22 ms·

Medium is not the home for your ideas

• thn-gap 6y ago
  I've been thinking recently on the idea of writing for the sake of sharing (be it a short story, some thoughts, or any tutorial), but I like anonymity. For this, I'd like to not host my content, but maybe have some fake profile on social media, and share my writings, which could be hosted on Telegram's telegra.ph. Is there a better platform for my use case, or a reason not to use telegra.ph?
  • retor 6y ago
    Thought about the same for a while. I didn’t compare them much, but I was leaning towards write.as. Maybe something to check out.
  • dredmorbius 6y ago
    Gitlab / github static hosting is an option.
• wishinghand 6y ago
  Kirby and other similar PHP based flat file CMS software is super easy to run. If I were to get back into making sites for people, I'd just use Kirby, Bulma/Tailwind, and Alpine.js. It can run on shared hosts like Siteground, Lithium, Green Geeks, Hostgator, as well as VPS platforms like Digital Ocean. The admin interface for making new posts is great, separating it from static site generators. It uses a modified Markdown called Kirbytext which is additive. If you write pure Markdown you'll see it rendered as expected. No database means no worrying about getting hacked (at least in terms of SQL injection). If you don't want to build it yourself, there's themes for sale too, despite how niche Kirby is. My own blog is a Kirby theme I bought because I knew if I built it myself, I'd never finish.
  • the_pwner224 6y ago
    I run a site on Grav, which appears to be very similar to Kirby but FOSS, with plenty of free themes and plugins (though the base installation is pretty complete). It's super easy to install compared to WordPress, and I've never had luck getting NodeJS-based software like Ghost to work and then stay working for a long time. For a personal blog it has all the features you would need, while being pretty simple. But, software like Grav and presumably also Kirby are very much not easy to run for 'normal' people. They would need to secure hosting without getting overwhelmed with the technical details or all the upselling that providers try to do, then install the software which is 'easy' but not 'click this button and you're done' easy, and of course also deal with domains and DNS etc. A hosted solution - even if you have to pay for it - is the only practical solution for normal people. That said, for the type of people that read HN I would highly recommend Grav. Installation is easy, it has a nice web-based interface for administration and writing posts, it is fast, and it is not the latest trendy static site generator. It is a boring PHP application that will probably keep working for 20 years with no changes required - but is still actively maintained and will be for the foreseeable future.
    • wishinghand 6y ago
      I agree it's not as easy as starting a wordpress.com site or even a self hosted Wordpress site if the host has a 1 click builder, but if a user can figure out basic PHP hosting, they can run Kirby (and presumably Grav). Grav's advantage over Kirby is that it's totally FOSS, but I encountered Kirby first and have a more thorough understanding of how it works. The maintainers and community are also quite helpful as well as super lenient about unlicensed usage.
  • rootsudo 6y ago
    Thank you! I had no idea. I'm sold on it, I have a few articles I wanted to get rid of anyway on Medium and post. This is amazing. I didn't want to really do HTML5 and create a new html file per post.
  • Fiveplus 6y ago
    Is the entry to barrier to new trendy static site generators relatively higher? Or how does this approach differ from them? Having never tried options like hugo I've always wanted to know about them directly from people who've used those.
    • chillfox 6y ago
      If you are a developer or sysadmin then they are easy, but for people at the service desk level or below they are challenging to impossible.
• iworkfromhome 6y ago
  That's true. Medium is not for long-term.
• xpe 6y ago
  The core argument against Medium is: "Until you host your content on your platform, they will always live at the mercy of the company hosting the platform."
  • nsonha 6y ago
    Which is fine, a lot of people putting their ideas out there are more concerned with the level of reach/impact than whether they own a webpage nor that it lives forever.
    • Quiza12 6y ago
      That's me in a nutshell. I've built a regular audience for my writing over the years. As the author suggests though, it might be a good idea to have a mirror.
  • dvtrn 6y ago
    Owning your content and self-publication is one of the principles of the indieweb[0]. This is as relevant of a discussion I think to plug it. When it comes to alternatives to the social media/algorithm-ified/data-hungry web-that in my opinion we should have gotten-it’s the IndieWeb. [0] https://indieweb.org/principles https://indieweb.org/principles
    • wincy 6y ago
      Except now if you say things that a group doesn’t like you just get ddosed out of existence.
      • scollet 6y ago
        Something tells me this happens less than you imply.
      • zaptrem 6y ago
        Isn't this what the Cloudflare free tier is for?
• TaylorAlexander 6y ago
  I’ve been running a self hosted instance of ghost for years now (link in my profile). It’s great! My stuff just sits there, never at risk of a policy change banning my work. I can write whatever I want. The URLs are easily memorized and I hand them out all the time. I don’t run analytics. I have no idea how many people have read my writing. I’m okay with that. I actually thought nobody reads my site but one day a piece I had just published hit hacker news, so I guess somebody is watching. I keep the content so I can refer people to it, and as a record of my thinking over time. I share the links when relevant in an online discussion. I highly recommend it! I should say, I was inspired by Paul Graham and his essays. Just keeping it simple and putting good ideas out there. Oh and I licensed all my work as CC0, so anyone can copy it for any purpose.
• detaro 6y ago
  It's telling that Medium stopped allowing custom domains. Their brand over yours, and no way of cleanly migrating elsewhere when they start log-in walls etc. (Of course their brand is now kinda poisoned by "log-in wall" and lots of low-quality "think-pieces", so you don't really want to be associated with theirs - which was somewhat different when Medium started)
  • tomc1985 6y ago
    I don't know, was it? From the beginning everything on Medium seemed to be written by folks who styled themselves as "thought leaders," but clearly weren't
    • paulie_a 6y ago
      Thought leader is a synonym for empty suit. If someone uses that in a bio you can just move along, you won't miss anything.
