[HN Gopher] Don't build your castle in other people's kingdoms (...
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Don't build your castle in other people's kingdoms (2021)
Author : lopespm
Score : 352 points
Date : 2024-10-01 19:10 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (howtomarketagame.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (howtomarketagame.com)
| amelius wrote:
| We all built our castle in TSMC's and ASML's kingdom ...
| doublerabbit wrote:
| While being guarded by a moat of snakes..
| birdman3131 wrote:
| Interesting article but it only talks about 1 half of the coin.
| For the sort of stuff they are talking about you can't get near
| the visibility and ease of use building it yourself.
|
| You will see a fraction of the traffic that somebody doing the
| same thing on those platforms will see.
|
| They try to hand wave it with build a tower and bring them back
| to your site but that rarely works well.
|
| I need to create an account to use your site has a significantly
| higher bar than I hit subscribe to see your next video in my
| feed.
| Apreche wrote:
| I have friends dealing with this very problem. They strongly
| believe in and agree that they should build in their own
| kingdom. They hate the platforms and all the ways in which they
| are bad.
|
| But they are small business owners. They make their living
| entirely based on digital visibility. They need to get their
| message out to where the eyeballs are. They may try to get
| people to subscribed directly to their e-mail newsletter, but
| that's not enough. Most people find them on Instagram, Twitter,
| etc. If they delete those accounts, as they would like to,
| their business will be in deep trouble almost immediately.
|
| Web discoverability has had the same dilemma since its
| inception. People only remember and actively engage with a few
| things. A search engine, some media platforms, some communities
| they are involved in, etc. If a link appears in one of those
| places it's extremely visible. If a web page does not show up
| in one of those places, discovering it is next to impossible.
| What are they going to do, guess the URL?
|
| How can someone get some amount of visibility on the web
| without putting anything in anyone else's kingdom? Even someone
| following the POSSE model (post on own site, syndicate
| elsewhere) is extremely dependent on the elsewhere if they want
| to be visibility. Without the elsewheres to syndicate to, they
| will build an empty and isolated kingdom.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Build your castle in the kingdom that gives you the best
| game-theoretic outcome, but always keep in mind that it's not
| _your_ kingdom.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| Advertising on multiple platforms is a little less risky than
| building the entire business on, being able to publish to the
| App Store.
| bitnasty wrote:
| The article didn't say you should delete all your social
| media accounts or never post content there...
| dandellion wrote:
| Right, it specifically says to build bridges from other
| kingdoms to yours. So using Twitter, Youtube, etc. to bring
| people to your own site.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Well, there's always good old fashioned off-line visibility,
| if your small business friends want to experience real
| worthless crap.
|
| If you do your work, it's not hard to get good visibility on
| Google and other search engines. The key is this: If you're
| selling product X or service Y, you need to make your website
| the very best resource imaginable for information about it
| and with an as easy purchase process as possible - with good
| terms to boot.
|
| But most small business owners are completely uninterested in
| that, and instead spend their days spamming social media and
| paying for ads to bring visitors to their website that turns
| potential customers away instantly.
| eikenberry wrote:
| Why not both?
|
| Build your castle in your own kingdom but have "vassels" in all
| those other kingdoms to get the benefits they provide and use
| them to promote your own kingdom. You might still rely on those
| 3rd party "kingdoms" for the vast majority of your income but
| you at least have options if one kicks you out and your fans
| know where to find you.
|
| [edit: akin to a developer having the official git repo self
| hosted but mirroring it into github for the community]
| shadowtree wrote:
| MrBeast built his castle inside of Youtube.
| binary132 wrote:
| The thing with being MrBeast is that now he makes YouTube a lot
| of money, so they have a good reason to keep him around.
| paulnpace wrote:
| They can replace him by altering search results, so he stays
| around while others build up make up for the revenue. There
| is a reason the YouTube search engine is no longer useful for
| finding things.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| The leaked MrBeast PDF is enlightening in this regard; he knew
| he was building his castle in youtube and did so intentionally
| and explicitly because he thought it would get huge. He wasn't
| exactly wrong, either. His prediction-gamble earned him a life-
| changing amount of money.
|
| Whether he could or should have built his castle in his own
| kingdom is irrelevant. His stated goal was to build a bigger
| youtube castle than anyone and everyone else.
|
| > Your goal here is to make the best YOUTUBE videos possible.
| That's the number one goal of this production company. It's not
| to make the best produced videos. Not to make the funniest
| videos. Not to make the best looking videos. Not the highest
| quality videos.. It's to make the best YOUTUBE videos possible.
|
| > Youtube is the future and I believe with every fiber of my
| body it's going to keep growing year over year and in 5 years
| Youtube will be bigger than anyone will have ever imagined and
| I want this channel to be at the top.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41549649
| russellbeattie wrote:
| I've had this attitude before and missed out on some major
| opportunities. For example, even though I was an early smartphone
| adopter, I refused to develop apps for the iPhone when the
| AppStore was launched in 2008 because of the closed nature of
| Apple's ecosystem. There are a variety of billion dollar
| companies which can attest that building their castle in Apple's
| kingdom worked out fine for them.
|
| The big question today is: Do you try to make an AI business
| using OpenAI's APIs, or do you host everything yourself? One
| could make the argument either way.
| keyle wrote:
| This is a good counterpoint. I fell for this too.
|
| There is an argument for airbnb the lands with a castle on
| wheels.
| lmeyerov wrote:
| You use their APIs in a way that commoditizes them. Ideally
| your customers don't care if you switch to Anthropic, because
| the LLM provider is not the reason customers are picking you.
| Likewise, there is some structural reason that OpenAI will
| never release a feature that rugpulls you, eg, no 'chat to your
| PDF'.
|
| An extreme form is self-hosted on edge-only devices where folks
| are buying some other hw. Ex: Nvidia selling GPUs and giving
| out free Triton inferencing OSS software. But most are in the
| middle, eg, some accounting app now with LLMs. Our case of
| investigations in louie.ai is right at that boundary: OpenAI
| likes to support data analysis, but folks using
| Splunk/databricks/etc all day expect a lot more out of software
| here, and that's too at-odds with OpenAI's org chart and
| customerbase.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| Most business advice is really good at figuring out in
| hindsight why things went a certain way. But usually it's not
| that great at predicting what will work in the future.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| More discussion from 2021:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29108662
| dang wrote:
| Thanks! Macroexpanded:
|
| _Don 't build your castle in other people's kingdoms_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29108662 - Nov 2021 (122
| comments)
| philipov wrote:
| Problem is that everywhere is already someone else's kingdom.
| This advice amounts to "Don't bother trying to build a castle."
| humblepi wrote:
| Desktop computers still exist and will happily run games.
| swagasaurus-rex wrote:
| Piracy and DRM killed most direct-to-customer distribution of
| software.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Valve Software got $8.6B in 2023.
| BadHumans wrote:
| Steam has DRM.
| okanat wrote:
| Not always. There are plenty games that work without the
| Steam libraries. Also GOG exists and very healthy with
| explicit no DRM policy.
| tjpnz wrote:
| But GOG censor their catalog for everyone after feedback
| from the CCP _cough_ gamers.
| int_19h wrote:
| GOG isn't exactly DRM-free these days. The platform
| doesn't add its own DRM, but it does distribute games
| with DRM elements. Their stance seems to be that, so long
| as the game is playable offline in single-player mode, it
| is acceptable.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| And yet Steam is _incredibly_ popular despite the DRM
| because it 's unobtrusive. You don't get punished for
| replacing your computer every couple years and needing to
| reinstall your games.
|
| I'm not sure I've ever heard of someone having a
| technical problem with Steam's DRM, I've only heard
| moral/ethical/worried-about-what-happens-when-Steam-
| disappears problems.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| Find the kingdom where you have most friends.
| theossuary wrote:
| It's true, even assuming you do everything yourself, you're
| still building within the laws of a country, which is building
| within someone else's kingdom, as it were. I suppose the real
| rule of thumb should be "Don't build your castle in an
| autocracy."
| JohnMakin wrote:
| Kind of tangential, but this article mentions Twitch Boost - I
| can't imagine small creators having any real issue with this.
| Building momentum on twitch is _hard_ , and usually involves a
| ton of luck. If you have no viewers, you get few recommendations,
| until either the algorithm helps you out and you get lucky or you
| get a big raid/rehost that gives you the momentum to grow. It's
| either that or you happen to be one of the first streamers of
| some entirely new gaming category that doesn't have any big names
| attached to it, you get lucky there, and grow.
