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[–] 1 point 1 year ago (4 children)

What is substack? I only heard of it everytime they got involved with nazis

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Like WordPress.com (i.e., without the self-hosted option that is WordPress.org), if there was also waaay less ability to customise your blog's theme. It's designed to look and feel much more like a single blog that has many contributors. Maybe think Twitter or Facebook, but using blog posts instead of Tweets and photos as the main medium.

    It's also famous for the fact that its owners refuse to ban literal Nazis.

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  • [–] 90 points 1 year ago (16 children)

    In economics, a network effect (also called network externality or demand-side economies of scale) is the phenomenon by which the value or utility a user derives from a good or service depends on the number of users of compatible products. Network effects are typically positive feedback systems, resulting in users deriving more and more value from a product as more users join the same network.

    The value of Twitter and Substack isn't the HTML or the CSS, it's the social circle behind it. That's why Facebook, founded as a Harvard social media site, outpaced Friendster and MySpace. That's why half your current crop of comedians and media pundits came out of the Ivy League. That's why The Federalist Society exists.

    Like, by all means, make a new BlueSky or Mastodon or Lemmy whatever. Thank you. But "What if we had a new Facebook, for annoying marketing dweebs?" it's how we got LinkedIn. And a thousand other knock offs of LinkedIn.

    So, keep that in mind.

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  • [–] 71 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    I have as much power as the Pope, I just don't have as many people who believe it

    • George Carlin

    Power, popularity and authority is always based on how many people you can convince to follow your movement. If you have enough people who believe it, I can become Master of the Universe!

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  • [–] 22 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    Power lies where men believe it lies

    — George Martin

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)
  • [–] 34 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    The other day I saw someone posting about wanting to bring webrings back.

    Unfortunately, it's really hard to get people to care about things. "This site is convenient and your friends are here" trumps "and it's run by nazi sympathizers" for most people, somehow.

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago

    Until the Nazism starts leaking through.

    Like, I don't really feel the urge to bring up the horrifying treatment of Latin American peoples every time I see someone drinking a Coca-Cola.

    But when Twitter is filling up my feed with CatTurds, I'm inclined to leave.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I remember webrings. We stopped using them for a reason. It's not a solution for diving into specific details of a topic.

    Neither is the AI slop that Google is putting at the top of the page, but for different reasons.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago

    Add to that section 1201.

    Facebook grew because it was able to make migrating away from Myspace easy. Facebook supplied a tool called SpaceLift that logged into MySpace on your behalf and moved messages back and forth for you. It meant that you didn't have to leave Myspace behind when you started using Facebook.

    If you tried that today, Facebook would send their legion of lawyers to crush you using section 1201.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I would love a social media app focused more on normal people networking and building communities. It's a shame something so potentially useful like that has been twisted to divide and isolate us.

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  • [–] 56 points 1 year ago (6 children)
  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (3 children)
  • [–] 51 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    Cities start from villages.

    That's what we've got here now.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago* (3 children)

    Not all cities start from villages: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underoccupied_developments_in_China

    Although a feature of discourse on the Chinese economy and urbanization in China in the 2010s, many developments that were initially criticized as "ghost cities" in China have since become occupied and are now functioning cities.

    Some cities are literally just built into the empty space, then wait until people move in. It has worked multiple times in China. Some cities literally went from zero to a million inhabitants in under 20 years.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I actually remember this one. Weren't western articles shitting on China endlessly for this? Calling it "ghost cities" and making up conspiracy theories and all.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago

    You still get lemmitors who think China just has empty cities made of tofu, trains that nobody uses, giant concentration camps full of people whos only crime was desiring freedom, and that china will collapse any day now.

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  • [–] 42 points 1 year ago* (8 children)

    I miss the old days of people making niche websites for their hobbies, their own blogs, and message boards.

    So many people think of the Internet as Google, Meta, Netflix, or . That makes me sad.

