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Why You Should Never Rely on Social Media

posted by mrpg on Sunday April 29 2018, @03:56PM   Printer-friendly
from the all-my-life-is-in-my-flash-drive dept.

canopic jug writes:

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.

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  • (Score: 2) by requerdanos on Sunday April 29 2018, @09:22PM

    by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Sunday April 29 2018, @09:22PM (#673487) Journal

    Your comment is brilliant and on-point and illustrates something important.

    The advice quoted in TFS and listed right up front in TFA...

    Quite simply, you cannot rely on someone else for you to have a website, platform, or social media presence.

    ...Is not only crap, but crap that mixes up the real issue, which is buried in another bit at the bottom of TFA:

    I am going to join the chorus urging people to stop being reliant on any of the big social media/tech companies – Microsoft, Google, Twitter, Facebook.

    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.

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