      • quattrofan 6y ago
        100% this. I also noticed a trend of people calling themselves "visionaries"...same thing.
      • rchaud 6y ago
        I feel the same way about the descriptor "serial entrepreneur".
    • alicemaz 6y ago
      medium had one killer insight, which was that if they dolled up blog posts to look like prestige news site articles, most people would mentally put them in the same category. at one point there was a wave of public figures using medium basically like they use/d the nyt oped section before and after but they messed up their site chasing a business model, and nyt/wapo/etc basically turned into tech companies and fill the niche that medium wanted to. meanwhile substack mints prestige by emphatically not looking like a news site. medium doesn't really have a place on either end of that anymore
• realusername 6y ago
  Another reason I host my own articles is that Medium is very heavy to load. Yes their design is great, but it's something that is achievable with a very small amount of CSS. This might not matter for a lot of people but I don't like how slow their platform is.
  • neilpanchal 6y ago
    Yeah, I emailed Sijmen Mulder to have my blog listed on his excellent text-only blog list: https://sjmulder.nl/en/textonly.html https://sjmulder.nl/en/textonly.html They all load almost instantly.
  • alicemaz 6y ago
    yea, it's actually surprising how heavy it is given it's all to provide a veneer of minimalism and simplicity. I run qutebrowser on musl, which is as you might guess not the most stable web experience, but one funny side effect is it makes me acutely aware of what sites are simple and what ones do too much. the three worst sites, that consistently 100% of the time freeze the tab they're opened in, are reddit wapo and medium
    • realusername 6y ago
      Yes there's a massive contrast between their minimalist and slick brand and their actual platform which is one of the heaviest blogging platform. I'm not sure what it does really but you can achieve a similar design with a few Kb of CSS.
  • throwaway8941 6y ago
    >Yes their design is great Is it? I had to write a bunch of µBlock and usercss rules to make their articles somewhat readable. The sticky bars waste a lot of screen estate. Firefox reader mode (Ctrl+Alt+R) is a wonderful thing, but it breaks on some pages (I guess due to Medium's incompetence or brain-dead priorities since they're still using gist for code snippets (every single snippet in a separate iframe!) instead of spending half an hour to integrate highlight.js)
  • jjcm 6y ago
• li4ick 6y ago
  There's one thing I want to scream at every front-end developer out there: STOP OPENING POPUPS WHEN I'M SELECTING TEXT! Again: STOP OPENING POPUPS WHEN I'M SELECTING TEXT!
  • vmception 6y ago
    but the a/b test says you keep doing it and stay on the site longer so you must love it
    • tomjen3 6y ago
      The more I see things like this, the more I think the original sin of this century was analytics, rather than ads.
      • dredmorbius 6y ago
        Ads drive analytics / analytics feed ads.
        • tomjen3 6y ago
          But ads have been a thing since the Egyptians started to write sales documents on Papyrus, but it is only in the last 20 years or so analytics have changed the game: I suspect that I might have been slightly of in the previous comment, maybe it is only when analytics can note the effect of individual customers actions that they matter.
          • dredmorbius 6y ago
            The major development of advertising is notably more recent: https://archive.org/stream/commercialismjou00holtuoft#page/n7/mode/2up https://archive.org/stream/commercialismjou00holtuoft#page/n... AdTech creates measurement problems not experienced in mass advertising, newer yet: https://idlewords.com/2015/11/the_advertising_bubble.htm https://idlewords.com/2015/11/the_advertising_bubble.htm
  • 6y ago
• joelrunyon 6y ago
  I've been yelling about this for years, but please start & own your own blog. Use webflow, ghost or whatever you like, but wordpress is good enough for most people. HN audience can likely handle their own, but if ease-of-setup is an issue - I created StartABlog.com to help people do this (and we'll actually set up your site for you for free - https://startablog.com/start https://startablog.com/start). Own your platform. Own your content. Own your voice. Use everything else as distribution methods - not core dependencies.
  • badsectoracula 6y ago
    Another easy solution, both for hosting and ownership, is using a static site generator/editor. I like desktop-based visual WYSIWYG tools so i use Publii[0] (example[1], though i really need to write something more :-P or at least move some older articles i had in now-defunct blogs that were hosted by others). I'm not a big fan of the program though (i dislike how it is based on Electron while not even taking advantage of it being based on Electron - e.g. no full WYSIWYG and not even an in-app site preview - and the UX has all the issues i dislike by modern apps like a design that pretends i'm using an oversized tablet) but it is the only one that does what i want without requiring me to enter cryptic codes (ok, markdown isn't so cryptic but i really prefer using WYSIWYG tools), having inline images/galleries and some (primitive) site management while generating static HTML (though a bit too heavy and i really dislike the themes... but again, not much of a choice and the tech used to make the themes look like a PITA so i avoid touching it for now). [0] https://getpublii.com/ https://getpublii.com/ [1] http://runtimeterror.com/devlog/ http://runtimeterror.com/devlog/
    • boramalper 6y ago
      Publii looks great! Just out of curiosity, do you know any other WYSIWYG alternatives out there?
      • badsectoracula 6y ago
        No, other (desktop-based) stuff i know is WYSIWYG editors from the 90s. Well, there is BlueGriffon but last time i used that it felt very clunky. But if there was something else i'd probably try it too.
• paulie_a 6y ago
  I've mostly blocked medium mentally and via software. I use google feed on a daily basis and medium was banned there for a while now. Mentally occasionally a really interesting article pops up that I want to read. Then medium prevents me from doing so. It can be interesting somewhere else. If you are a content creator you basically damage your brand by using medium The ux can be described as slimy at best.
