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Comment by _0w8t | Hacker News Reader

If one wants a blog with self-hosted comments, then there not so many options and those that exist are not particularly simple. For example, standalone Wordpress can do that, but setting it up and running with all relevant plugins requires skills that few authors have access to.

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Comments is a _secondary_ component to the core of what I am talking about - long-form content. I can still post a link to my blog post on Twitter and have all the commentary from my audience without donating the content itself to Twitter.

What do you mean "donating the content"? Ad clicks? Subscription fee on your blog?

Is your blog making you money?

You can have your blog make you money if you want to, in whichever way you want to. "Donate content" is just that - when you write long-form on any platform that you have no direct control over, you're handing over the rights to said content. From Twitter's own ToS[0]:

> By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods now known or later developed (for clarity, these rights include, for example, curating, transforming, and translating).

[0]: https://twitter.com/en/tos

You lose exclusivity, but you do not lose all other rights. Nothing stops you from posting your content on 10 platforms, even if each one gets a license to your content.

Yes and no. You lose exclusivity, and the ability to manage where and how your content can be used. Once you post it on Twitter, you can see from the ToS that they can basically do what they want with it - plug it into ads, print on billboards, publish alongside other content producers, etc. This is a suboptimal position to put yourself into if you care about your content.

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