Hacker News Reader

Comment by oidar | Hacker News Reader

I see more and more content creators realizing they aren't in charge of the channel on which create their content on - and then not knowing what to do about it. Medium, Youtube, Soundcloud, Reddit, Twitch, Tiktok - these companies are getting a hell of a deal with content creators giving things away for free. When things are going well with YouTube and the like it's fine - but what happens if you get unwarranted strikes - and then you lose your community. Content creators really need to build their community management side first and then start posting on the big sites mainly for promotion. Patreon has done a good job in this space. Ghost as well per this writer. What are some other services that allow you to keep your subscriber email list?

View on HN

The value-add of these services is pretty substantial, though. Free hosting alone is pretty big, since even setting up two servers to host your videos (one EU, one US) won't be as good as Google's global peering and edge storage servers[0]. And the web in terms of discoverability is dead - even if everyone used RSS readers and creators hosted their own videos, how do they find new viewers that want to watch their content without resorting to traditional advertising, or hoping word-of-mouth (online forums, IRL, or otherwise) works?

0: https://peering.google.com/#/infrastructure

this only applies to situations where your content is large in terms of byte count.

For textual content, there's barely any real cost tbh. a caching layer solves most of your problems with edge node speed (so you pay cloudflare or akamai or some such).

> The value-add of these services is pretty substantial, though.

For videos (and music to a degree), it's unique in that the content size is huge, and people are increasingly impatient. I have no doubt that youtube infrastructure cannot be replicated by a private person. Therefore, their services are not "value-adds", but the primary value, and your video content is the "value add".

You don’t need the full scope of Google’s network. Using fastly or another CDN provider will be enough to host your video content.

Without the content, there is literally nothing to inject advertising into and, thus, no business at all.

Content is pretty important for just a “value add”!

I sell my own books on my blog. No advertising at all.

It works fairly well, especially given that the Czech language community isn't very big.

host your videos on your website and ask yourself who's going to watch it. People forget what community values these platform bring.

Even EU and US servers would be poor comparatively. I'd get > 150ms latency to either, but I get < 30ms from my local Youtube edge nodes.

"Discoverability online" is a perennial question. And it's a rabbit hole as well since there's more then one way of exploring, discovering and consuming information with the question of "relevancy" being entirely context-driven.

Back in the 90s and 00s, the Web/Internet was promoted as a break from traditional mainstream media e.g. flipping between a fixed set of television networks that curated the content you'd get to see that night. It was hailed as this new way of sharing information compared to "40 channels and nothing's on tonight".

"What is the Web supposed to be?" has always been a question. Push or pull? The age of curated feeds and algorithms hasn't answered that question definitively. On the contrary.

> how do they find new viewers that want to watch their content without resorting to traditional advertising, or hoping word-of-mouth (online forums, IRL, or otherwise) works?

The Web/Internet is a game changer when it comes to providing access to services and information anytime any place. But, I don't believe that the Web / Internet was ever going to definitively solve an essentially a challenge of interaction between humans: "How do I get noticed?"

Consider a traditional library. As far as authors are concerned, putting books together and providing catalogues or curated suggestions to patrons doesn't imply that every single one of them will ever see the same reach or get the same readership. Not unless their work gets actively promoted.

Putting your work online - whether self-hosted or via a platform - only moves that challenge from the analogue to a virtual space.

Your mentioning RSS readers is interesting because subscribing to RSS feeds implies that you went through a phase or process of discovery first. Maybe someone recommended someone else's blog. Maybe you stumbled upon a blog via a blogroll. Maybe it's a blog of a friend who gave you their domain at a social occasion. There's just more then one way for a feed to arrive in your RSS reader.

To my mind, some of the criticisms about the quality of content on platforms, or what platforms recommend in their feeds, today draw parallels to criticisms given regarding last century's TV networks. To an extent, I think it's because the recommendation feeds of these platforms work just the same way: as constant feed that's passively consumed, having consumers flicking through whatever is presented until something engaging passes along.

