Write more, about anything, on a personal website, not social media

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Write more, about anything, on a personal website, not social media

2 January 2026

I will often find a blog post on Hacker News that really resonates. And when I go to check the rest of the site there’s three other posts. And I think: I wish you’d write more! When I find someone whose writing I really connect with, I like to read everything they have written, or at least a tractable subset of their most interesting posts.

I’m the same.

There are probably quite a few people writing, or posting publicly, but much of that content ends up on social media, rather than a personal website or blog. Let’s do more to encourage independent online publishing on personal websites and blogs.

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blogs, self publishing, social media

X moves to head-off claim on ‘abandoned’ Twitter branding

20 December 2025

Sarah Perez, writing for TechCrunch:

Elon Musk’s X is updating its Terms of Service to indicate it still lays claim to the “Twitter” trademark. The move to add this detail to the company’s terms follows an announcement from a Virginia-based startup, which recently filed an application to trademark the term “Twitter.”

No surprises there. Anyone hoping to obtain the rights to the Twitter trademark must know they face an uphill struggle to do so.

Reddit: the Australian social media ban is unconstitutional, in a way

15 December 2025

Social news aggregator Reddit has filed a lawsuit in the High Court of Australia, claiming the ban preventing Australians aged under sixteen using social media intrudes on free political discourse.

The Australian Constitution does not protect free speech as such. In fact, the document seems more concerned with matters pertaining to the Australian government, parliament, and judiciary. However, in 1992, the High Court found that an implied freedom of political communication exists.

The thing is, the social media ban doesn’t curtail this freedom for young Australian as such, it merely means they have to find other channels to express themselves. A personal website, or blog, is of course an option. But let’s see what the High Court of Australia has to say about the Reddit filing.

X has abandoned the Twitter brand, Operation Bluebird wants to own it

13 December 2025

An American startup called Operation Bluebird is hoping to take ownership of the defunct Twitter name, the term “tweet”, and famous blue bird logo, and relaunch Twitter anew. Operation Bluebird’s backers believe the old micro-blogging service can be restored to its former glory, and revive the “town square” the old Twitter once, for a time, gave the web.

I like the idea, but how feasible is it? Just crazy enough that it might work?

While X no longer uses the Twitter branding, they would still own it, despite Operation Bluebird’s claims it has been “abandoned”. I somehow doubt the present owner, Elon Musk, of what was once Twitter, X, sees things that way though. He would expect to see a very generous offer, before even beginning to consider parting with the Twitter branding.

It will be a hard sell, or a hard buy. Twitter branding aside, Musk believed as the buyer of Twitter, he also owned the micro-blogging concept. When Threads launched in 2023, Musk threatened to sue Meta, claiming Threads was a copy of X. Little came of that, but it says a lot about Musk’s resolve.

Selling the Twitter branding to someone who wants to establish a direct competitor to X, doesn’t seem like the sort of thing anyone would do, let alone Musk. But Musk has given X its own, quite distinct, identity. Everyone knows who owns X, and what it is about. It almost seems there could be little confusion if a new version of Twitter were launched, so entrenched is X as a brand.

Musk bought Twitter three years ago, but it seems like a lifetime ago. X is X now. It is no longer the old Twitter. Still, Operation Bluebird must have some idea of what they’re up against. Yet they think there’s a chance of success, taking control of the Twitter branding, as fanciful as it might seem.

Still, I’ve requested my preferred username (you’ll never guess…), and would be keen to be involved in the new Twitter if it ever happened. Twitter, to me, seemed to be the ideal accompaniment to a blog. It was a great place to go and mingle with others with similar interests. Town square, indeed.

It was neither too much, nor too little.

To my mind, nothing else was needed. I once set up a Facebook page for disassociated, but could never get enthusiastic about it. Ditto the prospect of having presences on the likes of YouTube, Reddit, Instagram, Linkedin, and Pinterest. That was like five places too many to be spread across. Plus none of then were particularly relevant to a site like mine.

Despite having my fingers crossed for Operation Bluebird, I still can’t help feeling that the “Twitter moment” in general is gone, as exciting as bringing back the early Twitter is. It seems like the micro-blogging site was part of a web that no longer exists. While Mastodon and Bluesky are fine latter-day variants, they’re not what Twitter was.

So I wonder: could (new) Twitter, were it ever to eventuate, ever be what old Twitter was?

Australian social media ban, day one: so far I have not been carded

11 December 2025

Not that I’m under the age of sixteen of course.

But say what you will about it, the social media ban for Australians under the age of sixteen is now in force. Already some of those effected are claiming to have circumvented the restrictions. That shouldn’t surprise anyone.

If anyone’s gong to figure out how to do something they shouldn’t be doing, it’ll be teenagers.

Going around the socials, I’ve so far noticed little difference to anything. I logged into Instagram, Threads, and Facebook without incident. That shouldn’t surprise anyone. As Cam Wilson, writing for Crickey points out, “they already know your age with some accuracy.”

Nothing to report with Mastodon to date. The only exception has been Bluesky, where I was asked to supply my date of birth, but not for proof. Bluesky advised though I might need to verify my age to access certain features. I imagine that refers to content that might be deemed for adults only.

But let’s see what happens in the coming days.

UPDATE: Australian journalist and pod-caster Stilgherrian, on Bluesky no less:

One correction. The teens can still *access* social media media to view things. They just can’t have accounts to be able to post or respond. They can’t have the social part of social media, just the media part.

