The TikTok ban, the Musk Twitter takeover, the Facebook moderation policy changes, the Republicans’ rapidly intensifying crackdowns on speech... let these be the proof you needed to move anything you care about online to a space you control.
Digital sovereignty is more important than ever.
As an ISP, let me chime in: No, not necessarily. Just avoid any form of vendor-lock in (eg: onepage, wix, ...). Given your question, I assume, you are not overly tech-savvy.
you are also fine running a cheap virtual host or virtual server. It's also OK, if you use the hosting-companies SQL-Server for your CMS (I suggest you do, so no hassle for you with patching, upgrades and security stuff). Important is, that you have means to 'dump' the stuff and move it somewhere else.
Point is: use your own (domain-) name, so u can move your emails and or content somewhere else, with a limited amount of hassle.
So: No vendor-specific stuff. They will prey on u, as they can guesstimate what a move will cost you, and calculate from there how to extract the maximum amount of money from you.
Hosting with a hosting-company is perfectly fine, as long as you don't use their special-sauce, which will run exactly only on their servers.
And if you are using CMSs - by the love of god, limit the amount of plugins. The ideal amount is 0, for that matter, and before you ask.
@gadgetgav @czauner @molly0xfff in terms of the social media evil shit, running your own stuff off an ISP is wayyyy better.
But, going the ISP route does mean you have to deal with things you haven’t. You’re going to have to learn some things about being a sysadmin. Marketing becomes a bigger workload.
There’s tradeoffs, there’s always tradeoffs, but some of those are good tradeoffs. If you’re careful, moving between ISPs isn’t painless, but it’s not awful either.
@gadgetgav @czauner @molly0xfff I'm a bit hesitant to suggest Wordpress with the drama Matt Mullenweg has created around it, but it's one of the most popular platforms for running a small website and there are plenty of providers offering various levels of managed hosting solutions. Also, exporting and moving on should be facilitated by the huge plugin ecosystem.
In general, picking an open source platform with fully managed hosting but with an option to go self-hosted is a good starting point.
@daaain @gadgetgav @molly0xfff
Yeah, we needed that WordPress drama really badly. But generally:
There is no one shoe fits it all. If your 'stuff' is mainly text - and not necessarily the layout an design of said text, then I see absolutely no problem here.
The Texts can easily migrated to $something_else if the shit really hits the fan.
If one is more 'artsy', and requires some multimedia-stuff and highly specific layouts (eg: a specific plugin and theme) then the answer is not so clear cut.
Note: I use 'you' in the following paragraphs not directed to the above poster, but to a curious reader without much IT-knowledge:
If you are a content-creator: ask around, what others are doing, und strike everything what looks like a closed shop (Facebook, Insta, Wix, onepage) from this list.
This will leave you with very few options left, and with these ask sbdy with an IT background, and who you trust. The Person should be able to explain you the pros and cons if the few options and help you to make an informed decision.
Damn, if I just have a week or two, I could really write the most important stuff in a kind of article. It will be a horrible article, as my writing is not the best, but maybe I would be able to cover the most important stuff.
Sorry, im on a train, and only on my cellphone. So ... I'm not overly competent when it comes to the US ISP market.
But GoDaddy is a larger player, and from what I know they offer basically everything from a naked VPS to a hosted WordPress.
Generally, this boils down how much of your time you want to invest in kindling your stuff (updates, etc, ...).
And, as I don't know you - and what you are intending to do, sorry, I can't give you solid advice.
SBDY should make a decision-flowchart, or something like this.
But if you are for instance talking WordPress: If you have SBDY who sets that up for you, and helps you decide for a holster, you should be fine.
If you keep the plugins to minimum, enable anything with auto updates, and have aforementioned person to check once or twice in a year, that should do it (major updates, like switching php-releases).
Sone Hosters and ISPs also offer WP setup and basing maintenance as a service, so there's that too.
@czauner @gadgetgav @molly0xfff
Don't use GoDaddy.
