This is the third and final post about blogging I am publishing this month as part of the Bring Back Blogging campaign. Be sure to check out the Bring Back Blogging homepage for more information about the campaign and links to other participating bloggers.
One of my favourite experiences when exploring the blogosphere is finding an interesting blog with a tremendous backlog of cool content. Finding these blogs is more difficult on the open web compared to finding profiles on centralized social media, but the reward of finding these highly unique pockets feels greater.
This is the second of three posts about blogging I am publishing this month as part of the Bring Back Blogging campaign. You can find my first post here. Be sure to check out the Bring Back Blogging homepage for more information about the campaign and links to other participating bloggers.
Starting a blog can be as easy or as difficult as you'd like it to be. Whether you want to make a text-focused blog, or an entire personal website with all kinds of content, there are plenty of platforms to choose from.
As part of the Bring Back Blogging campaign, during the month of January I will be publishing three posts about blogging. Be sure to check out the Bring Back Blogging homepage for more information about the campaign and links to other participating bloggers.
Blogs were the 'it' thing in the late 90's and early 2000's. Then came the introduction of centralized social media websites like Facebook and Twitter. When these sites took-off, many people abandoned their blogs and personal websites for the uniformity and ease of a centralized service with a rapidly growing user base. Eventually, blogging culture as we knew it disappeared to the far corners of the internet, kept alive by small groups of enthusiasts and believers in the form.
Publishing content on the internet can be an incredibly rewarding experience. However, the big bang level explosion of social media through the 2010's turned publishing into posting, and quality quickly succumbed to quantity. Yet, there are still plenty of ways to buck the trend and go back to the internet's roots and bring blogging back into the 'mainstream'. Today I'd like to share some tools and platforms you can use to discover, or for many re-discover, the world of personal blogs.
Many in the Global North do not value their online privacy very highly. I'll often hear people say, “they already have all my data, what do I care if they collect another piece,” or, “I have nothing to hide”. There are plenty of articles written about why these statements are flawed and that people always have “something to hide”, but that's not what I'd like to talk about here. Instead, I would like to share some tools anyone can use to help support those around the world who rely on internet privacy and anonymity.
In my last post, I briefly mentioned the Gemini protocol as a way of re-discovering bloat-free internet. In this piece, I'd like to dive a little deeper into the protocol, it's potential for average folks, and how you can explore this niche community for yourself.
The internet has evolved and grown over time. As a result, how we use the internet to communicate, learn, and conduct commerce has changed. Using email to exchange short messages with others has evolved into multi-purpose messaging applications. Visiting various websites for news has evolved into algorithm-based aggregators and Twitter feeds. Even reading webpages has gone from simple screens with texts and images, to an advertisement extravaganza with innumerable cookies behind every click. Beneath all the fluff and distractions, there are still foundational principles and tools that persist and provide a simpler, purer internet experience.
... And Why I Use Bisq
When I first learned about bitcoin and realized its potential, the only thing I could think about was how I could get my hands on some. After many hours of research, I learned there were several ways I could go about acquiring some. The four ways that intrigued me the most were: centralized exchanges, decentralized exchanges, mining, and earning. Mining and earning bitcoin are fascinating topics of discussion in and of themselves, however today I would like to focus on centralized and decentralized exchanges. For a stripped-down explanation of centralized versus decentralized, you can read my previous post on decentralization. In the context of exchanges, centralized versus decentralized entails a slew of differences that shape how one participates in the bitcoin economy.
This is a more personal post than is usual on here. I've come to the decision to delete both my Instagram and WhatsApp accounts. I deleted my Facebook account a few years back and have now decided to take the final step to further remove Facebook from my life.
With the news of WhatsApp requiring users consent to giving Facebook access to their personal information, I suddenly realized that I had to face up to my hypocrisy. I've written about the wrongs of Facebook on this very blog, and yet I was still making excuses for my continued use of Instagram and WhatsApp. My own complacency was leading to frustration with others complacency. My frustration stemmed from the resistance I felt from people even downloading the app to give it a try. Having painstakingly convinced many folks with whom I used to talk to on WhatsApp to switch to Signal, I think it's time I just remove WhatsApp completely from my life.
The accessibility of new technology to the masses is a slow, gradual process. Establishing a technological foundation upon which to experiment with different user interfaces (UI) and user experiences (UX) comes first and foremost. The evolution of the internet is a prime example of a foundation upon which an explosion of UI and UX innovation occurred and made the entire system accessible to everyone (see: the history of the web browser). One of the great innovations of the 21st century is the release of bitcoin in 2009. A proof-of-work backed decentralized digital store of value that has introduced the world to a whole new world of decentralized finance. As with the internet, how we interact with bitcoin has changed dramatically over the past twelve years.