|
| Offering a shortcut to skip all that and pay for growth seems
| like a common sense move for a lot of small creators. I struggle
| to think of the arguments against it - are they concerned big
| creators will flood money into it and drown out smaller ones?
| They already drown out smaller streamers, especially in streaming
| categories that are very "saturated." They also have no incentive
| to boost their stream, they're already top of the recommendations
| anyway.
|
| Great revenue idea, and a change I as a small creator was welcome
| to see. Often I have viewers want to spend their channel points
| or bits or whatever they're called and I tell them to save it, I
| don't seek profit off of what I do (plus twitch takes it all
| anyway) I have a day job - but I do feel bad because they seem to
| want to spend it on _something_ and I only have enough energy and
| bandwidth to add custom emojis or bot commands, which are dumb
| and people tire quickly of anyway.
| fwip wrote:
| Channel points are free to the viewer and automatically
| accumulated by watching your stream.
|
| Bits are purchased at roughly a 100:$1 ratio, and about half of
| that goes to the streamer (and half to twitch).
| JohnMakin wrote:
| Partner here - I don't know the precise TOS here because it's
| twisty and constantly changing but I have streamed now for
| almost 10 years as a partner with a micro following, my
| account balance to this day is like $46. They make every
| excuse possible not to give you money or put arbitrary
| restrictions on how much you should stream to access it, to
| the point I just stopped and put a paypal link on my profile
| and said dont give it to twitch. They steal a lot from
| smaller partners. However, it's a good platform so I just
| take it. Kind of on the theme of this thread, lol. You choose
| to build a castle in someone else's kingdom because there's
| no other place.
| neilv wrote:
| I'm about to launch an small indie Web site, and yesterday I
| started going through a list of 11 social media sites on which to
| grab the brand name.
|
| But initially the Web site has only an email list signup form.
|
| I figure, if I have an array of icons for social media sites
| where everyone is owned, then random people interested in the
| site will just pick one of those.
|
| I guess I'll soon see whether I get many connections that way,
| whether people actually read their email, whether they forget
| they signed up and flag it as spam (scrodding me with GMail),
| etc.
|
| (Later, I plan to have an active Fediverse presence, for people
| who want _some_ social thing like that. But I don 't expect many
| people to be on Fediverse, so first I'll have to sell it to
| people. It's an easier sell if that's the only "app" on which I'm
| putting out stuff, rather than hypocritically supporting all the
| social media ranching companies by replicating content to them.)
| DonHopkins wrote:
| The term is "sharecropping".
| echoangle wrote:
| Easier said than done... if you are a YouTube creator, are you
| supposed to set up your own video hosting to compete? And how
| many of your viewers will move over to watch your stuff there?
| This advice probably works for blogs and mailing lists but isn't
| really actionable for other content.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Well there is podcasting and PeerTube.
| whatshisface wrote:
| YouTube offers millions of dollars in free advertising to
| content creators along with tens of dollars in free hosting.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Indeed, I was just trying to point out some decentralized
| alternatives.
| EarlKing wrote:
| It really doesn't. To understand why, you have only to
| comprehend the following: Whether someone is searching
| under a particular keyword, or just browsing whatever pops
| up on the home page, the average browser has a finite
| amount they're willing to scroll before abandoning their
| search... and chances are your video is NOT going to be
| placed highly in those results unless you're directing a
| firehose at it from offsite via Twitter, forum posts, news
| aggregators, or paying Youtube to promote your video flat
| out (which is such an obvious moneygrab on their part its
| disgusting). In other words: If you rely on their algorithm
| to promote your work you're literally playing the lottery
| and, much like the lottery, statistically you're going to
| lose. It makes far more sense to find bandwidth and
| hosting, negotiate with an ad network, and direct a
| firehose at the resulting site... but that's more work than
| some are willing to do. _shrug_ Oh well.
| ako wrote:
| If you place it on a website you'll also be subjected to
| their algorithm, google search.
| EarlKing wrote:
| The point of going to your own site, though, is not to
| rely on algorithms, but construct your own marketing
| funnel.
| speff wrote:
| This is an amateurish take on marketing yourself on
| YouTube. The algorithm is /not/ like the lottery. My wife
| is a content creator on YT and hasn't spent a dime on
| advertising. The free advertising isn't in the form of
| search result placement (mostly) but rather the algorithm
| showing your videos next to more popular related videos.
| That's why the absolute most important thing for video
| promotion isn't the material itself, but rather the
| title/thumbnail combination. People are generally bad at
| understanding this and/or bad at marketing themselves so
| they attribute their lack of success as random chance
|
| And unless your audience is very tech oriented, they're
| not going to switch off whatever platform the ads are on
| to watch videos hosted elsewhere. You'd need to ask a LOT
| of people (= a large amount of $$$) and hope a few of
| them make it over a bit at a time
| EarlKing wrote:
| > My wife is a content creator on YT and hasn't spent a
| dime on advertising.
|
| Is your wife a representative sample of all Youtubers? If
| not, your datum is irrelevant.
|
| > unless your audience is very tech oriented, they're not
| going to switch off whatever platform the ads are on to
| watch videos hosted elsewhere.
|
| Having now witnessed multiple creators hop from one
| platform to another and drag their audiences with them
| because they're JUST THAT ENTERTAINING... no, you're
| wrong. People will gladly follow artists to a better
| platform if it means they're able to make a living and/or
| not be censored.
| giantrobot wrote:
| With YouTube people can just click the "make money" button.
| YouTube handles the ad sales and payments. Both are _your_
| job if you 're podcasting or publishing on PeerTube.
|
| Hosting video content is not an unsolvable problem. YouTube's
| moat is economies of scale and user base. YouTube's draw is
| the "make money" button.
| EarlKing wrote:
| The "make money" button, however, is an illusion for 99% of
| publishers. The one case where it does seem to make out is
| with livestreams, and then only because unlike topical
| short-form videos, streaming is not a winner-take-all
| environment where one or two people run away with all the
| eyeballs, but instead people will tend to decommoditize
| topical streaming based on the personality of the
| broadcaster and your ability to form a parasocial
| relationship with them... hence even a relatively unknown
| person, if they're persistent, can manage to grab a few
| hundred regular viewers who'll toss a few bucks each
| stream... not enough to make a living, but enough for beer
| money. The prime advantage of youtube in this scenario is
| not having to deal with setting up hosting/DDoS filtering
| and negotiating with a payment processor ... just push the
| button and upload. So for streamers I think it can still be
| worth it, but for people posting short form content I think
| they might be better off rolling their own because they
| can't rely on Youtube's algorithm to give them enough
| eyeballs to be profitable.
| tshaddox wrote:
| With podcasting you'll almost certainly be reliant on being
| searchable on the major podcasting apps.
|
| PeerTube is as close to nonexistent as a video platform can
| be.
| Spivak wrote:
| Podcasting is actually worse. YouTube is a kingdom where
| people come to you. In podcasting there are a few large
| kingdoms and you have to be in all of them because of the
| "wherever you get your podcasts" thing.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| There is a quasi-open podcasting index that many
| podcasting apps use.
|
| It's here: https://podcastindex.org/
| rlayton2 wrote:
| I think one method here is to incorporate your own site into
| the content as much as possible. For example, if you are a
| creator, get people to sign up to a newsletter to get the
| source files. Get people onto your platform/forum/whatever as
| well as watching through YouTube. Easier said than done, but
| better than not doing anything.
|
| From there, you also ensure that you have a backup of all your
| videos. I've talked to people that only had their stuff on
| YouTube/Facebook/whatever. It is super risky. If you have a
| backup, and YouTube bans you, you can rehost elsewhere, it
| won't be as big, but you might still have a business
| afterwards.
| azemetre wrote:
| Also something that needs to be noted, you don't need the
| same original numbers of people in your kingdom to make
| equivalent money.
|
| When you're making commerce in someone's fief, they will
| demand tribute as well. In the confines of your own kingdom,
| all the ad dollars are yours.
|
| Which also means you don't need to chase the same amounts of
| people to make similar coin, especially if the deals you make
| with advertisers are between you and the advertiser (not you,
| the advertiser, and the king of some other fief).
| georgeecollins wrote:
| Exactly. You can be huge on Youtube or tiktok and if you
| convert some of that to direct engagement you are much
| better able to survive a changing landscape.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Yeah, every YT creator that is serious about their job should
| have their own website with a copy of the videos, and I find
| it really curious that this doesn't seem to be much of a
| thing? At best I'm seeing merchandise webshops. But you'd
| think these people would be multi-channel and have a website,
| youtube, all the social medias, etc, and the bigger ones a
| company to manage them all.