> [...] hoping word-of-mouth works

Nobody has to hope, because it does

Not at the scale YouTube operates; the maybe 100k english creators (and a million more elsewhere) that have a full-time job doing content creation wouldn't have it without YT's discoverability algorithm.

There seems no way to prove or disprove that statement, since the evolution of the web created this reality and a different reality never got tested.

The current reality arguably depended on significant forks in the road of history, at least some of which might have been somewhat random.

For example, in a different, less monopolistic, version of evolution, there might be twice as many content creators, each making about half as much money.

I agree to a point.

Yep. There is a term less used nowadays online and that is for good reason. User Generated Content. All the big sites operate based on this system. Build a good enough system for people to generate content on, give them a pat on the head when they do it, sit back and watch the dollery-doos come in. If you read the post you'll see I never planned to stay on Medium, without sounding like I think I know everything and I'm full of myself, I knew Medium wasn't going to be the place for my content to live, but it was easy to test it there.

Yeah I think the optimal strategy these days is to host your own content, then build a following on Twitter, Reddit, etc. and link to it there. Post summaries with the link, but the keep full source text at your own site. Maybe also use a blog comment system like Discourse or Disqus to help with vitality.

https://meta.discourse.org/t/embedding-discourse-comments-vi...

https://disqus.com/

> Patreon has done a good job in this space.

Not really, they shut people down too, unfairly and without recourse. They shut down Sargon of Akkad for using bad words while arguing against racism, for example.

And don’t forget - Visa and Mastercard have started to go after content they don’t like (mostly porn and hate speech - but you never know where they’ll draw the line a year or two from now.)

I mean, this is a direct quote of what Sargon said:

“I just can’t be bothered with people who chose to treat me like this. It’s really annoying. Like, I — . You’re acting like a bunch of n***s, just so you know. You act like white n***s. Exactly how you describe black people acting is the impression I get dealing with the Alt Right. I’m really, I’m just not in the mood to deal with this kind of disrespect.”

“Look, you carry on, but don’t expect me to then have a debate with one of your f*gots.…Like why would I bother?…Maybe you’re just acting like a n**r, mate? Have you considered that? Do you think white people act like this? White people are meant to be polite and respectful to one another, and you guys can’t even act like white people, it’s really amazing to me.”

You're being pretty disingenuous with your recollection of events.

I’m not being disingenuous. I didn’t follow him at all, but learned about the incident after Sam Harris spoke about it and subsequently moved off of Patreon.

You may not agree with the tone, I don’t either, but he’s debating literal white nationalists in this quote - and he knew what words they use to hurt others the most (the n and f words) so he used them against the white nationalists he was debating.

I wouldn’t recommend anyone try to do this in 2022, but you can’t argue that he’s a racist from this when you understand the context (again: literally arguing with avowed racists against racism).

It’s like people’s brains turn off the second they hear an offensive word.

> and he knew what words they use to hurt others the most (the n and f words) so he used them against the white nationalists he was debating.

I don't understand the logic here. There's no logical reason to think these racial/homophobic slurs would hurt the white nationalists or cause them to rethink their viewpoints.

> you can’t argue that he’s a racist from this when you understand the context (again: literally arguing with avowed racists against racism).

Is he not literally digging deeper into these same racist stereotypes to make his point? That's how I interpret the two quotes. He's equating the white nationalists to those two groups in order to denigrate the nationalists, which implies the two groups are also bad.

My take is that he’s attempting to use their world view (that Europeans are more civilized than others) against them by pointing out they’re the ones with brutish views and violent behavior, and they’re white. He’s not espousing their views, he’s showing their inconsistency.

By the way, from what little I know about him, I don’t agree with much that he believes. But in any case, Patreon was wrong to deplatform him (something Twitter and YouTube haven’t done).

