
Regardless, my trust is broken, and my role as product has been made painfully clear.
G+ is used as the example, but the same principles apply to the other social control media.
(Score: 3, Informative) by fustakrakich on Sunday April 29 2018, @04:16PM (8 children)
If you need social media (unless it's your job), you're already in trouble. You can get time, traffic, and temps on the radio.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 4, Informative) by FakeBeldin on Sunday April 29 2018, @07:14PM (6 children)
From the summary, I thought this related to people who make money by uploading photos/videos to social media. Sometimes, social media companies change the rules - to cut down on things that are giving them bad press, or to improve monetization for themselves. Youtube did something like that recently, and apparently, some folks who used to make money off of Youtube now didn't anymore. And they got upset.
Of course, whether it is Youtube changing rules on which videos will get ads and which won't, or when it's instagram removing thousands of trolls which causes some people to drop below the threshold # of followers where companies are willing to advertise with them, or whether it's yet another social media site taking a rule that affects the profitability of some users:
- those users will complain, and
- the reasons for taking that decision make sound business sense.
From a business perspective, it would be idiotic for Youtube to share advertising revenue with a "creator" whose videos do not increase Youtube's profits. Fake profiles pollute plenty of social media sites, and companies believe that the site will be more profitable if it has less of those. Since fake profiles don't buy stuff (typically), getting rid of them means getting rid of zero-revenue users that are in transgression of your rules. So: profitability of your site goes up once you dump 'em.
Crux of the matter: if you have a nice job, but no contract with the entity who wires you money at the end of the month, then that entity can suddenly stop wiring money. That's kind of the point of contracts - to prevent such surprises on either side.
TL;DR: there are people that feel that Youtube / Instagram / ... owes them their money-making platform, and they get upset of the rules change. However: rules are not about them, but about Youtube / Instagram / .... . And they change to make these platforms more money. When that hurts the little guy, well, why would they care?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bobthecimmerian on Sunday April 29 2018, @08:32PM (5 children)
I agree with your points. But just to add a dimension for consideration: sometimes even when you know the owner of a marketplace can bury you at a whim, you have no choice but to play. I don't know what the situation is today, but a few years ago mobile app developers had no choice but to suffer through Apple's capricious app approval process: iPhone users were spending dramatically more money than other mobile operating system users. At the time, making money on Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone, etc... was all but impossible, so Apple was the only game in town. Likewise, if I want to make money off of social applications my choices are to play ball with Facebook and Twitter and risk having them shut me down in an instant or make zip in obscurity. If you want to make money advertising on videos Youtube is effectively a monopoly (unless you're doing gaming videos, in which case maybe Twitch is an option) and you're going to have a hell of a time making money anywhere else. If you want to sell a legal product on the web, the best option for reaching customers has shifted from Ebay to Amazon third party sellers. There's a lot of fraud and nonsense in that market too, and Amazon can shut you down or change your business relationship to wreck you at their whim.
The flippant response is: "Don't try to make money with mobile applications, social applications, video advertising, or sales through the internet." But you're cutting out a huge set of potential business models and customers. Maybe the flippant answer is the correct answer too, but I'm not sure.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by FakeBeldin on Monday April 30 2018, @07:57AM
That is actually a very interesting point.
Just to clarify my position: I'm not saying you shouldn't try to make money off of Youtube, an app store, or whatever. I will say that if you do so, you should be aware of how precarious your position is. It seems not everyone does.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday April 30 2018, @03:34PM (3 children)
> The flippant response is:
Another response is - do a risk assessment. Be ready to mitigate business risks (e.g. develop for Android as well as iPhone if that is your thing). Same as you wouldn't put all your business data on a single HDD, but rather make sure you have one or more backups.
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Monday April 30 2018, @05:46PM
Again, I was addressing development of mobile apps five years ago. Today it makes sense to target Apple and Android. Back then it didn't.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday April 30 2018, @09:44PM (1 child)
How about you develop HTML5, so that it's not tied to any proprietory platform? It's tunnel vision like yours and your parent poster's that stopped open architectures like Tizen from taking a foothold, despite the fact that it was the solution to the very problem you're concerned about. If one slave master is bad, then perhaps two would be better? Erm, no...