|
| But I suspect that as they get bigger, they enter in
| exclusivity / no-compete contracts with Youtube, and if they
| detect the same video hosted elsewhere, they get taken down
| or something.
| Y_Y wrote:
| This sounds like an opportunity for a product. Apart from
| eyeballs and familiarity, Youtube does a lot of handholding
| so that non-technical people van run their own channels. I
| don't think 90% of youtubers would have any idea how to
| spin up a website. But I'm sure they'd be happy to pay
| someone to do it for them (as long as the price was a small
| fractuon of their ad revenue).
| chillfox wrote:
| One way is to release videos 1-2 weeks early on your own site.
| btown wrote:
| There's an entire OTT sub-industry for video hosting and out-
| of-the-box monetization: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over-
| the-top_media_service
|
| For instance, https://vimeo.com/ott is an effective (albeit
| expensive) option, powering Dropout (formerly CollegeHumor) and
| other brands and allowing them to focus on content. Dropout, in
| particular, has found an effective model of releasing short
| clips from their improv-heavy shows on social video platforms,
| gaining virality there while subtly reminding new and old fans
| that they can find full episodes, and support on-screen and
| off-screen talent, by subscribing to the brand directly. Their
| growth would be impacted by the loss of a marketing channel,
| but not their underlying subscription fundamentals.
|
| (The entire Dropout business story is quite inspiring and worth
| a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRK_gNfFdP0 )
| JBiserkov wrote:
| That sounds incredibly interesting! Thanks for sharing that!
|
| The YouTube link at the end is ironic ;-)
| lolinder wrote:
| Your YouTube example is exactly what gave rise to Nebula.tv--
| creators banded together to create an alternative that would
| backstop them against YouTube's dominance.
| kalleboo wrote:
| Another example is Floatplane which was bootstrapped by the
| Linus Tech Tips people after realized how dependent they were
| on YouTube.
| echoangle wrote:
| And how many people are on nebula compared to YouTube?
| nine_k wrote:
| All the 1000 of your mailing list subscribers? Or maybe
| 10k.
|
| You start needing alternatives when you're already
| established and have a following. With this comes large
| enoug influence and thus the ability / risk to step on some
| big toes, including Google's.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| A high school friend of mine contacted me out of the blue on
| facebook after probably 20 years. He had gotten on early with
| an MLM that made it big and one of them had such success on the
| platform that he had made multiple appearances at their
| national convention to give a testimonial to how it changed his
| family's lives. Mind you, this is a guy who was 2 years from
| being able to retire with a pension from the chemical refinery
| he worked at.
|
| I laughed, told him I wasn't interested, and warned him that he
| didn't own his network: that the MLM could take it from him at
| any time, and it's why most of the experienced salesmen I knew
| lived well below their paychecks. He grew very upset, told me I
| didn't know what I was talking about, and basically behaved as
| if I had insulted his religion.
|
| Well, half a year later I was laid off and found a new job with
| a marketing automation firm. On my second day, we had an all
| hands meeting where they were announcing that the MLM he worked
| for would be immediately breaking contract and leaving our
| platform because they reached a settlement with the DOJ over
| their methodology. Effective immediately, they were going to a
| distributor model and ceasing all payouts for network related
| sales.
|
| I knew his world was going to collapse before he did. In the
| end, he had to sell his house and most of his possessions, his
| wife divorced him, and he tried to break back into the MLM
| world but could never get anything started. Nobody wanted to
| hire him for a traditional sales role because they regard
| MLMers as lazy and dumb. He's back at another chemical
| refinery, hoping to work there for another 20+ years to earn
| another pension.
| liotier wrote:
| > 2 years from being able to retire with a pension > [..] >
| hoping to work there for another 20+ years to earn another
| pension
|
| I don't understand that... If he was two years from retiring,
| then he only needed two more years of salaried employment
| somewhere lese - didn't he ? What country did he live in ?
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| The US. Your pension, if you get one, is tied to your
| employer. Most people have 401Ks.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| In the US, pension is short for "defined benefit pension",
| most often a provided by a single employer stipulating that
| you work at that employer for a minimum number of years,
| and the longer you work at one employer, the greater the
| benefit.
|
| They only exist at taxpayer funded employers or legacy
| businesses like oil and gas, but most everyone else has
| switched to defined contribution pensions, but those are
| referred to as "401k" or "401b" or some other letter for
| the appropriate section of the law that specifies the tax
| benefit of saving for retirement.
|
| The latter are better ever since low cost index funds came
| about, as you get to skip paying the DB pension
| administrators and remove agency risk.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Virtually all people who have worked and retired at oil
| and gas companies over the past 40 years had both a
| company pension AND a 401K. My dad has a paid off house
| and no bills other than utilities and taxes. He's pulling
| in over 80K a year in retirement, and he re-invests most
| of what he's being forced to pull out.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| But now people working for profitable businesses can do
| mega backdoor roth contributions and still invest in the
| same VOO equities that the pension fund manager would
| invest in, but cut out all of the agency risk and not be
| tied to their employer.
| Razengan wrote:
| > _if you are a YouTube creator, are you supposed to set up
| your own video hosting to compete?_
|
| They could use their popularity to promote and donate to
| alternatives.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| The optimal strategy would probably be to start on YouTube and
| then migrate to your own platform once you can afford it and
| have an audience willing to come with you.
|
| Then probably dual stream for a while on your site with blended
| chat support before cutting the YouTube cord loudly and with
| warning.
| magarnicle wrote:
| Some of them have, it's called Nebula.
| naming_the_user wrote:
| You're omitting the choice of just not doing that in the first
| place.
|
| If you want to be a Windows developer, then yes, you have to be
| a Windows developer in order to be a Windows developer.
|
| But you don't have to want to be a Windows developer. You don't
| even have to want to be a developer.
| devjab wrote:
| I think the difference between development for a "real" OS is
| that windows is still mainly owned by its customers. Similar
| to how MacOS is. On MacOS people can still install your
| applications even if you don't pay the Apple tax to avoid
| their pop-up warnings. (I'm not sure if avoiding the windows
| warnings is also something you pay Microsoft for.)
|
| I think a better comparison would be iOS or Chrome, where
| you'll realistically have to submit yourself to their stores
| if you want to reach most users. Which is sort of even more
| locked down than YouTube as some content creators on YouTube
| have managed to move their audience to other platforms,
| though sometimes by still posting teasers or at least some
| content on YouTube.
| nine_k wrote:
| If you are a _" YouTube creator"_, you have already firmly
| planted your castle on Google's land. The positioning of onself
| as bound to a particular website run by someone else is
| needless loss of independence.
|
| Position yourself as a _video creator_ and post your videos
| also to Instagram (when possible) and to Vimeo. Seed free /
| back catalog episodes via a torrent. Run a mailing list
| announcing and discussing your videos, with some premium
| content for paying subscribers only. Maybe have an X / SkyBlue
| / mastodon feed with more compact announces, comments, and
| high-virality short clips from your longer videos.
|
| Cross-link and cross-reference all the channels of your
| presence. Make your brand recognizable across the publishing
| methods. Gently prod people to touch more than one channel of
| your video distribution, just to get the most avid viewers
| acquainted with several.
|
| Yes, this is significantly more work. It also may bring
| significantly more results if your videos are good. This gives
| you a much stronger assurance that your brand and your
| following will not be lost, should you lose access to YouTube /
| Instagram / Vimeo / X / whatever other platform. Commoditize
| your complement, as they say.
| CJefferson wrote:
| Can you suggest a few video creators who are having success
| with this model? I watch quite a few video creators, and
| don't know any trying to use this model.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| No, he can't, because there are none. It's a ludicrous
| model that exists only in the minds of HN commenters.
| Elinvynia wrote:
| LinusTechTips literally built their own video hosting site
| - Floatplane - exactly for this reason, to have a backup in
| case YouTube nukes their channel.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Which is increasingly likely as they manually removed his
| video about adblock.
| Grumbledour wrote:
| Personally I have seen a few over the years come and go.
| Podcasts (Adio and Video) for example often tried to use
| youtube as an additional channel, but still maintain their
| websites and RSS feeds.
|
| It seems these days, most Youtube creators are at least
| somewhat aware of the problem and have websites, discord
| channels, patreons etc. While I still think many would
| struggle if they lost their youtube access suddenly, they
| do have additional channels to reach out to at least part
| of their audience.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| I have seen a few do the conversion. They usually start by
| cross posting on any video site they can. X, Rumble,
| locals, self hosting, discord, with usually some sort of
| patreon model of funding with maybe ad reads. Then what is
| left on YT is highlights of their other longer form content
| on other sites. The kicker is they do not need as many
| people following them as YT is not taking the majority of
| the ad revenue cut.
