4 ms·

Talking to the HN crowd about platform ownership is pointless. It's obvious that most people here are not able or willing to grasp the long-term consequences of

Talking to the HN crowd about platform ownership is pointless. It's obvious that most people here are not able or willing to grasp the long-term consequences of super-centralization, including many so-called security and scalability experts. Not a big surprise, because a lot of them work for highly centralized platforms, aspire to become one, or to be bough by one.

amelius 7y ago
I bet most people here totally grasp the long term consequences; it's just that they are eager to grab the short term benefits.
- pricechild 7y ago
  Or misjudge the probability of realising those consequences.
soulofmischief 7y ago
What? HN probably has the largest proportion of people who maintain their own websites out of any other major aggregator community.
- gambler 7y ago
  >HN probably has the largest proportion of people who maintain their own websites ...on AWS.
  - quickthrower2 7y ago
    Using static hosting that can be moved somewhere else easily. URLs remain the same due to controlling the domain.
  - tombert 7y ago
    The statement probably holds true of people who self-host in their home as well. I currently run a cluster in my basement.
    - dublin 7y ago
      As long as your Internet connection has decent upstream speed and latency, this is still a good option. A Raspberry Pi, for cryin' out loud, is roughly equivalent to a Cray 1/X-MP, so the need for huge "server iron" to serve even fairly large sites is a thing of the past except for shared server providers who want thousands of sites per server. If your site is static and you're running off a RAM disk or SSD, then you're as fast as pretty much anything you can buy. That said, S3 or Netlify are really easy and bring CDN and redundancy to the party, and neither can really lock you in if your content generation and DNS is under your control.
      - tombert 7y ago
        Yep yep, I run a cluster of 5 ODroix XU4's (not radically different than a Raspberry Pi), and even doing a ton of video streaming through Emby (which I hate), everything tends to perform just find for the up-to-three concurrent users that are ever on it.
    - soulofmischief 7y ago
      Yes, no doubt this community has the largest percentage in both categories of "self-hosting". I have VPS's in multiple countries as well as hosting from my home.
  - nkozyra 7y ago
    > ...on AWS. OK, but it's trivial to move hosts, it's much harder to move from a content platform.
  - sdinsn 7y ago
    But they own the content and own the domain. If AWS suddenly dies, they'll have no problems switching to a new provider.
  - JoshMnem 7y ago
    Or hosted by one of the large AMP caches with signed HTTP exchanges, if Google gets its way.
  - diminoten 7y ago
    I can't even count how many people comment on this website about how they host their own mail servers.
  - lone_haxx0r 7y ago
    Of course, no one is 100% independent. You could recursively find lack of independence: You have your own website but its hosted on AWS You host your website on your own servers, but they're in $COUNTRY You have a guerrilla controlling a de facto state where your server is, but you still depend on the submarine cables. You have a worldwide totalitarian dictatorship so you can host your website freely, but you depend on the sun for keeping the servers alive. Your worldwide totalitarian dictatorship has mastered interstellar travel, but you're still in $YOUR_UNIVERSE. Your scientists discover how to control the multiverse, but they're all going to big crunch eventually.
  - old-gregg 7y ago
    > ...on AWS. so? you're not implying I'm supposed to buy land, erect my own datacenter on it and lease my own backbone connectivity just to host a blog? I think the author's rebellion is against user-generated content, when everything you post becomes someone else's data. That's definitely not the case with any cloud hosting providers.
  - soulofmischief 7y ago
    Yep. Literally nothing is wrong with this. You're barking up the wrong tree.
m12k 7y ago
Of course the HN crowd is willing and able to grasp the long-term consequences of super-centralization. But we also recognize that for the vast majority of the population, some of the benefits that a centralized solution provides - such as UX, discoverability and 'it just works' - are essential, and so far none of the well-meaning open alternatives can compete on those parameters, no matter how much I cheer for their cause. For the vast majority of people, a platform plagued by relatively vague issues like censorship and privacy is still better than a platform that is too cumbersome for me to understand or get started with (and let's be honest, that I've probably never even heard about) - it's simply a non-starter.
- anderspitman 7y ago
  > UX, discoverability and 'it just works' None of those are inherent to preventing users from controlling their data. A company can create (and make money off of) a product that provides all of them while using open protocols and data formats, with easy export functionality. I think the bigger problem is that users don't care whether they control their data, and companies are incentivized to maintain that control.
diminoten 7y ago
Some of us realized long ago that feeling moral superiority in a professional context wasn't very valuable.
tomrod 7y ago
Duplication of fixed costs is an economic ill to be judiciously avoided.