• thereyougo 6y ago
  People say that they loved medium in the past because of their custom domains. I think that they also had issues back then. If your company is still running on Medium you're very limited with customizing your blog. You can't add any CTA button, popup window, widget, or anything that can help you to justify your blog exsistance. If 1000 people get into your blog post, only around 30 will hit your homepage. Compare it to other blogs where you can design it the way you want, because great UX and some traffic from Medium, I don't see the benefit of it.
  • saagarjha 6y ago
    > You can't add any CTA button, popup window, widget, or anything that can help you to justify your blog exsistance. FWIW, I utterly abhor these when reading blogs. Consider “goodwill” as being an abstract benefit of your blog existing.
• moonchild 6y ago
  > Google might add negative signals for your website, thinking that you copy-pasted an article from Medium on your blog. Can you get around this by posting the medium version later than the one on your own website? (Obviously, G crawls medium more frequently; so say, maybe, a week later.)
  • Jaruzel 6y ago
    I was going to ask a similar Q, but I'll hitch my comment to yours... (and give you an upvote as well) To get around Google thinking that your personal hosted version is a copy, can you pepper the medium version with links back to your domain/blog ? Would that help ?
    • everfree 6y ago
      Just use their import tool, it's designed specifically for that purpose. https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/214550207-Import-a-post https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/214550207-Import-a... It sets up a canonical tag and backdates your post to prevent just that from happening.
      • kuu 6y ago
        That makes sense
• iamacyborg 6y ago
  Netlify makes it fairly trivial for almost anyone with moderately techy chops to host their own static sites, so that's where I host my sites. Jekyll amd similar static site generators are more than good enough for 99% of blog sites anyone might want to build.
• Animats 6y ago
  Also, Google might add negative signals for your website, thinking that you copy-pasted an article from Medium on your blog. Google never did get serious about provenance. They scrape so often that they should be able to tell who's the original. I've seen Wikipedia copy sites outrank the real Wikipedia. As a backup, you should be able to submit a hash to a time-stamping notary service and have Google pick up on that.
• replyifuagree 6y ago
  Medium has a terrible reputation amongst readers. That's enough for me to not publish there.
• vishnu_ks 6y ago
  Folks looking for a Medium alternative, please checkout https://diff.blog https://diff.blog. It's an aggregator of developer and engineering blogs I built an year back. It has been growing steadily since. The reason why I built this was to solve the problem of disoveralibilty of self hosted blogs. It's hard for bloggers with self hosted blogs to reach a big audience. So a lot of them end up moving to a platform like Medium which gives them the audience. But they in turn give up their identity and content. diff.blog aims to fix that by solving the discoverabilty problem of self hosted blogs. Though dif.blog is not anywhere near in terms of the audience size of Medium at the moment. But hopefully it will come close one day.
  • dgellow 6y ago
    Thanks for sharing, that's a nice project with a good user experience. That reminds me of the concept of blog "planet" that was somewhat popular in the Linux world a decade ago. Basically an aggregate of blog feeds loosely related to a given topic, you can follow it and have the feeling that you're following a community, without the drama that you have on social media. It's a great concept IMHO, and stupidly simple technically speaking. As an example, Ubuntu still has theirs: https://planet.ubuntu.com/ https://planet.ubuntu.com/
    • vishnu_ks 6y ago
      Thanks! Yeah. Blog planets are awesome. They defintely played a big role in me coming up with diff.blog. https://rubyland.news/ https://rubyland.news/ in particular, which I came across while I was trying to learn Rails. Though diff.blog is built using Django and not Ruby on Rails :)
    • lebaux 6y ago
      This is actually kinda amazing. Am I too young? How did I missed this?
  • jcims 6y ago
    This is awesome!!!
• jjcm 6y ago
  Another thing I would echo here is that you don't necessarily need a CMS / WYSIWYG editor to run a great blog. A tiny script that dynamically compiles your markdown flavour of choice and has a nginx reverse proxy in front of it will be able to survive a reddit frontpage hit on a $5/mo vps, and it will be dead simple to set up. If you're looking to move off Medium, give it a try. If anyone is interested I'm happy to share the mini server I wrote to compile pug aka jade / stylus, which is what I use for my blog.
  • louwrentius 6y ago
    This is what I do with my (now solar powered) blog. Markdown, Pelican and rsync. I was using a digital ocean droplet for 5$ a month.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  • cube00 6y ago
    Add a free tiered CDN in front of that and you're certainly good to survive any spike in traffic.
    • saagarjha 6y ago
      You can also try one of the many providers that will host your static site for you for free, like GitHub Pages.
      • jjcm 6y ago
        True, but the point of the article was to avoid centralized providers as you may inadvertently be shadowbanned. I have much more faith/trust in Github than Medium, but nonetheless it still suffers algorithmic approaches to content.
        • saagarjha 6y ago
          GitHub is a merely a host, not a platform. You can switch off the former in an instant, but the latter locks you in.
• rsj_hn 6y ago
  Anyone recommend a good RSS reader with the following characteristics: * integrated into the browser (an extension is OK) * automatically downloads feeds and gives notifications of new text * keyword searchable
• input_sh 6y ago
  I've been thinking of mirroring the first few paragraphs on Medium and then adding something like "visit my own blog to read the rest of the article", basically (ab)using Medium as an acquisition channel. Do you know of anyone that did something similar?
• krtkush 6y ago
  The number of large (and hip) software companies which host their blogs on medium is mind boggling. With the amount of time they spend reinventing the wheels, one would think they would spend some time setting up their own blog. Also, why do people host their tech tutorials on Medium? I have few of my own and always put them up on my own github pages blog. It's not too difficult.
  • quattrofan 6y ago
    My irony alarm just went off...
    • krtkush 6y ago
      Because I mentioned GitHub? The thing is GitHub is just a wrapper. All my data is still with me and I can switch to GitLab in about a hours time. Also, unlike Medium, GitHub does not put a quota on number of free articles per month nor does it cover 1/4th of the page with a permanent pop-up asking the reader to sign up. I feel GitHub pages and Medium are not the same thing.