My friend, if you think using those terms in that context is acceptable then I'm afraid this conversation has ran its course. It is my opinion that using those terms derogatorily is unquestionably racist/homophobic, regardless of who you're using them against. Your original comment was disingenuous due to the omission of key details regarding which "bad words" he used, and how they were used. Most people would agree that there's nothing wrong with saying bad or offensive words, but racial and homophobic slurs? Not so much.

What a foolishly absolutist bunch of woke nonsense. These kinds of words aren't evil spells from some era of religious fanaticism. They're just words, and for such things context always matters, meaning that they can be said for all sorts of reasons that don't make one a racist.

You're free to disagree. I'm just explaining why the omission of those details changes the discussion greatly for people who hold similar beliefs to me. His original comment was framed in a way such that nobody could disagree, while the actual context makes it far less black and white.

I’m gay so perhaps I understand how these words can be hurtful better than you do.

But context matters. And I’m not going to get worked up by someone using slurs against white nationalists in a debate, even if I think it was misguided.

Context does matter, but the context is that the podcaster in question wasn't someone cleverly deconstructing white nationalism, but an edgelord who routinely says offensive things for attention (choice cuts: the video in which he tackles statements as apparently in need of contesting as "it's not OK to call me a fag" with such ingenious ripostes as "I don't even know that you're gay, but you're still a fucking fag" and his much-publicised comments about an MP being too ugly to rape) losing his temper at the white nationalist he'd invited on for a cosy chat because they were more interested in mocking his posh accent than finding common ground with him. A podcast persona he defends with the statement "Personally, I find racist jokes funny" . If a corporation decides it doesn't want to be associated with his content any more, it's not because they've completely misunderstood where he's coming from.

Yes, context matters. Hence why I added context that you disingenuously left out. You're free to disagree with my view, but you massively downplayed the situation when you called racial and homophobic slurs "bad words" in your original comment. This is important context which should not be omitted.

> I’m gay so perhaps I understand how these words can be hurtful better than you do.

Gay community successfully reclaimed all the slur words (gay, queer, fag etc).

While I wish everyone could do that (change themselves to not to be offended, instead of demanding me to endlessly change my words), that's not the case, slur words still exist.

reclaimed within the community

it would not be acceptable for someone outside it to use it.

As an European, that baffle me the casual discrimination that are rooted in your US mindsets.

The whole "You can do/say X if you are Y, but if you aren't Y, you are a racist/bigot/*phobe" isn't healthy to build a society without discrimination.

100% agree. As an Australian, it's fascinating to sit back and watch the mental gymnastics they need to run.

Lots of Americans (maybe even most) would agree with you.

But the people currently in power (institutional, corporate, and government) are all settled that this is the new standard. So we all have to pretend to agree or get kicked out of school, fired, or deplatformed.

gay and queer are not offensive even outside the community. It is acceptable for other people to use them. I haven't heard fag used non-offensively even inside the community, but maybe that's what needs to happen. Personally, I think it's great and that's what should happen to all slurs. They mean after all just "X but bad". When you turn them into just "X", you disarm the offenders and so the trend loses its memetic ability to replicate throughout tribes, and so people are less likely to denigrate only to assert their position as part of a tribe.

Regardless of what he said, do you think Visa / Mastercard should be content filters?

What if you said something bad about MasterCard's services? "Oops, no more credit cards for you" ?

This kind of monopolies should be treated like utilities, however I guess they're too useful as political tools to get that treatment.

No, I don't think they should be content filters.

Yeah, I think they should be classified as common carriers since a lot of the money individuals spend in the western world gets filtered through their coffers.

If they are allowed to decide who they will do business with on "moral" grounds what protections are there for people when those morals shift?

"Sorry, you're an unmarried mother, and we frown upon that so you're not allowed to use your debit card any more" is a stretch, but roughly 60 years ago it was the norm and we could easily backslide to that era again.

This is what happens when every word is recorded and every word is a 'statement'.

The English culture was heavily influenced by Kant who argued for a duty ethic, which was trained into schoolboys by the observation and participation in moral emotions during classroom tasks.

