Hacker News Reader

Syndicate usually doesn't mean just posting a link, it means actually posting all the content on other platforms. Cory Doctorow is a good example, every blog post is on his own site (pluralistic.net), but the full content is also posted on Twitter, Mastodon, Medium, and Tumblr. If you use one of those platforms you can read his stuff without ever visiting his site.

That would be better, but how would you even do that for long form content, which is typical of blogs?

This idea also goes against the "Copies cite the original." approach mentioned in the article. You'd lose view/readership tracking or fragment it.

Using the Cory Doctorow example, he converts articles into long threads when necessary. Here's an example: https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/110231149492915096

It does start with a link to his own page, but you can just skip that and keep reading if you want to. I think this is a great approach - if you just want to read the article you can click through, but if you really prefer a long thread you can read that instead, and then easily repost or respond to a particular quote from the thread.

It's true that you lose unified view/readership tracking, but I think that's considered a positive for a lot of people.

I think a part of the POSSE idea is precisely that, yes, in the moment you have those disadvantages. It wouldn't be its own idea if there wasn't some sort of tradeoff involved.

However... while my website may not be the hopping, happening thing, it was there when weblogs were the thing, it's been there through Slashdot, it's been there through StumbleOn going up and down, it's been there through MySpace, it's been there through Reddit, it's been there through Facebook, it's been there through Hacker News, it's been there through Mastodon, and it'll be there through the next happening thing, and based on statistics, quite likely outlast it too.

My policy is even a bit more flexible than that. I use social media to tune things, then make them permanent on my website. Often what ends up on my website is just not possible to post on social media, between the formatting I need, the size of the post, and so on.

To me, you're talking about all these short-term disadvantages, but I'm thinking long term, where I'm planning on outlasting all these transient social media services.

(And yeah, I don't get traffic, but to be honest, sometimes just publishing something and getting it out there, without hundreds of anklebiters rushing out to bitch about it, is the way to go.)

I'm fully with you. Independent ownership and publishing is the important part, I'm only critical of the syndication part.

> That said, posting links to original content tends to get low engagement and is generally disliked on downstream social networks. It is often seen as not really participating in a native social network

A long time ago, when I used Twitter, I used to think like this, but now I see it for what it is: cult mentality. And I have no qualms about offending cultists.

Leaving off the loaded language, I'll call them potential readers.

You may have no qualms offending potential readers, but if so you probably aren't the target audience here. Many people in fact try and appeal to potential readers to encourage them to read their work.

> Any feedback from downstream systems (likes, comments) are not syndicated back whilst at least for comments they can definitely enrich the content. Unless you have some very sophisticated polling mechanism, that content does not syndicate upwards.

The modal indieweb approach is sophisticated internally, but pretty plug-and-play:

brid.gy/

> When using native social networks directly, people often use multiple personas. The standup professional on LinkedIn, but also the toxic gamer dude on Twitter. Same person, different masks. Or even multiple personas within the same network. Very hard to setup with POSSE.

IMO yes/no; "have >1 domain" or two neocities sites or whatever is decently doable for fully separated alt-style stuff. If you want to syndicate from the same source only your toxic gamer stuff to Twitter and your professional stuff to LinkedIn, that... well, that example used to be possible before they killed the Twitter API. I think the technical part here is less difficult than feeling out your own social intent, what you actually want to share in different spaces, rather than letting the product design and app network effects cue you. But maybe anyone this involved in the web should be thinking about it that hard, maybe it'd be better for us to be more reflective, less cued.

A lot of this is down to deliberate API limitations of social networks, that are implemented to make them more walled gardens. For instance being able to reverse syndicate comments and likes from FB to your blog should be trivial, but AFAIK not allowed in the FB API.

This view conflates syndication with advertising. Syndicating the content means publishing the content elsewhere, not just a link to it.

> That said, posting links to original content tends to get low engagement and is generally disliked on downstream social networks.

Maybe I am misunderstanding you, but do people on, say, reddit or hacker news general dislike it when people post links to original content on other sites?

On Reddit at least, posting links to your own site or your own content on third party sites tends to be seen as "self promotion" and at least a little bit icky, even if you don't financially benefit. Some subreddit communities will tolerate it if you are an active participant in other threads on the sub; others dislike it even then.

Bridgy can help to bridge the gap between those social networks. https://brid.gy/