[HN Gopher] We'll be ending web hosting for your apps on Glitch
___________________________________________________________________
We'll be ending web hosting for your apps on Glitch
Author : js4ever
Score : 196 points
Date : 2025-05-22 17:16 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.glitch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.glitch.com)
| busymom0 wrote:
| As someone who had never heard of them, can someone explain what
| Glitch was used for?
| js4ever wrote:
| It was a platform to create / edit / host frontend and node.js
| backend. It was popular because it was an easy and free way to
| deploy something on a playground.
|
| When it went out I was super impressed, but they failed to
| monetize it and got badly abused by bad actors
| alexjplant wrote:
| Glitch the company also used to be Fog Creek of Joel
| Spolsky/FogBugz fame.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glitch,_Inc.
| qilo wrote:
| . (dot) got truncated
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glitch,_Inc%2E
| DannyPage wrote:
| I really enjoyed using Glitch as it allowed me to quickly publish
| and iterate on various experiments or try out new libraries like
| Datasette or HTMX.
|
| I am curious what Glitch will look like after July. If they
| aren't hosting apps, will they still be hosting code and letting
| it deploy elsewhere? It says it's not a full shutdown, but it
| doesn't appear to say what will be left to do on Glitch after
| that date.
| drewda wrote:
| Glitch was acquired by Fastly a few years ago, so perhaps the
| user-facing brand will continue on for a while on top of some
| Fastly hosted services...
| steivan wrote:
| I've been a long-time Glitch user and am now looking for good
| alternative platforms. My primary use case involves online coding
| with a Node.js backend using Express and some React apps. If
| anyone has recommendations, I'd greatly appreciate it.
| LordShredda wrote:
| I'd recommend, unfortunately, buying a cheap $200 netbook and
| running cloudflare tunnel on it. As long as you're relying on
| other people's computers for hosting you'll keep looking
| forever
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| That's nearly 20 years of lowendbox provider annual payments
| for what this guy is asking for.
| remram wrote:
| Or even more years of GCP/OCI free tier VMs.
|
| https://cloud.google.com/free/docs/free-cloud-
| features#compu...
|
| https://docs.oracle.com/en-
| us/iaas/Content/FreeTier/freetier...
| lxgr wrote:
| > As long as you're relying on other people's computers for
| hosting you'll keep looking forever
|
| > running cloudflare tunnel
|
| There's some irony here.
| CharlesW wrote:
| The Cloudflare dependency is for networking, not hosting.
| It would be very impressive to see a self-hosted service
| available over the internet without introducing a 3rd-party
| dependency or two.
| lxgr wrote:
| Yes, but my point is that there are many web hosting
| services, but only very few such proxy services to my
| knowledge. (Tailscale is another great option if you
| don't need public reachability.)
|
| I don't think it's a great tradeoff, when optimizing for
| independence of specialized solutions at least.
| CharlesW wrote:
| Sorry, yes --1 I was just gently poking you about the
| idea of self-hosting outside of one's local network
| without many 3rd-parties involved.
|
| BTW, Tailscale Funnel23 (in beta) does provide public
| reachability! 2 https://tailscale.com/kb/1223/funnel 3
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpxmfpCl20c 1 Please
| enjoy this hand-typed em-dash.
| lxgr wrote:
| Oh, nice, I vaguely remembered them doing something in
| that area but forgot about the details. Thanks for the
| reminder and the artisanal typography :)
| apitman wrote:
| More than a few: https://github.com/anderspitman/awesome-
| tunneling
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| has the internet really changed that much?
| lxgr wrote:
| Generally, I'd say so - life behind CG-NATs can be hard
| for non-eyeballs.
|
| But fortunately IPv6 is maybe finally happening, which
| solves many of the NAT problems, and in the meantime
| there's clever things like Tailscale.
| LordShredda wrote:
| I'm only suggesting it because calling my ISP and asking
| for a static IP + an open port is a hassle. It's only a way
| to forward ports
| ignoramous wrote:
| Workloads allowing, sub PS50 SBCs like _Banana Pi_ might do?