Also noteworthy, I was able to locate his Bluesky post, and page, via a search engine query, on a device not logged into any social media accounts, on an Australian IP address. That’s a selective social media ban for sure.

The Australian social media ban is also a ban on education

11 December 2025

American economist Tyler Cowan writes about the educational impact the Australian social media ban for people under the age of sixteen could have:

YouTube in particular, and sometimes X, are among the very best ways to learn about the world. To the extent that the law is effectively enforced, targeting YouTube will have a terrible effect on youth science, and the ability of young scientists and founders to get their projects off the ground will take a huge and possibly fatal hit. If you are only allowed to learn from the internet at age 16, you are probably not ready for marvelous achievements at age 18 or perhaps not even at 20. The country may become more mediocre.

No one learns solely from school issue textbooks anymore. Obviously there’s a lot of content on YouTube (and elsewhere of course) that isn’t suitable for all ages (or any age for that matter), but there are some truly valuable resources.

Kurzgesagt, whose educational videos I often link to, is but one example.

Cowan’s full article can be read at The Free Press with an account.

Rage bait named word of 2025 by Oxford University Press

8 December 2025

The term has been in use since 2002, and originally expressed a driver’s frustration towards another driver, who had indicated they wished to overtake them, by flashing their car headlights. Certain types of web content have seen the term’s context change somewhat:

Rage bait is defined as “online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive, typically posted in order to increase traffic to or engagement with a particular web page or social media content”.

Rage bait of the frustrating variety can often be found on Threads, where posts typically say something like: “what’s just happened?”, or “I’m so over this”, without a shred of context. This leaves people to ask “what’s just happened where?”, or “you’re so over what?”

The posts might be senseless, but they get the engagement.

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The Australian social media ban may not achieve much

8 December 2025

Nathan Powell writing for Mumbrella :

A social media ban for under 16s will have six uncomfortable realities that policymakers will not tell you. But they matter, because they determine whether this decision actually protects young people, or simply creates new risks in new places.

This is the polarising issue in Australia in 2025. People are either ardently in favour of restricting social media access to people under the age of sixteen, while others think it’s a terrible idea.

Both sides have convincing arguments to support their view. I don’t need to be told there is a lot of rot on social media that no one at all should see.

I’ve been winding back my social media use. I removed the Facebook app from my smartphone a couple of months ago, and have barely missed it. I’m considering doing away with Threads. It becomes more like the present Twitter/X with each passing day.

Ditto Instagram. There I’d just login to the website every now and then to see what’s happening.

But it’s also known younger Australians, particularly those marginalised in some way, are able to seek support safely and privately through social media, something they’ll lose access to. There’s no doubt the ban is going to be to the detriment of some Australians under the age of sixteen.

Feeds and algorithms have freed us from personal websites

26 November 2025

For another point of view, sorry POV, which I suggest you should read in full, Germany based linguist and writer, Burk:

People stopped typing URLs. Entirely. No one goes to “juliawrites.com” anymore. They go to TikTok. Or Substack. Or Medium. Or Twitter. Or anything that has a feed and an algorithm.

Well most people stopped, obviously. But I still sometimes type “juliawrites.com”. And “TikTok.com/@juliawrites”. Rather than using the TikTok app (yet to install it), so I can see the page of the person I want to, instead of the algorithm serving up what it decides to.

Ditto “Instagram.com”, where the website trumps the app when it comes to user experience any day. I see only what I want to see. And then leave. I seldom go to Substack. I do look in on Twitter sometimes, and Medium, where I have an (unused) account, and read Burk’s article.

I don’t hear too many people saying they like algorithms, at least in a web content context.

But this is the web, and if you want to write something like that on your website, your Substack and/or Medium page, or that algorithm infested swamp that is the socials, you’re free to do so.

As for “forcing” readers to learn the “design quirks” of your personal website, you could always encourage them to subscribe to the RSS feed instead (even if it’s an algorithm-free feed).

Via Michael Gale, whose personal website is here.

Verify the age of adult websites users via their device operating system

22 November 2025

A provider of adult video content — I’ll refrain from naming them, in the hope of stopping network content filters getting upset — is suggesting the age of their audience be verified through the operating system (OS) of their device. Note: the link is to a blog post by the provider, not to any NSFW content. I can’t speak for what happens if you start clicking other links on the page though.

More of these laws are coming, and the safety of our users is one of our biggest concerns. However, the best and most effective solution for protecting minors and adults alike is to identify users at the source: by their device, or account on the device, and allow access to age-restricted materials and websites based on that identification. This means users would only get verified once, through their operating system, not on each age-restricted site. This dramatically reduces privacy risks and creates a very simple process for regulators to enforce.

The idea certainly makes sense, and would save having to go through a separate age verification process on every website, social network, and other online service that requires it.

To date though I don’t recall ever supplying any of the OS’s I use with my date of birth, let alone verifying that information. It seems to me to make age verification possible this way might require some OS suppliers to make changes to allow this.

Update: on checking, I see my date of birth details are entered into my smartphone’s OS, iOS. I expect those details were verified when I obtained my first iPhone, as I needed to present photo identification on signing up with my then phone company.

Assume then my age is verified as far as my smartphone goes. As for my computer OS, Linux Mint, I’m pretty sure I didn’t supply any such info. Couldn’t even be certain I entered my full name. This I will need to check on.

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