|
| But if you want to see people trying to make the conversion
| just scroll the front page of Rumble. Many of them are
| trying to get out form under youtube and many have YT
| channels too. But Rumble is just another YT waiting to
| happen and they know it.
| lucianbr wrote:
| There's nebula.tv.
|
| The people there are both video creators and their own
| hosts, or so I read. Got together and built themselves a
| host because YT was not what they needed.
| tdeck wrote:
| [delayed]
| rchaud wrote:
| Most videographers are actively _trying_ to be seen, are
| they not? How else would they transition into an agency
| /studio job with real customers and projects? I've never
| heard of a videographer that would accept obscurity in
| exchange for tech/platform sovereignty.
| albert_e wrote:
| one possible example --
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ht9GwXQMgpo
|
| i saw they post pretty well produced videos on youtube --
| for folks like me
|
| but also promote a more elaborate/detailed video series on
| the same/related topics on a separate subscription based
| platform
| kalleboo wrote:
| Vimeo only gives you 2 TB bandwidth/month without negotiating
| an Enterprise plan. If your video goes viral, you're going to
| be out thousands to host it for everyone. How are you going
| to pay for that? You could put it on credit and then show
| these numbers when manually negotiating the payout from your
| next sponsor and pay it back with the proceeds from the next
| video, but there's no guarantee your next video will be also
| a hit.
| Animats wrote:
| > If your video goes viral
|
| That's what PeerTube is supposed to be for. You can set up
| a PeerTube host yourself. Or there are some public PeerTube
| hosts that accept uploads. When people are watching your
| videos, the ones with good bandwidth are also hosting them
| for other users. The hosting site is just handling the
| original copy and coordinating the peers. (This isn't like
| Bittorrent; hosting is centralized but playout is
| distributed. When no one is watching, the only copy is on
| the original server.)
|
| PeerTube really should be popular like WordPress, for self-
| hosted content. But it's not. Neither Google nor Bing
| indexes PeerTube sites, so there's no discovery. Few
| PeerTube videos have more than a handful of viewers. I use
| PeerTube for technical videos, to keep them ad-free, and it
| works fine for that low-volume application.
|
| Here's the Blender 4.2 showcase reel on PeerTube.[1] It's a
| good demo. Will it overload if watched by many HN users?
| Please try.
|
| [1] https://share.tube/w/uYK7X52m2Y7RyahL4wjKaM
| immibis wrote:
| PeerTube is just a self-hosted video platform. Video
| bandwidth is legitimately expensive. You'll still be out
| a bunch of money if your video goes viral.
| j45 wrote:
| There are cdns that can help..
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| The core issue is that someone has to pay a lot for a lot
| of bandwidth, or a lot of someone's paying a bit each.
| j45 wrote:
| I've been connecting the dots in video/bandwidth
| delivery.
|
| While I was digging up an additional link, it appears
| Cloudflare R2 allows no egress fees.
|
| https://www.cloudflare.com/developer-platform/r2/
|
| 10GB free to host, no egress fees.
|
| Combined with a cloudflare worker, it seems reasonable
| that the object storage could be managed.
| immibis wrote:
| Now your castle is in someone else's kingdom. And in
| Cloudflare's kingdom, always be ready to get an email:
| "pay us $150,000 in 24 hours or we cancel your service"
| j45 wrote:
| My original comment was using a group of cdns. I think
| there's a few.
|
| In this case you're already paying for storage so egress
| is free.
|
| A 10 gig fibre connection is another way to start.
|
| The internet always costs someone.
| treyd wrote:
| That's why it's built on WebTorrent, to share the load
| across users and instances.
| immibis wrote:
| Removed end of 2023:
| https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/issues/5465
| treyd wrote:
| I saw elsewhere that it's planned on being readded after
| the rearchitecting work that's mentioned in that issue.
| Animats wrote:
| No, that's the whole point of PeerTube. PeerTube scales
| up by spreading the playout load amongst everyone who is
| watching at the moment. If a thousand people are watching
| your video, most of them are getting the content from the
| cache of others who are also watching at the moment. Not
| from the hosting server.
|
| This works well only if many of the watchers have
| significant upload bandwidth and aren't behind firewalls
| that prevent them from outputting blocks of video.
|
| This is different from torrent-type systems or Usenet,
| which distribute persistent copies. With Peertube, only
| the original server permanently hosts the video.
| Everybody else is just caching. So the disk usage of
| watchers isn't that big.
|
| It's all done in the browser.
| Zak wrote:
| > _Neither Google nor Bing indexes PeerTube sites, so
| there 's no discovery. _
|
| That's not search engines discriminating against it in
| this case.
|
| https://share.tube/robots.txt
| password4321 wrote:
| Host on a provider with "unlimited" data transfer (the
| legit ones are capped by rate eg. 100mbps etc.).
| keiferski wrote:
| This is all good advice but realistically you can probably
| skip the random social media sites and just do email and
| YouTube. Email is much, much better than pretty much any
| social network.
| nine_k wrote:
| Mail lists go far, but retweets go wide. Different tools
| for different purposes.
| keiferski wrote:
| Sure, but in my experience it's better to have 1000 solid
| email subscribers than have your tweet seen by 100k
| people. Even moreso for something like TikTok, where you
| can get millions of views but capitalize on virtually
| none of them.
| authorfly wrote:
| Email has the problem though that Gmail suddenly in one
| fell swoop blackhole you for 80% of your readers.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Somehow you will need to reach people, at least initially,
| though. They don't magically appear on your mailing list.
| gilbetron wrote:
| Email? Outside of the older crowd, I don't know anyone that
| actively uses email for anything. So many people in my life
| are surprised when my wife and I use email for anything.
| Tech/business/academic might hit some ok % with email, but
| outside of that I'd doubt you'd get to 1% of your potential
| audience.
| keiferski wrote:
| Email is generally considered the best channel in the
| marketing industry. It's absolutely not just something
| for old people.
| sushid wrote:
| That's because the "marketing industry" is filled with
| those using emails. It is absolutely just for old people
| at this point.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >Email? Outside of the older crowd, I don't know anyone
| that actively uses email for anything.
|
| This, it's surprising and somewhat annoying, but people
| ~20ish and younger pretty much just don't use email.
| tdeck wrote:
| Dave Jones from the EEVBlog does this - he cross posts to his
| own site and to many smaller video hosting sites. But if I
| remember correctly he has said in the past that almost all
| his viewership comes from YouTube. Unfortunately for long-
| form videos in English YouTube seems to be the only game in
| town in terms of discoverability.
| nine_k wrote:
| While you're tiny, you need discoverability a lot. But even
| if YouTube bans you and deletes all your videos, you lose
| relatively little.
|
| The bigger you are, the more well-known, the larger is your
| following, and the more the whole enterprise is the source
| of your livelihood, the more you may need to hedge your
| bets.
| j45 wrote:
| Nice summary. There are tools out there that can help with
| chunks of this, but understanding the pieces as you're laid
| out is critical.
|
| Since a lot of creators today were consumers first of
| content, they miss the side when there was little social or
| video to consume online, and in turn creating was the
| default.
| instig007 wrote:
| With videos you can start by retaining control of your channel
| configurations and making it independent from any particular
| video hosting provider. See this for inspiration (not promoting
| it, just the gist of the idea): https://grayjay.app/
| j45 wrote:
| A huge part of the world forwards videos primarily on WhatsApp.
| And links to YouTube.
|
| Your question seems to connect discovery of videos and
| distribution.
|
| Video hosting is getting easier. There's platforms like avideo
| that are relatively easy to host.
|
| Many companies use alternatives already like or Vimeo.
|
| Hosting your video permanently first from your own setup isn't
| too far fetched.
|
| YouTube can be secondary.
|
| Many people use social media to build their own email lists and
| communities.
|
| YouTube can achieve the same. At the same time I think YouTube
| is more going to eat cable tv up or at least offset it more
| first.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Another option is to consider that "YouTube creator" should not
| be treated as anything more than a hobby; it should certainly
| not be your identity/job title. Unless you have some sort of
| contract with Alphabet, your videos are hosted at their
| pleasure and you are owed nothing. Your time is likely better
| spent not bolstering someone else's library of content.
| miki123211 wrote:
| You're always building a castle in someone else's kingdom.