| barnabee wrote:
| My vote for doing this is to get a second hand Lenovo/HP/Dell
| mini pc.
|
| They're cheap (thanks to corporate upgrade cycles and the
| sheer number of "obsolete" models that are out there on eBay
| et al.), quiet, reliable, low power consumption, and
| generally pretty capable for the money.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| ...are you averse to just doing this stuff over a cheap VPS?
| Here's an affiliate link if you're interested.
| 1 GB RAM KVM VPS 1x vCPU Core 1 GB RAM
| 20 GB SSD 2 TB Bandwidth Price: $10.96/Year
|
| https://my.racknerd.com/aff.php?aff=2502&pid=912
|
| I don't work for Racknerd, but my business uses them for our
| clients. Most of them have low-end requirements. I mean that's
| less than $1/month right there.
| sabellito wrote:
| Wait what, 11 USD per YEAR? How.
| h4ck_th3_pl4n3t wrote:
| https://lowendbox.com/
|
| Lowendbox has lots of cheap shared VPS providers. For small
| projects that's all you need.
| PhilipRoman wrote:
| Run iostat -c 1 and keep an eye on %steal column. IME these
| cheap VPS cannot be used for anything where response time
| is a factor. It's fine for static content if you put
| cloudflare CDN in front of it.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| Low volume, low resource usage is definitely the best use
| case for these things. Yeah, you can get a bit more out
| of them with CDNs or maybe even just some caches.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| The problem is, having a server on the internet is painful
| because you have to be constantly on guard for patches - if
| not you'll get hacked sooner than later.
| barnabee wrote:
| Debian with unattended-upgrades and a [weekly] scheduled
| restart has worked for me for a _long_ time.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| It should basically be a prompt with a default of Y on
| first-time setup at this point.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| What?
| em-bee wrote:
| patches for what? ssh? the service i am running? the linux
| kernel, but only for remote exploitable issues, of which
| there have been how many?
|
| seriously, it's not that hard to keep a server uptodate
| immibis wrote:
| This fear is way overblown - at least for the basic
| operating system. Web apps are much more risky. Sandbox
| them thoroughly.
| AndrewStephens wrote:
| You are getting some pushback but you are not wrong. I
| thought I was being pretty careful with my DO droplet but
| just last weekend discovered that it had been hacked and
| was consorting with mysterious IP addresses in Russia and
| Brazil.
|
| This was on a box that was firewalled and ssh was locked
| down. It was running an older kernel - that was probably my
| downfall.
|
| I immediately shut down and rebuilt the droplet with a more
| modern kernel. It wasn't too hard because my site is
| (mostly) static with a simple custom service but is very
| discouraging to find that somebody has damaged your home
| project just to (I assume) make a small amount of money.
| ignoramous wrote:
| 2 TB Bandwidth
|
| That's 2TB/mo. Pretty sweet deal for $10/yr.
| weiliddat wrote:
| Is it more small temporary projects you need to make and throw
| away, or large projects you keep working on?
| raybb wrote:
| It's not nearly the same experience, but I'd argue a bit nicer
| of one, I'd recommend giving coolify a shot https://coolify.io/
|
| You have to bring your own server to selfhost but it's dead
| dead easy.
|
| If you have a nodejs app you can basically just click "new
| project from github", select the repo, and click deploy. Then
| it'll be there on your domain (or a free one) and auto redeploy
| any time you push to master.
| qudat wrote:
| Me and a buddy built https://pico.sh to make it easy for
| developers to prototype and share their projects. In particular
| we have a static hosting service (https://pgs.sh) and a tunnel
| service (https://tuns.sh) that should cover most apps in the
| prototype phase.
| mvexel wrote:
| Thank you for building the pico services. I use pgs for
| hosting my simple static website, and prose to host my blog,
| and it's just such a wonderful experience.
|
| Also it's been a while since I mailed a check to pay for
| anything, let alone an online service!
