Owning Yourself

Many people have asked me why I write on my own blog. Why not write on a platform like Medium or LinkedIn?

The short answer is I wanted to own myself.

Reading Fred Wilson’s post on this was influential in my decision.

you have to blog on your own domain. medium, facebook, linkedin, huffpo will do what are in their interests, not yours. i have been doing it every day for 15 years this year. feels great to own my archive, my brand, my content, myself.

— Fred Wilson (@fredwilson) January 18, 2018

Derek Sivers, another writer I respect, has a similar persepective.

I got online in 1994, so I watched many companies — companies that people were completely dependent on — go out of business, and watched everyone’s uploaded stuff just disappear.

So I don’t trust companies, I avoid the cloud, and run everything myself on my own server.

I don’t depend on tech that’s not truly open source and non-profit, because otherwise I don’t trust that their long-term incentives are aligned with mine.

Many online writers, especially the older ones that have been blogging for years share the same sentiment. From my own perspective, I used to think fondly of Medium. But as the years went by Medium’s incentives changed. They’ve added a paywall and now Medium is a clickbait farm.

The solution here is not rely on any third party platforms but rather own yourself.

July 18, 2020


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