7 ms·

Nobody here has mentioned the real reason public blogging has died off, which is that with the modern public Internet, the risk of being attacked - doxxing, har

Nobody here has mentioned the real reason public blogging has died off, which is that with the modern public Internet, the risk of being attacked - doxxing, harassment, or simply the grind of moderating comments - has completely eliminated any desire any normal person would have to interface publicly (or anything more than pseudonymously) with the world apart from a profit motive.

mschuster91 3y ago
Yup. It's a real hassle just to keep the spammers and skiddies at bay. Not worth the trouble.
kstrauser 3y ago
I turned off comments a long time ago because the effort required to get a signal-to-noise ratio I liked was more than the value I got from the good comments. I'm glad I did it. If you want to comment on a blog post, drop me an email.
- tasty_freeze 3y ago
  I have a few websites dedicated to some old microcomputers. They are niche and very few people care. I work on them in bursts and then they sit there for years before the next bout of updates. It is often an excuse to take advantage of the latest CSS or whatever. Anyway, many years ago I added a message board to most of them so passersby could share their recollections and nostalgia. At first it was a PITA to keep out the spam. But message boards are so passe that not only is it rare to get a new comment, but it is rare to get spam too.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    I love the tiny message boards that implement a completely effective captcha with things like "How many bits wide is the 8088?"
    - meatmanek 3y ago
      Good old "security through not being a big enough target to make it worth the time to write an exploit". The rtl-sdr.com blog uses this sort of captcha. Unfortunately I suspect someone will break this whole category of captcha soon enough by throwing an LLM at it.
      - fsckboy 3y ago
        LLM cracks into your blog: "interesting blog post today about the 8088, thank you! that 8/16 architecture, with some 32 bit ops and, through segmentation, a 20 bit address space really expanded the possibilities for this chip. These PoTeNcY pIlLs will expand your possiblities even more!"
    - fsckboy 3y ago
      8088? I swear I'm not a robot, but I wouldn't know how to answer that. Perhaps that's the correct answer?
at_a_remove 3y ago
I to some extent agree. A blog can be an attack surface for someone wishing to doxx you, a point of failure for potential employers, or perhaps an opportunity to open yourself up to criticism for the local equivalent of your knitting community when they're having a purity spiral. You could, of course, keep to the driest topics, the most tamed opinions, nothing spicier than an animal cracker, but for some this self-censorship of "your most honest, primitive, real thoughts" (to quote Naked Lunch) is tantamount to a sin, just one step up from lying to your diary. If you are trying to keep it safe, are you truly communicating what is on your mind, or are you pasteurizing your output, homogenizing it, adding a touch of gamma radiation and a run through the freeze-drier, until the final result is palatable pablum, certainly inoffensive and low-residue, but ultimately unworth either consumption or production? Blogging seems to have shifted on the risk/reward scale and people have responded as such. A pity.
- morkalork 3y ago
  I think this is it. Of course you could blog anonymously? Though it kind of defeats half the purpose and feels like shouting into the void. At that point, it's easier to just be another random user on hn and reddit.
  - ReactiveJelly 3y ago
    And if I'm anonymous, I can't say _much_ about my life. Every single comment gives away entropy. https://gwern.net/death-note-anonymity https://gwern.net/death-note-anonymity I think this has contributed to my life-long mental health problems, as I've purposely separated myself into 2 personas. To paraphrase Agent Smith... Jelly 1 has a job and a mortgage and a Facebook, is made of matter and occupies space, and is openly lesbian, and isn't shy to talk a little about politics or her old schizophrenia diagnosis. Jelly 2 exists only on the dark web, never grew out of enjoying hentai, delights in posting political hot takes like "gasoline should cost more, actually", lies about absolutely everything to shake off doxxers, and doesn't even use the same username on any 2 forums. Both Jellies are miserable most of the time, since they take turns hiding the other one from one social circle or another. Jelly 2 can never hold a job. Jelly 1 isn't convinced that there's enough stuff in the real world to kill off Jelly 2 and live alone. "One of these lives has a future..."
OfSanguineFire 3y ago
I'm not sure this is it. Twitter and Mastodon has loads of people who turned some details that would previously been considered intimate or controversial -- transness, sexual preference, polyamory, stance on American partisan politics or Israel vs. Palestine, etc. -- into a major part of their online persona, and are posting either under their own names or pseudonyms that aren't impossible to discover, but without a profit motive.
- lmm 3y ago
  Only when those details/stances are obviously protected, IME. Consciously or unconsciously, they may be concluding that being visibly a member of a protected class makes you safer from being fired than not being so.
qingcharles 3y ago
Anyone out there using solutions like this and can offer any feedback? https://akismet.com/ https://akismet.com/
- vincent_s 3y ago
  Akismet is great. It's baked into every WordPress blog (but needs to be activated separately) so it's widely adopted. You can also use it via their REST API. It's not limited to WordPress.
hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
I'm not convinced normal people have ever interfaced publicly with the world via the Internet in a way apart from a profit motive, actually. Most of what you read on the Internet is written by insane people [1]. [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/s/ad9kNJLyl3 https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/s/ad9kNJLyl3
- barrysteve 3y ago
  Your article mentions that 97-99% of people lurk to read content produced by the 1%. That 1% is getting massively underpaid.
  - hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
    Filling in this blank is your first step back to normalcy!
    - barrysteve 3y ago
      Oh to have read the first few paragraphs of Moby Dick, long ago. Dogmatically chasing the phantom of life... disconnected from substance of life. How easy it is to find an abuse or deprivation worth filling in with the chase for life's sensory phantom.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
V1ndaar 3y ago
For me it is partially that for sure. There's plenty of stuff I would - in theory - not mind to post publicly. E.g. my personal notes about interesting stuff I stumble on, want to read up on, how to troubleshoot stuff etc. But the issue is a) I don't feel like investing the time to individually post only subsets and b) posting all of it makes me feel way too vulnerable. At a quick glance suddenly everyone would just know all my interests, my expertise and lack thereof in areas and so on. Just not worth it in the current internet and societal discourse.
carlosjobim 3y ago
In the early 2000s there was a ton of bloggers publishing under their real name, what fear would they have for doxxing? Comments can be turned off, or set to only appear after admin approval. These people now mostly publish stuff under their own profile on Facebook, because that's where the audience is. Soon to be was.