| loumf wrote:
| I pair program JS-based games with my nephew remotely using the
| glitch editor. In the end, it's just static files. Can anyone
| recommend another place to do that? What we needed from glitch
| was the collaborative editing and instant update.
|
| I could stand up a server if there's some open-source glitch-
| like for just static HTML and JS.
| akoboldfrying wrote:
| > In the end, it's just static files.
|
| GitHub Pages?
| loumf wrote:
| I really want the collaborative editor from glitch. The
| hosting part is easy.
| paradox460 wrote:
| GitHub pages with vscode in the browser?
| paradox460 wrote:
| GitHub pages with vscode in the browser?
| immibis wrote:
| I've been thinking about offering some kind of independent
| free hosting for the last few months or so. It seems like
| there's some need for more free, unenshittified hosting
| services aimed at non-commercial projects (like Miraheze is
| for wikis), but I'm very concerned about the legal risks,
| being outside of the USA (not that it's any better in the USA
| right now but traditionally it was). Servers are plenty cheap
| now, but lawyers aren't.
| curiouser3 wrote:
| glitch.com brings back memories of the pre-slack era Glitch MMO.
| What an amazing time that was, really beautiful game made by
| talented people, pivoted the communication side into what we now
| know as Slack
| BrenBarn wrote:
| Heh, I was thinking about that game too. It was bizarre. Even
| more wild that Slack was just a byproduct of it.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| The same way Flickr was a by-product the online Game
| Neverending. By the same people!
|
| https://gamicus.fandom.com/wiki/Game_Neverending
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludicorp
| 3036e4 wrote:
| I thought of that game as well, but I never played it or even
| knew about it at the time. I also forgot about the connection
| to Slack. What I DO remember is that they released the game art
| with a CC0 license after shutting down the game. The site seems
| to just redirect to a 404 on slack.com now.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20161124184152/http://www.glitch...
|
| https://archive.org/details/glitch-public-domain-game-art
| duck wrote:
| Why is Glitch and Pocket both shutting down the same day and
| announcing today?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44063662
| 42lux wrote:
| Someone is looking for coin and doesn't find it.
| sureIy wrote:
| You may be surprised to find out how many more things are
| happening today! It's definitely a conspiracy.
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| Birthday Paradox
| pabs3 wrote:
| Ubuntu Launchpad mailing lists shutdown got announced today
| too.
|
| https://blog.launchpad.net/general/sunsetting-launchpads-mai...
|
| Lots more shutdowns in the coming months:
|
| https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Deathwatch
| rafram wrote:
| This is... quite a list. Doesn't seem like people are really
| holding to the "notable or with user-generated content" rule.
| For instance:
|
| > 2025-07-01: Vrijeschool Waldorf elementary school will
| close, due to lack of schoolchildren.
|
| OK.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| Coincidence or not, this seems like it could be related.
|
| https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-implements...
|
| > As explained in NSD's Data Security Program Implementation
| and Enforcement Policy Through July 8, 2025, NSD will not
| prioritize civil enforcement actions against any person for
| violations of the Data Security Program that occur from April 8
| through July 8, 2025, so long as the person is engaging in good
| faith efforts to comply with or come into compliance with the
| Data Security Program during that time. These efforts include
| engaging in compliance activities described in that policy,
| such as amending or renegotiating existing contracts,
| conducting internal reviews of data flows, deploying the CISA
| security requirements, and so on.
|
| > At the end of this 90-day period, individuals, and entities
| should be in full compliance with the DSP. This policy does not
| limit NSD's lawful authority and discretion to pursue civil
| enforcement if entities and individuals did not engage in good
| faith efforts to comply with, or come into compliance with, the
| Data Security Program.
| Atreiden wrote:
| The same July 8th deadline here doesn't feel like a
| coincidence. But the provisions of that executive order
| wouldn't apply here unless they have been quietly selling
| user data. Do we have any evidence of this?
