Because platforms can fall down, or you can get thrown off — and all your “stuff” is thus constantly in jeopardy.

This is a bit of a rant I inserted into my weekly link round-up on Google. I’m extracting it and posting it here for reference, and in case I ever want to refer to it sans links.

In trying to sort out my digital life in this scattered world we inhabit nowadays, I have, for a variety of reasons, gravitated to minds.com as a kind of “home base.” They don’t censor you, they don’t hide your stuff, and they don’t spy on you. (Or so they say: at least I’ve noticed none of that action.) The links work, and are permanent; the comments routine works well enough, though it is underutilized at present. The whole “not being hidden or manipulated” thing is a big plus for me, as you’ll know if you’ve followed all of my previous whining on the subject.

What I really want to do, if I’m honest, is to try to contrive a work-around to the current chaotic system of unreliable, occasionally nefarious, and ultimately ephemeral “platforms” to recreate something like the pre-”web 2.0" world and do basically a “magazine of me” with meaningful interaction from interested people where it is warranted. For those people who are interested, I want them to be able to go to a central place where everything is laid out clearly and completely, and permanently, not dependent for visibility or findability on the algorithmic schemes of companies and the dubious structural integrity of their ever-shaky “platforms.” (Because platforms can fall down, or you can get thrown off — and all your “stuff” is thus constantly in jeopardy.)

I want it to be in chronological order, not all scattered and mixed up. I want to be able to go back refer to things, and be able to cite them, and for everything to be permanent and findable. With this, I am doing the best I can with the tools I’m aware of. As I’ve said before, the main thing missing, even on minds, is a reliable index. And this is what I’m trying to create manually by doing this weekly, annotated link round-up.

At least I, and we, to the degree that there is a “we”, can refer to these posts on Google to see what happened and find it. (Of course, that’s only as long as Google lets it exist. I’m not saying it’s the perfect solution.)

I know I could just start a new blog, and I may well do that. But, as I’ve said before in one of these rants, that’s not the way the internet of now works, and it wouldn’t be sufficient. People don’t come to blogs anymore. They passively wait for “platforms” to deliver them a selection of material, on the basis of undisclosed criteria. And they seem fine with that. The people have spoken, the bastards. Still, as I say, I’m doing the best I can.

If you’d like to join me over there, you can use this referral link.

More later, I’m sure.