      • marcosdumay 6y ago
        > The thing is GitHub is just a wrapper. If you own the domain name, yes. Otherwise, no.
        • krtkush 6y ago
          In my case, I do own the domain name.
• krn 6y ago
  > A lot of companies like Basecamp and Spotify executed this idea with their company blogs. > They started with a Medium publication, and when they gained traction on their content, they moved to their own hosted blogs. This is false. Basecamp's blog "Signal v Noise" is much older than Medium itself, and their transition perfectly illustrates what Medium has become[1]: > Three years ago we embraced an exciting new publishing platform called Medium. It felt like a new start for a writing community, and we benefitted immensely from the boost in reach and readership those early days brought. But alas it was not to last. > When we moved over, Medium was all about attracting big blogs and other publishers. This was going to be a new space for a new time where publishers could find a home. And it was. For a while. > These days Medium is focused on their membership offering, though. Trying to aggregate writing from many sources and sell a broad subscription on top of that. And it’s a neat model, and it’s wonderful to see Medium try something different. But it’s not for us, and it’s not for Signal v Noise. [...] > So now we’re back on the indie trail. The new blog is powered by our friends at WordPress, and the new amazing design is courtesy of our in-house designer Adam Stoddard. > Thanks to the fact that we kept our own domain when we moved to Medium, all the articles and links still work. The pieces have simply swapped the Medium styling for our own look. (Although, sad to say, Medium didn’t let us export the comments, so those are gone ). [1] https://m.signalvnoise.com/signal-v-noise-exits-medium/ https://m.signalvnoise.com/signal-v-noise-exits-medium/
• Alir3z4 6y ago
  I have gone through the same phase myself. Not only Medium but many other platforms as well. The algo based recommendation that force feed you the content that "they" think you should read and constant trackers all over the place that profiles everyone with heavy ads scripts with tons of js css files just to read a simple text from someone. I've built what I had in mind (_sort of_) for myself and many others. Anyone wants to start a blog, without the headache of self hosting or maintenance without ads and sneaky business model is welcome gonevis.com
  • non-entity 6y ago
    > The algo based recommendation that force feed you the content that "they" think you should read. This is probably one of the things I hate most about the modern web. There are a ton of situations where I want raw, un-autofiltered results from something and I can't get it.
• scotthtaylor 6y ago
  Bundle, unbundle, rinse, repeat. Tech's virtuous cycle will forever run...
  • cube00 6y ago
    I've learnt the hard way about the risks of bundling that I didn't even consider a decade ago, no chance I'll be going back to that matter how "do no evil" the next company that comes along claims to be.
• cube00 6y ago
  There's something dishonest about your profile appearing normal only to yourself, while the rest of the world is getting a 404. If you're suspended, fine, but tell the user, but why the need to hide this from them?
  • nekopa 6y ago
    This has been discussed a lot under the term "shadowbanning" in various places. HN does this too, if enough people downvote a comment it will disappear from the conversation, but not from the posters viewpoint (and if you have showdead on, as a reader it shows up as lighter and lighter shades of grey). The rational behind it is that if a spammer notices that their post/account has been banned, they can quickly spin up another one. Apparently this is quite effective against spammers, (or used to be) but of course seems extremely unfair in the case of false negatives. So when you say dishonest - how would you feel if the fine article was written by someone who said he had wasted 2 months on Medium writing posts that try to trick people into downloading malware before he realised that Medium had shadowbanned his account?
  • saagarjha 6y ago
    The usual reason given is because it wastes the time of abusive people because they don’t realize they’re not reaching anyone else. However, I’ve yet to see actually malicious people be tripped up by this :(
  • jasonkester 6y ago
    Indeed. It seems shady until you realize why sites do this. Probably the only way to truly understand is to run a site with user generated content for a while. There will be people using your site that just need to go away. They're different from your typical pharmaceutical spammer because they genuinely think they're not doing anything wrong. If you tell them to stop posting affiliate links to timeshares, they'll put themselves in this box of "banned for doing nothing wrong", and simply start a new account posting affiliate links to timeshares in a slightly different way that hopefully will get around your algorithm. The worst part is that after enough time, and enough tries, you'l have given them (and the pharmaceutical spammers as well) detailed instructions for how to circumvent your spam protection. All every step of this does is add more work to you to run your site for the people who you want to have there. So the simplest and most effective thing you can do is make those people think they have succeeded. Let them promote their timeshares (and v1agra) to their heart's content. Just don't show anybody but them. Real people have friends who read their blog and will point this out if it happens by mistake, and you have a "fix" button in your admin console to hit a few times a year. Trust me. Run your own blog host for a few months and you'll implement this too.
• paulie_a 6y ago
  Unless you are in HR and need to participate in the circle jerk why both with medium? You might as well use literally any other platform including blogger. No one is reading anyways. Medium used to have interesting content once upon a time. They are a player in that industry like all is a player in internet access.
  • yobi-ponti 6y ago
    Same reason people put up with YouTube's nonsense. It is where the money is at. I agree with this post for the average blogger, but if your end game is to build a career off of writing I, medium kinda becomes a necessary evil.
• throwawaysea 6y ago
  As a paying subscriber, I lost faith in Medium during COVID, when they started censoring and deleting posts that analyzed COVID data and information. Those speculative amateur posts often resulted in findings that went against the prevailing public health guidance or scientific consensus. While many were wrong, many of those early amateur posts ended up being correct on some counts as well. I feel they deserved a place for the conversation to be held. I was put off by the seemingly arbitrary choices medium made in deleting content, especially considering the WHO and other agencies have been wrong on COVID repeatedly - amateur speculation and reporting was necessary. A democratized internet requires that we exercise that democratic right and retain control over our content, rather than handing control to new platform masters.