|
| If you're publishing on your own website instead of a social
| media platform, your new Kings are your domain registrar,
| registry operator and ultimately ICAN itself, your hosting
| provider, Let's Encrypt, all the email providers you need to be
| able to deliver to (notably Microsoft and Google), and probably
| also your payments provider.
|
| Despite what people say, the internet is not decentralized, and
| it's no longer possible to build a site that isn't in anybody
| else's kingdom.
|
| This is mostly a good thing, if this wasn't true, somebody would
| have set up a site that was a safe haven for child porn, and
| there'd be nothing that anybody could ever do about it.
| lolinder wrote:
| When you get to this level of granularity the metaphor really
| starts to fall apart, but the principle is still there:
| identify your points of failure, the risk of them failing, and
| ensure there's a plan B.
|
| Most businesses can treat their domain name as fail-safe. If
| you have a .com/.org/.net, pay well in advance, and aren't
| doing anything that's currently illegal in the US, you're not
| going to lose it unless there's a dramatic political shift
| that's earthshattering for ~everyone.
|
| On the other hand, social media platforms arbitrarily locking
| you out is a daily occurrence for tens of thousands of innocent
| people per day. This isn't just a hypothetical risk, it
| actually does happen to people and businesses all the time.
| Even the most law-abiding business should not build their
| castle in a social media platform.
| Veuxdo wrote:
| > On the other hand, social media platforms arbitrarily
| locking you out is a daily occurrence for tens of thousands
| of innocent people per day.
|
| If you're at all legit, you don't have to worry about being
| locked out.
|
| Everyone has to worry about being downranked to oblivion,
| which is the new normal on most SM sites.
| BadHumans wrote:
| > If you're at all legit, you don't have to worry about
| being locked out.
|
| Complete ignorance of the people who arbitrarily get
| flagged by algorithms to no fault of their own or get on
| the bad side of someone at these companies who have a
| grudge.
| zdragnar wrote:
| You mean like the Texas home schooling Facebook group
| that keeps getting dinged because Facebook keeps
| asserting that the word "Texan" implies they are selling
| drugs?
| dandellion wrote:
| > If you're at all legit, you don't have to worry about
| being locked out.
|
| That's not correct, just on HN you can frequently see
| articles about people getting locked out of Google, Paypal,
| Facebook, etc. with no explanation given. I've been banned
| for suspicious activity on a social media site on an
| account I hadn't used in years, probably because someone
| was trying to steal the username.
| lolinder wrote:
| My wife got randomly banned from Facebook Marketplace for a
| year. Appeal after appeal was ignored, then randomly they
| restored access more than a year later.
|
| A year is enough time to kill a business.
| strken wrote:
| I was once involved in my friend's SaaS startup and he got
| locked out of Facebook ads for having an inactive account
| and then spending too much money in the first day. "Too
| much" in this case was a few hundred dollars. Turns out
| you're meant to slowly increase your spend over a week
| while doomscrolling shitty clickbait, otherwise Facebook
| thinks your account has been compromised.
| navigate8310 wrote:
| > If you're at all legit, you don't have to worry about
| being locked out.
|
| This is simply false. We were locked out of Meta Ads
| Manager for no apparent reason. When we contacted Meta
| customer support--setting aside the casual racism I faced
| for not being a native speaker--all they could offer was,
| "Oops, that shouldn't have happened; we'll refresh your
| account." As a result, we lost approximately $5k in
| business because we couldn't reach our audience at its
| peak.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| This is not a safe assumption. You're just one crazy person
| willing to harass the family of whoever runs the registrar
| away from being 'too difficult to work with' and getting your
| account nuked. They don't charge enough to stick their neck
| out for you.
| pyrale wrote:
| We're also one button press away from thermonuclear
| apocalypse.
|
| Knowing what's more likely and what's less likely is still
| useful information: social media turning bad is a daily
| occurence, while dns registrars' family members have been
| safe for a pretty long time now.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Nuclear security had many buttons and many people.
|
| Harassing people is far more accessible and has a proven
| track record of success.
| pyrale wrote:
| > has a proven track record of success.
|
| Do you have examples of someone successfully harassing a
| registrar employee into breaking the registrar's ICANN
| accreditation terms?
| ctxc wrote:
| Agreed. I don't know why the other thing is even an
| argument.
| graemep wrote:
| Yes, and a cray person could blowup your house or your
| business premises,
| SigmundA wrote:
| At this point you only have your own kingdom if you have a
| standing army with nuclear weapons, you are sovereign, everyone
| else rents, this is just physics, the details are social
| contracts.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Having your own nuclear weapons is probably like having
| firearms in your home in that you're actually _more_ likely
| to be the victim of that class of weapons.
| SigmundA wrote:
| The alternative is you don't have them and you rent
| protection from someone who does.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Right, I'm hinting that it's probably not worth
| maintaining your own nuclear weapon system in order to
| host your own website and email newsletter.
| SigmundA wrote:
| "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must
| first invent the universe"
| EarlKing wrote:
| A certain medieval gentlemen from Alamut would beg to differ.
| One does not need a standing army and nuclear weapons so much
| as the ability to inflict your politics on others credibly
| and unavoidably. There are many ways to do that, not all of
| which necessarily involve violence.
|
| Put another way: There are many minority populations
| throughout history and up to this very day that have managed
| to carve out a niche in their host population without
| necessarily employing mass violence to do it.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| All politics is violence by other means.
| HPsquared wrote:
| It does make Clausewitz's saying about war being
| "politics by other means" back in context when you put it
| that way.
|
| But really politics is just about "one person causes
| another to act". This can be through persuasion. It
| doesn't have to be force (or fraud for that matter).
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Persuasion is merely the implication of force. All
| actions can be explained through the language of force
| from the tenuous to the direct.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Consider the persuasion of making a sale. That's not
| force. People can sell political ideas in the same way,
| they can spread virally.
|
| EDIT: Also I consider economics, politics and marketing
| as basically "mass psychology". Hence all the problems
| with replication in those fields.
|
| EDIT 2: And with these things being psychology, there's a
| big "default biological drives" component. A lot of the
| motivations for political etc actions are internal to
| each person.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| The replication issues in those fields are partly
| attributable to the fields inability to explain behavior
| in terms of the biological imperative.
|
| There is the theoretical rational actor which while very
| misunderstood is also subject to the stochastic and
| entropic reality. The 'internal motivation'
|
| Persuasion can be divided into carrot and stick. The
| stick the implication of force against the individual and
| the carrot the promise of the ability to use force
| against other actors. This can be further expanded to
| negative force inherent from a relatively worse off
| position for not taking the carrot.
|
| With some creativity all behavior can be formulated from
| a few simple primitives.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Interpersonal relations can fall into "win-win", "win-
| lose" (of which zero-sum is a subset) and "lose-lose". No
| force is needed to enter into a win-win arrangement.
| EarlKing wrote:
| Persuasion is the art of supplying facts to enable mutual
| self-interest. Not everyone has an implacable class
| interest.
| EarlKing wrote:
| If you think that all politics is violence then you're
| always going to be woefully ineffective at it. Never
| bring a shotgun to a negotiation when a well-placed fact
| (or fiction) will do.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| This logic extend to governments as well. It's a spectrum which
| in many ways the mega platforms are directly comparable in
| their economic impacts to governments. This requires a more
| nuanced analysis than a reductive "it's a private company".
| bitnasty wrote:
| This is addressed in the article...
| xeyownt wrote:
| Yes, but you had to scroll to see it. Way too hard these
| days.
| 6510 wrote:
| You can make a html website in a torrent. Works surprisingly
| well.
|
| One time I had a copy of someones website that got deleted and
| experimented a bit.
|
| The index was paginated linked page titles 50 per page. I
| combined the paginated pages so that each had 2000 entries (I
| think it was, maybe 5000) Then I wrote a bit of js that takes a
| search query from the url?q= looks if it exists on the page, if
| nothing is found load the next html document and append the
| query to the url. To my surprise it paged though the pages
| remarkably fast.
|
| If you want to you could, in stead of display the content,
| display a search box on each page with the query in it, have a
| row of dots for the page number (on page 4 display 4 dots)
|
| Displaying 50 or 500 blank pages one after the other goes
| pretty damn fast if you load them from the file system. They
| can also be pretty damn big. If you put the content in comments
| the rendering engine wont touch it at all.
|
| When you update the website you can make a new torrent that has
| the same folder name and the same files inside. Run a check and
| the client will discover you had nearly everything already. The
| only restriction is that it may not change existing html
| documents.
|
| For that you can just attempt to load non existing scripts in
| the folder. Have script1.js attempt to load script2.js and 2
| look for 3 etc
|
| Can publish updates on a telegram channel.
| Y_Y wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Compiled_HTML_Help
| roenxi wrote:
| > This is mostly a good thing, if this wasn't true, somebody
| would have set up a site that was a safe haven for child porn,
| and there'd be nothing that anybody could ever do about it.
|
| I doubt it is true, and I'd assume people have set up a site.
| If the media industry failed to exterminate torrenting with
| enormous economic incentives to do so why would the crusade
| against child abuse achieve more success? It isn't technically
| possible to stop people communicating with each other over the
| internet.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| It's already happened. The Trump shooters brother was
| arrested for CSAM only because it was discovered during the
| investigation of his brother.
| ThunderSizzle wrote:
| Well, for all the "safety" of the kingdoms there, it didn't
| stop it.
|
| So the kingdoms have not prevented it, and many probably
| have facilitated it, and maybe not always unintentional (as
| in, someone from inside the company was "in on it").
