

If Facebook Threatens the Web, then WordPress Saved the Web - grabanski
http://marcgrabanski.com/articles/wordpress-saved-the-web
After reading Tim Berners-Lee’s writings on how Facebook threatens the future of the web it occurred to me just how in the reverse argument is also true...projects like WordPress actually saved the web up until now by saving the intellectual property of millions of content publishers.
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grantheaslip
We're never going to convince regular people to run their own Diaspora server.
I mean, look at this:

[https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/wiki/Installing-and-
Run...](https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/wiki/Installing-and-Running-
Diaspora)

Even Wordpress is increasingly becoming a huge liability for someone who isn't
a sysadmin to run. Telling a non-geek friend to use a self-hosted Wordpress
install to host their personal blog strikes me as incredibly irresponsible in
the same way that jailbreaking/rooting a non-geek's smartphone would be doing
them a huge disservice. Nobody should be self-hosting unless they know exactly
what they're committing to. I'd much rather they use a hosted platform with a
good export mechanism than use wordpress, see their site hacked using a zero-
day export, and completely lose faith in "openness".

Data portability is something that average people can understand, something
that sites can implement fairly easily, and something that's compatible with
how regular people use computers. If geeks push self-hosting, they risk
completely losing their credibility with regular people in the same way that
the FSF has. Data portability might not be as sexy, but it's something that we
have a chance of seeing through.

There's a reason why people used closed systems like Facebook, and it's not
ignorance—it's convenience and quality. People aren't going to move away from
these systems for the sake of "openness", but they might be convinced to push
companies to implement true data portability if we can convince them why it's
important.

~~~
Encosia
Maintaining a self-hosted WordPress installation is awfully easy since they
added the one-click updating for plugins and WordPress itself. I agree that a
_neglected_ WordPress install is a liability, but it takes negligible effort
to keep later versions of it running smoothly. Even "normals" can handle
clicking an update button once in a while when they log into their dashboard
to check comments, stats, etc.

~~~
grantheaslip
But "normals" just aren't always going to do that. If Wordpress installations
automatically updated without any user intervention, then _maybe_ it would be
better, but I still think it's dangerous to get non-geek friends to use a
self-hosted Wordpress unless they really understand server administration—not
just following an installation guide, but how permissions work, how to back up
databases, how to properly vet add-ons, etc.

Plus, a lot of the Wordpress exploits have been zero-day. Even if they are
checking their Wordpress dashboard every day, or even every week (and that's
probably not a good assumption to make), their installation could be silently
compromised before an update was even available.

I think geeks tend to assume that regular people understand and care about
even the most basic (by our estimation) best practices. You could argue that
that's their fault, not ours, but I think there's a certain lack of pragmatism
involved in thinking that regular users can responsibly administer a Wordpress
install. I'm sure contrary examples exist, but there's a lot of horror stories
as well.

------
VladRussian
> Nobody should be self-hosting unless they know exactly what they're
> committing to.

it is just a FUD. Self-hosting can be done in a range of options - starting
with your personal webserver on your own home or collocated computer (geek) to
the pages personalized with your domain name on some common hosted and managed
_open_ platform like wordpress, etc... (regular, non-geek person)

The issue isn't about technicalities of hosting or data portability. It is
about content ownership. What FB does is "all you base are belong to us".

My related post on similar issue about giving away reviews to sites likes Yelp
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1898945>

Edit : this post is actually a reply to
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1943861>

------
Tichy
I think Facebook/Twitter are basically just blogs with inbuilt blog readers,
and a beefed up blog roll. Isn't that why Tumbler seems to be taking off
suddenly?

Funny how much of a difference subtle details of implementation can make.

