Social media and the rest, a personal website is best

11 April 2025

Mike Sass, writing at Shellsharks:

A website, your own personal website, is just like this—a digital home, on the web. With all the same comforts, familiarities and problems that need a-fixin’.

Does your personal website, your blog, feel like home? Mine does, and always has.

Although I’ve long been a social media participant, albeit not a particularly active one, the prospect of abandoning this website to go all in on a social media platform, maybe even several, never once crossed my mind. This even as I watched contemporaries do exactly that, and go on to sometimes garner large followings.

I always viewed the social media platforms I was a member of as outposts for my website. Like garden sheds (dare I say outhouses) you might build in the garden outside your home. Fragile structures that may not withstand a storm, in the same way a house can. Or the erratic whims of a billionaire owner. To say nothing of inconsistent moderation policies and erratic algorithms.

Owning and maintaining a house, home, is extra work and cost, but a far better investment than all those garden sheds.

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