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       Re:Technology/Blogs, (sdf.org), 12/17/2018
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User alexschroeder was reminiscing about blogs today[1]. His 
comments recalled my mind to a time when I was on blogger 
and blogspot (were they the same? eventually?), wordpress, 
and a few others. I never really pondered on what made me 
leave, or what made others leave. I guess I always figured 
it was just "social media" that killed the blogs.

I think alex brings up an interesting possiblity, that the 
blogs were killed because commenting was too much of a pain 
in the neck. Certainly, interaction on social media 
platforms was always more clear-cut than on blogs (at least 
for me) because you already had your audience filtered out. 
On a blog, you had spammers and trolls that could come out 
of the woodwork at any time, filling your comment section 
with nonsense that you'd have to moderate. On social media, 
that really didn't happen as much.

It was these spammers and jerks that made commenting such a 
pain in the neck, requiring logins and captchas and all 
sorts of stupidity. After that, it was the data-mongers, the
conglomorates and their endless worship of behavioral 
information that ruined the simple logins (and more 
recently, the captchas, with their shadow-work of having you 
identify photos for them!) In essense, the whole thing is a 
mess because of money grubbers and selfish jerks.

Of course, I'm not bitter. My blogs weren't really the type 
that people would comment on, aside from an occasional 
question. But, it's the principle of the thing!

Alex also mentioned gopher, and the tendency for people to 
simply reply to a phlog by posting their reply on their own 
phlog. It's probably clear that I enjoy this format. The 
thing about it is, it's the least intrusive reply possible. 
No one has to read my reply, not even the author of the 
original content. No one has to moderate what I say, 
because I'm just yammering on my own platform, not 
theirs. Sure, it means that when you author something, 
you're just puting it out there into the ether without any 
real knowledge of what happens with it. Yes, it means that 
back-and-forth conversations can get lost or missed or 
confused. But it also means simplicity, equality, and 
thought. It means that to reply, you have to be willing to 
put yourself out there not only for someone else's readers, 
but for your own readers as well. To me, there are definite 
benefits.

As to the future of blogs, I have nothing to say on the 
subject. I've deleted most of mine; some of them I've even 
asked archive.org to delete. Perhaps I'll try again someday, 
when someone invents "the constrained web" and brings sanity 
back into the www picture.

[1] gopher://alexschroeder.ch:70/02018-12-17_What_killed_the_blogs%3f