3 ms·

> The reason I think this is needed is because a large percent of Internet users cannot afford hosting personal websites. ~$5-7 a month for a web server via va

> The reason I think this is needed is because a large percent of Internet users cannot afford hosting personal websites. ~$5-7 a month for a web server via various platforms. A better one than your phone would be, most likely—certainly more stable. I don't think that's what's stopping people, I think most people just don't have a use case for hosting a web site. In my 90s dream of the technohippie utopia they would all have extensive and idiosyncratic personal websites about various things they've soldered together, but that didn't work out. Turns out most people want to watch videos of other people doing things, and that is most efficiently hosted in a centralized place.

ip26 3y ago
I think it’s axiomatic that an order of magnitude more time will be spent on consuming content than producing it. Why would you spend hours every day crafting a deeply insightful blog if literally no one ever read it? As an author or other content producer, you want people to consume your work. Therefore, the equilibrium between content and consumption must settle on dramatically more consumption than production. I think this handily explains why the “personal website for every human” utopia never came to pass. (Yes, I know some people will produce great content purely for the joy of doing it, and don’t care if anyone consumes it. I think that’s an edge case, not the operandus of every living person) P.S. You’re completely right about the $5-7/mo hosting. I used to run a server in my home, but discovered I was spending more on electricity than the cost of leasing a small VPS. Centralizing has fantastic economies of scale.
bandergirl 3y ago
$60 a year is a lot of money for a lot of the world. I met people who spent that much a month for a bed to live on. The cheapest PHP/MySQL hosting in my country is $18/year

ip26 3y ago

I think it’s axiomatic that an order of magnitude more time will be spent on consuming content than producing it. Why would you spend hours every day crafting a deeply insightful blog if literally no one ever read it? As an author or other content producer, you want people to consume your work. Therefore, the equilibrium between content and consumption must settle on dramatically more consumption than production. I think this handily explains why the “personal website for every human” utopia never came to pass. (Yes, I know some people will produce great content purely for the joy of doing it, and don’t care if anyone consumes it. I think that’s an edge case, not the operandus of every living person) P.S. You’re completely right about the $5-7/mo hosting. I used to run a server in my home, but discovered I was spending more on electricity than the cost of leasing a small VPS. Centralizing has fantastic economies of scale.

bandergirl 3y ago

$60 a year is a lot of money for a lot of the world. I met people who spent that much a month for a bed to live on. The cheapest PHP/MySQL hosting in my country is $18/year