| aspenmayer wrote:
| The provisions will apply to Glitch parent company Fastly,
| to my reading, and so would apply to subsidiary Glitch.
| Same logic applies to Pocket and parent company Mozilla.
| Atreiden wrote:
| The implication that Mozilla, a privacy focused company,
| would have been selling user data in any form is deeply
| concerning. I'm inclined to withhold judgment until I've
| seen evidence of this, because that would be a
| significant scandal given their mission.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| Well, I'm not implying that Mozilla did it, but rather
| that Pocket _might_ have done it, or been unable to prove
| that they didn 't if they were audited. The fact that
| Pocket was owned by Mozilla during the relevant period is
| not really up for debate, but whether they were aware of
| anything that did or didn't happen there is unknown, but
| they have a reasonable expectation for knowing such
| things as the corporate owner of Pocket.
|
| I mean, it's kind of curious that the Pocket server
| source code never got fully released, even though Pocket
| was promised to be open sourced by Mozilla when they
| bought it. Now, Mozilla is ending Pocket, without ever
| delivering on their obligation to their users and donors.
| I don't mean to cast aspersions here, but this is not a
| good look for Mozilla, as their hand was forced, if our
| reading is correct, and this upcoming enforcement
| deadline is the reason behind Mozilla ending Pocket.
| Would they have closed Pocket on their own if they didn't
| have a reason? What was their stated reason?
|
| Mozilla Firefox collects user data and shares it
| automatically:
|
| https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-stop-firefox-
| making...
|
| We should assume Firefox is sharing data because Mozilla
| tells us they are. Why should we believe differently for
| their lesser-known properties?
|
| _Firefox built-in spyware that cannot be disabled_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39166801 - January
| 2024 (45 comments)
|
| > Looking at about:networking I can see connections to
| pocket (despite me disabling pocket in about:config) as
| well as connections to
| "firefox.settings.services.mozilla.com".
|
| > And after research, it appears some of these are hard-
| coded into the source code on purpose for "security
| reasons" which is ridiculous.
|
| > Mind you, my browser is hardened to it's best.. just
| felt like sharing this for anyone unaware that even if
| you harden Firefox, even if you go the extra 10 miles and
| edit about:config, it will still spy on you!
| weiliddat wrote:
| Sad, one of the first of its kind. Created a bunch of one-off
| tools for friends and colleagues on glitch, but could see why it
| didn't really take off. For me I switched to other platforms like
| codesandbox, replit because the editor UX wasn't great for a long
| time. I get wanting the simplicity angle but having poor
| hints/autocomplete/etc is a hard sell for writing code.
| biker142541 wrote:
| Just coming to say this is a great example of how communication
| should be done for such changes. So many companies get this
| wrong, but this is thoughtful and to the point. Glitch was a
| springboard for myself as well, so very bittersweet (and I guess
| I need to migrate really old stuff... but to their point, this is
| super easy now).
| pyb wrote:
| I can't tell from the post if Glitch is shutting down or not.
| immibis wrote:
| And that's how communication should be done. Uncertainty
| raises shareholder value. Somehow.
| pyb wrote:
| "On ne sort de l'ambiguite qu'a son detriment." a
| successful politician once said
| oblio wrote:
| Does Glitch do anything else besides web hosting?
|
| If it doesn't, in what world is this good communication?
| daveguy wrote:
| This is excellent communication and respect for their users.
| Applause for Glitch. Especially allowing users to retrieve
| resources for a full 6 months after the closure.
|
| If you appreciate this level of communication and respect, avoid
| Digital Ocean at all cost. They will fail to send you emails for
| a few weeks and then delete your resources permanently with no
| recourse. They are the literal opposite of Glitch. Avoid Digital
| Ocean.
|
| I would recommend Glitch remove Digital Ocean from their list of
| alternatives.
| vorador wrote:
| Is this the end of fog creek? I remember they had shut down most
| of their services by the time their rebranded to glitch.
|
| I wonder if anything is left of the company besides Joel's blog
| posts.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Glitch isn't FC either, but to answer your question: is there
| anything left?
|
| Yes, giant piles of money!
