15 ms·

Why do people post on [bad platform] instead of [good platform]?

224 points by firstSpeaker 3y ago

foobar1962 3y ago
[flagged]
- zadokshi 3y ago
  Why does good content get posted to the wrong platform?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- antegamisou 3y ago
  I'm notorious for shitting on the content reaching the front-page but as of 1706420941 it's a blast for me Disney unveils the HoloTile floor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39156444 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39156444 The invention of a new pasta shape - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39159263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39159263 Studying species in the deepest parts of the ocean: A new method of analysis - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39159601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39159601 The quest to decode the Mandelbrot set - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39145513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39145513 Revisting Madonna-Ology in the Era of Taylor Swift Studies - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39141334 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39141334 Implementing a ChatGPT-like LLM from scratch, step by step - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39156778 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39156778
geerlingguy 3y ago
There are still a few people who try to post long form text (and appropriate code and documentation in a code repository) for any project they deliver primarily through one of the big media platforms. I know I appreciate having the transcripts of all the Practical Engineering episodes, and I enjoy channels like Ben Eaters' where there is often supplemental material given. The thing that annoys me about Twitter/Mastodon/similar is it is rare someone will post the same thoughts separately on a blog or in long form, so it can be difficult to follow a full story there, especially if you are linked into a reply to a reply (not to mention the requirement for an account to read things on some platforms).
- jsemrau 3y ago
  I write long form paper reviews and coding example for autonomous agent tech on my substack (Encyclopedia Autonomica). In my highly subjective experience High velocity social like Twitter or LinkedIn (where I maintain a digest with about 350 subscribers) do not at all provide traffic to my posts. Reddit, where content exists longer since people are discussing about it works better. What I enjoy about Substack compared to Medium (where I am in the Partner program and was a top 5% global business writer) is that I own the distribution list and can configure the economic benefits. Media in 2024 is changing, and we have reached a point where some established Youtubers, Podcasters, and Longform writers have established more clout than established papers like the Los Angeles Times or similar.
  - LegitShady 3y ago
    I think the subreddit paradigm means that you can collect groups of niche users who are interested in something a particular niche author has to offer. On Twitter everything just sort of mashes together. I don't know about LinkedIn - I don't use it.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
muhammadusman 3y ago
As someone who can’t seem to post on any of the bad platforms mentioned but I find it seemingly freeing to post on my blog. I have the opposite issue, I want my blog to be read by those interested in the content and not by those who happen to be my friends. Because my writing is very different than what gets posted on Twitter/IG/Tiktok. And maybe because I find that my blog posts are sort of just personal journal entries over status updates with rich details like photos etc.
- J_Shelby_J 3y ago
  Same. And even professionally I'm not going to post everything on linkedin, so it can't be my "blog" either. And medium paywalls....so I ended up just rolling a quick blog on github pages using astro. Was pretty easy, and set it up as a repo so my partner can host her portfolio on github too -> https://github.com/ShelbyJenkins/easy-astro-blog-creator https://github.com/ShelbyJenkins/easy-astro-blog-creator and this is knowing very little about webdev. pretty nice until github tries to monetize pages
  - adhamsalama 3y ago
    I think Medium paywalls only when you choose to monetize your content. I still think using something open source is better though.
- eXpl0it3r 3y ago
  I don't see a link to your blog in your profile ;)
  - layer8 3y ago
    Maybe they don’t want their various presences on the net to be linked.
    - eXpl0it3r 3y ago
      Maybe, but if you're not willing to link your blog in "social spaces", then you shouldn't be frustrated that nobody is reading your blog, as no one will ever learn of its existence
ggm 3y ago
Because "you do you" has been a thing since cave painting?
anigbrowl 3y ago
The original title was clearer: Why do people post on [bad platform] instead of [good platform]?
- beanjuiceII 3y ago
  [flagged]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- yau8edq12i 3y ago
  The edit fundamentally changes the meaning of the title. With the brackets, it's clear that the title is a paraphrase/quote and that the article will probably be an answer to that question. Without the brackets, I was actually expecting a rant about people using the "wrong" platform to post content - the exact thing that the article is actually replying to.
Noumenon72 3y ago
This would be a lot more digestible as a tweet thread. Why wasn't I consulted?
- suction 3y ago
  [dead]
- mola 3y ago
  Or just a single tweet > People post tweets because there's more engagement and revenu and less friction It's ironic this hot take got the long form treatment
- graphe 3y ago
  You can always just read the title if you want blogs to be more like Twitter. ;)
  - mlrtime 3y ago
    Or like Reddit (popular subs), don't read the title and dive straight into hive mind comment soup.
    - mst 3y ago
      I believe the technical term for this is 'circlederp.'
      - sowerssix 3y ago
        I totally can't wait to use that now. Have an upvote, my friend.
treflop 3y ago
Doesn’t matter if where you post is the ‘appropriate’ place if no one is gonna find it!
kgeist 3y ago
Here in Russia we have a popular platform for long-form tech blogs called Habr. It's basically the go to platform for software and hardware engineers (for example, it's where Flipper Zero started). Usually, to have a good article, especially if you represent a company, you need to spend quite some time on editing your post to perfection, because the platform also has karma. Karma is important for corporate blogs - it's good for the image (Habr also has Habr Career - if readers are interested in your posts they may apply for a job at your company). Previously, when our company maintained its blog a few years ago, we even had to hire a copywriter to proof-read our posts, and a designer for the pictures. The main problem was that it took a lot of time of our engineers to write a single post (plus the back-and-forth with the copywriter/designer). We also had difficulties with finding employees who want to spend time on all of that. Not long ago Habr introduced short-form posts, exactly to allow individual writers and companies write "rambly twitter threads" without investing too much time in it (while still providing value, in small bits). This year we want to restart our corporate blog - we had a call with Habr staff a few days ago and they recommended to try the new short-form format. We haven't tried it yet, but it sounds like the both formats have their place.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 3y ago
  This sounds like the exact same argument as long vs short form video.
- anticodon 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - user432678 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - tux3 3y ago
      Bad. Do not take the bait. You don't keep you shirt clean by joining the mudfight.
  - 3y ago
matheusmoreira 3y ago