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| The FBI also temporarily ran a CSAM site which raises
| ethical and legal questions.
| dartos wrote:
| > Despite what people say, the internet is not decentralized.
|
| Do people say this? I've never heard anyone outside of web3
| land say this.
|
| IIRC it's one of the big disappointments of the internet that
| is evolved in such a centralized way.
|
| But also you can deploy a website which doesn't rely on ICANN
| or a hosting provider, lets encrypt, email, or any of that.
|
| Your only "king" would be an ISP (which you could also run
| yourself, if you were so inclined)
|
| It wouldn't be an easily accessible castle, but it'd be yours.
| immibis wrote:
| You still need an IP address. You can build your own network
| on top of point-to-point layer-2 connections, which have no
| central authority, but it won't be reachable from the
| Internet.
|
| BTW: anyone interested in this should join DN42, which is an
| alternative central authority, and does more-or-less this.
| Although 99.9% of DN42 links are internet VPNs because that's
| cheaper, physical links are also accepted because they're
| cooler.
|
| (This reply was delayed by an hour by HN's rate limit)
| dartos wrote:
| I'm not an expert (or all that knowledge, honestly) in ISP
| level stuff. I just know it can be done.
|
| If you ran your own ISP and purchased wholesale bandwidth,
| would that not just include an ipv6, at least?
| immibis wrote:
| You can get an IPv6 range from your ISP, or directly from
| the central authority in your region. (IPv4s are too
| scarce to get a range, so you'll only want to have one
| and that will have to be part of your ISP's range because
| you can't advertise just one.)
|
| Purchasing wholesale internet bandwidth is another way of
| saying purchasing internet service (a lot of it). The
| company that sells you that is your ISP.
| croes wrote:
| >But wait! Your mailing list is hosted by Mailchimp which is
| another company, and your website is hosted by GoDaddy or
| Squarespace? Aren't they evil kingdoms too?
|
| >Not really. They are just hosting platforms that are invisible
| to your followers.
|
| >The general public doesn't have to go to Mailchimp.com to read
| your newsletter or squarespace to view your blog. Your readers
| go to your domain.
| Gud wrote:
| Just because you are using someone else's services doesn't mean
| you're in their kingdom.
|
| Self hosting (which I think you should be) is more like being
| Luxembourg. Sure, you still have to appease the neighbours, and
| occasionally you might be invaded, but overall you still get to
| see your own taxes and keep the culture somewhat independent.
| rchaud wrote:
| > your new Kings are your domain registrar, registry operator
| and ultimately ICAN itself
|
| To whom have these bodies caused problems, to anywhere near the
| same extent as mass market social media networks?
| appendix-rock wrote:
| Nobody said that this happened? The commenter is pointing out
| the faulty absolutist suggestion of the clickbait title.
| piyuv wrote:
| OP is close to defending sovereign citizens.
|
| Well-regulated, established organizations are not threats to
| liberty; on the contrary, they're required for a well
| functioning community (of netizens)
|
| Some kings thought that they were bound to gods so in the
| name of total freedom they announced themselves as "god-
| kings"
| int_19h wrote:
| It's not an either-or. Organizations are required for a
| well-functioning community, but they're _also_ threats to
| liberty insofar as they represent easily capturable
| concentrations of power.
| veunes wrote:
| Full independence is nearly impossible
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| Yeah, build a business on an island.
| meiraleal wrote:
| in the "cloud"
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Good advice, but really think it is a lot harder to get eyeballs
| than this makes out. What the big platforms brings is the
| audience. Yes, you can make a site to archive off the content,
| and direct people to your own site. But that is a backup plan. If
| you get de-platformed, and you go it alone, your audience will
| stagnate and shrink. Each little guy just doesn't have the reach
| or infrastructure to drive eyeballs.
|
| Hence, why the proliferation of sites that do this for you like
| substack, twitch, etc... Anything with content, by being a part
| of a bigger crowd you can gain more eyeballs.
| alexdobrenko wrote:
| yeah i came here wondering about substack which does give you
| everyone's email addresses...
| alexdobrenko wrote:
| curious how ppl feel about substack in all this? its def not your
| kingdom but you do have everyone's email addresses
| dceddia wrote:
| It feels like a middle ground to me. If you can export your
| list, and use your own domain, and have an easy way to get the
| content out, it might be worth whatever distribution they can
| provide.
|
| Just generally I'd always have an eye on the exit and watch for
| signs of things going down hill. Anything VC-backed warrants
| more care. Think about how they could alter the deal and plan
| accordingly.
| muscomposter wrote:
| which by this point, is nowhere at all.
|
| we cannot even go die and just drop dead in a ditch like the
| animals we are oh no.
|
| now we need a certificate, and we need to essentially buy, a lot
| of land for our rotting remains to rot in, lest a single lot of
| land go unclaimed...
| openrisk wrote:
| The elephant in the room is the size distribution of "other
| people's kingdoms". Having oversized kingdoms and overbearing
| kings is not a god-given parameter, its down to regulation,
| political and economic choices. Its not for nothing that the
| current digital world has been called neo-feudal.
|
| The real solution is to _force_ these kingdoms to build
| permanently open gates and roadways that connect the land,
| increase all around traffic and opportunity.
|
| Only when people turn from digital vassals to digital citizens
| will we emerge from the middle ages we are currently in. In this
| sense the most important development in the online world is still
| ahead if us.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| It is the same process that turned literal kingdoms into
| representative democracies.
| openrisk wrote:
| Absolutely. But it is disconcerting to realize the inertia of
| current collective intelligence even when what is at stake is
| great gains in productivity and welfare and even when
| formally we "celebrate" the benefits of well governed, market
| based democracies.
|
| It goes to show that every generation has to internalize the
| painful way key facts about what is good and what is bad for
| society, even if history provides more than enough learnings
| for free.
| Moru wrote:
| History isn't exactly the most liked subject in school.
| Most people continue not liking in later in life.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| History is just terribly taught and practiced. At the
| core history is just telling stories which are always
| interesting when told well.
| Maken wrote:
| History is terribly taught because it's often about the
| _how_ and not the _why_.
| teqsun wrote:
| Even worse is the overemphasis on _when_ (in terms of
| exactness).
|
| Knowing the rough order of events (as per the flow of a
| story) is important, as is the relative timespan, but a
| lot of history schooling puts too much emphasis on
| knowing the exact dates of certain events, which I think
| really subtracts the experience for many.
| arethuza wrote:
| The most interesting history we got taught at school was
| by one of our music teachers who was a kilt wearing
| Scottish independence supporter who used to tell us
| bloodthirsty stories about Bruce, Wallace and others...
|
| NB This was ~45 years ago - I doubt such things would be
| tolerated these days. :-)
| Neonlicht wrote:
| I suppose he skipped the part in which the Scottish elite
| sold out their country (literally) to the English crown?
| arethuza wrote:
| He probably didn't mention that because it wasn't
| particularly bloodthirsty and therefore of little
| interest to 12 year old boys.
|
| Mind you, the fact that it was events on the Isthmus of
| Panama that were one of the main causes of the union is
| fairly interesting:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darien_scheme
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| Scottish history would be far too dangerous to teach
| today. Undermines the narrative that all white people
| have a detestable history of colonisation and
| exploitation.
|
| The history curriculum I was taught in school was
| terribly boring and politicised. Other than the mandatory
| WW2 coverage, the _only_ other topics we studied were the
| horribleness of European colonisation, like Gandhi and
| Apartheid, ect... I was rather surprised to grow up and
| find out how interesting the topic actually was.
| zigman1 wrote:
| Do you think fediverse is a good direction as response to that?
