I’m entertaining the idea of starting a digital privacy and security blog. As a matter of fact, I am self hosting it right now, but mainly for friends, family and acquaintances. It’s super basic, more rants than articles honestly, 🤣
Since the only 2 social networks I have are Lemmy and Mastodon, I’ve been avoiding allowing sharing to Facebook, Twitter and other mainstream SNs.
My wife thinks I should just host it on a cloud and share it everywhere with the argument of, and I quote, “the platforms you use are already full of people as paranoid as you. If you really want to bring your knowledge and experience to others, you should allow us to share to the platforms full of people oblivious to the dangers you constantly slam us with” (which is absolutely true. I’m a thorn on their side, lol.
What do you guys think? Should I add features to share to those places? Would you if it was you? Under no circumstances will I post on any of them, and if I allow to share from my blog, my inner circle would be the one doing the sharing.
I do want to help spread our gospel, but I think that most people in those platforms are just to far gone to even care. I don’t even know what to think anymore. I’ve only written 2 articles so far anyway, so it’s not like I’d be the New York Times of privacy or anything.
Can’t they just copy and paste the articles URL from the browsers adress bar? Or are you blocking anyone with a referee from Facebook, etc.?
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I am self hosting it right now, but mainly for friends, family and acquaintancesIn addition to rants, if you post tips, how-tos, explanations, best practices, suggestions, etc., I’d like to read your blog. Can you share the URL?
That’s the idea, and now that I’ve written 2 articles, it’s a bit time consuming. I want to do 2 - and 3 posts per week, and absolutely planning on adding tutorials and suggestions that have worked for me, as well as lists of alternatives to mainstream software and hardware.
The blog is extremely raw in terms of design, and I will be getting a new domain soon to separate it from my personal life as well. I sent you the link via DM.
I like the “raw” bit. It comes across as more honest, in-the-moment, rather than for selling something.
Plus I’m about info first, rather than the over-produced pages you see today.
Those share buttons are trackers themselves. So it’s not about “supporting” those websites by publishing content to them, it’s about undermining the privacy of your readers and doing the opposite of what you preach, and “supporting” those websites by feeding them much more valuable user data. As another comment said, just put a button to copy the permalink and let them paste themselves if they want to share.
As for you sharing a link on the mainstream social media platforms yourself, I’d actually encourage that. Cory Doctorow auto-publishes links (not content) to his articles on as many social media platforms as he can (sorry, can’t find the article in which he describes it). The point is that he still retains control over his content by hosting it himself, he controls the (lack of) trackers and ads, and gaining traffic from these platforms is still to his and his potential readers benefit. Bending your rules a little to reach more people and maybe even convert them to be more privacy-aware is fine.
That’s been my main debate. I didn’t think of that possibility,but it makes sense. Adding those buttons would go completely against what I’m trying to share in my blog.
I’ll start researching FOSS options to add a way to auto post links like you mentioned. Since I haven’t used any of them in years, does anyone know if I would need to create a user in each of them? I’d probably do it with the blog’s name, not personal if it comes to that.
I just copy and paste URLs, I don’t really use share buttons.
Yeah, I think that will end up being the available Streamline.
I do want to help spread our gospel, but I think that most people in those platforms are just to far gone to even care.
noone wants to learn about how to use X Y Z technology until you explain to them WHY they should listen. First start with the why, then tell them what their options are (what) and then tell them how to get there. First the why, then the what, then the how. https://blog.nowhere.moe/opsec/tutorial/index.html
Should I add features to share to those places?
personally, as i specialize in opsec on my blog (at https://blog.nowhere.moe) i go on forums and communities where people try to learn privacy / anonymity / deniability so i can just give them a link to one of my tutorials to help them learn about something more quickly
Great advise. I didn’t think of it that way. Thanks so much, and thanks for providing the link to your blog. It’s always super insightful to be able to gather different points of view.
Wait, how can you even stop somebody from sharing it to facebook? It has a text box and computers can copy and paste a URL.
I can’t, nor do I want to, lol. What my wife is pitching is basically “share to” buttons to everywhere.
Your friends who use spying social media platforms can share them there, if it’s a public blog. And if none of your target audience (friends and family) use Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, etc then there’s no need for them to be shared on those platforms?
Also, ime from when I had to use Facebook because of a group I was in, the group was very resistant to any privacy advice. I think the vast majority of people on these platforms are on those platforms specifically because they don’t care.
I agree. But my wife does have a point. From all the feedback, those who want to share can just copy the link and paste it to their platforms, which would be good. The more normies see these in their environment, the higher chance of people starting to care, but I will not add mainstream SNs access directly from my site. Thanks so much guys.
I do want to help spread our gospel, but I think that most people in those platforms are just to far gone to even care.
You need to backdoor them with the ideas.
One of the first steps I did was removing the Facebook app and replacing it with a Foss version still maintaining the account. Not until a lot later I deleted it. People do change. Go ahead, add some share buttons.
Oh, no, nothing that elaborate. That’s why I came to ask you guys. I can easily set up a “share to social” button that would give the reader the choice to basically post the link to 1 or many social networks. I guess you’re right, they could totally copy the link, and that would force them to not be so lazy, lol.
