title: Stop making excuses for not dumping big or alt tech platforms, and go Fedi and self hosted already!
author: 寮
date: 2022-11-28
tags: technology,internet,webdev,socialmedia
threadid: AQ3rmu4Nwml4hUzdU8
----
[In my yesterday's post](/blog/are-you-a-tech-jew/) I said the following:

> 2. When somebody calls you out for using big tech even though you’re against it, do you make up excuses (example: reaching out to a wider audience, waking up those still asleep, getting new followers etc)?

This got me thinking, every time I try to convince people to self host and federate their own platforms, I get dismissed with "but you're not discoverable", "but you won't find any new followers", and stuff like that.\
Let me tell you, this is total bullshit.\
In fact, I'm proof of that!\
I have no big tech presence, I have no alt tech presence, I almost exclusively use self hosted solutions and Fediverse (I am on 2 forums, although inactive, but almost none of these people are who I met at Fedi and vice versa).\
And even before I got my clearnet domain name, I've had a loyal readership, I have followers on Pleroma, I get to reach out pretty far and wide actually, even without having an account on any of the big or alt tech platforms or chat programs.

Apart from that, Fedi's biggest userbase is human, whereas the userbases of pretty much all big tech and alt tech platforms are bots.\
Sorry, but I'm not buying into this whole audience argument at all.\
It's all just a cope to make up excuses to not self host and just suck your corporate/state overlord's dick instead.

More important than joining the Fediverse, make your own website.\
Seriously, this is the only true way to fight censorship!\
Everything you can do with soycial media can be done with your own website.\
Everything you can't do with soycial media can be done with your own website.

Instead of the follow or subscribe button, there's RSS feeds.\
Instead of retweets/boosts/reposts/whatever, there's sharing links to articles worth reading and/or having webrings where you recommend other websites that are worth reading.\
Instead of a comments section there's email, XMPP, IRC, or you can still use a comments section if you have a dynamic website (and I can't stress enough, but don't use any 3rd party soyware like Disqus).

And among the features you will never get on soycial media, but you do get on your own website are the ability to use any words you want without the fear of getting banned, the ability to make your websites look and feel however you want, write content with actual merit, separate stuff into pages, get seen at any time instead of just the first hour or day (so content on your website never get memory holed), and so on.

This is the way we used the internet before Fakebook, and it worked!

Before you tell me, "but how about video?", just convert them to .webm and/or .ogv files, and host them, it's not difficult at all!\
Here's an example:

<video src="http://ass.ryocafe.site/bin.ogv" controls="controls"></video>

If I can do it, why can't you?
