Re-evaluate
The recent events in the US have made me seriously re-evaluate the idea of using US-based services for web hosting, social media, streaming, and all that jazz. I’m deeply saddened by the state of things, but it is what it is. I know there are a lot of good folks out there in the US (hopefully the majority) fighting the good fight. But in the end, the way things have progressed is forcing my hand to take some drastic measures.
From phone to desktop: A social media reset
I’m trying a new approach to social media usage for the coming weeks: I’ve removed most social apps from my phone and will use them only on a desktop. That means Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, and Micro.blog are now gone from my phone.
Facebook was already removed earlier. Instagram stays because I still want to post stories directly, and WhatsApp remains for communication. So, that’s it for Meta apps on my phone—less Meta, even if just in terms of installed apps, feels like a win!
Part of me thinks, now would be a good time to drop off the social media for an extended period of time (4 years, perhaps?). Then again, that might not be wise either. After all, when you know what’s happening around the world, you can at least try to prepare for the ill effects. Thoughts? 🤪
I wonder if, 10 years from now, we’ll still be playing the “my platform just got rug pulled—where do I go now?” game. Or have we finally realized that the only way to opt out for good is to make our personal websites and blogs the place to be again? #startyourblog
Micro.blog might just be the last benevolent social network out there, when all the dust has settled. I mean, there’s Bluesky and Mastodon for sure, but.. dunno. Feeling pessimistic about the future of social media in general atm. There’s shitshows and dumbster fires everywhere you look 😓
I wonder how medium.com’s article discovery works these days, because it feels like.. it doesn’t? Wrote a piece and published it on Friday. Today, it has 3 views and 0 reads. And I’m supposed to have 1.5k “followers” there. Is that the normal experience there these days? Seems bit.. brutal? 😅
Oh, this is 💯 my problem, too: Cutting back by @MacPsych
Spreading myself thin with all the different social channels in the recent years and this year (despite all the Fediverse stuff) has probably been one of the worst. Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, Micro.blog + handful of blogs on various platforms. It’s just too much. I’m strongly contemplating writing to a single blog in 2025, perhaps sharing those posts to Fediverse and be done with it.
Oh how I hate those AI movie trailers that have infested YouTube with passion. Just saw another one, which I first though was a “real trailer” for an upcoming blockbuster. It’s beyond me how those don’t get taken down / sued by the movie studios. It’s one thing to make “fan art” and whole another to not even mention in the trailer description that this one’s generative AI made. All “just for the clicks/views”.
What a stunning Aurora Borealis week it was last week. One can never get tired of these views! 😍
#auroraborealis #finland
If someone’s interested, I have a few record.club invites to share. First come, first serve 😁👋
Looks like only Mastodon cross-post went through. Bluesky and Threads “didn’t get the memo”. Let’s try again 🤔
Testing micro.blog cross-posting to Mastodon, Bluesky and Threads (don’t mind this message, will delete later). 😁
I’m a bit late to the party (here on this blog), but I just want to take a moment to congratulate @dave for the incredible milestone of blogging non-stop for the past 30 years! There are very few (if any!) bloggers who have been doing this for as long as that. Even the Wayback Machine doesn’t have records of those first years (as it was started in 1996 and Dave’s blog has been around from ‘94!
Switched my new finnish blog from Eleventy (& Netlify) to micro.blog just now. Surprisingly painless switch! Synergy ftw! 😁
Aaand the finnish version is live now too! - juhaliikala.fi/kahden-bl… 😁
Two blogs, two languages
In my endless quest of “trying out new blogging things”, I lured myself into a new experiment for this weekend: What if I keep my existing (in english) Micro.blog site where it is at micro.juhaliikala.com, but also start a Finnish variation of the site on a separate domain at juhaliikala.fi. Would that fly? In other words; will I end up writing on both sites for a longer run, or is one or other going to get buried as a failed experiment?
Got my custom micro.blog theme in good speed this weekend, aye! See it in action at https://blog.juhaliikala.com/ . Still ton of things to tweak, improve and implement, but eventually, the idea is to publish this as a micro.blog theme/plugin that others can use in their micro.blog blogs too 😊 Early feedback much appreciated! 🙏
So, as we now have three main ways for subscribing to a blog/publication; email newsletter, RSS and ActivityPub (handle), which will win? Some blogs even add a fourth way: Subscribing via WhatsApp / Telegram / Etc. Will RSS and ActivityPub subscribing continue being marginal use case and email still rules? I have no idea, but I think about this a lot.
I feel ActivityPub (especially in it’s current form) has a bit similar problem that RSS does, non-techical users just don’t use them for subscribing.
Excited to see what @john.onolan.org and team Ghost is cooking up here: activitypub.ghost.org. I find the new subscriber flow especially interesting (signup with email or ActivityPub handle). Some ideas here for future micro.blog additions too @manton? 😊
Aaand back to the “real human” type of profile picture again, after rockin the cartoon avatar for a while. In this age of AI generated pictures, having a “real human face” as the profile image feels nicer I guess 😄