Category: TechnologyCategory: Technology

From “Bespoke Websites for Emergencies are an Active Thing“

“A single website URL is much easier to give to friends and family, who don’t really know how to look up the data on their own, but it’s something that can be put in a text message. “Go to this site,” is all you need to say. They’re happy.”

Look, not everyone is on social media these days, but every smart phone still ships with a web browser. (via Hacker News)

This from “I Moved My Entire Business Off Big Tech. Here’s Exactly How and Why,” by Tracy Stewart.

“Every single company in my new stack offers real human help. Phone, live chat, email with actual responses… I hadn’t noticed how completely I’d accepted the big tech model of help articles and chatbots until I experienced the alternative. Small companies compete on care. It shows. It makes a genuine difference.”

This is such a huge point to consider when leaving the big services – companies actually want to help you use their service!

I know setting up a website sounds hard, or moving to a new email platform, or figuring out something with domain names! But I promise, there are good companies out there with great help documents, and staffed by people who actually will help you. Like Tracy says above, we’ve accepted the big tech model of service, which is usually a let down!

I wrote, “maybe centralized kingdoms of power and influence aren’t the answer” back in January of 2024.

Now Mark Zuckerberg writes, “the history of democracy and economics has proved that centralized power stifles human potential.”

I mean, he’s talking about the fantasy world of “delivering personal superintelligence,” but he’s right about one thing: centralized power stifles human potential.

It stifles creative potential, artistic potential, (ahem) home ownership potential… large platforms like Facebook and Instagram wield so much power, determining who wins and who loses on a minute to minute basis. I know they don’t owe anyone free traffic, but it’s their digital roulette table system that stifles the creative efforts of millions (unless they pay up, of course).

It was only recently that we were expected to always be available. This from Nicholas Bate (via Patrick Rhone):

“Life was shaped, from edge to edge, by scarcity and by natural limits. The shop shut. The night fell. The letter took three days. You were, for long stretches, simply out of reach.”

We drove across town to pick up groceries without a phone. We drove across state lines. We drove in snow storms and heavy rain.

Without a phone.

Yes, of course the phone comes in handy in emergency situations, but now everything is seemingly an emergency sitatuion, from breaking news, shipping alerts, album announcements, Slack notifications.

When are we ever out of reach?

Our friend Amelia Hruby, PhD is moving their Substack operation over to Ghost. They go on to explain that inactive subscribers won’t be automatically ported over, leading to this curious point from Amelia:

“you know where most of those inactive subscribers come from? 👉👉👉 The “Substack Network.” Which means that a lot of the amazing growth Substack is promising me (and bragging about in my stats dashboards)… is mostly resulting in inactive subscribers.”

I wrote about this experience (Substack Follows The Enshittification Playbook), and it aligns with what I’ve seen: the majority of the subscribers I’ve gained from Substack are inactive. And while newsletter open and engagement stats are not 100% accurate, there are patterns (and gut feelings).

Substack is definitely social media – the allure of growth, of audience – it’s there, and I’ve benefited from it. But that’s how enshittification works – it’s smooth and easy and amazing at the start for the user, and then it’s not.