Elena Rossini ⁂
@_elena@mastodon.social  ·  activity timestamp 3 days ago

Warning: this is in fact a sub-toot.

A viral article about « getting off US tech » that mentions email, office suites, music and video streaming services, search and maps… but NOT the publishing platform where the article was posted.

Spoiler alert: it was Substack - the enshttf*ed Nazi bar supported by A16Z that platforms and profits from far right content.

Substack alternatives: Ghost, Wordpress, BeeHiiv, Buttondown. I use Ghost & Wordpress and LOVE them

Related: https://news.elenarossini.com/this-is-what-resistance-to-the-digital-coup-looks-like/
Petra van Cronenburg
@NatureMC@mastodon.online  ·  activity timestamp 10 hours ago
@strypey Read more closely, please: I talked about #EuropeanAlternatives. Ghost is placed in Asia.
I'm a zero in IT, for your technical questions pls read their website. My newsletter is published in the web, you get it per email, and they have a plug-in for Wordpress (even with paywall), from there I could implement it here, even with podcasts (I don't use that).

It is especially for people who want a very easy to-go solution without any subscribing costs (they take money if income).

@_elena
Chris Hartgerink (they/them)
@chartgerink@akademienl.social  ·  activity timestamp 3 days ago
@_elena haha yes it is awkward. Thanks for resharing your blog 🙏

The writer's journey is interesting, because they were on substack -> migrated to ghost -> and chose to publish on both ghost and substack (I only found out now!).

Substack -> Ghost
https://www.disconnect.blog/p/welcome-to-the-new-disconnect

Ghost + Substack
https://www.disconnect.blog/p/new-year-new-disconnect
Strypey
@strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz  ·  activity timestamp 20 hours ago
@kobold
> Can't we just start hosting our own webservers again?

Maybe if we made the FreedomBox vision happen, which requires;

* every household/ office to have a net gateway capable of hosting services

* installing services to be as easy as installing apps on a mobile device,

* ISPs to give every customer a static IPv6 address

I've been installing GNU/Linux for about 20 years, and I'm still finding hosting skills fiendishly difficult to learn. Good luck getting normies to do it.

@_elena
Strypey
@strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz  ·  activity timestamp 13 hours ago
@_elena
> I’m a normie that self-hosts ... thanks to Yunohost

Good for you. I'm a GNU/Linux using ubergeek who's never self-hosted anything.

I'm all for people doing it if they have the resources, and the spoons. But most people don't even admin their own devices, or know how to install an OS on them. So I can't see self-hosting becoming common any time soon, more's the pity.

To get most people into community-hosted services is much more realistic in the medium term.

@yunohost @kobold
Paul Sutton
@zleap@qoto.org  ·  activity timestamp 12 hours ago
@strypey @_elena @yunohost @kobold

I fully agree here, we need to make it easier for people who do not have the skills in this area, I can install an OS, and attach to network, what scares me is compromising network security by opening the right ports, (or port forwarding from another port).

So some of the barriers are not technical, just not sure on the right word for the above.
Elena Rossini ⁂
@_elena@mastodon.social  ·  activity timestamp 12 hours ago
@zleap I’m sorry if I missed something in the discussion but I never argued that everybody should self-host. And self-hosting isn’t a requirement for the indie web or the Fediverse.

There are instances run by admins… or paid services that allow people to have more sovereignty while the backend is handled by technical people (I’m thinking of masto.host and magicpages.co).

There are plenty of options that do not require a Pi or VPS and installing software

@strypey @yunohost @kobold

1 more replies (not shown)
Kobold
@kobold@social.troll.academy  ·  activity timestamp 13 hours ago
@strypey @_elena @yunohost Nobody said self-histing was supposed to become common, same us publishing to whatever corporate service there is ain't common. But if you want to publish something, just hosting a simple text file is easy. As you might remember, back in the 90s, we all used to have a dedicated folder in our /home/$USERNAME/public_html to publish files from through an http server.