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Fog Creek Software was renamed to Glitch, and they offloaded
| FC.
| kbrosnan wrote:
| Trello sold to Atlassian. Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow
| sold to Prosus FogBugz sort of lives on at
| https://ignitetech.ai/softwarelibrary/fogbugz but it looks like
| one of those companies that buys software solutions and retains
| the minimum staffing to keep lights on.
| bfdm wrote:
| This a real loss. I'll miss Glitch for rapid experimentation with
| UI and APIs together.
| dmarcos wrote:
| Glitch has been a key piece of the A-Frame community (open source
| project I maintain) for almost a decade. I'm super thankful to
| the team! So many people started programming and had first steps
| in game and 3d graphics development with Glitch.
|
| It's sad to see it go. I was always somehow worried. They had an
| awesome and super generous free tier. You don't even need to
| create an account! Unfortunately, it looks they couldn't make the
| numbers work.
| karol_ wrote:
| As someone who has been using glitch.com because of A-Frame and
| was teaching students to also use them together I am really sad
| by the news. It was a great thing to see students who had no
| experience with programming to create a virtual spaces in under
| an hour and after few more lessons using A-Frame in a creative
| way that I wouldn't even thought off. I guess I would also like
| to thank you @dmarcos for keeping A-Frame alive. My especially
| fond memory of it was during Covid lockdowns when my friend
| reached out to me that he had students of Art University
| feeling pretty bummed because they weren't able to do a end of
| a year physical exhibit and if I had any ideas to do a simple
| site to show the works. What we went with instead was to create
| a virtual gallery that evolved also in to place where people
| could stream live performances through the internet and even
| had a premiere of a CD of a band done there
| (https://vimeo.com/428814586).
| dmarcos wrote:
| Thanks so much for sharing. Means a lot
| apitman wrote:
| Are there viable alternatives for your community? Anything
| that's just as good?
| dmarcos wrote:
| Not that I'm aware of. I like glitch because the dev
| experience is the same as working on a local machine: a list
| of files, text editor, viewer. Anything you learn on glitch
| transfers directly to local development.
|
| Codepen, jsfiddle abstract away too much with the UI and
| different panels. You're coding their way.
| apitman wrote:
| Have you tried Val Town?
| dmarcos wrote:
| It makes me sign up to do anything. That's a deal
| breaker.
| 627467 wrote:
| Unrelated: but the whole glitch labour union that lasted a year
| before it dissolved itself is the first thing that comes to mind
| when I read about glitch.
| singron wrote:
| > Glitch's 14-person staff will all make the move over to
| Fastly. However the Glitch union, which made history last year
| when it signed the white collar tech world's first collective
| bargaining agreement, won't be coming with it.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/19/23126349/glitch-fastly-ac...
|
| [This had substantially less coverage than forming the union,
| so I wanted to link it here]
| Kiro wrote:
| I don't really agree with people saying this is good
| communication. What will happen with Glitch?
| mattbee wrote:
| Yes! It's exactly what it says it's not, an Incredible Journey
| post, from Anil, who is a laser-sharp writer.
|
| I kept reading because I assumed they were going to - idk open
| source it or allow you to host Glitch apps elsewhere - but
| nope, it's just a straight shutdown announcement. What have I
| got wrong?
|
| I'd assume there is some obfuscation required by owners or
| whatever pending a change of ownership, something like that?
|
| Anyhow, RIP, if the internet has taught me anything it's that
| we can't have nice things for more than about 10 years.
| Maxious wrote:
| Considering Anil boldly stated "MCP is the coming of Web 2.0
| 2.0" https://www.anildash.com/2025/05/20/mcp-web20-20/ I'd
| bet now the golden handcuffs are off, it's AI VC money time
| baby
| TheNewsIsHere wrote:
| They're shutting down.
