TikTok Shutdown: Why building on proprietary platforms is a risky game
33 comments
·January 19, 2025herbertl
dangus
Anyone who follows your content on any one platform should have a path to reach you on other platforms or on your own
I think about big/semi-big YouTubers like Jeb Brooks who starts every video introducing his website. Or how Doug DeMuro sends you to cars and bids and sends you to his podcast.
Other creators have premium/“backup plan” type of content hosts like floatplane for Linus tech tips or Nebula for the various documentary-style producers out there.
Basically, don’t make your revenue dependent on a single platform in any way you can.
paulryanrogers
What makes email so resilient? Decentralization and federation. Like Mastodon and activity pub
nozzlegear
And maybe the fact that an email inbox feels like it's "yours" more than anything else does. It's especially true for technical folks who know how to move our email addresses from one host to another, but even for non-technical folks, the inbox is just the inbox – it doesn't change a lot, if ever.
xnx
The most important thing is to own your own domain/urls. URLs are forever.
Own your own domain and anything is possible. Build on someone else's domain and you are always a serf.
yourname.substack.com is worthless and can be taken away at any time. blog.yourname.com can never be taken away[1].
[1] It can be taken away, but if it comes to that point you probably have bigger problems.
RestartKernel
To add to [1]: if .io can teach us anything, it's not to build on top of ccTLDs. I'd even call into question whether Google's new global TLDs are in the same class as a .net or .com.
dangus
I don't know that .io has taught us that. If .io changes in the future there will be ample time to prepare.
Read especially the last paragraph here: https://www.icann.org/en/blogs/details/the-chagos-archipelag...
I believe that one of two outcomes will occur:
1. The popularity of .io will be incentive enough for Chagos to leave it alone
2. .io is retired and we all have 5 years to deal with it.
noman-land
DNS urls are extremely not forever. Ask the likes of wikileaks, pirate bay, libgen, etc. Their domains have been routinely seized and they move to other ones.
xnx
Totally. If the government is after you, good luck.
kebsup
This is one of the reasons why I'm building my app in Flutter and not Swift/Android, which is not mentioned a lot in cross-platform vs. native discussions. Neither of the native frameworks compile to JS/we assembly, making it useless if the app gets randomly deleted from stores.
Ekaros
On other side building yourself has even bigger problem discoverability. You need to either already have audience. Or spend lot of time on marketing. With likely lesser rewards than spending that same time on content on some proprietary platform.
wg0
I worry the most about app stores.
carlosjobim
I will take the bait. What are the exact steps for making a blog? From zero. This is what is always suggested by hackers for the general public, instead of being dependent on proprietary platforms. Okay then, list the exact steps to be taken by a non-programmer who wants to do that? Let's assume they own a PC or a Mac, to give them a fair start.
dangus
I’ll take your bait: pick one of dozens of hosting providers that run common blogging platforms like Wordpress and you’re not locked in to anything.
You could start your blog with someone like GoDaddy and move it to NameCheap with the import/export tools Wordpress has available.
I can even see from a quick search that proprietary solutions like SquareSpace will let you export a ZIP that you can then import into someone else like Wix.
carlosjobim
Okay, a quick web search tells me Bluehost.com is what I should go for. On their front page they recommend me a plan for $5 per month, for this among other things:
- 50 websites: I just want to have my own website or blog
- 50 GB NVMe Storage: How many blog posts is this?
- 500 Concurrent Visitors: That doesn't sound like a lot, does it?
- Free SSL: What is that and why do I need that for my blog?
- Free CDN: What is that and why do I need that for my blog?
- DDos Protection: What is that and why do I need that for my blog?
Then after selecting plan and finding a domain, you have to give a ton of info and pay about $60 to get to the next steps. Which probably will be a world of pain again.
GoDaddy and other web hosts are the same. Their target public are developers and sys admins, not the general public. That's why the general public uses proprietary services for putting their creative content online. That's why the general public buys iPhones and doesn't care about how many gigabytes of RAM a phone has. That's why they buy new cars and don't know or care how many horses are under the hood.
On proprietary services like social media, you can start writing, posting and uploading at once, without setting up a dozen different services and routing, worrying about security and hacks, or having to pay out of pocket.
Things get even worse if said blogger or content creator would like to purchase groceries and decides to start charging for his/her work. Subscription / payment plugins are a nightmare on WordPress - and expensive to boot. Anybody who wants to keep his sanity will instead go for a proprietary solution.
Just like driving is for everybody and not only mechanics, the internet is for everybody and you shouldn't have to be a programmer or sys admin to be able to express yourself online. Just like you shouldn't have to know how to bore out a cylinder to be allowed on the highways.
dangus
Do people not buy understand how to buy and operate cars because the spec sheet has a bunch of technical info on it? The fact remains that they are one-click setup solutions.
Look at products like EasyWP on Namecheap.
https://www.namecheap.com/wordpress/
https://www.godaddy.com/hosting/wordpress-hosting
https://www.bluehost.com/wordpress
I think a lot of bloggers know that they want/need SSL, DDoS protection, and a CDN. I wouldn't confuse bloggers with the lowest common denominator general public.
Let's not put on our rose colored glasses and mistake the classic world wide web for something that didn't need a decent amount of knowledge to setup even in the plain HTML days.
A number of WYSIWYG blogging providers in that day (Xanga, LiveJournal) were not interoperable and basically shut down and erased your dat.
If you were using a website host like Geocities or something of that sort you needed to have some level of HTML coding knowledge or were using some very limited site builder tools.
And I would also say that the WYSIWYG blogging tools that are still out there are far more flexible than your typical closed wall social media platform. Services like Blogger and Medium have full export functionality as a part of their platforms.
antasvara
To extend the driving metaphor somewhat, you definitely don't need to be a mechanic if you live in an area with a lot of mechanics.