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday May 01 2018, @03:13PM
> How about you develop HTML5
That's a good idea as well.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Monday April 30 2018, @08:52AM
Or the ('non-social') web.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by N3Roaster on Sunday April 29 2018, @04:34PM (1 child)
At the end of the rant, the author moves to Mastodon. I also set up an instance [typica.us] a couple weeks ago on a whim. It wasn't hard. Did it in an evening after work. Thanks to federation, I was quickly seeing more activity on my feeds than I did on G+ (granted, a low bar) even when I was the only user on that instance.
Typica - Free software for coffee roasting professionals. [typica.us]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 30 2018, @06:10PM
Looked at the Mastodon site (https://joinmastodon.org/), click "how it works," YouTube video starts playing.
That was good for a chuckle.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Sunday April 29 2018, @04:46PM (7 children)
so i need SoylentPersonalWebSite/SuiteServer?
I don't want to be held hostage: will Buzz cut our Runaway and Eth? I. DON'T. KNOW?
Supposeably he says he won't, but maybe he'll change his mind? Maybe?
Should i abandon Soylent?
Dog help me! I am clueless....i donno wat to do!
I needs social media friends to tell me EVERYTHING! Help me ObiNews: you're my only hope!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2, Insightful) by aristarchus on Sunday April 29 2018, @06:57PM
Remember, Gaaark, remember the Prisoner of SoylentNews! Tormented by dementors, shadowbanned by Buzzards, lectured to by JR, he suffers for you, Gaaark! For you!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday April 29 2018, @07:06PM (4 children)
One of my good buddies, like me, gave up on social media for years because he thought it was bullshit.
But then he got back on, for one reason. To troll. He used to read my trolls on Slashdot and wonder why I did it, what kind of fun and thrills I got from it. Then he tried it himself, became a convert, and never looked back.
-- Big Boss, MGS4
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 29 2018, @07:15PM (3 children)
in the old days, one used to troll rather gifted people stuck in tunnel vision, or in a "misunderstanding" about some issue, maybe even being wrong on the particular issue...
nowdays, i find the topics not being compatible with me...
sure, there is a limited satisfaction in trolling retards about jews and feminists, but wtf...
dunno... time to move on...
-zugedneb
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday April 29 2018, @07:39PM (2 children)
Trolls, like Deadheads, never die. They just mellow with age.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 30 2018, @12:43AM
They do get more stupid as they get older. And gayer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 30 2018, @06:41AM
You've got issues and should do some thinking on why you enjoy trolling so much. Convert? Why such language?
(Score: 3, Touché) by hendrikboom on Monday April 30 2018, @03:34PM
If you're not paying for the service, you're the product, not the customer.
Fortunately, it's easy to convert from a product to a customer at Soylent News.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by BsAtHome on Sunday April 29 2018, @05:00PM (13 children)
So, if I get this right, I have to go cold turkey and abstain from SN for the rest of my life or make a site myself.
Damn you guys, you have such an addictive platform... Why are you doing this to me? It is so hard to restrain myself reading and commenting. You are wasting all of my spare time!
Well, good, I got that out of my body. Now I feel better and take good care of all my other addictions. Must get the next dopamine kick somewhere on a website, somewhere.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 29 2018, @05:20PM
If you plan on doing more than post silly comments, yes.
If posting silly comments is all you're good for here, then no, by all means stay!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by requerdanos on Sunday April 29 2018, @05:29PM (11 children)
That's not a bad reading of the bad advice given.
On the one hand, I was reading a business card yesterday for contact information and the business, "Name Redacted Grant Consulting", listed a "website" of facebook.com/nameredacted and an email address of nameredacted@gmail.com.
Thus, the business in question has no web or email presence at all, and uses the services of others. This business is probably in the target audience of the dire warnings given.
