

Own Your Identity - thisisblurry
http://www.marco.org/2011/07/11/own-your-identity

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BenS
One of the most valuable parts of an online identity is the attention you
receive from other people. Social networks make getting attention more
efficient. In this way, proprietary tools do a lot to enrich your online
identity.

For me, this is a great tradeoff. For example, I'm happy to put my pictures on
Facebook because my family and friends see those pictures and leave comments
that I enjoy. In comparison, my local copies feel like those dusty old photo
albums in my parents' basement that nobody ever opens.

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BrianBerk
As he mentions in the post, this is from one of the creators of Tumblr, who's
elevator pitch at this point is "a social network that gives users control of
their identity". It is one of the easiest ways for someone to practice what
he's preaching.

Still, the people who are converting everything over to Google+ aren't crazy
(well, they are a little bit, no search and no RSS is kinda a big deal). The
design of G+, particularly the permalink pages, does a good job of making the
first thing you see the actual content, not the fact that it is on G+.

~~~
starnix17
Also worth noting, he's no longer using Tumblr for Marco.org:
<http://www.marco.org/secondcrack>

~~~
VengefulCynic
And, as discussed in his podcast - _Build and Analyze_
<http://5by5.tv/buildanalyze/18> (ep. 18), this has nothing to do with Marco
developing a sudden aversion to Tumblr and everything to do with his desire to
be able to roll his own CMS as he has been doing since far before that CMS
turned into Tumblr.

~~~
starnix17
Ah, correct, this makes more sense now.

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nikcub
'owning it' doesn't mean your own domain. you are only leasing that domain
name until you either no longer pay for it or the government in control feels
you no longer deserve access to it.

~~~
mapgrep
While you hit on a genuine problem, there are far fewer legal barriers to
Google, Facebook, Twitter or Microsoft terminating your account than for US
ICE to seize your .com and .org; ICE needs a warrant for seizure and more to
retain indefinitely. Further, you can always get a non U.S. domain, e.g. .ch
(Swiss) as used by Wikileaks.

~~~
lloeki
That's unless you live in a country where it's becoming commonplace to filter
out DNS. I'm honestly hesitant to have my online identity be obliterated at a
whim by some reckless government of mine (France); they won't seize my
dotsomething, but they will legally be able to block it out of existence,
nationwide, _without even the order from a judge_. In that case, there are
actually _more_ legal barriers to Google terminating my gmail account on my
government behalf than being blacklisted.

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russnewcomer
It's not just individuals that need to own their identity. I work with small
businesses and have helped numerous clients move from @aol.com or @hotmail.com
addresses to their own domains. And it's not just businesses, either. I have
worked in third-world countries and seen governments print
"countryforeignerregistration@yahoo.com" on official documents.

The only reason I don't own my identity online is that I've been too cheap to
pay for domain registration. And that's an ever less meaningful excuse.

~~~
zobzu
unfortunately having a domain is not enough you have to be on twitter maybe
youll have to be on g+ sometime soon too then you dont own it anymore

additionally, ive always worried about the fact that the dns registar
generally own your dns and just let you use it for a fee.

~~~
sixtofour
Yes, for some reason we say we "own" our domains, but I always seem to have to
renew my lease.

~~~
zobzu
its funny that i get minus karma for this post lol. but yeah id prefer some
decentralized dns system where i would own my domain somehow

well then again, dns depends also on static ips which we dont really own. with
ipv6 we can be one step closer to owning the ip without being an isp however.
can also setup rdns more easily.

~~~
icebraining
>dns depends also on static ips.

Not really, there's dynamic DNS. My home connection has a dynamic (well, semi-
static) IP, so I use a dynamic DNS provider and a small monitoring utility to
auto-update the IP when it changes.

~~~
zobzu
No, I'm talking about hosting the DNS, that is, the DNS server, not the IP the
DNS record points to. When you buy a DNS record you need a nameserver with a
static IP to handle the DNS record. Then you can assign this record to dynamic
IPs if you like. Technically the nameserver could also work on a dynamic IP,
but practically this doesnt work out in this order.