You need to know how your car works, however, if you're 50 miles from the nearest garage.
If your livelihood and business depend entirely on a single social media site, that's a problem long term. I'm not talking about creators where their content is a side hustle; if your content creation is your full time income and you have a single point of failure, that should feel scary.
Reminds me of the stories of people that lose access to their Google account. They can't access any account they've created using that email, they had their passwords saved with it, and essentially couldn't function without access. For a more business focused angle, it's reminiscent of the Silicon Valley Bank failure. If you can't operate your business at all if one bank were to fail (or have an outage), that's kind of a problem.
herbertl
Yes! Whatever blog solution you choose, buy your own domain name. I personally use Namecheap, I have heard good things about Porkbun. That way you can always control the flow of link traffic.
And set up a mailing list! If you use Substack, buy a domain name. Otherwise you can use ConvertKit, Ghost, etc., and collect your reader's emails directly.
xnx
Agree completely. Do any registrars toss in a free (or very cheap) basic [micro]blog service? Domain ownership should be the main entry point to the web, everything else is interchangeable and can be sorted out later.
satvikpendem
Ghost.org (the open source version, not the hosted one, as you mention). Optionally buy a domain name and point the blog to there via the settings. Thousands of people (and I guarantee you the vast majority are non-technical) run blogs like on WordPress or Ghost so not sure why you're thinking people would struggle.
carlosjobim
"Prerequisites The officially recommended production installation requires the following stack:
Ubuntu 20.04 or Ubuntu 22.04
NGINX (minimum of 1.9.5 for SSL)
A supported version of Node.js
MySQL 8
Systemd
A server with at least 1GB memory
A registered domain name"
Do you think a normal person has any idea what the above is or how to set it up?
I like Ghost, but this is like a mechanic saying "bore out the cylinder". Non-developers will have a very hard time setting up a self-hosted Ghost blog. That's why the proprietary Ghost platform exists, which is an excellent choice.
Thousands of people run blogs on WordPress, but billions of people express themselves through social media. Because self-hosting is a nightmare unless it's your job to work with sys admin stuff.
I will suggest a solution that would let normal people easily host and own their own blog without being sys admins or developers:
A "Blog" app that you could get in the App Store on your iPad. Set-up includes deciding a domain name and paying for it with Apple Pay. Then start writing posts and pressing publish, everything taken care of out of sight, with built in hosting that you pay for monthly. If the user so pleases, they could activate features such as paid memberships or publishing to search engines, taken care of in the background by the "Blog" service. It could also include community features like social media, which could be moderated like social media – with the difference that they can't take down your blog.
Normal people would be able to use this and focus on being creative and not on lint error or PHP version.
satvikpendem
Your arguments are contradictory. Ghost is not proprietary, it is open source, so unless you're using a different definition of the word proprietary, you will have to clarify how Ghost is proprietary. If you mean "hosted," then again your arguments are contradictory.
You are asking how the average non-technical user should be able to blog without anything "proprietary" (hosted), without also setting anything up. The contradiction is that you can't want something to be self-hosted and also not expend any effort whatsoever towards it, self-hosted always required some knowledge of time and effort, and thus you correctly say that people should use something hosted. Your example itself is literally what Ghost does, (and you even say yourself that it's hosted) I don't see how it is any different or less "proprietary" than hosted Ghost.
Therefore, by the logic laid out by your own stipulations, your initial question actually would not have any logically valid answers. There is simply no platform that is not proprietary (hosted by your definition it seems) that also does not require any knowledge or setup.
nickthegreek
Thousands of people do it, so millions of people can? You somehow distilled 100+ steps into 2 sentences like they are fundamentally understood by the masses who struggle with the idea of file system. You have fallen victim to the exact hacker mentality OP stated.
satvikpendem
You're right, it's millions of people who use Ghost, per their npm download statistics, not thousands. I read what OP said but I am not going to spend time copy pasting what the Ghost.org instructions say onto an HN comment when, yes, millions of people can and do already read and follow the instructions provided there. If one can't do what millions already do, follow a simple step by step process that is clearly laid out, then I'm sorry but they honestly don't deserve to have a blog.
op00to
What are the exact steps from zero for starting a newspaper? Writing a book and getting it published? Effectively using billboards for an ad campaign?
carlosjobim
> What are the exact steps from zero for starting a newspaper?
Assuming the user owns a computer and a printer:
1. Open Microsoft Word or Apple Pages (either of these comes pre-installed on most consumer devices).
2. Write your articles.
3. Check that the printer has paper.
4. Print.
Millions of normal people are using computers and printing their documents every day, this is not a problem for them.
> Writing a book and getting it published?
1. Open Pages
2. Write your book
3. File menu -> Publish on Apple Books...
They even have a nice tutorial:
https://authors.apple.com/support/4574-publish-book-from-web
> Effectively using billboards for an ad campaign?
This I don't know.
Building a direct connection with your customers/audience/people is the key. As this piece suggests, an email list is a great way to get started.
It could really be any list of any contact info that you can export and download as a data file at some point. I have seen physical stores leave clipboards out for people to sign up for a mailing list and that works.
I feel extremely passionate about this topic and I've written extensively on it.
1: Going direct buys you freedom: https://herbertlui.net/going-direct-buys-you-freedom/
2: Own your marketing, own your income: https://herbertlui.net/own-your-marketing-own-your-income/
3: Learning to talk to customers, directly: https://herbertlui.net/learning-to-talk-to-customers-directl...
Of course, I'm not the only one:
The Rostra manifesto is also great! https://www.rostra.co/
There are also the filmmakers buying their own theater: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/westwood...