It feels to me like we’re all at a party at Manton’s house. Unlike a public, community-run event, where you can have a say if you think things could be done better, if you don’t like how a host runs their house party, you just leave.
Belle’s post on why she’s leaving micro dot blog.
@joshsharp I wish I could share this directly! I've already posted it twice and it's not showing up :(
@belle It looks like the RSS feed was removed from your account. Adding it back should allow the post to show up. (You make some good points. I hadn't even seen the pull request yet. Thanks! I really do think domain names are the key to content ownership, though, more important than self-hosting or open source.)
@manton Ah, thank you! I always forget I have to have the feed added for my hosted blog to show up. I sort of expect the hosted blog to not need that extra step to show up in the timeline.
@manton I guess I don't understand about domains, then. Suppose Twitter offered a custom domain for your Twitter account. How does that make you own the tweets you post there any more than the current state?
@belle As someone who is really into the IndieWeb movement and content ownership, I host my own website but my Microcast is hosted in Micro.blog. To me, I still feel safe with my Microcast being on Micro.blog because the entire platform is built on Jekyll. I can sync the content of my entire Microcast website to GitHub and walk away with all of my files and pages, put them on another server and point my domain name at it. With that, I could successfully leave Micro.blog with all of my content very easily compared to any other hosted service. For some people it is too hard or not worth self-Hosting, but data portability is key to content ownership and that’s what Micro.blog provides in my opinion.
@belle Ownership of the URLs for your posts gives you the freedom to move hosting providers without breaking links. Twitter is a good example... If Twitter itself was open source, but your content was only on twitter.com/yourname, you still can't move the tweets without starting over on the web. I would love for Twitter to offer custom domains, but they never will because they want all the content hosted on their platform. (You're right that not everyone cares about this yet, but many people would benefit if domains and blogging were easier. Thanks again for the feedback.)
@manton I feel like I'm still missing something. If Twitter was closed-source, as Micro.blog is, but you could have a custom domain, how do you move your tweets to anywhere else on the web? Sorry if I'm missing something obvious! I really want to understand because I think this stuff is important.
@belle I found your post very interesting. The point about lack of Android support is very salient. I haven’t been on here long enough to speak on diversity.
Obviously I don’t speak for @manton, but as a user, for me it comes down to the terms of service. On Twitter for example the TOS state:
By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).
You’ll find similar clauses on the Instagram TOS. In short, you “own” the content but grant licenses for the service to do whatever they want with it. Compare that to Micro.blog’s TOS:
Content. Micro.blog does not claim any ownership rights in any text, images, photos, video, sounds, links, works of authorship, or any other materials that you post to the Service (collectively, “Your Content”). After posting Your Content to the Service, you continue to retain all ownership rights in Your Content, and subject to any licenses granted by you, you continue to have the right to use Your Content in any way you choose. By posting or sharing Your Content, you grant Micro.blog only the limited rights that are reasonably necessary for us to provide the Service, which includes, without limitation, the right to store Your Content and share or display it with other users of the Service.
You are not granting licenses to M.b to use your content.
I understand that the best way to fully own your content is to host it yourself on your own server but many of us can’t or won’t do that. In that case, entering into an agreement where I retain ownership of the content without granting license is the best that’s available to me.
@belle If I could have manton.org hosted by Twitter, my tweet URLs might look like manton.org/status/123456. At any time I could import the tweets into WordPress (or Micro.blog) and update my DNS settings to be up and running again.
@manton Sure, so the links don't break. But wouldn't you still have to export the data from Twitter? I guess I'd call that permanence, rather than ownership. If the Twitter server went down, you couldn't see or export your data. Their servers host your content, so I don't think you control it just because you control the urls for it. I think permanence is really important, too, and a worthy goal! I just think there's more to ownership than that. But thanks for explaining. I was definitely misunderstanding the idea before.
@uncrtn Fair enough! I don't really trust TOS since they change all the time, and you have no guarantee that they'll remain. I agree about not everyone wanting or being able to host their content, as I mentioned in the post. But I take issue with the discrepancies I see between the idea of Micro.blog as somewhere you own your content and the truth of hosted blogs here, which is that the content lives on the Micro.blog servers and you could lose access to that content anytime because you don't really own it at all.
@belle Thanks! I think ownership and permanence are closely linked, but that's true, they're not exactly the same thing. Automatic exports also help, whether that's on a closed platform like Twitter or backing up a self-hosted blog.
@belle that’s true. TOS do change like the wind. If @manton sells m.b for example TOS may change. I suppose you have to keep an eye on the TOS. It’s still less burdensome than spinning up my own server at my home.
In a way, what you’re saying is that my content lives on m.b servers which are actually Linode servers so in reality they own my content based on ultimate access (?). That’s my takeaway by following that thought. Is hosting my content on a server at home the only way I really own it?
In actuality, my content actually lives on Dropbox and iCloud, and a local copy on my iPad/iPhone, then I copy it over to m.b.
I agree most people don’t care about ownership of content (like you say on your post) until they realize the way companies use that content e.g. FB scandals but even then they soon forget. I suppose I just picked the service I trust most for now.
@uncrtn @manton I think having a copy is a way of owning it, as is running your own server. I have a copy locally of my own blog, as you do, because mine starts as text files before being uploaded. As I said in the post, I don't think everyone should have to own their content, but I also don't think Micro.blog should be pushing the idea that you own your content if you use a hosted account here, because I don't think you truly do. But that's just how I see it!
@belle Yes. I use both. There's a bit of overlap, as both sprang from ADN, but I find that easy to deal with. If you need invites, ask.
@uncrtn I had similar thoughts. I’m unlikely to place a web server in my home, therefore I need hosting. The fact that I can take my content, and my domain, and move them at will qualifies as ownership in my mind.
@jeremycherfas Ah, I see. Thanks! I'd love an invite for pnut if you have one, so I can get a better idea of what it's like.
@belle PNut is cool, although I'm not there as often as 10C. It seems to me to have picked up the more teccy ex-ADN gang. All very nice people though & I do support it with its modest (optional) fee. @jeremycherfas
@belle @manton So you are really reacting to the words Manton uses to describe micro.blog. I personally think the concept of ownership on the Internet is rather difficult. There is a difference between hosting (storage), access (DNS), and ownership. Ownership implies one has absolute control over what one owns, in this case the content posted on micro.blog. Micro.blog's terms stating they won't do anything with my content they host on my site is as close as can come to supporting onwership. Yet, I know that once I post something on the Internet I do in fact lose a good degree of control over it. If I am truly concerned about ownership of a piece of content, I shouldn't put it on the Internet.
Manton, you might consider using different words rather than ownership. I think your emphasis on DNS is more about the portability of my content that you currently host. You are making it easier to allow me to move my content somewhere else, should I choose.
@frankm @belle Thanks. The word "ownership" isn't perfect but seems like the best we have. At the top of the IndieWeb principles they highlight that ownership is content, metadata, and identity. Any service can export content, so identity (DNS) is a key differentiator.
@belle Also it is not a typical micro blogging service but check out dev.to . You mentioned wanting to have a more dev-centric place so that might be a nice place to hang out too.