Sargon is making a (very lazy) appeal to emotional reasoning, to which Brits would respond. The idea that you don't fulfill the category of behaviour you're 'supposed to be', is something Brits can hear in his text and everyone else (except some aussies and canadians) doesn't hear.

The idea that these racists are not 'behaving white' and they are being like the thing they rail against, isn't to be understood on face value, it is supposed to generate emotional self reflection in the people that were raised in that philosophy.

I've never liked Sargon, he always appears so smug. Probably an unwelcome judgement, but he's not racist from that statement. Just an idiot.

The entire statement is founded on racist reasoning to engender an emotional response. If you're racist tactically, that still means you're racist. Just like the person who was quoted was being.

You seem to mean being a "racist" is just saying racist things. Which means nearly nothing to me. I have no idea what you mean by Racist Reasoning™ when his real reasoning is completely different to what you have experienced before, as I described above.

There is meaning to words further than Prima Facie. We aren't programmed robots that interpret words like a machine, they have an added effect on the rest of our human 'functionality', which people commonly try to access via emotions, persuasion and hypothetical arguments.

Real racism happens whether or not you police saying Racist Words. The fact that I have to explain this is beyond credibility.

It would appear that racism in your country is like saying some Magic Words that summon angry political groups and has almost nothing to do with intent, logic, meaning or anything else. Just saying words is bad enough to be condemned, like He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named in Harry Potter.

I had more explanation written out, showing how the traditional Scholastic dialogue works in Master and Commander, when Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany are discussing the fate of a sailor who failed to salute, and how they let go of making "official statements" in favour of personal, emotional arguments and come upon the truth through that dialogue. I have lost interest in responding to this hyper-literal, internet Enlightenment view which encourages mediocrity and tribalism.

I have zero sympathy for your view, it oversimplifies life into a world-view that can't contain it and has almost no meaning. If this is where the conversation ends, I would be very happy with that.

> You seem to mean being a "racist" is just saying racist things.

What's with racism purism? That you have to embody racism with your whole self in order to be really racist. I never see this purist concept applied to anything else: "Oh, he was only saying libertarian ideas, that doesn't mean he's libertarian" - sure, but why does it matter if the speaker is libertarian (or not)? What matters, and is indisputable, is their statement was libertarian.

You don't see a lot of "purist" stuff because it happens in the emotions and feelings where normal language is shaped to make for a movement in those areas without having to be explicit about it. That's the whole point and why Sargon's move was so lazy using explicit swear words and cheap logic.

>but why does it matter if the speaker is libertarian (or not)? What matters, and is indisputable, is their statement was libertarian.

Because you can't contain people in speech. How is this even a question? Policing speech does one third of what the unwritten rules and unspoken feelings do for maintaining social order. You can feel a father's disapproval, you can be emotionally moved towards the Good, ect, ect. The speech acts nearly always come after the thing that happened.

A car crash always has people mourning and setting up new safety rules and making 'indisputable statements' well after the event itself. Most 'statements' are just empty posturing and perfect-form chasing.

Golly gosh this feels like taking a horse to water but being unable to make it drink.

If it bothers you this much when someone tells you not to speak in a manner that's offensive to most people and tuned in a way explicitly to foster that offense (in this case because it's racist), that really says the most about you.

Racist language is a part of racism, just like nazi dogwhistles are a part of nazism. Perhaps this is offensive to you and that sucks, but it doesn't change the fact that this is how terrible people advertise themselves. By using their reasoning, their words and their stance on other people you signify that you sympathise. That is all anyone really needs to understand about this linguistic smokescreen.

What you quoted I find incredibly disturbing and unnecessary. But at the same time it seems like an attempt to fight fire with fire, with “their” language. So I get what he is trying to achieve here.

I’m not a fan of this tactic. But as someone who has been attacked by neonazis multiple times, I don’t mind as much if people are aggressive towards them. Tolerance paradox.

I still think it’s counterproductive, because it acknowledges their ways to a certain degree? Hard to pin down.

