In this post, I'll talk about how Medium has burned me with their algorithms in the past, and why you should work on your own blog.
  • DessalinesA
    6·
    4 years ago

    Anyone else get one of those annoying site blockers after they’ve read a few articles on medium, asking you to sign up? Its just a blog site where you can’t read more than 5 articles w/o signing up. Absolute trash.

    Luckily we have writefreely and plume.

    • dl_OP
      5·
      4 years ago

      Yeah, I get those all the time. Fortunately changing to a private browser window usually gets around it.

      It really makes me despise Medium though, especially since a lot of developers have chosen to publish their write ups on software there. Hitting that blocker while researching or debugging something is the worst.

      • MayaM
        4·
        4 years ago

        firefox containers also work for this.

        I’m a little torn because I want writers to be able to get paid for their work, but… the Medium experience isn’t good, and they’ve dicked around some content publishers who’ve committed to them

        • dl_OP
          4·
          4 years ago

          Monetization seems to be quite neglected in this wave of self-published content. I am with you that writers who want to monetize their work absolutely should be in power to do so.

          I think a big part of why monetization is neglected is because it’s tricky do right. No one likes being subjected to tons of tracking scripts or hitting a paywall for the content they’re browsing. On the other hand, how do you make money from people if your content is completely free to browse.

          Of course anyone can slap Google-ads on their website to generate some money from their traffic. However, for the indieweb to grow I believe there needs to be a healthy discussion on how to ethically monetize your content.

          • MayaM
            2·
            4 years ago

            I read something lamenting that Substack is taking off for this–unhappy that it’s email instead of the web. Myself, I’m just happy Substack publishes RSS feeds for its newsletters, so it works for me. The more web-native version would be Patreon. Patreon’s a silo, for sure–so I’m curious what the self-hostable versions would look like (integrate with Stripe/Square kind of stuff?). I think Ghost is trying to do stuff in this space, but I’ve heard complaints that it’s really finicky to self-host.

  • ksynwa
    5·
    4 years ago

    my favourite way to do write blogs is to use a static site generator (i use hugo). you can also host it on grihub/gitlab/etc. for free. the issue is i am not a good or dedicated writer so i don’t worry about things like vitality and SEOs. i wonder if there are some good guides about stuff like that.

  • k_o_t
    5·
    4 years ago

    tldr you don’t own and don’t have control over your blogging platform

    but yes, very true

    • dl_OP
      5·
      4 years ago

      I agree that this isn’t really the most groundbreaking take, especially on here.

      But I thought this post might be interesting for someone who’s just started breaking free from big social media and getting to know the indieweb.