i’m looking for a place/means/medium for texts that i write. content is essays on topics that i find worthy writing about with hints towars philosophy (i guess).
twenty years ago the right answer to my question would have been a (we-)blog - what’s the current day equivalent for such a venture?
optimally, a solution would neither be based on lock-ins, data collection/aggregation or other shady business and would be freely (e.g. in a web browser, no login/registration required) and easily accessible.
Wordpress recently started offering fediverse federation. That it exists is the sum total of what I know about it, but I can see the potential.
WriteFreely and Plume are based on ActivityPub and can be followed from the Fediverse (in addition to RSS of course)
Do you have any opinions on or comparison of the two?
I used to prefer Plume because it’s written in Rust, but, well, it seems like it isn’t maintained right now, so WriteFreely is currently the better option
I don’t see anyone open for no cost right now (at least not in English). Might see about self-hosting if it’ll run on a raspberry pi.
There are many open WriteFreely instances: https://writefreely.org/instances
Write.as is kinda the flagship instance
Plume seems discontinued or not actively maintained (anymore)
… Lemmy?
Writefreely is a fantastic option. Your posts and profile integrate perfectly with the Fediverse right out of the box, it’s nice to look at and really nice to use. It’s also FOSS. RSS is supported by default. If you want to tinker with it you can add custom CSS and it’s self-hostable. I host my own instance and it’s by far the simplest & easiest federated software I’ve run. An absolute peach - highly recommend!
I heard substack was a new medium.com so it might be worth taking a look.
I tried to create a blog on substack once, I got literally zero views across a few posts. I feel like the only blogs there that get recommended are by people who are already semi-famous, suggesting the usual problem of recommendation algorithms killing entry for new creators. It also strongly encourages a paid model, you also usually have to subscribe to comment on others’ posts which makes it hard to get your blog out there. I’d say it’s more a publishing platform for people who are already well known than for ordinary people.
Substack is a safe harbour for actual Nazis and they refuse to do anything about it.
Everyone should avoid that site like the plague, and encourage anyone they know using it to do the same
Modern equivalent to blogs would probably be vlogs (videos on tiktok or other platforms like that)
Blogs are still a thing, check out WordPress.org
Another option is publishing on a place like medium.com
None of the above are optimal regarding your concerns about data collection, etc.
To address that, you could just set up your own personal website, if you don’t mind learning how to do it
i already know how to create my own website - i’m just curious whether that’s (still) the best option
Regarding the concerns you listed, it’s the option that gives you the most control over content and access to it.
All the others are a trade off in exchange for them promoting you.
I agree with this other Nemo. Your own site under your own control is best.
Still a blog. Host your own Wordpress or Ghost blog. Substack and others are evil.
What’s evil about substack?
They defend platforming nazis in the name of free speech or something.
but how do i gain reach? should i just advertise on lemmy/fediverse and hope to get traction?
with good posts?
for sure. but content usually does not advertise itself, so…?
I think people don’t normally mind if you post your own blogposts on a platform like Lemmy as long as you don’t spam it and the content is actually relevant