|
| This is one of those classic examples of awful communication
| dressed up as some kind of "good news everyone!" treatise on a
| founders personal feelings while being clear as molasses about
| reality.
| Jean-Philipe wrote:
| I'm a bit confused...if web hosting shuts down, what stays?
| Doesn't this mean glitch just shuts down altogether?
| karel-3d wrote:
| https://me.dm/@anildash/114553094584569213
|
| > We're thinking through what's next. I'm really interested in
| how we can look at all the other amazing creation and app
| experiences out there (I really love stuff like Val Town and
| Fly.io and Deno and Netlify, etc.) and bring all those together
| for easily making and remixing new apps. Will take a bit to
| figure that out.
| diggan wrote:
| I'm similarly lost as GP, and even reading this, I feel like
| I'm missing something.
|
| If HN said they're disabling new submissions and comments,
| that'd effectively mean they're closing the site, and would
| probably say that outright.
|
| But Glitch aren't saying they are shutting down, but they're
| removing the feature that I thought made Glitch a thing. So
| nothing is left, yet they continue? Is this a 180 pivot or?
| Are there other features that will still be usable?
| eitland wrote:
| It could go the Piczo route--a website builder aimed at
| kids and teens, not for polished blogs or ecommerce, but
| more for one-off, personal and playful friend-to-friend
| sites.
| diggan wrote:
| > a website builder aimed at kids and teens
|
| They're still just hosting websites in that scenario,
| which seems to be exactly what they don't want to do. A
| bit like if GitHub decided they didn't want to host
| source code anymore.
| dgimla20 wrote:
| Bloody hell. That name takes me back. I got started on
| web with Piczo (albeit moved on very quickly).
| madeofpalk wrote:
| They're shutting Gitch down. Anil's just trying to be high-
| minded and optimistic without saying anything specific. I'll
| be surprised if they do anything new with Glitch.
|
| This absolutely is a "Our Incredible Journey" story, but just
| with a good migration off-ramp.
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| Well, it has a better migration off-ramp than most "Our
| Incredible Journey" stories, but they don't even promise to
| keep redirects working beyond the end of next year. Fastly
| can absolutely afford to do better than that.
| wilg wrote:
| I love the brass of putting "Our Incredible Journey" posts on
| blast right up top and then writing a post that even less clearly
| explains if they are shutting down entirely, why they are doing
| so, or what is going on.
| deafpolygon wrote:
| Weird.
|
| Both Mozilla and Glitch are doing something on July 8. Is there
| something significant about that day?
|
| "On July 8, 2025 Glitch project hosting and user profiles will be
| shut down."
|
| "We've made the difficult decision to shut down Pocket on July 8,
| 2025."
| altano wrote:
| I think it's pretty common for more than one thing to happen on
| most days.
| skwashd wrote:
| It isn't unheard of for 2 companies to announce a shutdown on
| the same day. What is less common is for them to both
| announce it on the same day and last day isn't 4 weeks/30
| days.
|
| When I saw this announcement after seeing pocket earlier, I
| immediately started to wonder if there was a regulatory
| change on 8 July.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| DOJ starts enforcement of the new DSP on that date, for one
| thing.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44071372
| aspenmayer wrote:
| This was all I could find, but it actually may be related?
|
| https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-implements...
|
| > As explained in NSD's Data Security Program Implementation
| and Enforcement Policy Through July 8, 2025, NSD will not
| prioritize civil enforcement actions against any person for
| violations of the Data Security Program that occur from April 8
| through July 8, 2025, so long as the person is engaging in good
| faith efforts to comply with or come into compliance with the
| Data Security Program during that time. These efforts include
| engaging in compliance activities described in that policy,
| such as amending or renegotiating existing contracts,
| conducting internal reviews of data flows, deploying the CISA
| security requirements, and so on.
|
| > At the end of this 90-day period, individuals, and entities
| should be in full compliance with the DSP. This policy does not
| limit NSD's lawful authority and discretion to pursue civil
| enforcement if entities and individuals did not engage in good
| faith efforts to comply with, or come into compliance with, the
| Data Security Program.