amelius 7y ago

I bet most people here totally grasp the long term consequences; it's just that they are eager to grab the short term benefits.

pricechild 7y ago
Or misjudge the probability of realising those consequences.

soulofmischief 7y ago

What? HN probably has the largest proportion of people who maintain their own websites out of any other major aggregator community.

gambler 7y ago
>HN probably has the largest proportion of people who maintain their own websites ...on AWS.
- quickthrower2 7y ago
  Using static hosting that can be moved somewhere else easily. URLs remain the same due to controlling the domain.
- tombert 7y ago
  The statement probably holds true of people who self-host in their home as well. I currently run a cluster in my basement.
  - dublin 7y ago
    As long as your Internet connection has decent upstream speed and latency, this is still a good option. A Raspberry Pi, for cryin' out loud, is roughly equivalent to a Cray 1/X-MP, so the need for huge "server iron" to serve even fairly large sites is a thing of the past except for shared server providers who want thousands of sites per server. If your site is static and you're running off a RAM disk or SSD, then you're as fast as pretty much anything you can buy. That said, S3 or Netlify are really easy and bring CDN and redundancy to the party, and neither can really lock you in if your content generation and DNS is under your control.
    - tombert 7y ago
      Yep yep, I run a cluster of 5 ODroix XU4's (not radically different than a Raspberry Pi), and even doing a ton of video streaming through Emby (which I hate), everything tends to perform just find for the up-to-three concurrent users that are ever on it.
  - soulofmischief 7y ago
    Yes, no doubt this community has the largest percentage in both categories of "self-hosting". I have VPS's in multiple countries as well as hosting from my home.
- nkozyra 7y ago
  > ...on AWS. OK, but it's trivial to move hosts, it's much harder to move from a content platform.
- sdinsn 7y ago
  But they own the content and own the domain. If AWS suddenly dies, they'll have no problems switching to a new provider.
- JoshMnem 7y ago
  Or hosted by one of the large AMP caches with signed HTTP exchanges, if Google gets its way.
- diminoten 7y ago
  I can't even count how many people comment on this website about how they host their own mail servers.
- lone_haxx0r 7y ago
  Of course, no one is 100% independent. You could recursively find lack of independence: You have your own website but its hosted on AWS You host your website on your own servers, but they're in $COUNTRY You have a guerrilla controlling a de facto state where your server is, but you still depend on the submarine cables. You have a worldwide totalitarian dictatorship so you can host your website freely, but you depend on the sun for keeping the servers alive. Your worldwide totalitarian dictatorship has mastered interstellar travel, but you're still in $YOUR_UNIVERSE. Your scientists discover how to control the multiverse, but they're all going to big crunch eventually.
- old-gregg 7y ago
  > ...on AWS. so? you're not implying I'm supposed to buy land, erect my own datacenter on it and lease my own backbone connectivity just to host a blog? I think the author's rebellion is against user-generated content, when everything you post becomes someone else's data. That's definitely not the case with any cloud hosting providers.
- soulofmischief 7y ago
  Yep. Literally nothing is wrong with this. You're barking up the wrong tree.

m12k 7y ago

Of course the HN crowd is willing and able to grasp the long-term consequences of super-centralization. But we also recognize that for the vast majority of the population, some of the benefits that a centralized solution provides - such as UX, discoverability and 'it just works' - are essential, and so far none of the well-meaning open alternatives can compete on those parameters, no matter how much I cheer for their cause. For the vast majority of people, a platform plagued by relatively vague issues like censorship and privacy is still better than a platform that is too cumbersome for me to understand or get started with (and let's be honest, that I've probably never even heard about) - it's simply a non-starter.

anderspitman 7y ago
> UX, discoverability and 'it just works' None of those are inherent to preventing users from controlling their data. A company can create (and make money off of) a product that provides all of them while using open protocols and data formats, with easy export functionality. I think the bigger problem is that users don't care whether they control their data, and companies are incentivized to maintain that control.

diminoten 7y ago

Some of us realized long ago that feeling moral superiority in a professional context wasn't very valuable.

tomrod 7y ago

Duplication of fixed costs is an economic ill to be judiciously avoided.