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| The fediverse just moves the problem to multiple servers. The
| solution is a content addressed network.
| openrisk wrote:
| Conceptually the fediverse points towards the "right"
| direction, but imho it still falls way short from being a
| fully developed and sustainable new proposal. Both on the
| technical side and (maybe more importantly) on the economic
| side.
|
| Don't get me wrong, it is admirable what a handful of highly
| motivated people have achieved with activitypub, atproto etc.
| (to mention just some currently trending designs). But what
| needs to be done to deprecate the pattern of digital
| feudalism is a much bigger challenge.
|
| The main way to move forward will be to incentivize (through
| legislation) _many_ more actors (not just social media
| reformers) to invest and experiment in this direction, away
| from the feudal hypersurface that is crushing our horizon.
| Its the only way to explore the vast number of technical
| possibilities and economic patterns without being hampered by
| biases and blind spots.
|
| We don't know what a digital democratic economy and society
| exactly looks like. Its not been done before. Maybe more than
| one patterns are equally viable and it becomes a matter of
| choice and/or random historical accidents.
|
| But we do know that we are far from anything remotely
| compatible with our purported norms and values.
| noirscape wrote:
| The fediverse is probably the best answer you're gonna find
| to digital feudalism that is compatible~ish with the real
| world. Which is to say; it theoretically divides the risk
| that any single castle and king could hijack the entire
| process up into many smaller castles, meaning that if a king
| turns hostile, you can go somewhere else with relatively
| little friction.
|
| The reality is that if you truly want to get rid of digital
| castles and kings, you're essentially going to have to
| operate a distributed digital firehose (cynically: digital
| sewage pipe) that anyone can submit to with no preconditions
| whatsoever. For many reasons (first one that jumps to mind:
| spam, second reason: illegal shit, third reason: trolls) most
| people don't want to operate something like that, and that's
| _before_ the law gets involved.
|
| Pet projects exist of course, but pretty much zero of them
| are made to scale up against the idea of truly nuking
| kingdoms; the closest to a realization of this sort of
| network is something similar to TORs peer2peer, and you can
| consider pretty much all legal risks of running a TOR exit
| node for a service like this.
| j45 wrote:
| It's one of the better options.
|
| There's a few other neat technologies that are toying with
| being social network protocols.
|
| There's some fascinating angles for combating AI fake content
| compared to human ones.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > There's some fascinating angles for combating AI fake
| content compared to human ones.
|
| Are there any common terms one could research?
| andrepd wrote:
| No. Network effects + turbo-capitalism being able to lose
| 100s of millions a month to build market share, mean
| excessive concentration which we cannot get rid of simply by
| providing alternatives, even if they are "better".
| arethuza wrote:
| I live somewhere that has a _lot_ of castles - there are 3
| (possibly 4) within 2km of where I am sitting writing this.
|
| I don't think _any_ of these castles were built directly by
| kings - although I suspect their construction was either
| approved by a king or by someone who had delegated authority
| from a king. NB I can also see a large castle about ~11 km away
| that was a royal castle (and still has a military garrison).
|
| I suspect that _most_ castles are probably in other people 's
| kingdoms.
| khafra wrote:
| So, you should build your castle in someone else's kingdom
| iff that kingdom either
|
| 1. Has strong norms against castle seizure or abandonment of
| the king's duties in kingdom upkeep
|
| 2. Has a federation of non-king castle owners strong and
| unified enough to force the former point.
| hoorayimhelping wrote:
| 3. You are strong enough to provide a serious and credible
| threat to the king if he implements a policy that threatens
| you.
|
| Example: Valve in the early 2000s before or as they were
| building Steam to challenge the video game publisher model.
| 20 years on and Valve is still printing money, while Sierra
| Online doesn't exist.
| oremolten wrote:
| Sierra Online was acquired through fraudulent accounting,
| and the company that acquired them went under shortly
| after as their fraud was revealed.
|
| Unfortunately Sierra had to accept the offer.
| Maken wrote:
| If you are in France or some other central European old
| Kingdom, the people living in those castles were the ones who
| either put the king in the throne or had the power to remove
| him if he started some funny business, so it was _their_
| kingdom in a sense. The problem with modern platforms is, as
| always, how much leverage the users have against the
| administrators.
| arethuza wrote:
| Yes, in the case of Scotland there is a famous document
| (Declaration of Arbroath) that was written to the Pope
| asking him to, amongst other things, acknowledge that
| Scotland had been pretty much always been independent of
| England. This was "signed" by the Scottish nobles and has a
| section saying that if the current king (Robert the Bruce)
| wasn't good enough at fighting the English he'd be removed
| and they'd find someone more capable.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Removal of a bad king was a possibility, but actually
| attempting to do it was ... tricky. It could definitely
| backfire and end up with the rebels on a scaffold, or,
| worse, with a decade-long civil war that harmed everyone
| and opened the door of the kingdom to potential raiders
| from the outside.
|
| In practice, unhappy nobles would often rather deny their
| necessary cooperation (at war or administering the land in
| peace) and thus force the king to make some amends and
| tradeoffs.
|
| Passive aggressivity isn't a modern concept :)
| int_19h wrote:
| So long as the king is not sufficiently powerful to take
| on a bunch of nobles who gang up, for all practical
| purposes, it is not the king's country.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "for all practical purposes"
|
| Well, there is the practical purpose of _legitimacy_. It
| may seem too soft for modern power theoreticians, but the
| legitimate king has something that cannot be acquired by
| raw power, and that puts somewhat of a damper on
| potential rebels. Not on each and every one of them, of
| course, but it has a wide effect. Killing or deposing the
| legitimate monarch was a serious spiritual crime for
| which one could pay not just by his earthly life, but in
| the afterlife as well.
|
| Even usurpers like William the Conqueror tried to obtain
| some legitimacy by concocting stories why they and nobody
| else should be kings.
|
| We still see some reverbations of that principle today.
| Many authoritarians love to "roleplay elections", even
| though they likely could do it like Eritrea and just not
| hold any. It gives them a veneer of legitimacy.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| My understanding in many places (France in the Versailles era
| and the contemporaneous Tokugawa Japan) important families
| were expected to have some members at court where they could
| be observed, held accountable (hostage?) etc. That would be a
| reason to be your own domicile close to the court.
| nasmorn wrote:
| Castle building was in fact a function of the downfall of the
| carolingian empire that until then kept it under control and
| only granted the right at strategic locations. Most castles
| simply made a local lord unfireable by his king since
| besieging a castle was way too expensive for a regular
| dispute. The castle building shifted the power to the local
| realm, starting the feudal period for good.
|
| Castles are thus more like domains where once you take hold
| of it, even the big powers have a hard time taking it away
| from you again
| grues-dinner wrote:
| Seems more like the rule is:
|
| > Building a castle is a very good idea if you seek to
| entrench yourself in the power structure of the kingdom. To
| do this, you must be able credibly mount a defence of the
| castle to discourage forcible eviction without major mutual
| destruction ( _cough_ too big to fail).
|
| > Don't build a wooden cottage and expect it function like
| a castle with a garrison under your command. Even if you
| slowly expand it to a stone mansion, if you don't maintain
| a garrison, it won't work as a castle.
|
| Sadly, building an game on someone else's platform is more
| like setting up a cottage on the land. You might be able to
| get some farming done and survive, but if the lord fancies
| the grain, you're out of luck. But also good luck finding
| land to farm without a lord. Peasant.
| movedx wrote:
| I'm guessing you live in Wales if the castles are that
| densely populated. It has the highest density of castles in
| the world.
| neon_me wrote:
| When it comes to the "internet" - you are 30 years late to
| apply such forces. Everything is now DRMed, closed garden
| proprietary bs - there is no legal framework, nor will to
| reverse that and we are going to pay.
|
| And this is not cynic talking ...
| j45 wrote:
| The web is still open.
|
| Wide open.
|
| For anything to build.
|
| More users online than ever, and able to get their attention
| too.
| gspencley wrote:
| It looks like you got down-voted but I'm not sure why,
| because you're technically correct.
|
| Rewind 20 years and YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, iPhones,
| TikTok, Discord and what we think of as the "contemporary
| Internet" didn't really exist. Google existed, and even
| back then SEO was a thing and people were talking about not
| putting all of your eggs into Google's basket when it comes
| to your business model (which I remember vividly because I
| started a business in 2003 running a for-profit website
| that would continue to exist until 2022).
|
| Fast forward to the present and yeah users are opting in to
| "platforms" that require accounts that keep content within
| the walled garden. And Google search has declined in
| quality so much that I and many others don't use it
| anymore.