I'd like to address some of the citations in that post, they really stood out to me. > CAUSE I CAN'T MAKE A BLOG POST, GOD DAMN IT. I have ADHD. I can relate... I have attention deficit disorder too and it's extremely difficult to start working on anything. I take top tier medication and it makes it much easier to maintain focus but getting started is still difficult. Somehow against all these odds I managed to publish a bunch of articles. They languished unfinished for quite a while though. Wish I had a general solution for people but my advice is probably too specific to my case: it turned out the only tool that can make me productive is Termux. It gave me the ability to start working on stuff anywhere and anytime. So whenever I get the sudden motivation to do something, I make the most of it. Requires enormous effort to write any amount of text on a tiny screen made even tinier by the touch screen keyboard but it beats the alternative which is writing nothing because my laptop is too far away. Hell I wrote my own goddamn programming language inside Termux because of all this. As far as I know it's the first and only programming language to be literally born inside a mobile device. Lots of C code, all written in a tiny 135x8 terminal emulator window. Never stopped to think about how insane that is until now. > if I try to make a blog post, it'll end up being abandoned and unfinished, as I am unable to edit it into something readable and postable. I felt that one too... I would worry way too much about perfection, try to make sure everything's correct and substantial. Actually felt guilty if I published before it was perfect. Which is the same thing as saying I felt guilty if I published anything at all. It took someone here on HN telling me something like "if your comments are good enough content for this place then they're good enough content for your blog" for me to finally stop caring. I got that sort of realization that seems obvious in hindsight. It's my site, I can do whatever I want. I dunno why I ever thought otherwise. If I make mistakes I'll just fix them. If at a later date I have more to add, I'll just add it. I'm starting to think "readability" and "postability" are very harmful concepts. It's OK to be imperfect. Actually it's probably better to be imperfect. Everything is more sincere that way, more human. Perfection is a machine's job. > but I can do rambly tweet threads. they don't require a lot of attention for a long time, they don't have the endless editing I get into with blog posts, I can do them. I do the same thing but with HN comments instead of tweets. The rate limiting the moderators applied on my account is actually helping stop this addiction. I've realized that over the years I discussed certain topics many times. HN has definitely helped me shape my world view but the moderators are right about the fact this isn't the place for repetitive discussions. I've resolved to turn all these thoughts into articles at some point.
spintin 3y ago
I think the best way to use "social media" is to pull eyes to your own platform, eventually people will transition (Myspace -> Facebook -> Reddit -> Twitter -> Mastodon) and each time they move the likelihood that they eventually use "RSS" increases.
Sparkyte 3y ago
In addition think that not all venues provide proper engagement statistics to clearly know a target audience. Demographics are complicated. Being a male or female adult isn't enough to personalize content and so good content often drops in the wrong place.
noelwelsh 3y ago
One of the problem with blogs is that a lot of remaining bloggers are technical people and they have these weird hangups about styling their posts so they are actually readable. They seem to think that because design has an element of personal preference it has no importance. As much as a I dislike platforms like Twitter and Medium, the content is a least readable by default.
- BiteCode_dev 3y ago
  That's a problem with substack. I like that for once I just write and don't try to code a blog platform, and substack takes care of it. Articles readable and mails are well taken care of. But code blocks are aweful: https://www.bitecode.dev/p/analyzing-sorting-a-million-32-bit https://www.bitecode.dev/p/analyzing-sorting-a-million-32-bi... So when they reach a certain size I link to github instead. And eventually I will have to code a platform because of course I itch to do so no latter what.
- sph 3y ago
  I disagree but I see where you are coming from. Some personal blogs are unreadable because of shoddy CSS choices, but I need them to have a little personality for me to spend a second on them. The most memorable ones for me are those that I can distinguish visually (they don't have to be necessarily beautiful) And Medium is a good idea in a vacuum, in practice with nag screens and article limits the association I make when I land on it is "fuck this place, and whoever write it only cares for engagement, not reader experience." And it's true. If you care about your readers, you won't subject them to Medium or Substack's silliness. I literally don't know a single good blog hosted on those platforms. At least on blogspot we had Steve Yegge.
- szundi 3y ago
  I always just press read mode
  - noelwelsh 3y ago
    Nerds like you and me know about reader mode, but I would bet at least 90% of web users don't and even if they do it's another step in the way of accessing content.
jowea 3y ago
Stupid question: but why does video monetize so much better? Is it because of sponsorships that are harder to skip than just jumping a text paragraph? Or it's the normal ads?
- Ekaros 3y ago
  Video adds are much harder to ignore. Compared to banners. Maybe we should develop some sort of unskippable add on articles. Like lot of text and then multi-choice questionnaire, kinda in style of captchas. Those could be real value.
  - em-bee 3y ago
    how about a modal popup that forces you to type out the name of aa product or brand before it goes away. that ought to do the trick. ;-) no thanks. i'd rather just outright ban intrusive advertising that you can't skip.
- graphe 3y ago
  Skipped ads are more valuable than non skipped because it is "proof of humanity".
Animats 3y ago
The home page of the New York Times now looks like a Twitter feed. Very little copy per story. There's an important story right now - Israel vs. Gaza may be headed for a cease-fire deal. Home page info, useless. Linked content, useful, but too much blithering before they get to the actual terms. The important content: "In the first phase, fighting would stop for about 30 days while women, elderly and wounded hostages were released by Hamas. During that period, the two sides would work out details of a second phase that would suspend military operations for roughly another 30 days in exchange for Israeli soldiers and male civilians being held. The ratio of Palestinians to be released from Israeli prisons is still to be negotiated but that is viewed as a solvable issue. The deal would also allow for more humanitarian aid into Gaza." But is that up front? No.[1] That's the high end of mainstream media. The low end usually begins "10 ways to ..." I want a filter for those. People posting videos is fine. People posting unedited videos is not fine. Talking heads wearing headphones in love with the sound of their own voice - no. Run those guys through speech to text conversion and have ChatGPT summarize. "And the characters in these books and plays and so on, and in real life, I might add, spend hours bemoaning the fact that they can’t communicate. I feel that if a person can’t communicate, the very least he can do is to shut up." - Tom Lehrer [1] https://archive.is/pkoy8#selection-7311.100-7311.620 https://archive.is/pkoy8#selection-7311.100-7311.620
- ako 3y ago
  I hate it when news sites post videos, it just doesn’t work if you’re in a room with multiple people and everyone is looking at a different video with audio.
  - rzzzt 3y ago
    Embedded tweets are on the same level of annoyance. The introduction blurb and connecting sentences could be reduced to an <hr> tag so entire articles become a series of tweets and videos back-to-back.
- lozenge 3y ago
  There used to be a style for journalism called reverse pyramid. The most important part is at the start and then details get filled in. Online video has turned this on its head.
sph 3y ago
> The engagement reason is the simplest, so let's look at that first. Just looking at where people spend their time, short-form platforms like Twitter, Instagram, etc., completely dominate longer form platforms That might be the reason. I'd rather poke my eyes than "hang out" on Twitter or Mastodon. My day worsens by the minute the longer I am on those websites, with the amount of bad takes and terrible idea slogans. I hate the Twitter style posts because I exist outside that all-consuming bubble of neurosis. Reddit is dead, HN is alive and kicking, so this is basically my front page of the Internet (:
- sanroot99 3y ago
  How is lemmy nowadays?
  - brabel 3y ago
    When the Reddit strike started, I tried Lemmy for a few weeks. Absolutely the only content that got any discussion was posts about how Reddit was bad or about Lemmy itself (both criticizing the owners and extolling the platform). I was interested in programming posts but there was almost nothing interesting there :( so I was quite happy when Reddit came back (it seems to have come back to normal levels now).
    - BeFlatXIII 3y ago
      > Absolutely the only content that got any discussion was posts about how Reddit was bad or about Lemmy itself I call this the new social death spiral. When meta-discussion dominates for too long, it kills the community. I'm surprised Mastodon has lasted for as long as it has for precisely this reason.
      - thejohnconway 3y ago
        Mastodon definitely got a critical mass of non-Mastodon subject matter.
    - CM30 3y ago
swiftcoder 3y ago
I think you gloss over one of the most important aspects of engagement - feedback and recognition. Publish a blog post, and a handful of long-time followers might comment. But publish an even moderately popular/contentious twitter thread, and thousands of likes and comments roll in. I think the former is pretty demoralising after a while. Am I blogging into a void? Does anyone actually read these long-form posts I'm sinking so much time and effort into? And that leads to having to promote one's blog on short-form sites, which requries producing short-form content to build an audiance... might as well post on the short-form site to begin with.
- lapcat 3y ago
  > I think you gloss over one of the most important aspects of engagement - feedback and recognition. Publish a blog post, and a handful of long-time followers might comment. But publish an even moderately popular/contentious twitter thread, and thousands of likes and comments roll in. Engagement was the #1 reason that Dan mentioned.