mschuster91 3y ago

Yup. It's a real hassle just to keep the spammers and skiddies at bay. Not worth the trouble.

kstrauser 3y ago

I turned off comments a long time ago because the effort required to get a signal-to-noise ratio I liked was more than the value I got from the good comments. I'm glad I did it. If you want to comment on a blog post, drop me an email.

tasty_freeze 3y ago
I have a few websites dedicated to some old microcomputers. They are niche and very few people care. I work on them in bursts and then they sit there for years before the next bout of updates. It is often an excuse to take advantage of the latest CSS or whatever. Anyway, many years ago I added a message board to most of them so passersby could share their recollections and nostalgia. At first it was a PITA to keep out the spam. But message boards are so passe that not only is it rare to get a new comment, but it is rare to get spam too.
- bombcar 3y ago
  I love the tiny message boards that implement a completely effective captcha with things like "How many bits wide is the 8088?"
  - meatmanek 3y ago
    Good old "security through not being a big enough target to make it worth the time to write an exploit". The rtl-sdr.com blog uses this sort of captcha. Unfortunately I suspect someone will break this whole category of captcha soon enough by throwing an LLM at it.
    - fsckboy 3y ago
      LLM cracks into your blog: "interesting blog post today about the 8088, thank you! that 8/16 architecture, with some 32 bit ops and, through segmentation, a 20 bit address space really expanded the possibilities for this chip. These PoTeNcY pIlLs will expand your possiblities even more!"
  - fsckboy 3y ago
    8088? I swear I'm not a robot, but I wouldn't know how to answer that. Perhaps that's the correct answer?