|
| But the world wide web, as a technology that is accessible
| to everyone, that existed 20 years ago still exists.
|
| You can still build a website
|
| You can still create opt-in email newsletters
|
| And there are a lot more people online today than there
| were 20 years ago, which in many regards makes it easier to
| reach an audience today than it did back then... even if
| how you would choose to go about it might differ because of
| user behaviour.
|
| It's fashionable to be pessimistic towards the tech
| industry.. and I myself get pessimistic about it all the
| time.
|
| But when I look back at the fact that I was able to,
| beginning in 2003, create an online business that allowed
| me to work from home and feed my family for 15 years at a
| time before YouTube existed and when the dominant social
| media platform was still MySpace ... and now I see content
| creators getting millions of views and some of them are
| just talking heads in a bedroom ... yeah the world changed
| but in many ways it's easier to reach people today than it
| was before this modern era of walled gardens and a google
| search that sucks.
| j45 wrote:
| 100% true.
|
| But we are starting to have the first generation that
| grew up with Google thinking Google, etc was the
| internet, where as it's not. The culture of creating more
| than consuming gave way to consuming content and
| scrolling becoming the default behaviour that was
| conditioned into users.
|
| Using a platform is one thing, reducing your platform
| risk by finding the people who will be your supporters is
| the real purpose of other platforms in other cases...
| coming to your platform.
|
| As people start to see themselves as a platform, I
| suspect this will change.
| krapp wrote:
| >But we are starting to have the first generation that
| grew up with Google thinking Google, etc was the
| internet, where as it's not.
|
| What's weird is how deeply held this view is on HN, by
| people who should know better.
| treyd wrote:
| It's functionally shackled by the terms Google lays out for
| it.
| runamuck wrote:
| Anecdotal: My hobby tech blog went from 4k hits/ day (all
| cold Google search traffic) w/ top Google searches in
| 2019 to about 60 a day today. I still publish at the same
| tempo and I believe I improved the quality of the blog,
| but I suspect these days the search engine traffic pushes
| eyeballs to the walled garden "social media" apps.
| raxxorraxor wrote:
| You are no "authoritative" voice. What do you think was
| all the rage against misinformation about? To give legacy
| media and advertising customers an edge. All platforms
| with user voices and ratings were destroyed too. User
| opinions are bad for marketing.
|
| If any search term is in any way part of any news cycle,
| you will get the crappiest search results you could
| imagine and any real content like a blog fitting the
| topic will be far down the line.
| j45 wrote:
| I'm not sure why search engines would push there or where
| you are learning about seo, etc.
|
| It seems search engines want to know it's real people
| behind content.
|
| Do you post your blog on social media to be found and
| shared?
| Veuxdo wrote:
| > Do you post your blog on social media to be found and
| shared?
|
| It wouldn't do you any good. Social media sites will kill
| your post if it has a link in it. They don't want you
| leaving.
| runamuck wrote:
| I post it to LinkedIn and X, but my logs show very little
| traffic from those sources.
| j45 wrote:
| If Google is relevant to it.
|
| Google's relevance has been changing with alternate means
| to discovery (perplexity, chatgpt) than their search.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I see more 401s than ever before running a webcrawler I
| think because of A.I. paranoia.
| Veuxdo wrote:
| > More users online than ever, and able to get their
| attention too.
|
| Not really. There are some people walking around with giant
| teddy bears[0], but that is entirely for show.
|
| [0]https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-
| doctorow/
| j45 wrote:
| Or, maybe reside on large platforms partially or temporary.
|
| There is an existing solution to not having to put in massive
| efforts to get massive private companies change their ways a
| tiny bit.
|
| The open web.
|
| We can build any web we want, at any time.
|
| And build we should.
|
| All large communities were small once.
|
| Starting a community and being a part of a small community is
| the only way they will grow.
|
| Maybe forums like HN and forums of the past have some of that
| right still.
|
| And maybe we can give what we want our attention, instead of it
| being gamified away from us.
| j45 wrote:
| Do we go on massive platforms to find the small communities
| (like subreddits) that we like?
| j45 wrote:
| We already have digital citizenship and already are digital
| citizens.
|
| We are digital citizens of commercially owned and run countries
| called Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and more.
|
| A digital citizenship is in private corporations with out many
| rights in exchange hold our digital identities as they see fit.
|
| It's why we are offered digital citizenship to a digital
| identity in exchange for convenience of a single sign on to
| click.
|
| This can setup a relationship Of being locked out of your
| digital identity and whatever it is tied to.
|
| A way to keep a balance is to only use email as login, and own
| your identity with your own domain for email that at least can
| be moved between providers if you don't want to manage your
| own.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| The real elephant in the room is unless you are an actual king,
| your castle is always on someone's land
|
| I get the original point of the article, but the reality is
| you're always building something on someone else's
| infrastructure. It depends on how much the infrastructure you
| want to build yourself and own versus how much you get to use
| of theirs and for how much
| N8works wrote:
| Make all Algos for content recommendations open for scrutiny
| and watch the walls come down.
| hackable_sand wrote:
| Disagree. That is still "playing nice"
| ramshanker wrote:
| Nice. Convinced me to add a mailing list to my website. :D
|
| I promise, 1 mail update per month. Exceptional cases, 1 mail a
| week.
| uxx wrote:
| Is this a political post? :D
| mylastattempt wrote:
| While the article admits that it's pretty much necessary to use
| "other people's kingdoms" to get any interest in or visibility
| for your castle in the first place, I feel it still greatly
| underestimates the power of the few large kingdoms that are in
| actual place on the internet at this point in time.
|
| If your goal is to monetize your castle, you generally need the
| masses. And while you should indeed spread your risk, be it
| throughout multiple kingdoms or having one of your own, it is
| naive or even ridiculous to assume you can get the bulk of your
| revenue-generating visitors to continuously add 'visiting your
| castle in your kingdom' to their routine. That is a conscious
| effort they have to make, not just a mental choice but an actual
| action, to go to your (e.g.) website.
|
| Simply put: the majority of visitors to any castle do their
| visits in the FB/X/IG/YT/TT kingdoms. Only a negligible few of
| them will consistently make the effort to go to your kingdom.
| Spread your risk, but don't delude yourself.
| jorisboris wrote:
| I started a newsletter on Revue. Then Elon shut it down quite
| drastically after my 17-ed edition. I'm using Convertkit now
| where frankly speaking I'm running the exact same risk...
| renewiltord wrote:
| Meanwhile, Mr Beast.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| This actually piqued my interest, does anyone know of any good
| resources to learn digital marketing?
| meiraleal wrote:
| I always start by searching HN. I'm no techbro so I take a good
| amount of what I read with a grain of salt. With such an open
| query (Digital marketing), you should limit to past year and
| there will be good content
|
| first one:
|
| Ask HN: How do you learn digital marketing?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41107413
| immibis wrote:
| You will never own every dependency. The raw IP Internet is also
| someone else's kingdom, more and more by the day. Best you can do
| is try to balance the utility of someone else's kingdom with its
| risks.
| high_na_euv wrote:
| >know it sounds good to be anti ad but that means they have no
| clear way to monetize.
|
| Nitro
| nextcaller wrote:
| Building castles on the intern-net is fun.
|
| Maybe the knowledge can be transferred to the doctor-net.
| guyzero wrote:
| This advice goes back to previous generations of web
| entrepreneurs, way back to 2015 or earlier:
| https://www.roughtype.com/?p=634
|
| " It's a sharecropping system, but the sharecroppers are
| generally happy because their interest lies in self-expression or
| socializing, not in making money, and, besides, the economic
| value of each of their individual contributions is trivial. "
| jonstaab wrote:
| Rule #7: Use a social media platform that lets you own your
| identity and social graph.
|
| Social media has certain benefits that your own website doesn't.
| Public key cryptography, self-hosted servers, and an open
| protocol make it possible for your followers to actually follow
| you, regardless of what app they use to access the protocol. This
| is what we're building on nostr (in contrast to bluesky and
| farcaster, which are nearly as closed as the legacy solutions).
| It's not always pretty, but it works better for sovereign social
| media than anything else.
| fire_lake wrote:
| The mailing list is king here. Always push people to your
| mailing list so you can do direct contact.
| szundi wrote:
| Lot of young people just don't care about emails anymore
| hshshshsvsv wrote:
| Also generally a good idea not to build any sand castles.
| shahzaibmushtaq wrote:
| Yes, build a place where people can reach you at any time if the
| place where they met you becomes out of reach for any reason in
| the future.
| N8works wrote:
| ....as everyone builds their core digital infrastructure in the
| cloud... :/
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