| rafram wrote:
| > the Data Security Program establishes what are effectively
| export controls that prevent foreign adversaries, and those
| subject to their control, jurisdiction, ownership, and
| direction, from accessing U.S. government-related data and
| bulk genomic, geolocation, biometric, health, financial, and
| other sensitive personal data
|
| How do you think this could be related?
| aspenmayer wrote:
| >> the Data Security Program establishes what are
| effectively export controls that prevent foreign
| adversaries, and those subject to their control,
| jurisdiction, ownership, and direction, from accessing U.S.
| government-related data and bulk genomic, geolocation,
| biometric, health, financial, and other sensitive personal
| data
|
| > How do you think this could be related?
|
| I didn't quote that when I said it may be related. I have
| some ideas of my own, but I just want to be clear so that
| I'm not being held to account for things I never said. How
| do you think it may be related?
|
| People in other threads on this post were saying that
| Glitch was being used by bad actors, and if Glitch was
| aware of this or reasonably should be, then they would
| likely have issues with complying with audits for
| compliance with the new order, I would think.
| rafram wrote:
| You linked to that announcement. I quoted the most
| substantive section explaining what the DSP is. Reading
| that description, it's pretty clear that it has
| absolutely nothing to do with Glitch (or Pocket). Glitch
| isn't a data broker.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| > You linked to that announcement. I quoted the most
| substantive section explaining what the DSP is. Reading
| that description, it's pretty clear that it has
| absolutely nothing to do with Glitch (or Pocket). Glitch
| isn't a data broker.
|
| If anonymous people are abusing free tiers on Glitch,
| it's hard to say if some of those bad actors are also
| foreign adversaries. People will make C2C infra out of
| anything these days, and even if they were making a net
| profit on the whole enterprise, which remains to be seen,
| perhaps the costs of compliance for Glitch (or Pocket)
| were not worth paying.
|
| I went out of my way to do original research for HN, and
| made a case for why I think the results are respondent to
| the original query as asked. I think that it's likely
| that the new parent company of Glitch, Fastly, is subject
| to the DSP, and that obligation probably extends to their
| subsidiaries. Same for Pocket and Mozilla.
|
| It's clear to me that this situation deserves further
| study.
| x0xrx wrote:
| I tried to read up on this DSP thing and was immediately
| lost. How do I know if I need to comply? What does
| compliance look like? The FAQ is _100+_ questions long!
|
| It feels likely that it could apply to any company that
| draws the current administration's ire.
|
| I agree it's very reasonable to imagine that legal
| departments across tech are worrying, and might consider
| shutting down -- especially if they are already losing
| money.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| > How do I know if I need to comply? What does compliance
| look like?
|
| These are questions for your lawyer, and if they don't
| have good answers, questions for your new lawyer. If you
| don't have a lawyer yet, there's your problem.
| evan_ wrote:
| If it was a legal compliance thing they wouldn't wait until
| the very last day to do it in case something went wrong
| aspenmayer wrote:
| Or, to another reading, they are making every and all good
| faith effort to comply by ceasing business operations
| entirely. Why else is this announcement so strangely worded
| and timed?
| evan_ wrote:
| but if they were going to have to pay a fine if they
| operated past x date they'd want to shut down a week
| before x date just in case everyone who was in charge of
| flipping the switch was sick on July 8
| aspenmayer wrote:
| It wasn't my idea to look into this, I'm just reporting
| what I've found and my thoughts about it, which are
| speculative in nature.
| troupo wrote:
| To people praising this communication: they've given everyone
| just 6 weeks to move off the platform.
|
| To quote a response from their forum:
| https://support.glitch.com/t/discussion-thread-project-hosti...
|
| --- start quote ---
|
| I'm not a fan of those overly sweet, corporate-style messages
| that try to sugarcoat the truth: Glitch was simply too good to
| last, and you're losing money...