  • bishalb 6y ago
    It's really sad. Not just medium but Facebook, twitter, YouTube all blocked such content/posts and tried to stifle the content creators. YouTube even permanently banned many channels. I didn't know medium did the same.
• philipclarke 6y ago
  yes
• everfree 6y ago
  It seems to me that the author completely missed Medium's import tool in his/her "mirror your blog" section. The tool is specifically made to prevent SEO issues when syndicating content from your own blog. https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/214550207-Import-a-post https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/214550207-Import-a... There's no SEO risk as the author alludes to. This is Medium's tool for dealing with that.
  • wmeredith 6y ago
    The key part of this functionality is, "Imported stories will automatically apply a canonical URL referencing the original source material." Taken from the content of that page.
• OhSoHumble 6y ago
  Something that wasn't mentioned is that there is a reading cap for Medium articles if the user doesn't pay. Something that is frustrating is finding some technical documentation for a project on Medium and being hit with "you hit your reading cap of 5 stories..." and having to open up an incognito window. That is dumb. I shouldn't have to pay money to get around a pay wall for a project's technical documentation.
  • austinpena 6y ago
    Blocking cookies and never logging in has solved that problem for me.
  • gwd 6y ago
    > I shouldn't have to pay money to get around a pay wall for a project's technical documentation. But that's on the project, not Medium; and if they want to be paid for the work that goes into their documentation, what's the problem? I mean, seriously, Medium is $5/month, for loads of advertising-free content. Why not just subscribe?
    • bleuarff 6y ago
      Has the project team any say in this, or is it just Medium doing their thing?
      • tonystubblebine 6y ago
        Every article behind the paywall on Medium is there because the author put it there.
    • beervirus 6y ago
      Why not just reward this user-hostile behavior??
      • gwd 6y ago
        Sorry, seem to have been mixing two messages: For one, if you don't like a project using a freemium service for its documentation, then take it up with the project, not with Medium. Secondly, documentation isn't free; is it really that unreasonable for projects to want to be funded for the work they're doing? Medium is pretty cheap. If you're running into your Medium limit regularly, why not just subscribe?Complaining that you have to pay $5/mo to access a resource you use a lot, when you're probably paying $50/mo for internet anyway, seems a bit unreasonable.
• classics2 6y ago
  Is it really so hard to spin up an aws machine with a plain old lamp stack to serve this kind of content? Its incredibly cheap and simple to do.
  • ethiclub 6y ago
    Yes, for many (most?) non-technical folk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge
    • nickcotter 6y ago
      Even if you are well-versed in how to do it, it can still be a time sink you may not be able to afford.
      • ethiclub 6y ago
        And you wouldn't even know that another solution necessarily existed. And you wouldn't necessarily know where to start. And you would have the mental hurdles of "where do I start", "who do I listen to", etc.
• magnusmagnusson 6y ago
  Medium and Substack signal crashed from 'might contain something useful' to 'I avoid even opening the links' fairly fast. Precisely because they're not home for ideas, but just a sad self-marketing attempt.
• willvarfar 6y ago
  For tech-minded people, a static site generator and github-pages is a great solution. Zero cost. Zero ads etc. Not likely to change or go away. Easy to move to paid for hosting Or GitHub’s next competitor if that is ever needed etc.
  • kuu 6y ago
    I guess that the issue here could be GitHub policies, maybe they don't like your post 'because reasons' and you're in the same situation as with Medium (I understand it's not as common). The ideal case is that you own the platform.
    • nickcotter 6y ago
      No doubt, but it's easier to move if that happens.
• saagarjha 6y ago
  The button to tweet about free speech on the web is a bit ironic ;) But yes, stay off of Medium. And I’m not just saying it, I walk the talk myself for my blog: it’s really not that hard and I can confirm that it “works”, at least for my definition of “works” (read: minimal fees–just a domain registration–per year, highly flexible but not a massive pain to use, attracts readers of some sort…)
• radiKal07 6y ago
  This is exactly why I started working on https://panakit.com https://panakit.com I want to provide the same easy way to publish your blog while at the same time using your own custom domain and own your platform.
  • pseingatl 6y ago
    Tried to login, timed out.
• DataScienceGuy 6y ago
  If your goal is reach and monetization, Medium (or substack) is the best option out there. You don't get any reads by hosting your blog by yourself.
• syntaxing 6y ago
  I'm surprised how little people run their own blog, especially since it's free, minus domain name cost. I run my own blog (shameless plug: https://www.powu3.com/ https://www.powu3.com/) for free (thanks Netlify!) and it was relatively easy to setup, and this is coming from someone with a hardware background rather than software. I guess the biggest downside is that it's harder to get visibility and clicks from search engines. I know a lot of people use github pages which is fully free and a great alternative.
• mindfulhack 6y ago
  I want to run with this sentiment to a certain extreme: This reminds me of Cloudflare blocking that pro-nazi website at the DNS level - not because the content was illegal, but because of social or other reasons. What this means is even your own domain and web server can be censored in devastating ways, based purely on personal or cultural disagreement. Of course I'm not supporting nazism, but it's a dangerous precedent for the free and open web to moderate and censor people when you are not legally compelled to. Even if you are, the laws of your country might be unjust. Not blocking != endorsing, and to say it does is thought policing. Thanks for this post. I won't be posting to Medium anymore.
  • coldtea 6y ago
    >Of course I'm not supporting nazism Nazism is the easy target. The precedence is removal of something legal by a moral/social decision by a corporate entity. This is dangerous. In the 50s, had they had internet, it could be leftist or communist sympathizers' blogs (under the red scare). In the 60s it could be blacks civil rights blogs (imagine a conservative southern CDN), In the 70s/80s it could be pro-gay writings. In the GWB era it could be criticism of various wars, etc - like the Dixie Chicks had their shows cancelled for speaking out. It already includes all kind of right and left ideas stomped, if they don't agree not just with your local country morals, but what with Americans think those should be (this includes FB banning posts for "nudity" in 2020, as if we're in the Victorian era, or as if it's e.g. French users are ok with puritanism).