  - swiftcoder 3y ago
    I guess he may have meant two-way interaction there, but the digital marketing folks typically measure engagement for a blog by session length and repeat visitors (rather than the like/comment/retweet counts one would measure social media engagement by).
    - lapcat 3y ago
      Ok, but... your post did specifically mention "likes and comments", not session length and repeat visitors. Besides, Dan also talked about "Revenue", which I presume is what digital marketing folks are concerned with.
- _heimdall 3y ago
  There are many different motivations for people posting content online. Some may blog to get recognition, others may do it simply as an outlet to write what's on their mind. Personally I'd argue that the very likes and comments you point to are what's most wrong with social media. When people are incentivized to chase engagement they'll post more often and post more extreme content. IMO blogging into the void seems much less likely to lead to morale or anxiety issues than being in a bubble of people all trying to say whatever gets more engagement.
the_gipsy 3y ago
The main reason in relation to the "why" could still be that those users are completely oblivious to the degree of inaccessibility of their content. It's accessible if you are logged in (and extra requirement on mobile: app installed). If not, it probably won't load or at best will be behind a barrage of popups nagging to agree, sign up, etc. There is no point in joining either, twitter is for people that already are heavy users and have a network, or celebs. For new users it's dead.
knorker 3y ago
The one argument in this post that is just wrong is the person who blamed ADHD. "I can't write longer than a tweet!". But... You just did. Even the argument itself is an example of how it's false.
- corobo 3y ago
  That isn't what they said or do. They're posting thoughts as they flow on Twitter in threads. It's not a single tweet, it's a thread of many tweets. Think of it as a livestream vs an edited video. In their case doing the content live is less resistance than cutting and polishing an edited video.. but in text form.
  - knorker 3y ago
    What's the difference between a twitter thread that requires more than one tweet, because of its length, and writing it in something that accepts the message as a whole? Or hell, just a plugin that tweets a picture of the whole message? I'm not suggesting that they hire an editor, do multiple passes, get a proofreader to give suggestions, etc... This is actually what they said: > Not to humblebrag or anything, but my favorite part of getting posted on hackernews or reddit is that EVERY SINGLE TIME there's one highly-ranked reply that's "jesus man, this could have been a blog post! why make 20 tweets when you can make one blog post?" > CAUSE I CAN'T MAKE A BLOG POST, GOD DAMN IT. I have ADHD. I have bad ADHD that is being treated, and the treatment is NOT WORKING TERRIBLY WELL. I cannot focus on writing blog posts. it will not happen > if I try to make a blog post, it'll end up being abandoned and unfinished, as I am unable to edit it into something readable and postable. so if I went 100% to blogs: You would get: no content I would get: lots of unfinished drafts and a feeling of being a useless waste > but I can do rambly tweet threads. they don't require a lot of attention for a long time, they don't have the endless editing I get into with blog posts, I can do them. I do them a bunch! They're just rambly and twitter, which some people don't like ^^ that doesn't fit in a tweet. Yet their ADHD didn't prevent them writing it. Why is it a tweet? In fact, the thread continues for several more statements. It's basically a blog post already, yet denying that they are able to write a blog post.
ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
> Personally, I don't really like video as a format and, for 95% of youtube videos that I see, I'd rather get the information as a blog post than a video For myself, I tend to write fairly long (I don’t consider them “long,” but I have had people refer to me as “prolix”) blog posts[0]. I enjoy writing. I’ve been doing it for most of my life. But it takes time. I spend a lot of time, writing, then, just about as much time, editing. I know that videos are far more popular, but they take even more time to make. I have posted on Medium, as well as on my personal site, but I’m probably done with that. Medium paywalled one of my posts without my consent, and that pretty much put a sock in it. But I’ve been very involved in a pretty sizable project, for the last couple of years, and that has affected my writing. Now that it’s shipped, I hope to get back to it. [0] https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/ https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/
lapcat 3y ago
1. Readership If you write a blog post, how do people become aware of the blog post? Relatively few people follow RSS feeds, so you also need a social media post linking to the blog post. With such a link, there's only one opportunity to go viral, one opportunity for each person on social media to see the link to the blog post. Whereas with a long thread of multiple short social media posts, there are many opportunities to go viral, one for each post of the thread. 2. Ranting vs. Research Speaking only for myself, I consider my blog to be my "permanent record", whereas social media is my fleeting thoughts. Indeed, I frequently delete my social media posts, whereas I almost never delete my blog posts. I have blog posts going back to 2006. And I typically spend a lot more time writing a blog post: not in terms of the technical aspects of writing, e.g., typing, but rather in terms of thinking, researching, ensuring that everything I say in the blog post is accurate and well-supported, with external citations when necessary. Just look at Dan's own blog post here: you'd never see that same level of organization and citation in a social media thread.
- cebert 3y ago
  > If you write a blog post, how do people become aware of the blog post? There are other solutions to the readership problem with independent blogs. I am trying to start blogging this year and am using Ghost as the CMS. I pay for the hosted solution that is $11/mo and provides readers the ability to subscribe for email updates. This isn’t a unique feature to Ghost, several other platforms support this too. I can say Ghost makes supporting this trivial.
  - lapcat 3y ago
    I've never heard of Ghost, so I'm not sure how much that would help with readership. In any case, external hosts undermine the goal of having the blog be a permanent record. External hosts are fleeting. They can shut down. Even Twitter itself could shut down due to massively declining ad revenue. And even though Twitter is still operating now (well, technically, "Twitter" did stop operating and was replaced with "X"), the site has started to put content behind a login wall that was previously public. Self-hosting is the only way to keep control of your content.
- 3y ago
QuadmasterXLII 3y ago
Say what you will about the content of the rationalism movement, but they read and comment on each others’ long form writing- no twitter or reddit needed.
IHEARTANAL 3y ago
That post itself is not really readable in a quick, eye-strain-less fashion.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
keiferski 3y ago
He briefly hints at it, but I think the author makes a mistake common to well-read, intellectual-type people: he assumes that people like to read as much as they like watching video, and therefore that the blog vs. video decision is one made on "proper format." The reality, I think, is that most people fundamentally don't like to read, and that reading more than a few paragraphs is rapidly becoming something akin to a chore for the majority of the population. Watching a video, on the other hand, is an entirely different experience and one that more-or-less comes naturally to human beings, no matter their education level or cultural background. I run a Substack myself, but I've increasingly become convinced that text-first platforms don't have a mass-market future and at best, will exist as a niche thing. Instead, I think video-first platforms will gradually solve the advantages text still has over video – for example, search and scrolling. As such, I'd recommend any writers/content creators seriously consider adopting a video-first approach, or at least a hybrid one. Also see a recent discussion on this topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38924022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38924022
- sourcecodeplz 3y ago
  I sure prefer videos but there is a serenity to reading. It is very quiet and all you can hear are your thoughts.
  - keiferski 3y ago
    I definitely don't want to disparage reading – I generally prefer reading to video, at least for some topics. But I do recognize that it's not a common attitude to have and it does require more "buy in" than video.
- NikolaNovak 3y ago
  I wish it weren't so but it appears to be. Even when timing is at a disadvantage - I.e. most of my friends will rather watch a 10min video with data content of a 3 paragraph article (how entertaining is that 10min video, is a matter of personal judgement :)
- codeflo 3y ago
avgcorrection 3y ago
Why do people write up great pull review descriptions and then merge them as lame duck “Merge major-security-vuln-oops into 'main' / Fixes #1624”. Can someone explain that?