at_a_remove 3y ago

I to some extent agree. A blog can be an attack surface for someone wishing to doxx you, a point of failure for potential employers, or perhaps an opportunity to open yourself up to criticism for the local equivalent of your knitting community when they're having a purity spiral. You could, of course, keep to the driest topics, the most tamed opinions, nothing spicier than an animal cracker, but for some this self-censorship of "your most honest, primitive, real thoughts" (to quote Naked Lunch) is tantamount to a sin, just one step up from lying to your diary. If you are trying to keep it safe, are you truly communicating what is on your mind, or are you pasteurizing your output, homogenizing it, adding a touch of gamma radiation and a run through the freeze-drier, until the final result is palatable pablum, certainly inoffensive and low-residue, but ultimately unworth either consumption or production? Blogging seems to have shifted on the risk/reward scale and people have responded as such. A pity.

morkalork 3y ago
I think this is it. Of course you could blog anonymously? Though it kind of defeats half the purpose and feels like shouting into the void. At that point, it's easier to just be another random user on hn and reddit.
- ReactiveJelly 3y ago
  And if I'm anonymous, I can't say _much_ about my life. Every single comment gives away entropy. https://gwern.net/death-note-anonymity https://gwern.net/death-note-anonymity I think this has contributed to my life-long mental health problems, as I've purposely separated myself into 2 personas. To paraphrase Agent Smith... Jelly 1 has a job and a mortgage and a Facebook, is made of matter and occupies space, and is openly lesbian, and isn't shy to talk a little about politics or her old schizophrenia diagnosis. Jelly 2 exists only on the dark web, never grew out of enjoying hentai, delights in posting political hot takes like "gasoline should cost more, actually", lies about absolutely everything to shake off doxxers, and doesn't even use the same username on any 2 forums. Both Jellies are miserable most of the time, since they take turns hiding the other one from one social circle or another. Jelly 2 can never hold a job. Jelly 1 isn't convinced that there's enough stuff in the real world to kill off Jelly 2 and live alone. "One of these lives has a future..."

OfSanguineFire 3y ago

I'm not sure this is it. Twitter and Mastodon has loads of people who turned some details that would previously been considered intimate or controversial -- transness, sexual preference, polyamory, stance on American partisan politics or Israel vs. Palestine, etc. -- into a major part of their online persona, and are posting either under their own names or pseudonyms that aren't impossible to discover, but without a profit motive.

lmm 3y ago
Only when those details/stances are obviously protected, IME. Consciously or unconsciously, they may be concluding that being visibly a member of a protected class makes you safer from being fired than not being so.

qingcharles 3y ago

Anyone out there using solutions like this and can offer any feedback? https://akismet.com/ https://akismet.com/

vincent_s 3y ago
Akismet is great. It's baked into every WordPress blog (but needs to be activated separately) so it's widely adopted. You can also use it via their REST API. It's not limited to WordPress.

hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago

I'm not convinced normal people have ever interfaced publicly with the world via the Internet in a way apart from a profit motive, actually. Most of what you read on the Internet is written by insane people [1]. [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/s/ad9kNJLyl3 https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/s/ad9kNJLyl3

barrysteve 3y ago
Your article mentions that 97-99% of people lurk to read content produced by the 1%. That 1% is getting massively underpaid.
- hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
  Filling in this blank is your first step back to normalcy!
  - barrysteve 3y ago
    Oh to have read the first few paragraphs of Moby Dick, long ago. Dogmatically chasing the phantom of life... disconnected from substance of life. How easy it is to find an abuse or deprivation worth filling in with the chase for life's sensory phantom.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

V1ndaar 3y ago

For me it is partially that for sure. There's plenty of stuff I would - in theory - not mind to post publicly. E.g. my personal notes about interesting stuff I stumble on, want to read up on, how to troubleshoot stuff etc. But the issue is a) I don't feel like investing the time to individually post only subsets and b) posting all of it makes me feel way too vulnerable. At a quick glance suddenly everyone would just know all my interests, my expertise and lack thereof in areas and so on. Just not worth it in the current internet and societal discourse.

carlosjobim 3y ago

In the early 2000s there was a ton of bloggers publishing under their real name, what fear would they have for doxxing? Comments can be turned off, or set to only appear after admin approval. These people now mostly publish stuff under their own profile on Facebook, because that's where the audience is. Soon to be was.