On the other hand, as you point out, this bit of inspired "wisdom":
Is simply arrant nonsense. It is a dead tie for the dumbest thing ever said.
Host my own at home? I rely on someone else, my ISP, who relies on upstream providers. I can be cut off at any time under terms and conditions. For any reason or none.
Rent shared hosting? I rely on someone else named 3ix or 1and1 or webhostingpad etc. I can be cut off at any time under terms and conditions. For any reason or none.
Run a virtual private server? I rely on someone else named hostyourboxhere.com etc. I can be cut off at any time under terms and conditions. For any reason or none.
Co-locate with my own server that I built? I rely on someone called YouCantHostWithoutOurDatacenter.com. I can be cut off at any time under terms and conditions. For any reason or none.
All that's not enough, and so I win the lottery and buy Google, Amazon, and Microsoft outright and host in
theirmy new "cloud" datacenters? I rely on someone else called my internet backbone provider. I can be cut off at any time under terms and conditions, or under peering agreements. For any reason or none.There are other hosting possibilities, but the single thing they all have in common is that they are ways to rely on "someone else" to connect to others.
In short, the Internet is an assembly of peers. Without the "someone else" that he insists that you avoid, there is no internet; there's just your LAN and nobody cares about your LAN, nor probably ever will. And Steven S., while less clueless than before, remains very, very clueless.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 29 2018, @06:02PM (5 children)
But I have a somewhat stronger claim to my domain, and I take backups of my install, so if my hosting service cuts me off for any reason or none, I'd be back in less than a day.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Sunday April 29 2018, @06:44PM (1 child)
Only if, within that day, you agree to host or get Internet service from the "someone else" that he proclaims you must avoid.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 30 2018, @03:17AM
The magic of competition is at work in the hosting industry.
Full video and SM services, otoh, are a near monopoly.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by KiloByte on Sunday April 29 2018, @08:34PM (2 children)
Well, then why can't I connect to dailystormer.com, dailystormer.net, or same at many other TLDs? (It's somehow alive at .name [dailystormer.name]). And that site is relatively tame as Internet goes.
Ceterum censeo systemd esse delendam.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 30 2018, @08:32PM (1 child)
dailystormer.com doesn't resolve. dailystormer.net is blocked at my university, but leads to a parking page. dailystormer.name doesn't like my browser.
Mr Andrew Anglin from Worthington OH was smart enough to register all three at competing registrar sites. However, I notice he uses javascript code written by a Jew.
(Score: 2) by KiloByte on Wednesday May 02 2018, @01:18AM
Yeah, I don't understand these kind of kooks at all.
Like, Nazis followed the teachings of a slav occultist Blavatsky and as a non-aryan race (Germans) kept murdering an aryan one (gypsies). On the other hand, today it's Hitler who's the symbol of evil when all flavours of fascism together haven't killed even one fifth of people killed by flavours of communism. And so on, so on...
Ceterum censeo systemd esse delendam.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday April 29 2018, @06:59PM
Well, you just have to win a "few" more lotteries and buy a backbone of your own. No wait, you'll rely on an electricity provider, so you have to buy that, too.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 5, Informative) by fyngyrz on Sunday April 29 2018, @08:54PM (2 children)
Here's the thing.
If you host your own knowing what you are doing, you have not only your data, but you have the shape of it - the software that's doing the hosting, the exact databases containing that structure it into something useful, the stats, the images, the videos, the gzips, the scripts, etc.
This means if service A shuts you down, even your local ISP, you can pick and move your whole shebang to service B,C,D...Y,Z,AA,AB...ZZZZZZZ in about a day using nothing but a laptop and someone else's connection.
Compare this to keeping your presence only on Flickr or Facebook or G+ or wherever: Even if you have your data, it's neither presentable or all that useful in terms of re-developing a web presence. That will be one long, hard slog.
For myself, I keep my main website out on the net on a big pipe (I'm in rural Montana... this is really my only choice for a relatively busy site.) The host is a generic linux system. I also keep a live backup here on a completely different linux system – the main site goes down, I change the DNS, it's back up, albeit slower, until I can pick another host, which isn't exactly rocket science.