> Visa and Mastercard have started to go after content they don’t like

I'm an incredible crypto skeptic, but this has to be one of the better arguments for crypto to exist and be convenient for payment. No other argument resonates like this one.

The crypto exchanges could take the same position as the credit card companies. Then you are stuck using on-chain transactions and paying fees. Plus you have the inherent risks and instability of most crypto systems (the most popular of which murder the climate). No thanks.

They have done this before but the old saying in crypto is 'not your keys, not your coins'. You dont need an exchange. But it does help and make things easier.

Technically, you don't need an exchange. Practically, you do at some point in the chain.

Say this Sargon guy or some other personality with a rep takes payments/donations in BTC. Okay, and what then? You can't pay your rent with that, unless you're renting from some crypto fan, and they also can't pay for their taxes/groceries/gas/etc with crypto. At some point, if crypto is used as money there has to be an exchange.

And since crypto is very traceable it's very possible you won't be able to exchange coins with some sort of murky history to them. If you'd have a problem, then your landlord likely also has a problem. And you probably don't want to be on the wrong side of your landlord.

> Practically, you do at some point in the chain.

Except you don't - they can be sold and bought entirely without a digital middleman. You can buy goods for them. It's not a weird thought to keep them entirely as themselves, forever.

As for the "crypto is very traceable" angle, it's honestly kind of tired and wrong. If it's something you care about, you have solutions available. Arguing about it as if it's some sort of absolute is disingenuous.

> Except you don't - they can be sold and bought entirely without a digital middleman. You can buy goods for them. It's not a weird thought to keep them entirely as themselves, forever.

Where do you pay rent and pay for groceries with crypto?

> As for the "crypto is very traceable" angle, it's honestly kind of tired and wrong. If it's something you care about, you have solutions available. Arguing about it as if it's some sort of absolute is disingenuous.

I know mixers exist. And a lot of exchanges ban their use, which is detectable.

You can always use a privacy coin. Even if they get banned from exchanges, you can transact within the coin, then use an atomic cross-chain swap to cash out to bitcoin.

Alternately, there's decentralized mixing algorithms like CoinJoin that are indistinguishable from normal transactions with multiple inputs and outputs. Bitcoin's Wasabi wallet and Ethereum's Tornado cash do this.

Privacy is really a solved problem for anyone who wants to solve it.

> The crypto exchanges could take the same position as the credit card companies. Then you are stuck using on-chain transactions and paying fees.

That seems incredibly unlikely. They didn't shut it down for ape pictures and Matt Damon. You lump libertarians in with sex positive people and you can't really tell them apart anymore.

> Plus you have the inherent risks and instability of most crypto systems

True.

> (the most popular of which murder the climate).

Everything we do murders the climate. We're not going to fix the problem without a total economic shutdown. Pointing fingers at crypto folks when Google is training ginormous ML models it won't release and while everyone else continues to fly, drive, enjoy indoor temperatures, eat meat, and buy plastic is a bit like throwing rocks in a glass house.

Other cases geared a bit more towards HN folks:

- playing computer games where just the graphics card is using 200W-400W ("this has no use and should be forbidden!")

- using (and buying and making others buy) over-dimensioned hardware

- upgrading your hardware (desktop, laptop, cell phone) every 2 years

- three monitors

I certainly hope you're using public transport to go to work...

As the author is the blog post and a non-techie crypto advocate I can tell you when I've been paid in Crypto by people in other countries for work I have done that right there is the only reason I need to support and advocate for Crypto. No bank needed, no government approval needed. Just them to me and if the upswings and downswings of crypto scare you, use a reputable stable coin.

I don't doubt it. All the more reason to own your followers list.

This has always been the way since the internet.

Register your domain. Write on that domain (using CMS you control). And then use a range of social media / forums / creator platforms to get traffic to your site.

> Write on that domain (using CMS you control). And then use a range of social media / forums / creator platforms to get traffic to your site.