They either sold, or allowed to be hacked, my email with them. After that I got a steady stream of phishing spams demanding payment for a non-existing domain. Also continual adverts from 3rd party web services.
It’s a valid concern. Ultimately you *can* still be shut down. But it’s a lot harder. There are many DNS providers out there (And GoDaddy is frankly one of the worst IMO). There’s only one Facebook provider.
You *can* move your own website to other providers for a long time before you run out of options.
@gadgetgav Sure! So first thing, just in case it isn't obvious to you:
Who hosts your domain name, and who hosts the actual content of your site, do *not* need to be the same organization.
For my domains, I'm currently using https://www.hover.com as well as https://porkbun.com.
I've been happy with both, I've used Hover for far longer than Porkbun, but the latter is a bit cheaper. So for now my domains are split the two, I may consolidate later.
@gadgetgav For the actual content of my sites, I'm using GitHub Pages: https://pages.github.com right now, but there are tons of other options out there!
As mentioned earlier in the thread, the trick is to use "boring” standard technologies that are interchangeable. An HTML file will work on one of a thousand providers. Getting sucked into some cool new thing often means only the one vendor of that thing will work.
Check out @louie's post as a starting point: https://lmnt.me/blog/how-to-make-a-damn-website.html
@BrendaAnna @czauner @gadgetgav @molly0xfff
Even if you have a domain name, it can be taken away.
Use #tor to make an #onion domain as alternative to access your website
#OwnTheEndNodes #SelfHosting #CommunityNetworks
#Tor #Onionize #CommunityClouds
#DigitalSovereignty
@czauner @gadgetgav @molly0xfff
Never trust any company offering a free domain name registration.
Or at the very least when choosing a domain through a supplier check who they register the domain owner as. (Most will quietly register *their* ownership of your desired domain, and then charge you an arm and a leg to release it to you if you ever try to move. The lock-in is tight.)
This is way too complicated. There were various tries doing that since the nineties. And they all failed.
As a rule of thumb: you can't solve sociological or political problems using tech.
And if someone brings up 'decentralised mesh nets': run. The last 30 years have proven, that these won't work (over a certain size, that is).
It's fine for messaging, but not much more. NNTP ('NetNews') was the prime example for such a decentralised communication subsystem. It's still around, btw.
@TotalSonic @molly0xfff In most places, the closest thing we have to this in practice is amateur radio voice repeater networks (which is not a terrible place to start, honestly). SOME major cities have volunteer 802.11 mesh networks running: e.g. https://www.nycmesh.net/
This is not a problem which can be fixed with a website, app, or gadget. (not suggesting this is what you meant) It is a matter of community organizing, knocking on doors, and *off-line* collective action.
@molly0xfff I built https://lmno.lol with portability in mind (entire blog in a single file). You don't have to rely on lmno.lol domain. I'll soon offer custom domains.
For example: https://xenodium.com now backed by https://lmno.lol/xenodium
Social media belong in the public and open source domain, regulated and out of the hands of big tech moguls.
Period.
The American democracy is destroyed for many years te come, there will be no fair elections anymore, people will lose there civil rights and poverty will become immense while the biljonairs will become richer and richer every day!
But hey, Trump is the guy you all voted for so don't complain. Every country gets the government they deserve!
@Luuk_Aalders @molly0xfff Trump got less than half the votes in a race heavily influenced by voter suppression, disinformation and a broken system. So some people deserve what's coming, but plenty tried their best to keep this from happening.
Anyway, how are Netherlands politics these days?
@molly0xfff They are pushing to controll the information space... It will allow them to control the narrative.
All of this has nothing to do with free speach.
@molly0xfff Exactly..
I feel people are moving from one mouse trap to the next currently
@stux @molly0xfff we all can think of (at least) two other platforms with the same problems…or worse. And, inside of the US, banning those is not discussed. Europe is different, but largely has limited itself to fines…for what is likely the same reason…that people would ignore it or choose something worse if they banned it.
Social media is basically the digital equivalent of smoking at this point.
If only there were a non-corporate public social media alternative!?
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