Then it's just a matter of an upload, setup some really basic linux stuff, another DNS change, and off you go, right back to the strip club. Well, that's where I'd go, if we had a strip club. Well, or not. The gene pool is shallow and polluted here. But I digress. :)
I'm not saying this is perfect – obviously Facebook and the like have traffic advantages – but it's a damned sight better than going from site to no site and no easy way to climb back on the horse, after having been someone's product.
I'll be my own product, thanks.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Sunday April 29 2018, @09:22PM
Your comment is brilliant and on-point and illustrates something important.
The advice quoted in TFS and listed right up front in TFA...
...Is not only crap, but crap that mixes up the real issue, which is buried in another bit at the bottom of TFA:
And even *that* ignores that there is a huge difference between hosting your own using an instance located in a "big tech company" datacenter vs. uploading your things to their websites, making you and your data, their property.
While this guy is coming closer to the point, I don't think he sees it fully yet (despite saying in TFA "my trust is broken, and my role as product has been made painfully clear").
Post to G+, Facebook, Twitter, etc. if you want. But realize the difference between that and hosting your own website.
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Monday April 30 2018, @03:01PM
On top of all the excellent reasons you state, I'll add two more:
1. If I run a website on a hosting provider, I pay them directly for the service. When Youtube cuts channel ad revenue, or Facebook or Twitter block some application, or Apple blocks some application from the iOS app store, in almost all cases the company makes more money by screwing the user or partner than they lose. A hosting provider doesn't have any similar financial benefit from screwing some customers, if they just cut off the customers they lose revenue.
2. Something you alluded to but did not explicitly state is that the hosting market has competition. If I don't like AWS I can go to Digital Ocean, or GCE, or Linode, Vultr, Scaleway, even (ha!) Microsoft Azure. The market is loaded with competition. Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube are effectively monopolies so when they screw a channel/page/application partner that partner has no alternative available except giving up on whatever it was they were trying to do.
(Score: 2) by jb on Monday April 30 2018, @06:41AM
Nice straw man.
If you host your own at home (or more likely at your office), you'd be silly not to use multiple links to independent upstream ISPs (and if one gets bought by another, be sure to change the one that got acquired).
As I read it, the OP's advice was not so much about relying on nobody at all (which is impossible if one is to remain part of civilsed society), but rather is about not relying on any middle-men (who by definition are unnecessary).
It's not such bad advice, but probably could be put better as the age-old "eliminate all single points of failure".
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DBCubix on Sunday April 29 2018, @07:24PM (3 children)
While I understand where the author is coming from, at some point we must rely on others for goods and services.
(Score: 3, Informative) by shortscreen on Sunday April 29 2018, @08:00PM (1 child)
Relying on other people is the road to ruin. Buy a generator.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by requerdanos on Sunday April 29 2018, @09:26PM
Excellent point! And refine your own fuel. From the oil well on your fully local and organic family farm that you operate full time. (Or from ethanol produced from your organic corn. Burn the leaves, stalks and roots to power the still.)
Maybe shoot anyone who approaches lest you rely on them.
Or acknowledge that perhaps the "never rely on someone else" advice misses the whole supposed point of TFA, despite its being advice given in TFA...
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Sunday April 29 2018, @09:06PM
I have a solar plant adequate to my needs. Not really seeing your argument in terms of "don't have."
In the US, you can arrange to be fairly independent, as long as you can pay your taxes and are willing to specifically work towards your independence. Plenty of inexpensive room out here in the flat areas. I paid less for my home and property than most people pay for a car. Everything else has gone into making it what I (we, my SO partnered in this) want it to be and at least somewhat sustainable in the face of loss of utilities.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 29 2018, @08:21PM
"social control media." IS SOLENT NEWS!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 29 2018, @10:30PM (5 children)
The author complains long and hard that he was denied access to a free service. But, as a beggar, he has no rights there. He can be allowed to stay or be kicked out. Yes, the service is free - but that also means that you are using someone's resources with no guarantee that the service will not be denied to you at any moment, often by decision of an AI that is never checked by a human.