    I don't see a way back to a less commercialized internet, but little pockets of goodness like Lemmy make me happy.

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago* (3 children)

    The thing that I've repeated more than anything else the past 5-10 years:

    I miss websites.

    [Edit] ok second most. I think I've said "RELEASE THE LIST" at least twice as much.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I miss things spreading by word-of-mouth, not The Algorithm.™

    I miss people making things for fun, not for the exit strategy.

    I miss misinformation being called out and bullied mercilessly, not rewarded for Engagement.™

    I miss Nazi being hyperbole, not an alternative viewpoint we're supposed to acknowledge as valid.

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  • I remember The Blues Brothers and "I hate Illinois nazis" and John Belushi and Dan Akroyd running the fucking nazis into the fucking river. The sad thing is, that shit was universally funny back then - there weren't people in the theater saying "hey wait a minute, that's not respecting their free speech rights" or worse, "hey, what's so bad about Illinois nazis?" Just straight up "of course they drove the nazis into the fucking river".

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago

    You'd think that with QR codes every-fucking-where these days, that we could easily swing back to everyone having their own website. Back in the bad old days, it was hell on wheels to share URLs with folks. Now? There's nothing stopping us.

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  • [–] 28 points 1 year ago (2 children)
  • [–] 21 points 1 year ago

    First name choice was "The internet"

    Second name choice was "The pornography machine"

    They have forgotten our provenance and purpose. There is no pornography sullying out social media. There is social media sullying our pornography.

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  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    It's good more people are realizing, buts substack's owners have been openly pro-facist for at least a year

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  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago

    we-built-this-city

    we-built-this-city.htm

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    I can still hear the s falling.

    Those were the dark days, at the beginning of CSS, when we fought for scraps of anything that smelt like standardisation.

    e: autocorrect

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago

    We have always lived in slums and holes in the wall. We will have to accommodate ourselves for a time. For, you must not forget, that we can also build. It is we who built these palaces and cities, here in Spain and in America and everywhere. We, the workers. We can build others to take their place. And better ones. We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth. There is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world here, in our hearts. That world is growing in this minute.

    Buenaventura Durruti

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    The land wasn't barren though.

    It was inhabited by GOPHERs and TELNETs and FTPs and BBSes.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (15 children)

    on HTML and CSS*

    ... doesn't really have the same ring to it

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  • [–] 33 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    When I first learned HTML there was no such thing as CSS. Everything was tables and BGCOLOR

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    My first dummy intranet site for grade school used it, but it was a new technology at the time. I remember having a site on geocities a couple years earlier that was all wysiwyg and only used text. Back then, email was cool.

    Internet nostalgia.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (10 children)

    Jesus or just use Wordpress. Takes like an hour to set up.

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    I never understood why seemingly everyone uses WP. 'I need a personal, but professional, web presence' 'use this blogging platform', 'I need an e-commerce site' 'use this blogging platform' like what.

    Maybe I'm old and WP now does everything and the kitchen sink, but I was there when it started and made no sense.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Now it has the kitchen sink AND vulnerabilities… and an asshole CEO.

    As someone who managed it for a while, WP as a platform isn’t horrendous, but there are definitely better alternatives depending on what you need to accomplish.

    Sadly it’s still a defacto standard.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)

    What's a good alternative nowadays for someone who isn't super tech savvy and just wants to set up a basic WYSIWYG website?

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  • [–] [S] 4 points 1 year ago

    It’s true. They got through some gnarly WYSIWYG problems and, yes, due to plugins they basically do have the kitchen sink available.

    There’s some good comparative alternatives as well, but I don’t know much about them yet.

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Is he talking about metaphorical cities, or Geocities?

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Oh no did substack do a bad thing?

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    Dark web social media here we come

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Infrastructure is the issue. Got to be able to get to the new city.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    It is all evolution in progress at every scale. Some people are already extinct but haven't gotten the memo. To live is to change.

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  • [+] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)
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