- shzhdbi09gv8ioi 3y ago
  It means, "read #1624" for more info. Would be great if issues were tracked inside of the git repo tho, or the reference would point to some code hosting instance.
  - avgcorrection 3y ago
    You seem to be agreeing with me as well as not agreeing? Even though you don’t track everything inside the repo, you can still keep the most relevant commit context inside the repository by using the pull request description in the commit message. That’s what commit messages are for. (As for issue tracking: I use git-bug sometimes when the project doesn’t have an issue tracker or if I want to make my own issues. The issues are tracked in the same repository.)
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
amadeuspagel 3y ago
There are no good platforms for posting text. On neither medium nor substack can you select text without something popping up.
- layer8 3y ago
  If only it was possible to have a blog outside those two platforms.
  - amadeuspagel 3y ago
    I'm not sure what you're talking about here. Other comparable platforms that don't have such anti-features yet? How do I know they won't in the future? Or creating a static blog or renting a VPS to deploy a wordpress site? That's obviously a lot harder then posting something on twitter.
    - layer8 3y ago
      Blogging platforms that you pay for hosting your blog, like wordpress.com, write.as, ghost.org (not sure about popups there). The best assurance regarding future changes is always using your own domain, so that you can use it with a different platform in the future. While self-hosting isn’t as easy as posting on Twitter, it isn’t exactly hard either. You can also pay a service to do it for you, like bluehost.com for wordpress.org instances.
bluedino 3y ago
I can tell you where the bad content is being posted now. LinkedIn. My feed has turned into blogspam, exam cheatsheets, crappy AWS "architecture" diagrams, and low effort cyber security guides. Did you know SMTP is port 25? I'm not sure if it's recycled Medium posts, AI generated, or people actually create this crap. Others "like" and comment on it, so who knows.
- shagie 3y ago
  People create it (possibly with AI generation) and have it liked and commented in part to try to game the metric of "lots of posts/activity on Linked in on {subject}" to make themselves appear more impressive when either applying for a position ("1000 applicants, here are the top 5% for activity in cyber security") or increase the likelihood of having a recruiter noticing them and including their resume in the batch that gets sent to some company. The quality of the content is not of primary concern if there is too much content out there to be able to spend time evaluating it in an effort to differentiate between applicants.
- dewey 3y ago
  This has always been the case in my experience, I didn't really see much change over the years to be honest.
- jefozabuss 3y ago
  But did you know 99% of the people cannot solve these 2 math operations on these 3 sets of match sticks? Linkedin feed is turning into somehing like a 9gag of rehashed memes.
- stevekemp 3y ago
  Back in the day I used to collect sysadmin guides/documentation over at debian-administration.org. I've lost track of the number of times people would copy/paste who articles and series, posting it on linkedin as their own work. Usually Indians, but the second-most common nationality was Americans. I used to report it, but it happened often enough that I just gave up. My site is long-dead now, which tells you how long this has been going on, definitely 10+ years. No doubt now "AI" is commonplace it has gotten easier, but that's nothing new.
amadeuspagel 3y ago
> you can see this in the valuations of these companies No you cannot. Valuation is based on market power. There are many platforms to post longform text, which is why none of them have any significant market power. There's only one platform to post tweets.
joduplessis 3y ago
I hate that "content" now has become "content we want people to engage with so that we can get likes and clicks and become thought leaders and such". Likely unrealistic, but I hope the internet can get back to where it was 15 years ago, but keep the good stuff.
- CatWChainsaw 3y ago
  It would be nice. But this internet needs to have an apocalypse so something new can be built in its place.
alberth 3y ago
“Why good content” … doesn’t have (a) date posted, (b) author by line, or (c) clear navigation because you want to read more. I always enjoy Dan’s post, but above also drives me crazy.
corobo 3y ago
> if I try to make a blog post, it'll end up being abandoned and unfinished, as I am unable to edit it into something readable and postable. so if I went 100% to blogs: You would get: no content I would get: lots of unfinished drafts and a feeling of being a useless waste I can see this being an issue aye, looking at my drafts I've got 45 posts in draft status currently.. eventually™ Maybe I should look into Twitter threads too
mst 3y ago
The article itself is solid ... but my favourite part is probably the fact it has a collection of Foone thread links and it seems I'd missed some of them at the time.
forgotmypw17 3y ago
I view the comments as a mis-targeted criticism of the poor accessibility and content lock-in of these platforms. I, too, find long twitter threads largely unreadable, because of how distracting it is to have after each post the retweet and reply counts, timestamp, another the user's avatar, and sometimes ads. I can't blame the author, because twitter obviously works for them as an easy platform to post from. But the fact that I have no other means to access their content makes it inaccessible. I used to be able to use Nitter, but that's gone now. And that's OK. There are also large portions of this city that probably have all sorts of interesting and great people that I'll never meet, because I don't tend to frequent some places. I can't read all the content on the Internet; platform-based elimination saves me a lot of time. Most of the time, I have noticed that platform quality correlates with content quality, and the things I can read only after dismissing a cookie banner, followed by a newsletter pitch, followed by a registration proposal, were not worth my time to begin with. On the rare occasion it sounds like I really want to read it, I use a helpful service such as archive.is. But most of the time, I just close the Tab, thank the platform for saving me some reading time, and move on.
derbOac 3y ago
I appreciate addressing this question directly from the perspective of arguments in favor of the practice. It basically answers the question of "why". However: None of these reasons seem to address the problem, they just offer an apologia of sorts. The practice is still poor communication in my opinion. The reasons are largely focused on the writer, and not on the reader. It says a lot to me. Even the reason "because people are on platform X" seems still focused on the writer getting attention, and not on the readers per se. What I've never understood about any of this is if you're going to bother to write a multiple-post thread, why not just put it on a blog, and put a link to it on a shortform platform? Then people get a summary and a link for further reading, and you get to read the content in the best form for it. This is the purpose of URLs. I can't get over what seems to me to be this weird stockholm syndrome phenomenon when it comes to putting longform writing on shortform platforms. All of the reasons given seem like legitimate reasons to use Twitter or Mastodon for something, but not for posting longform content on there per se.
- ivank 3y ago
  Unfortunately, the Twitter algorithm heavily penalizes the visibility of posts containing a URL.
FrustratedMonky 3y ago
The short form, information in chunks, is good also because it forces the author to make a point per post. In a long blog post or book, authors might get lazy and ramble on and not come to a defined point. But if it is multiple short tweets, they do have to think about the subject enough to get to a point. A good author should be doing this for each paragraph in a long peace, but it is easier to meander, or loose the thread. (edit: I mean 'good' only as a 'practiced' writer, as post points out, some 'good' writers just work better in different formats, it doesn't mean they are 'bad'). Also. Very glad this was included. I had read it a long time ago and was pretty amazed, but couldn't remember enough to search for it. So -> Thank You Foone. This was a good post. You want to know something about how bullshit insane our brains are? (2018) (twitter.com/foone) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32303786 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32303786
chrisknyfe 3y ago
Sorry but what is [good_platform] ?
Kye 3y ago
This is basically why all my music is in the form of screen recordings of Live these days. Rendering is effort! And no one listens to it anyway. If someone actually asks for a FLAC or MP3, I'll do it, but no one has. I never managed more than 2-3 sales per album at peak when I did albums and EPs, and even a simple release with some thrown together cover art is 10x the work for basically no return. People do watch the videos[0], and enough people pay $5+/month for it--they go to YouTube later--to make it worth doing and cover new tools. [0] https://www.youtube.com/@keenkye/ https://www.youtube.com/@keenkye/

