#1520
Last edited: 05.01.2024 by
diggy, read: 11288 times
Anyway, let's talk about something lighter and more personal. Some reflections after 6 years of running my site. Let's start with the kind of people that read my site. I don't store logs or keep stats on any of this, so this will be just from memory of E-mail communication. Anyway, only about 10% of my interlocutors bother to use PGP. And then, half of those don't attach their own keys. I guess I'm doing something wrong with my guides. Maybe PGP is indeed too hard for the average person? Or even the above average.
About 20% of people who send me mails use Gmail as their provider. Then about 40% split between disroot and riseup, showing that at least people do follow my email guides significantly. Then let's say 20% proton and 20% random providers.
A significant amount of the people who communicate with me don't appear to read what I write on my site. They ask questions I've already directly answered there. Which is sad to think about. And I even go to great lengths to divide my articles by sections, etc.
Many inquiring about browsers, etc only want to be told what to do, instead of the rationale for doing so. Quite a few wanted a review of their "special snowflake chromium fork" that isn't really any different from any of the others, in any way that really matters. There's quite a failure somewhere, in teaching the fundamentals, I think.
A surprising amount of people wants to do all kinds of modifications to their...Windows installation, not understanding that you don't start building a home on a broken foundation. They want their perfect browser and chat setups while Microsoft swipes everything.
The vast majority (90+%) of readers only care about my tech content, barely any about my reports on libertarianism, capitalism, or the schooling system (which are the more important ones). I did get a few mails praising those, though. Sometimes, they've resulted in long discussions on XMPP, so, it's nice to know at least some are digging deep into those reports, and I'm not just shouting into the wind.
Much of what I've written in 2019, 2020 and maybe early 2021, that hasn't been modified since then, is quite weak. That's big parts of capitalism and libertarianism for example. I'm surprised people haven't picked it up. I guess I'm left to do my own trash cleaning. lol.
The backlog of stuff that I wanted to do, is piling up, while the weak stuff still rots in there to be cleaned. I really have to stop myself from starting new shit now. How I've usually done things, is get an idea, get excited, whip out a draft and just throw it out there. Repeat many times. Then, some stuff I've edited later, but because it was so much, not all of it. Then corona came and I had another responsibility, that was constantly changing. And so, I took too many responsibilities. Now, I'd rather focus on the few things that I feel I can cover better than others, than start more weak stuff to rot and hurt eyes.
I usually get one or two mails per day, sometimes none for a few days. It seems I don't have more than a few thousand regular readers. Which is quite a low reach for what I hoped to accomplish. Oh well. It seems you really need shilling campaigns on the big mainstream platforms to get popular. Doesn't help I've been censored in many already. I remember when I was mentioned on HN, view per day count multiplied 10 times for a few days. That's until they censored me. For some reason, the diggy sting is particularly painful.
I guess that's it, nothing comes to mind anymore. Might edit this post later though, if it does. Edit: it did. Because it came to mind that...
The criticism I get in reddit, HN, chan type places, is fucking useless. It's obvious they don't read any of it, or they just skim and succumb to some useless "first impressions" that are completely wrong. I've had people say that I don't support any of my claims with evidence. When that's the thing I focus the most on! The evidence! The references! They could say my references don't support my claims. But that's different, they say they just don't exist at all. Or that I simplify things, miss context, exaggerate, blah blah generic claims that are never supported with examples. Clearly they don't read any of my material, just the conclusions which they don't like and want to dismiss. The art of following a 500 page argument in a book, has surely been lost in zoomers, if people can't be bothered to follow a quite short in comparison, article.
There's quite the clique, in those types of places, that believes in certain things, and doesn't want to give up that narrative. The belief in "anonymized data storage", "secure data storage", the belief in "trusting someone with your data" used as a justification for siphoning everything you do. It's very common in places like HN and reddit. The overusage of implication fallacy, used to justify something bad because, well, how can we do without it? The service must have ads or tracking because they would die otherwise! And we must have wars because bad Putin, or whatever. I don't care. If something bothers me I'll call it out. I guess that's why diggy stings so hard?