    • moises_silva 6y ago
      >>> Nazism is the easy target. The precedence is removal of something legal by a moral/social decision by a corporate entity. This is dangerous. Do we want companies to do just what's legal or what's moral? in the end even laws are supposed to be trailing morality and disagreements are expected on what's moral and what's not. This is again the same old debate of whether is some sort of fundamental right to be served by Cloudflare or have your content hosted by Twitter. I do not like all forms of censorship but I also don't want private companies to be forced to host just about any content people want to publish.
• MangoCoffee 6y ago
  "It’s always better to own your platform" - 100% i listen to some Joe Rogan's podcast when he got some interesting guests. i don't remember which one but Joe mentioned Twitter ban Zuby for a reply to someone with "OK, dude". i look up Zuby and yup. Twitter ban Zuby for saying "OK, dude" to someone. how the fuck is "OK, dude" hateful? Joe said Zuby is the nicest guy that he ever meet and Joe is right. they come for Zuby because transgender activist mock Zuby and Zuby reply with "Ok, dude". the cancel culture in the West is destroying people from speaking freely. the cancel culture in the West is the reason why you must own your own content. there are many people on the internet who doesn't agree with cancel culture and want to see your content but due to powerful tech company like Twitter. they can't see it because Twitter act like a publisher but don't want the responsibities that come with it. the current Western society is in a very sad state. "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" - Evelyn Beatrice Hall
  • Isinlor 6y ago
    Does hackernews act like publisher and doesn't want the responsibilities that come with it? Yes - they do act like publisher. There is even editorial guide called "guidelines". They will remove things they don't want. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html And no - hackernews should not bear the responsibility for whatever we decide to write here, unless it's unlawful. But I agree on "own your own platform".
    • MangoCoffee 6y ago
      "own your own platform" - that we can all agree on.
    • levosmetalo 6y ago
      Does that mean we should be writing comments on own platform, and just put links here instead of commenting on HN?
      • Isinlor 6y ago
        Hackernews is not really a platform for building a brand. We have no tools to follow specific people. I don't even care that much if you are the original person I was replaying to or not ;) . We are all random strangers to each other. But if you have something substantial to say and want to put the effort, then write a blog post, build your own brand and own it.
• young_unixer 6y ago
  [SSG recommendation request] I want an SSG with the following requirements: - If it requires a dev env, it must be node. I don't want to install Ruby, Go or any other system-wide thing. - Support for (simple) custom CSS written from scratch must be first class citizen, and not buried in a dark corner of the docs. - RSS feed. Thanks for your suggestions
• zerop 6y ago
  I stopped clicking on links which have medium.com domain. It will be a premium article. Medium is choosing anything under premium payment wall, without explicit consent from Author. We need an alternate to this platform
  • tonystubblebine 6y ago
    Medium does have consent from the author and the vast majority of page views are going to authors who know a lot about what they are doing. I think that's worth noting. A Medium link is most likely to an article that exists to be behind the paywall because the author thought they could make some money and get good distribution that way. A lot of these articles wouldn't exist otherwise.
    • zerop 6y ago
      I too used to think so and that's how it was earlier. Check again. For example, other day I found one post on Netflix tech blog was also behind paywall.. check posts from famous tech blogs of companies, you would find some of them behind paywall. I don't think big corporates want to make money from their tech blogs.
      • tonystubblebine 6y ago
        The deal is for two things, money and distribution. It's possible that people are choosing to put something behind the paywall for distribution. But I agree that's unlikely in Netflix's case. But I'm 100% certain that the Netflix is the one who put it behind the paywall by having that option checked at the time of publication.
• fastball 6y ago
  If you're in the "medium is still suitable for some use cases" camp, I think you should just use Ghost[1] instead. - great for casual blogging - very cheap to host - monetization tools built-in [1] https://ghost.org/ https://ghost.org/
  • bishalb 6y ago
    Or plain old WordPress
    • fastball 6y ago
      WordPress is very slow (objectively) and much more complex to get started with (subjectively). Also the security model of WP isn't great (PHP/MySQL/etc).
      • bishalb 6y ago
        Much more complex to get started with compared to what Ghost? Really? Almost all shared hosting services offer a single click install of WordPress, I don't think ghost is anywhere as simple as that to install(for a non tech savvy user) WordPress has improved a lot in the past few years in terms of security, "worpdress is insecure" is an old meme. Sure if you just go on installing any plugin under the sun, there can be a risk. But the stock installation of WordPress with just a handful of reputable plugins should be good. Much of the slowness comes from the oodles of plugins that people install. For speed, there are many great and free caching plugins available for WordPress which can considerably speed up your site.
        • fastball 6y ago
          I meant less complexity with the setup and more complexity in just "starting to write a blog". I have used both and I found the experience with Ghost much nicer. WP will never be faster (and will use more resources) than a JAMStack website. WP will never be more secure than a JAMStack website. It is literally impossible to deface my static Ghost blog without compromising my upstream provider. This is obviously not the case with any WP site. WP definitely has its uses. I don't think a personal blog is a good one.
• rapnie 6y ago
  Quite interesting is that there are a bunch of blogging softwares that not only publish to the web, but also federate with Mastodon and other fediverse applications. Most well-known is WriteFreely.org (written in Go) that can be a good replacement for Medium (hosted version is Write.as that comes with a paid subscription). But there are also new, more specialized apps such as FediReads and Readlebee that are Amazon Goodreads alternatives. Here's a list of blogging apps in various stages of development: https://git.feneas.org/feneas/fediverse/-/wikis/watchlist-for-activitypub-apps#blog-publishing-and-reading-apps https://git.feneas.org/feneas/fediverse/-/wikis/watchlist-fo...