Sure, a server at home, on a business connection, is pretty safe, unless the state wants you gone. The latter is a rare occurrence, not applicable to the writer - he is horrified that something bad might have been said in his name. But he does not have to do it at home. Most domain registrars sell hosting services. Amazon has hundreds of VMs ready to launch. In these cases the user is shielded by the contract. He pays, they deliver. Now it's not as easy to deny services.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday April 30 2018, @01:31AM (4 children)
There was a contract, the TOS, which he almost definitely clicked through without even reading.
The contract, if he'd bothered to read it, regardless of which big-name corporate platform you're talking about, will always end up amounting to the following:
1. The service provider can cut you off for any reason or no reason at all.
2. The service provider can delete your stuff for any reason or no reason at all.
3. Anything you create on the platform is theirs to do with as they please, but if someone is upset about your content (e.g. it's a copyright violation) then that's your problem not theirs.
4. You can't sue them, no matter what they do. At most, you can go through a private arbitration process where they pick the judge and damages are limited to non-existent.
Why anybody would rely on a contract with terms like these for their chosen means of making a living, I have no idea.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 30 2018, @02:14AM (3 children)
If you read these stories over and over the same thing comes up about google. The opaque 'we have done something' 'why' 'you do not need to know that just reasons were used'. This is what is frustrating people. It is why someone picked up a gun and walked into youtube. They are frustrated with the stone face they get from google. They are gutting Codys Lab for god sake. He basically did not thing wrong when he posted his videos. Yet he has them yanked on a whim. He is desperately trying to stay in the system because he has turned it into a big part of his life. Yet his life is at the mercy of google and their precocious whims. He is hardly alone. He only survived because he is one of the bigger more popular ones. There are hundreds that are being driven out in a halestorm of made up righteousness that they had no clue they were even subject to. How many times do you go back and re-re-re-re-read the latest updated terms to something? Bet it does not happen often does it? Lindsey Graham stated to Mark Z that he is a full time lawyer whose job it is to make laws that he can not follow the TOS of Facebook. Facebook is not exactly alone in that regard. Then ding-a-lings like you come in with your 'but achcktually' and it does not help. You know it. You are being pedantic. It only serves to make the problem worse. Which is these companies want as many 'creators' on their sites as they can get. But the second the political winds change they dump on them and call them scum. So yeah, some people are getting frustrated.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday April 30 2018, @03:26AM (2 children)
The point is, if you are trusting Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Geocities, MySpace, Dropbox, Apple, or any other major corporation with your key revenue model, you are being a fool. Anybody who looks at the TOS can realize this. For example, a lot of the complaints about Google seem to amount to "I was relying on ad revenue to do my thing, and now I can't because won't let me show ads anymore." But the problem there lies in large part on the first part of that sentence, not the second part. And no, there isn't a player in that kind of game that's not going to grab as much from your pocket as they can. If you want to make stuff for a living, you're going to have to create your own tech infrastructure for it sooner or later.
TL;DR: If you get into bed with giant dicks, you're going to get screwed.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday April 30 2018, @03:27AM
Darn filters. Revised sentence:
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Monday April 30 2018, @03:03PM
I responded to this a bit upthread: https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=25343&page=1&cid=673475#commentwrap [soylentnews.org] "The point is, if you are trusting Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Geocities, MySpace, Dropbox, Apple, or any other major corporation with your key revenue model, you are being a fool. "
Those companies collectively own a colossal market. So if you don't jump into bed with them they can't screw you, but there are not that many other profitable beds left (pardon the mixed metaphor).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by krishnoid on Sunday April 29 2018, @10:44PM
I wonder if they would allow you to download your previous posts [google.com] and move them to another service once you're banned. Seems like if they don't want you at Google+, their general intent is one of letting you take your content and move it where you want.