224 points by firstSpeaker 3y ago

foobar1962 3y ago

[flagged]

zadokshi 3y ago
Why does good content get posted to the wrong platform?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
antegamisou 3y ago
I'm notorious for shitting on the content reaching the front-page but as of 1706420941 it's a blast for me Disney unveils the HoloTile floor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39156444 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39156444 The invention of a new pasta shape - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39159263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39159263 Studying species in the deepest parts of the ocean: A new method of analysis - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39159601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39159601 The quest to decode the Mandelbrot set - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39145513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39145513 Revisting Madonna-Ology in the Era of Taylor Swift Studies - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39141334 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39141334 Implementing a ChatGPT-like LLM from scratch, step by step - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39156778 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39156778

geerlingguy 3y ago

There are still a few people who try to post long form text (and appropriate code and documentation in a code repository) for any project they deliver primarily through one of the big media platforms. I know I appreciate having the transcripts of all the Practical Engineering episodes, and I enjoy channels like Ben Eaters' where there is often supplemental material given. The thing that annoys me about Twitter/Mastodon/similar is it is rare someone will post the same thoughts separately on a blog or in long form, so it can be difficult to follow a full story there, especially if you are linked into a reply to a reply (not to mention the requirement for an account to read things on some platforms).

jsemrau 3y ago
I write long form paper reviews and coding example for autonomous agent tech on my substack (Encyclopedia Autonomica). In my highly subjective experience High velocity social like Twitter or LinkedIn (where I maintain a digest with about 350 subscribers) do not at all provide traffic to my posts. Reddit, where content exists longer since people are discussing about it works better. What I enjoy about Substack compared to Medium (where I am in the Partner program and was a top 5% global business writer) is that I own the distribution list and can configure the economic benefits. Media in 2024 is changing, and we have reached a point where some established Youtubers, Podcasters, and Longform writers have established more clout than established papers like the Los Angeles Times or similar.
- LegitShady 3y ago
  I think the subreddit paradigm means that you can collect groups of niche users who are interested in something a particular niche author has to offer. On Twitter everything just sort of mashes together. I don't know about LinkedIn - I don't use it.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

muhammadusman 3y ago

As someone who can’t seem to post on any of the bad platforms mentioned but I find it seemingly freeing to post on my blog. I have the opposite issue, I want my blog to be read by those interested in the content and not by those who happen to be my friends. Because my writing is very different than what gets posted on Twitter/IG/Tiktok. And maybe because I find that my blog posts are sort of just personal journal entries over status updates with rich details like photos etc.

J_Shelby_J 3y ago
Same. And even professionally I'm not going to post everything on linkedin, so it can't be my "blog" either. And medium paywalls....so I ended up just rolling a quick blog on github pages using astro. Was pretty easy, and set it up as a repo so my partner can host her portfolio on github too -> https://github.com/ShelbyJenkins/easy-astro-blog-creator https://github.com/ShelbyJenkins/easy-astro-blog-creator and this is knowing very little about webdev. pretty nice until github tries to monetize pages
- adhamsalama 3y ago
  I think Medium paywalls only when you choose to monetize your content. I still think using something open source is better though.
eXpl0it3r 3y ago
I don't see a link to your blog in your profile ;)
- layer8 3y ago
  Maybe they don’t want their various presences on the net to be linked.
  - eXpl0it3r 3y ago
    Maybe, but if you're not willing to link your blog in "social spaces", then you shouldn't be frustrated that nobody is reading your blog, as no one will ever learn of its existence

ggm 3y ago

Because "you do you" has been a thing since cave painting?

anigbrowl 3y ago

The original title was clearer: Why do people post on [bad platform] instead of [good platform]?

beanjuiceII 3y ago
[flagged]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
yau8edq12i 3y ago
The edit fundamentally changes the meaning of the title. With the brackets, it's clear that the title is a paraphrase/quote and that the article will probably be an answer to that question. Without the brackets, I was actually expecting a rant about people using the "wrong" platform to post content - the exact thing that the article is actually replying to.

Noumenon72 3y ago

This would be a lot more digestible as a tweet thread. Why wasn't I consulted?

suction 3y ago
[dead]
mola 3y ago
Or just a single tweet > People post tweets because there's more engagement and revenu and less friction It's ironic this hot take got the long form treatment
graphe 3y ago
You can always just read the title if you want blogs to be more like Twitter. ;)
- mlrtime 3y ago
  Or like Reddit (popular subs), don't read the title and dive straight into hive mind comment soup.
  - mst 3y ago
    I believe the technical term for this is 'circlederp.'
    - sowerssix 3y ago
      I totally can't wait to use that now. Have an upvote, my friend.

treflop 3y ago

Doesn’t matter if where you post is the ‘appropriate’ place if no one is gonna find it!

kgeist 3y ago

Here in Russia we have a popular platform for long-form tech blogs called Habr. It's basically the go to platform for software and hardware engineers (for example, it's where Flipper Zero started). Usually, to have a good article, especially if you represent a company, you need to spend quite some time on editing your post to perfection, because the platform also has karma. Karma is important for corporate blogs - it's good for the image (Habr also has Habr Career - if readers are interested in your posts they may apply for a job at your company). Previously, when our company maintained its blog a few years ago, we even had to hire a copywriter to proof-read our posts, and a designer for the pictures. The main problem was that it took a lot of time of our engineers to write a single post (plus the back-and-forth with the copywriter/designer). We also had difficulties with finding employees who want to spend time on all of that. Not long ago Habr introduced short-form posts, exactly to allow individual writers and companies write "rambly twitter threads" without investing too much time in it (while still providing value, in small bits). This year we want to restart our corporate blog - we had a call with Habr staff a few days ago and they recommended to try the new short-form format. We haven't tried it yet, but it sounds like the both formats have their place.

8n4vidtmkvmk 3y ago
This sounds like the exact same argument as long vs short form video.
anticodon 3y ago
[flagged]
- user432678 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - tux3 3y ago
    Bad. Do not take the bait. You don't keep you shirt clean by joining the mudfight.
- 3y ago

matheusmoreira 3y ago

I'd like to address some of the citations in that post, they really stood out to me. > CAUSE I CAN'T MAKE A BLOG POST, GOD DAMN IT. I have ADHD. I can relate... I have attention deficit disorder too and it's extremely difficult to start working on anything. I take top tier medication and it makes it much easier to maintain focus but getting started is still difficult. Somehow against all these odds I managed to publish a bunch of articles. They languished unfinished for quite a while though. Wish I had a general solution for people but my advice is probably too specific to my case: it turned out the only tool that can make me productive is Termux. It gave me the ability to start working on stuff anywhere and anytime. So whenever I get the sudden motivation to do something, I make the most of it. Requires enormous effort to write any amount of text on a tiny screen made even tinier by the touch screen keyboard but it beats the alternative which is writing nothing because my laptop is too far away. Hell I wrote my own goddamn programming language inside Termux because of all this. As far as I know it's the first and only programming language to be literally born inside a mobile device. Lots of C code, all written in a tiny 135x8 terminal emulator window. Never stopped to think about how insane that is until now. > if I try to make a blog post, it'll end up being abandoned and unfinished, as I am unable to edit it into something readable and postable. I felt that one too... I would worry way too much about perfection, try to make sure everything's correct and substantial. Actually felt guilty if I published before it was perfect. Which is the same thing as saying I felt guilty if I published anything at all. It took someone here on HN telling me something like "if your comments are good enough content for this place then they're good enough content for your blog" for me to finally stop caring. I got that sort of realization that seems obvious in hindsight. It's my site, I can do whatever I want. I dunno why I ever thought otherwise. If I make mistakes I'll just fix them. If at a later date I have more to add, I'll just add it. I'm starting to think "readability" and "postability" are very harmful concepts. It's OK to be imperfect. Actually it's probably better to be imperfect. Everything is more sincere that way, more human. Perfection is a machine's job. > but I can do rambly tweet threads. they don't require a lot of attention for a long time, they don't have the endless editing I get into with blog posts, I can do them. I do the same thing but with HN comments instead of tweets. The rate limiting the moderators applied on my account is actually helping stop this addiction. I've realized that over the years I discussed certain topics many times. HN has definitely helped me shape my world view but the moderators are right about the fact this isn't the place for repetitive discussions. I've resolved to turn all these thoughts into articles at some point.

