thepuppet33r
9 hours ago
The biggest problem with people making their own websites is: 1) It's more effort and time than most people are willing to deal with, when instead they can create an account on Bluesky in seconds, and immediately begin sharing their opinions. This means that the slant of opinions from people who make their own websites will inevitably skew more techy. 2) Most people don't view the content they are producing to need a website. It's great if you're writing short or long-form content or obsessed with a particular thing (like the three website examples listed in the article). But for the average Joe, a website feels unnecessary.
I feel like what's missing in this discussion is that as much as I hate Facebook and Twitter (X), they enabled people who otherwise would never have been able to participate in the global discussion to have immediate access to do so. There isn't a good way to parlay that ease of use and immediate connection into individual websites. If all of my friends made their own websites tomorrow, I wouldn't visit them all daily like I read their posts on Mastodon.
Maybe the solution is to accept that most people don't need to be posting their opinions out in the ether? Other than here, I rarely post online.
Gys
9 hours ago
I think people are looking for attention. They want to be seen and heard. Posting on Facebook, Tiktok, X, etc does that (or at least they think so).
xtiansimon
5 hours ago
> “There isn't a good way to parlay that ease of use and immediate connection into individual websites.”
Seriously?
That’s what we’re mostly doing right here in HN. Having social discussion about links to long form (longer form) personal writing (ignoring the business marketing and Show links).
If you want to avoid toxic X/twitter, this is the way. Use social media to market your private work, and don’t participate in whatever the algorithm throws at you off topic. I’ve never really experienced toxicity on x/twitter this way.
Now ticktock is an evolution in a different direction. More like social YouTube.
There was an EDX course which really made this case. DALMOOC, Data, Analytics and Learning (University Arlington TX, 2014). The course was aimed at educators, and taught social media analysis and machine learning techniques for analyzing student participation and engagement when they followed the paradigm of using social media to link to their full project sites using blog platforms like Wordpress.
thepuppet33r
an hour ago
Hacker News (as much as I would like for it to be) is not and likely will never be the mainstream.
Even posting a link has friction, compared to the "share now" or retweet options.
I love the format and Hacker News in general, but you're kidding yourself if you think most people will pivot from X to HN and that it is a viable alternative for them.