|
| That said, my only real complaint is this: if you knew the
| situation wasn't financially sustainable, you could have at least
| announced it a year in advance--not overnight.
|
| --- end quote ---
| brulard wrote:
| Sad. Do you guys know about a good alternative?
| dustingetz wrote:
| $30M Series A by Tiger in 2018, acq by Fastly in 2022 for
| undisclosed price, shutdown in 2025. Fastly is a CDN and edge
| network. Glitch was used by Fastly for "internal training" and
| "internal sales tools" (kinda?), a far cry from "fullstack
| application platform in the edge".
|
| https://blog.glitch.com/post/my-last-day-at-fastly/
|
| https://www.fastly.com/blog/fastly-announces-acquisition-of-...
| reverendsteveii wrote:
| is it me or does it feel like the american dream is quickly
| becoming "work super hard developing a new product that meets
| people's needs, then get bought out and shut down by one of the
| supergiant orgs that owns everything"?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Big money exit without concern for what happens next has
| always been the VC-powered startup dream.
|
| You are probably spending too much time on a discussion forum
| sponsored by a startup accelerator if you think that defines
| the American dream, though.
| dymk wrote:
| No, that's the Silicon Valley-specific "Sigma Grindset" Dream
| dughnut wrote:
| This is why civil design software has not meaningfully
| improved in 20 years and is indistinguishable from its state
| 10 years ago. We're living in a Dark Age. We just don't
| realize it.
| dabockster wrote:
| You'd have to convince someone to say no to a multimillion
| dollar VC check, bootstrap themselves financially (and often
| on "bread and water" levels of available money for their
| project), and be willing to potentially run or be at least
| somewhat responsible for whatever they build for potentially
| decades.
|
| An entity would have to _really_ want to do all that for the
| "American Dream" to happen.
| DrillShopper wrote:
| Welcome to the New Gilded Age
|
| It's going to get worse.
| neuroelectron wrote:
| It's not realistic to provide a secure hosting infrastructure
| unless you're AWS-level.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| So... it totally is an Our Incredible Journey thing.
|
| They got bought, Fastly doesn't want it, they're killing it.
| skrebbel wrote:
| I just can't get over the fact that this starts with
|
| > This is a big change, but it's not an "Our Incredible Journey"
| post
|
| and then never, nowhere, at all, makes clear that the post means
| "We're shutting down Glitch". At least the "incredible journey"
| posts are clear about _that_ , somehow this here is even worse.
| It suggests that they're just shutting some small part of it down
| but actually if I read it right (and the comments here) it
| actually means they're shutting the whole platform down but might
| someday want to try and do something else with the name and the
| userbase.
|
| I simply don't understand why people write like this. What's the
| benefit of trying to fool your userbase into thinking that maybe
| not _that_ much is changing when in fact everything is? Who wins
| when, the day after they pull the last plug, lots of people email
| them in panic, because they hadn 't realized that "important
| changes" means "we'll delete everything"?
| popalchemist wrote:
| They write like this because they can't own what they're doing.
| jeeyoungk wrote:
| Yes, they tried to avoid the cliche by pointing at the cliche,
| but they weren't able to refute Our Incredible Journey.
|
| Though, this was a real product, with almost 10 years of
| operation; very few products last this long, and the product
| wasn't immediately shuttered after the acquisition, so it is
| unfair to categorize them into the same OIJ bucket.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| Yeah I'm with you here.
|
| It's a bit ironic coming from Anil, who has quite a following
| on social media due to "calling it like it is" when big tech or
| VC culture does something rotten or self-serving.
|
| The doublespeak and evasiveness in this "incredible journey"
| post is exactly the sort of thing he'd typically criticize!
| apitman wrote:
| I listened to a great podcast recently with one of the co-
| creators of Glitch: https://www.localfirst.fm/8
| LahanF wrote:
| Anyway, all I can say is thank you Anil and team, Glitch helped
| me learn web dev 7 years ago, and also teach others. It's just
| very sad that it's ending like this, sugarcoating much.
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