spintin 3y ago

I think the best way to use "social media" is to pull eyes to your own platform, eventually people will transition (Myspace -> Facebook -> Reddit -> Twitter -> Mastodon) and each time they move the likelihood that they eventually use "RSS" increases.

Sparkyte 3y ago

In addition think that not all venues provide proper engagement statistics to clearly know a target audience. Demographics are complicated. Being a male or female adult isn't enough to personalize content and so good content often drops in the wrong place.

noelwelsh 3y ago

One of the problem with blogs is that a lot of remaining bloggers are technical people and they have these weird hangups about styling their posts so they are actually readable. They seem to think that because design has an element of personal preference it has no importance. As much as a I dislike platforms like Twitter and Medium, the content is a least readable by default.

BiteCode_dev 3y ago
That's a problem with substack. I like that for once I just write and don't try to code a blog platform, and substack takes care of it. Articles readable and mails are well taken care of. But code blocks are aweful: https://www.bitecode.dev/p/analyzing-sorting-a-million-32-bit https://www.bitecode.dev/p/analyzing-sorting-a-million-32-bi... So when they reach a certain size I link to github instead. And eventually I will have to code a platform because of course I itch to do so no latter what.
sph 3y ago
I disagree but I see where you are coming from. Some personal blogs are unreadable because of shoddy CSS choices, but I need them to have a little personality for me to spend a second on them. The most memorable ones for me are those that I can distinguish visually (they don't have to be necessarily beautiful) And Medium is a good idea in a vacuum, in practice with nag screens and article limits the association I make when I land on it is "fuck this place, and whoever write it only cares for engagement, not reader experience." And it's true. If you care about your readers, you won't subject them to Medium or Substack's silliness. I literally don't know a single good blog hosted on those platforms. At least on blogspot we had Steve Yegge.
szundi 3y ago
I always just press read mode
- noelwelsh 3y ago
  Nerds like you and me know about reader mode, but I would bet at least 90% of web users don't and even if they do it's another step in the way of accessing content.

jowea 3y ago

Stupid question: but why does video monetize so much better? Is it because of sponsorships that are harder to skip than just jumping a text paragraph? Or it's the normal ads?

Ekaros 3y ago
Video adds are much harder to ignore. Compared to banners. Maybe we should develop some sort of unskippable add on articles. Like lot of text and then multi-choice questionnaire, kinda in style of captchas. Those could be real value.
- em-bee 3y ago
  how about a modal popup that forces you to type out the name of aa product or brand before it goes away. that ought to do the trick. ;-) no thanks. i'd rather just outright ban intrusive advertising that you can't skip.
graphe 3y ago
Skipped ads are more valuable than non skipped because it is "proof of humanity".

Animats 3y ago

The home page of the New York Times now looks like a Twitter feed. Very little copy per story. There's an important story right now - Israel vs. Gaza may be headed for a cease-fire deal. Home page info, useless. Linked content, useful, but too much blithering before they get to the actual terms. The important content: "In the first phase, fighting would stop for about 30 days while women, elderly and wounded hostages were released by Hamas. During that period, the two sides would work out details of a second phase that would suspend military operations for roughly another 30 days in exchange for Israeli soldiers and male civilians being held. The ratio of Palestinians to be released from Israeli prisons is still to be negotiated but that is viewed as a solvable issue. The deal would also allow for more humanitarian aid into Gaza." But is that up front? No.[1] That's the high end of mainstream media. The low end usually begins "10 ways to ..." I want a filter for those. People posting videos is fine. People posting unedited videos is not fine. Talking heads wearing headphones in love with the sound of their own voice - no. Run those guys through speech to text conversion and have ChatGPT summarize. "And the characters in these books and plays and so on, and in real life, I might add, spend hours bemoaning the fact that they can’t communicate. I feel that if a person can’t communicate, the very least he can do is to shut up." - Tom Lehrer [1] https://archive.is/pkoy8#selection-7311.100-7311.620 https://archive.is/pkoy8#selection-7311.100-7311.620

ako 3y ago
I hate it when news sites post videos, it just doesn’t work if you’re in a room with multiple people and everyone is looking at a different video with audio.
- rzzzt 3y ago
  Embedded tweets are on the same level of annoyance. The introduction blurb and connecting sentences could be reduced to an <hr> tag so entire articles become a series of tweets and videos back-to-back.
lozenge 3y ago
There used to be a style for journalism called reverse pyramid. The most important part is at the start and then details get filled in. Online video has turned this on its head.

sph 3y ago

> The engagement reason is the simplest, so let's look at that first. Just looking at where people spend their time, short-form platforms like Twitter, Instagram, etc., completely dominate longer form platforms That might be the reason. I'd rather poke my eyes than "hang out" on Twitter or Mastodon. My day worsens by the minute the longer I am on those websites, with the amount of bad takes and terrible idea slogans. I hate the Twitter style posts because I exist outside that all-consuming bubble of neurosis. Reddit is dead, HN is alive and kicking, so this is basically my front page of the Internet (:

sanroot99 3y ago
How is lemmy nowadays?
- brabel 3y ago
  When the Reddit strike started, I tried Lemmy for a few weeks. Absolutely the only content that got any discussion was posts about how Reddit was bad or about Lemmy itself (both criticizing the owners and extolling the platform). I was interested in programming posts but there was almost nothing interesting there :( so I was quite happy when Reddit came back (it seems to have come back to normal levels now).
  - BeFlatXIII 3y ago
    > Absolutely the only content that got any discussion was posts about how Reddit was bad or about Lemmy itself I call this the new social death spiral. When meta-discussion dominates for too long, it kills the community. I'm surprised Mastodon has lasted for as long as it has for precisely this reason.
    - thejohnconway 3y ago
      Mastodon definitely got a critical mass of non-Mastodon subject matter.
  - CM30 3y ago

swiftcoder 3y ago

I think you gloss over one of the most important aspects of engagement - feedback and recognition. Publish a blog post, and a handful of long-time followers might comment. But publish an even moderately popular/contentious twitter thread, and thousands of likes and comments roll in. I think the former is pretty demoralising after a while. Am I blogging into a void? Does anyone actually read these long-form posts I'm sinking so much time and effort into? And that leads to having to promote one's blog on short-form sites, which requries producing short-form content to build an audiance... might as well post on the short-form site to begin with.