• winter_blue 6y ago
  The most valuable gem of advise in this article is at the end: > Update: As pointed out in the comments section, Medium has an import tool which allows you to add a canonical link from your Medium post to your original blog post. > This process ensures that Google does not think of your blog post as a duplicate. Thanks to Nicolas and Matthias for this correction. This is an excellent way to do things. Publish on your blog first, and then mirror the same post(s) on Medium.
• semicolonandson 6y ago
  I'm working with a team that provides booking systems for COVID-19 testing. The software is legit, works with some of the nation's best labs, and has even been used by the government. Seems like the kind of software that Apple/Google might be inclined to fast-track given the current state of affairs? Wrong. Neither Apple nor Google approved the apps, so the team spent 8 weeks going back and forth with them about what seemed (to me at least) like totally ineffectual, CYA security theatre. Instead we ported the code to a web-app on a domain we owned and could start helping people with symptoms immediately. Own your platform.
  • mrtksn 6y ago
    Your point is valid but in the case of App Store and Google play, they require to be an institution with an authority if you are building anything about the COVID-19 pandemic. So the route would be to partner with a medical institution that is reputable enough for Apple and Google. From their perspective, it makas sence because otherwise the App Analytics would pick up that there is this thing called coronavirus and is popular so from business perspective they should target it and the search results would degrade. Then the analytics would pick up that testing positive on Covid-19 test app has a good conversation rate and people would make apps where you test positive(or whatever goes. conspiracy theories, denialists - anything that brings eyeballs). This is essentially what happened with the News market. Analytics showed what kind of news people like and publishers made the news that people demand. They simply wrote the articles that brought most eyeballs. When you own the platform, then it is your responsibility to spread it. Good luck with that, you can be a good citizen or conspiracy theorist and it is all fine until you succeed. If you are the "undesirable" and you actually succeed then people will start talking how to block your platform. You can be undesirable by telling the truth(journalism) or invoke trouble(shootings, racism and so on). Owning the platform is not going to be the solution, it will simply delay the consequences.
• joosters 6y ago
  Even though Medium reinstated my profile, I stopped publishing on the platform and moved to my blog again. There's some history re-writing going on here. The tweet from Medium about unblocking his account was in July 2018 - the author replied with 'Happens. No worries. Thanks for resolving the issue guys', so they clearly weren't too bothered about this at the time. They then went on to post over ten further articles on Medium over the next six months - again, hardly the sign of someone annoyed by the platform. (for contrast, they had only written one earlier article in the year, so his output increased after the issue) ...and now in July 2020, two years on, they have decided that this was the thing that stopped them using Medium? How is this anything but a lie?
  • mastazi 6y ago
    You can be annoyed at something and take action after some time, what’s so strange about it? I wanted to get off Gmail for a long time but it took me a while before I actually did it. Migrating off a platform is not something you do in the blink of an eye, there is always friction involved for obvious reasons
  • ACow_Adonis 6y ago
    ...or maybe...tweets aren't an accurate representation of an author's mindset? Especially ones in a customer-company relations context responding to a recent account blocking/unblocking? I know I'm always polite when communicating in that context (it does little good to respond in a hostile fashion even if you think the person on the other end is the lowest of the low). i mean, the blog post might not honest be either, maybe there is another motive, but i'd put the company-directed communications and tweets at about the bottom of the authenticity/trust hierarchy myself.
  • tarkin2 6y ago
    “Cancel culture”... Some want others censored? This is as old as the hills. “Culture”? We need to claim exaggeration of a normal facet of human society? Those who use term portray themselves as white nights, from what I’ve seen, to try to claim a free pass. You disagree with a private company agreeing with your censorious critics? Then continue to argue your point elsewhere. That private company owes you nothing. Claiming to be a victim of society seems defeatist at best, and suspicious at worst; it makes me think the user is trying to procure sympathy to gain support for their contentious argument.
• alexnewman 6y ago
  Turns out creating a blog , backed by ipfs, and cached by cloudflare is pretty easy. http://github.com/posix4e/blog http://github.com/posix4e/blog -> http://www.wuli.nu/ http://www.wuli.nu/ Feel free to steal my example
• Anthony-G 6y ago
  Before reading this story, I had been expecting that perhaps somebody had complained about article content and that the author had been banned from Medium so I was surprised to discover that this story was about the author being shadow-banned. Shadow-banning is a useful tool for online forums but many moderators would usually considered it to be the last in a series of escalating steps that might be used for particularly troublesome users who ignore moderator warnings. I wouldn't have expected a blogging platform to implement it and certainly not at the whim of an automatic spam filter. Even worse, its algorithm does not seem to take into account past behaviour or a positive reputation of the user before banning them; all articles are hidden due to a false positive in just one of them.
• trekrich 6y ago
  dont put anything on medium that you are not prepared to have deleted with no warning.
• hatmatrix 6y ago
  As a side note, anyone know of any good CSS templates? I use org-mode to generate HTML content but have not found a lot of options.
• scoot_718 6y ago
  I don't even read things on Medium, I always open them on outline
• PaulHoule 6y ago
  Given that medium is so choked with content marketing and parodies of content marketing, it's amazing you.can have a post zapped by the spam filter. I mean, it is hard to find something on medium which isn't some variant of 'hiring is broken' sponsored by triplebyte (let's really break it!) Mulesoft getting bought by Salesforce has given us some respite from 'does your content marketing strategy need an app strategy?' They never ask 'what are the two things you need to build a business around an api?' or 'what are the two features you never get from an app management platform?' because those two questions have the same answer.
• cblconfederate 6y ago
  Quietly use blogspot. The Original Blog platform still works, doesn't go about censoring people and it's not the hip thing to do (which is a good thing(TM)).