Even blah.com depends on com and com depends on . (aka dot)

DNS being hierarchical, you never actually own the thing =/

There are decentralized DNS attempts tho

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spodek
Take his arguments farther and you reach Eben Moglen's (co-creator of free
software licenses) goal of the FreedomBox, which would enable all to own all
their data currently in the cloud.

The project is getting started. It's bold and far-reaching, but so was a free
encyclopedia anyone could edit. This page <http://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox>
gives more background and the videos it links to are inspirational.

If you agree with owning your identity, you may like what you read.

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dvdhsu
Interesting that he mentions Hotmail.

Hotmail addresses are indeed notorious for their lack of permanence. Last time
I checked, if you do not log in for 270 days, your account is deleted, and
your username is up for grabs. [1] If somebody else were to come along and
take your username, they could easily gain access to your passwords that can
be restored restored via e-mail, as well as your whole online identity.

\---------------

1\. <http://www.redd.it/ej321>

~~~
svat
Well, that's his point: if he had simply trusted the best webmail provider, he
would have ended up trusting Hotmail.

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Fargren
Going on a tangent, but hotmail is really good nowadays. My non-serious-mail-
from-friends account is on hotmail, and it's as good as gmail, a bit better in
some stuff and a bit worse in others.

~~~
naner
_Going on a tangent, but hotmail is really good nowadays._

I hope you're joking. Live Mail (which subsumed Hotmail) is atrocious, the
interface sucks. Live Mail also doesn't do a good job of catching spam.

The only thing worse I've used interface-wise is Yahoo! Mail.

~~~
forgotAgain
WHile part of Live mail the hotmail addresses are still valid. The interface
while still not to my liking has improved to a usable level in the past year.

To give credit where it's due, the spam filtering has improved dramatically.
I've used my hotmail account as a utility email account for at least ten
years. I get several hundred spams a week. They are close to 100% in filtering
accuracy for me but YMMV. The only problems I've had is that spammy things
I've signed up for can be filtered the first time in.

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masnick
However, tumblr does not provide an easy way to export your content.

This makes it not viable as a blogging platform for me.

~~~
there
your content is in html, how is it not easy to export?

~~~
icebraining
The problem is not the transport format - HTML is no worse than JSON or XML -
it's the lack of a standard _schema_.

For e.g. Wordpress to import Tumblr blogs they need to write an importer just
for Tumblr's format, whereas if Tumblr used a standard like RSS, WP could use
a generalist importer.

Don't underestimate the value of standard formats; the transport mechanism
(XML/JSON/HTML) is a small detail.

~~~
Otto42
Yeah, writing that importer was certainly annoying. Tumblr's formats are nutty
and weird.

<http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tumblr-importer/>

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mmaunder
I wonder if TLD's will ever be perceived as government lock-in e.g. bit.ly,
ow.ly, 3.ly are at the whims of Libya and yourname.com is subject to US
legislation and enforcement. Great post and 100% agree.

~~~
qq66
Unfortuantely, we are all very vulnerable to malfeasance by governments,
especially our own. Governments have done far worse things to their citizens
than revoke their domains.

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william42
Going to post this here, since it seems relevant to tumblr discussion:
[http://spinor.tumblr.com/post/7113243594/decentralized-
tumbl...](http://spinor.tumblr.com/post/7113243594/decentralized-tumblr)

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mise
My issue is not being able to decide which domain name to use. My surname is
complicated for people unfamiliar with it.

~~~
khafra
Buy your name and the common misspellings?

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kefs
<http://www.kevinrose.com/> should read this.

~~~
robryan
That is almost a counter example though, he has 32000 people in circles while
g+ is still quiet limited. If g+ was to go away he could easily redirect the
domain and build his core following back up fairly quickly.

This of course is a lot different for say a company that has worked very hard
building up something like a Facebook following that while susceptible to
marketing messages aren't likely to go out of their way to follow the company
to whatever online presences they create.