lapcat 3y ago
> I think you gloss over one of the most important aspects of engagement - feedback and recognition. Publish a blog post, and a handful of long-time followers might comment. But publish an even moderately popular/contentious twitter thread, and thousands of likes and comments roll in. Engagement was the #1 reason that Dan mentioned.
- swiftcoder 3y ago
  I guess he may have meant two-way interaction there, but the digital marketing folks typically measure engagement for a blog by session length and repeat visitors (rather than the like/comment/retweet counts one would measure social media engagement by).
  - lapcat 3y ago
    Ok, but... your post did specifically mention "likes and comments", not session length and repeat visitors. Besides, Dan also talked about "Revenue", which I presume is what digital marketing folks are concerned with.
_heimdall 3y ago
There are many different motivations for people posting content online. Some may blog to get recognition, others may do it simply as an outlet to write what's on their mind. Personally I'd argue that the very likes and comments you point to are what's most wrong with social media. When people are incentivized to chase engagement they'll post more often and post more extreme content. IMO blogging into the void seems much less likely to lead to morale or anxiety issues than being in a bubble of people all trying to say whatever gets more engagement.

the_gipsy 3y ago

The main reason in relation to the "why" could still be that those users are completely oblivious to the degree of inaccessibility of their content. It's accessible if you are logged in (and extra requirement on mobile: app installed). If not, it probably won't load or at best will be behind a barrage of popups nagging to agree, sign up, etc. There is no point in joining either, twitter is for people that already are heavy users and have a network, or celebs. For new users it's dead.

knorker 3y ago

The one argument in this post that is just wrong is the person who blamed ADHD. "I can't write longer than a tweet!". But... You just did. Even the argument itself is an example of how it's false.

corobo 3y ago
That isn't what they said or do. They're posting thoughts as they flow on Twitter in threads. It's not a single tweet, it's a thread of many tweets. Think of it as a livestream vs an edited video. In their case doing the content live is less resistance than cutting and polishing an edited video.. but in text form.
- knorker 3y ago
  What's the difference between a twitter thread that requires more than one tweet, because of its length, and writing it in something that accepts the message as a whole? Or hell, just a plugin that tweets a picture of the whole message? I'm not suggesting that they hire an editor, do multiple passes, get a proofreader to give suggestions, etc... This is actually what they said: > Not to humblebrag or anything, but my favorite part of getting posted on hackernews or reddit is that EVERY SINGLE TIME there's one highly-ranked reply that's "jesus man, this could have been a blog post! why make 20 tweets when you can make one blog post?" > CAUSE I CAN'T MAKE A BLOG POST, GOD DAMN IT. I have ADHD. I have bad ADHD that is being treated, and the treatment is NOT WORKING TERRIBLY WELL. I cannot focus on writing blog posts. it will not happen > if I try to make a blog post, it'll end up being abandoned and unfinished, as I am unable to edit it into something readable and postable. so if I went 100% to blogs: You would get: no content I would get: lots of unfinished drafts and a feeling of being a useless waste > but I can do rambly tweet threads. they don't require a lot of attention for a long time, they don't have the endless editing I get into with blog posts, I can do them. I do them a bunch! They're just rambly and twitter, which some people don't like ^^ that doesn't fit in a tweet. Yet their ADHD didn't prevent them writing it. Why is it a tweet? In fact, the thread continues for several more statements. It's basically a blog post already, yet denying that they are able to write a blog post.

ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago

> Personally, I don't really like video as a format and, for 95% of youtube videos that I see, I'd rather get the information as a blog post than a video For myself, I tend to write fairly long (I don’t consider them “long,” but I have had people refer to me as “prolix”) blog posts[0]. I enjoy writing. I’ve been doing it for most of my life. But it takes time. I spend a lot of time, writing, then, just about as much time, editing. I know that videos are far more popular, but they take even more time to make. I have posted on Medium, as well as on my personal site, but I’m probably done with that. Medium paywalled one of my posts without my consent, and that pretty much put a sock in it. But I’ve been very involved in a pretty sizable project, for the last couple of years, and that has affected my writing. Now that it’s shipped, I hope to get back to it. [0] https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/ https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/

lapcat 3y ago

1. Readership If you write a blog post, how do people become aware of the blog post? Relatively few people follow RSS feeds, so you also need a social media post linking to the blog post. With such a link, there's only one opportunity to go viral, one opportunity for each person on social media to see the link to the blog post. Whereas with a long thread of multiple short social media posts, there are many opportunities to go viral, one for each post of the thread. 2. Ranting vs. Research Speaking only for myself, I consider my blog to be my "permanent record", whereas social media is my fleeting thoughts. Indeed, I frequently delete my social media posts, whereas I almost never delete my blog posts. I have blog posts going back to 2006. And I typically spend a lot more time writing a blog post: not in terms of the technical aspects of writing, e.g., typing, but rather in terms of thinking, researching, ensuring that everything I say in the blog post is accurate and well-supported, with external citations when necessary. Just look at Dan's own blog post here: you'd never see that same level of organization and citation in a social media thread.

cebert 3y ago
> If you write a blog post, how do people become aware of the blog post? There are other solutions to the readership problem with independent blogs. I am trying to start blogging this year and am using Ghost as the CMS. I pay for the hosted solution that is $11/mo and provides readers the ability to subscribe for email updates. This isn’t a unique feature to Ghost, several other platforms support this too. I can say Ghost makes supporting this trivial.
- lapcat 3y ago
  I've never heard of Ghost, so I'm not sure how much that would help with readership. In any case, external hosts undermine the goal of having the blog be a permanent record. External hosts are fleeting. They can shut down. Even Twitter itself could shut down due to massively declining ad revenue. And even though Twitter is still operating now (well, technically, "Twitter" did stop operating and was replaced with "X"), the site has started to put content behind a login wall that was previously public. Self-hosting is the only way to keep control of your content.
3y ago

QuadmasterXLII 3y ago

Say what you will about the content of the rationalism movement, but they read and comment on each others’ long form writing- no twitter or reddit needed.

IHEARTANAL 3y ago

That post itself is not really readable in a quick, eye-strain-less fashion.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

keiferski 3y ago

He briefly hints at it, but I think the author makes a mistake common to well-read, intellectual-type people: he assumes that people like to read as much as they like watching video, and therefore that the blog vs. video decision is one made on "proper format." The reality, I think, is that most people fundamentally don't like to read, and that reading more than a few paragraphs is rapidly becoming something akin to a chore for the majority of the population. Watching a video, on the other hand, is an entirely different experience and one that more-or-less comes naturally to human beings, no matter their education level or cultural background. I run a Substack myself, but I've increasingly become convinced that text-first platforms don't have a mass-market future and at best, will exist as a niche thing. Instead, I think video-first platforms will gradually solve the advantages text still has over video – for example, search and scrolling. As such, I'd recommend any writers/content creators seriously consider adopting a video-first approach, or at least a hybrid one. Also see a recent discussion on this topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38924022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38924022

sourcecodeplz 3y ago
I sure prefer videos but there is a serenity to reading. It is very quiet and all you can hear are your thoughts.
- keiferski 3y ago
  I definitely don't want to disparage reading – I generally prefer reading to video, at least for some topics. But I do recognize that it's not a common attitude to have and it does require more "buy in" than video.
NikolaNovak 3y ago
I wish it weren't so but it appears to be. Even when timing is at a disadvantage - I.e. most of my friends will rather watch a 10min video with data content of a 3 paragraph article (how entertaining is that 10min video, is a matter of personal judgement :)
codeflo 3y ago

avgcorrection 3y ago

Why do people write up great pull review descriptions and then merge them as lame duck “Merge major-security-vuln-oops into 'main' / Fixes #1624”. Can someone explain that?