• jeremiahlee 6y ago
  Another reason: today I clicked on a Netflix Engineering blog post I saw on LinkedIn. Medium blocked me from reading and said I had to subscribe because I had read too many articles. Netflix has the skill and money to operate its own blog without Medium putting up a paywall over its content.
• XCSme 6y ago
  I already had a PHP site so I wanted an easy way to integrate a blog in my site. I ended up creating a micro-blogging library[0], which just renders markdown as blog posts. The advantage is that there is no build step, you only write markdown files (VSCode has live-preview by default for markdown) and you get easy versioning as markdown is just plain text. [0]: https://github.com/Cristy94/markdown-blog https://github.com/Cristy94/markdown-blog
• neya 6y ago
  What I find funny in this post is it goes to great lengths to encourage you to stay off walled gardens and then there's this: "The web is meant for free speech. Your content shouldn’t be jailed for being controversial." <Followed by a Tweet Icon>
  • tonystubblebine 6y ago
    Right. You are getting at the nuance of how this conversation is a shade off. People who like Medium almost always say they like it for the distribution. So people who say you should host your own blog should be more clear about where you get distribution from. Almost always, you are going to get distribution by trying to siphon readers away from other walled gardens. But you are almost always working with these massive systems you don't control. Google SEO, Twitter & FB followers, etc. And even if you manage to siphon away a user and get their email address, you still have to deal with GMail's spam filters. You're never really in control, that's a pipe dream.
• auganov 6y ago
  I've had Medium do this to me and in server logs for my homepage I found hits from a Medium owned subnet preceded by hits from a Slack robot. Then some more Medium requests with a referrer from my other social media. Definitely not automated. It seems like Medium manually reviews any story (and user!) that crosses some threshold of traction.
  • tonystubblebine 6y ago
    Had you marked your article for distribution, i.e. behind the paywall? If so, then yes, they have a curation team that is manually reviewing articles for extra distribution across their network. As a publishing partner, I have a copy of their guidelines--mostly stuff that can be done at scale. And mostly what they are doing is trying to find the right topics to feature the article in. I'm wouldn't be surprised if they have some sort of prioritization system to deal with the volume of articles along the lines of what you describe. If an article is getting traction and hasn't been reviewed, then do it quick.
    • auganov 6y ago
      No, just a standard article. Unless that's the default then I wouldn't know. Didn't seem to be behind a paywall.
      • tonystubblebine 6y ago
        The decision is pretty prominently placed on the publish modal. I think you'd probably notice.
• StavrosK 6y ago
  If you want a site with a minimum amount of hassle, just clone the repo I made for this site: https://quicksite.stavros.io/ https://quicksite.stavros.io/
• dmje 6y ago
  HN truism: sooner or later all threads default to one about static CMS systems
• dudeabides 6y ago
  Jeremy Howard had a good post about this earlier this year. I haven't tried it yet, but it seems like a reasonable way to setup your own blog. https://www.fast.ai/2020/01/16/fast_template/ https://www.fast.ai/2020/01/16/fast_template/
• bakedbeanz 6y ago
  Not defending Medium here, but I do have an issue with this point: > The web is meant for free speech. Your content shouldn’t be jailed for being controversial. You mentioned your profile was taken offline after being mistakenly caught in their spam filter. Shouldn't spam blocking be a basic function of a publishing site? Obviously in a perfect world there wouldn't be false positives, but sometimes these things happen. Your content wasn't banned for being "controversial".
  • qayxc 6y ago
    Straight from their Terms of Service [1]: We can remove any content you post for any reason. They also clarify that they have rules [2] that users need to follow. Also government takedown requests might be followed without even notifying you if the law prevents them from doing so. So even if it wasn't a mistake, takedowns may still happen for whatever reasons and you need to take this into account before you start using the platform. I really don't understand why some people complain about services doing exactly what's stated "on the box". [1] https://policy.medium.com/medium-terms-of-service-9db0094a1e0f https://policy.medium.com/medium-terms-of-service-9db0094a1e... [2] https://policy.medium.com/medium-rules-30e5502c4eb4 https://policy.medium.com/medium-rules-30e5502c4eb4
• geniium 6y ago
  As soon as I hit a medium post, I hit the Pocket icon and switch to The pocket viewer.
• tmaly 6y ago
  I use Hugo now for my blog. But I do have to admit that Medium's mobile app is really great for writing posts. In an ideal world, I would have that interface to write my markdown on the phone. It would encourage me to write more. I could start a draft of something when a thought occurs to me and finish it up later at home.
• graton 6y ago
  Medium is the reason that I installed Cookie AutoDelete [0]. I finally got tired of doing shift-F9 and deleting cookies :) Now that I have been using Cookie AutoDelete and enabling it so that it does delete cookies automatically (and whitelisting the sites I care about) it has been very nice. [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-autodelete/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-autode...
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• tijuco2 6y ago
  Their blogs are pleasing to read. Great font and colors, but everything there is politically engaged and because of that when someone posts a link here I tend to skip it.
• dredmorbius 6y ago
  This is the principle behind Indieweb's POSSE: https://indieweb.org/POSSE https://indieweb.org/POSSE
• rolandtshen 6y ago
  I've been building Imprint (https://imprint.to https://imprint.to) these past few months to provide a better home for ideas. It's centralized like Medium, but has a focus on content ownership. You can use custom domains, own your content through our policies, and know that your content won't be altered or removed spontaneously. We also promise that in the event of the platform shutting down, we'll notify you to export your posts 3 months in advance.
• illuminea 6y ago
  I totally agree. It's so important to own as much of your content on the web as possible. That's why CMSs like WordPress are a great solution. I know WP has lots of issues, and that's why we created Strattic: static and headless publishing for WordPress websites so you can easily and quickly create content, but not worry about security and performance. https://www.strattic.com https://www.strattic.com