People can read it natively in the social app they find themselves already in. Also makes it easier for such readers to share, increasing the post/thread's reach.
Not saying you're wrong, but... if it was a blog wouldn't that "native app" be a browser?
>> Also makes it easier for such readers to share, increasing the post/thread's reach
I think this is a big part of it; it's not about connecting with a few deeply, but many shallow connections. I'd argue that these authors care more about the sharing than the communication aspects TBH.
But they come across the content scrolling through a social feed. They'd need to click a link, that opens a new tab (with goodness knows how many ads), to read the content.
I get that some people dont want to have this experience. But this here is using the medium as intended. It fits in the scene & participates actively with others, in a way that going-off-and-doing-your-own-isolated-thing (then linking to it) doesnt.
It'd be so nice if we didnt have to keep having this debate every single time. There's advantages to both. Recognizing & accepting that different things can be happening in the world & that you should maybe have a little flexibility about it seems like the mature response I'd hope for.
I dont think it applies nearly as much to this grass-roots, open-source, distributed, protocols & standards based form. People want a way to talk, converse, connect. Sure there's ways to do it badly, for bad cause, with bad incentive, but this is & most activity on ActivityPub reads as dielectic. As an exploration & search for truth, a desire to understand ourselves, each otger, and the worlds about us better.
For sure, we can use communication & connectivity poorly. Are unwilling to imagine though that connection can be a force for good? ActivityPub here is a very very early attempt to create standards where we can explore & innovate, and hopefully some of those fronts indeed show promise of good, for raising up & improving... not just amplifying the rash, the base, the overly emotional, the manipulators.
At some point we have to be willing to get beyond the long long long scapegoating & demonizing we've done. We have had very convenient targets to hang the blame on. Maybe less is the only answer, the only possibly, & hope of ever being better is foolish & mistaken, but I hope we can at least entertain that as a question, a possibility, & not act with- ahem- rash emotional fear-based certainty. This seems like a new path where we can be involved enough, have the decisions available, to start pioneering im the addition of responsibility & moderation to our social systems. That possibility excites me, and I hope we can agree is worth trying.
Are there other avenues for hope you see? What else might possibly be worthy?
Welll...
> (all the arguments are other features that may be missing in blogs, not arguments against having a cohesive post that doesn't spread across multiple messages)
Ok that's a pretty big category of exclusions. I can maybe picture a blog which is actually a number of subresources with distinct urls in it, where as we go down the page the url keeps updating itself. I can maybe imagine commenting per section. I can maybe imagine ActivityPub readers that can show the top resource & let folks expand the remainder if interested. I can recreate a better more featureful more complex medium, if I drastically rebuild what a page is/how it works.
There's a dozen structural advantages to using the web like a hyper-medium, not just a long scroll of paper. Yes we can try to import those features onto the virtual long-scroll-of-paper. But why? Many people like this hyper-medium. Im sorry but I think the pro-blog people need to fix their own problems & build better clients. Assimilate yourself & stop being petulant, acknowledge the superior medium that is more capable, and for god sake, start building some clients that hide all the stuff that you find so so bothersome to yourselves so you can please be less miserable people.