shzhdbi09gv8ioi 3y ago
It means, "read #1624" for more info. Would be great if issues were tracked inside of the git repo tho, or the reference would point to some code hosting instance.
- avgcorrection 3y ago
  You seem to be agreeing with me as well as not agreeing? Even though you don’t track everything inside the repo, you can still keep the most relevant commit context inside the repository by using the pull request description in the commit message. That’s what commit messages are for. (As for issue tracking: I use git-bug sometimes when the project doesn’t have an issue tracker or if I want to make my own issues. The issues are tracked in the same repository.)
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

amadeuspagel 3y ago

There are no good platforms for posting text. On neither medium nor substack can you select text without something popping up.

layer8 3y ago
If only it was possible to have a blog outside those two platforms.
- amadeuspagel 3y ago
  I'm not sure what you're talking about here. Other comparable platforms that don't have such anti-features yet? How do I know they won't in the future? Or creating a static blog or renting a VPS to deploy a wordpress site? That's obviously a lot harder then posting something on twitter.
  - layer8 3y ago
    Blogging platforms that you pay for hosting your blog, like wordpress.com, write.as, ghost.org (not sure about popups there). The best assurance regarding future changes is always using your own domain, so that you can use it with a different platform in the future. While self-hosting isn’t as easy as posting on Twitter, it isn’t exactly hard either. You can also pay a service to do it for you, like bluehost.com for wordpress.org instances.

bluedino 3y ago

I can tell you where the bad content is being posted now. LinkedIn. My feed has turned into blogspam, exam cheatsheets, crappy AWS "architecture" diagrams, and low effort cyber security guides. Did you know SMTP is port 25? I'm not sure if it's recycled Medium posts, AI generated, or people actually create this crap. Others "like" and comment on it, so who knows.

shagie 3y ago
People create it (possibly with AI generation) and have it liked and commented in part to try to game the metric of "lots of posts/activity on Linked in on {subject}" to make themselves appear more impressive when either applying for a position ("1000 applicants, here are the top 5% for activity in cyber security") or increase the likelihood of having a recruiter noticing them and including their resume in the batch that gets sent to some company. The quality of the content is not of primary concern if there is too much content out there to be able to spend time evaluating it in an effort to differentiate between applicants.
dewey 3y ago
This has always been the case in my experience, I didn't really see much change over the years to be honest.
jefozabuss 3y ago
But did you know 99% of the people cannot solve these 2 math operations on these 3 sets of match sticks? Linkedin feed is turning into somehing like a 9gag of rehashed memes.
stevekemp 3y ago
Back in the day I used to collect sysadmin guides/documentation over at debian-administration.org. I've lost track of the number of times people would copy/paste who articles and series, posting it on linkedin as their own work. Usually Indians, but the second-most common nationality was Americans. I used to report it, but it happened often enough that I just gave up. My site is long-dead now, which tells you how long this has been going on, definitely 10+ years. No doubt now "AI" is commonplace it has gotten easier, but that's nothing new.

amadeuspagel 3y ago

> you can see this in the valuations of these companies No you cannot. Valuation is based on market power. There are many platforms to post longform text, which is why none of them have any significant market power. There's only one platform to post tweets.

joduplessis 3y ago

I hate that "content" now has become "content we want people to engage with so that we can get likes and clicks and become thought leaders and such". Likely unrealistic, but I hope the internet can get back to where it was 15 years ago, but keep the good stuff.

CatWChainsaw 3y ago
It would be nice. But this internet needs to have an apocalypse so something new can be built in its place.

alberth 3y ago

“Why good content” … doesn’t have (a) date posted, (b) author by line, or (c) clear navigation because you want to read more. I always enjoy Dan’s post, but above also drives me crazy.

corobo 3y ago

> if I try to make a blog post, it'll end up being abandoned and unfinished, as I am unable to edit it into something readable and postable. so if I went 100% to blogs: You would get: no content I would get: lots of unfinished drafts and a feeling of being a useless waste I can see this being an issue aye, looking at my drafts I've got 45 posts in draft status currently.. eventually™ Maybe I should look into Twitter threads too

mst 3y ago

The article itself is solid ... but my favourite part is probably the fact it has a collection of Foone thread links and it seems I'd missed some of them at the time.

forgotmypw17 3y ago

I view the comments as a mis-targeted criticism of the poor accessibility and content lock-in of these platforms. I, too, find long twitter threads largely unreadable, because of how distracting it is to have after each post the retweet and reply counts, timestamp, another the user's avatar, and sometimes ads. I can't blame the author, because twitter obviously works for them as an easy platform to post from. But the fact that I have no other means to access their content makes it inaccessible. I used to be able to use Nitter, but that's gone now. And that's OK. There are also large portions of this city that probably have all sorts of interesting and great people that I'll never meet, because I don't tend to frequent some places. I can't read all the content on the Internet; platform-based elimination saves me a lot of time. Most of the time, I have noticed that platform quality correlates with content quality, and the things I can read only after dismissing a cookie banner, followed by a newsletter pitch, followed by a registration proposal, were not worth my time to begin with. On the rare occasion it sounds like I really want to read it, I use a helpful service such as archive.is. But most of the time, I just close the Tab, thank the platform for saving me some reading time, and move on.

derbOac 3y ago

I appreciate addressing this question directly from the perspective of arguments in favor of the practice. It basically answers the question of "why". However: None of these reasons seem to address the problem, they just offer an apologia of sorts. The practice is still poor communication in my opinion. The reasons are largely focused on the writer, and not on the reader. It says a lot to me. Even the reason "because people are on platform X" seems still focused on the writer getting attention, and not on the readers per se. What I've never understood about any of this is if you're going to bother to write a multiple-post thread, why not just put it on a blog, and put a link to it on a shortform platform? Then people get a summary and a link for further reading, and you get to read the content in the best form for it. This is the purpose of URLs. I can't get over what seems to me to be this weird stockholm syndrome phenomenon when it comes to putting longform writing on shortform platforms. All of the reasons given seem like legitimate reasons to use Twitter or Mastodon for something, but not for posting longform content on there per se.

ivank 3y ago
Unfortunately, the Twitter algorithm heavily penalizes the visibility of posts containing a URL.

FrustratedMonky 3y ago

The short form, information in chunks, is good also because it forces the author to make a point per post. In a long blog post or book, authors might get lazy and ramble on and not come to a defined point. But if it is multiple short tweets, they do have to think about the subject enough to get to a point. A good author should be doing this for each paragraph in a long peace, but it is easier to meander, or loose the thread. (edit: I mean 'good' only as a 'practiced' writer, as post points out, some 'good' writers just work better in different formats, it doesn't mean they are 'bad'). Also. Very glad this was included. I had read it a long time ago and was pretty amazed, but couldn't remember enough to search for it. So -> Thank You Foone. This was a good post. You want to know something about how bullshit insane our brains are? (2018) (twitter.com/foone) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32303786 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32303786

chrisknyfe 3y ago

Sorry but what is [good_platform] ?

Kye 3y ago

This is basically why all my music is in the form of screen recordings of Live these days. Rendering is effort! And no one listens to it anyway. If someone actually asks for a FLAC or MP3, I'll do it, but no one has. I never managed more than 2-3 sales per album at peak when I did albums and EPs, and even a simple release with some thrown together cover art is 10x the work for basically no return. People do watch the videos[0], and enough people pay $5+/month for it--they go to YouTube later--to make it worth doing and cover new tools. [0] https://www.youtube.com/@keenkye/ https://www.youtube.com/@keenkye/