Or if you want to eat your cake and have it too, follow the POSSE strategy to get the discoverability benefits of services like Medium without betting the farm on it.

https://indieweb.org/POSSE

Thanks for that. I have been doing this but did not know there was so much more to it.

Thanks! Nice to see a name for what's been rattling in my brain ;-)

You don't even have to pay for hosting or anything. Keep your stuff on github and use a CDN with free integration. It's fire and forget as long as you keep the domain registered. If github or your CDN misbehaves moving is pretty trivial and doesn't affect your site's content or address.

Some people don't have those skills and don't want to learn them. They just want to write and produce good stuff. But I hear you.

> Some people don't have those skills and don't want to learn them.

But isn’t that always the chasm of running your own business vs. being an employee or small subcontractor?

The more control you want, the more broad your skill set and investment of your time needs to be.

Word can export html and there are GUIs for github that don't need skills. I guess you could say there's some small amount of learning involved but it's extremely minimal. Arguably not more than these social media sites.

It never ends. The goalposts will be moved from youtube to patreon, from patreon to visa (this has already been done), from visa to web hosts, from hosts to DNS registrars etc etc. The problem is the mob itself, not its means. The somewhat-bulletproof solutions would involve blockchain

I think Substack is pushing that angle and that's part of their appeal, although whether you trust them to make it work is another question.

I mean, it's always a tradeoff, whatever you do. Whenever anybody offers anything, they don't do it unlimited, for free and no strings attached, so over time, no matter what they offer, the limits, the price or the terms will become a liability. Often it changes over time: what didn't matter back then, matters now.

Also, these companies are getting a hell of a deal now. Now that they are so successful that you know them by heart. And only maybe are they getting that deal, YouTube for one bled money like there's no tomorrow for a very long time, maybe even know.

Creators, and people in general need to do realize that there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. And assess and manage their risk.

Is the idea you have to run your own site first. If the idea is you can convert followers and engagement from a big platform to your own, then you should be able to do it after you have a large following on a platform as well.

That way you can find a content market fit using a big platform then move people over and monetize.

There are clearly a couple issues with this now. Is the main problem here not having a host your own version of all the mediums creators use to get an audience? Ghost solves this for blogging, but I don't know anything for tik tok or Instagram or twitch.

Or is there a reason you couldn't move over a lot of audience late in the game? And if not, why not/would the reasons you can't stop you from building an audience in the first place?

"but I don't know anything for tik tok or Instagram or twitch."

Remember, its worse than just a lack of software. Text is dirt cheap (not processing text mind), whereas images, videos, require several orders of magnitude larger data, and several orders of magnitude more processing power.

CDNs are one bit of the puzzle, large specialized providers which will cache and store images around the globe for you, but those require obviously dedicated servers, associated hosting fees...

The other portion, then obviously, is bandwidth. Even if you can get away without a CDN, you still need good up/down speeds, as do your users. The solution is/was partially to use bittorrent or other file-share protocols to offload your bandwidth. OFC, then come issues like defending your work from theft, etc, all of which are issues with the simple centralized system as well, not actually at odds with file sharing (you can implement DRM over bittorrent if you wanted to).

No, here you can squarely point at RIAA, MPAA, US Congress (Interpol in the EU), and blame them for the current state affairs, bad policies having caused media monopolies. Until you strike down some of their more nonsensical decisions and bring the world back to file-sharing, alternatives to popular, performant, and widely available image/video sharing applications are not going to exist.

These are the main problems as I see it: 1) Content creators are busy creating content, they have little time to create an independent membership site. For streamers, beyond the streaming there isn't a whole lot that one could offer on a membership site. Twitch owns you. Maybe game coaching? IDK. For a recipe creator on Tiktok, a membership site makes sense. You can offer full recipes and full walkthroughs with engagement on recipes. 2) You don't own your followers list - it's hidden behind by the social media company. If the algo changes, if you get a violation of ToS, and so on. You have no idea when you might lose your audience access. Owning the list protects you.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com