On Blogging for Traffic

Manuel Moreale has a comment up on his blog that’s in response to someone else’s writing. This post of mine is in response to Manuel’s post.

It’s somewhat unfortunate that Manuel hasn’t linked to that original newsletter or post or article or whatever it is. Because this could very well be a chain of replies, which makes the web a beautiful place.

First, the setup – Manuel takes offense at the idea that someone would recommend that you should “blog to be found” on the internet. As in, instead of focusing on building the most wonderful site, make a quick and dirty one that gets eyeballs. You can worry about the looks later. That’s the original post.

Manuel argues that the web isn’t so black and white. What if the individual goal of the website owner is to learn or hone their programming skills? What if making a gorgeous website is the actual point? What if the person is focused more on the art of making the site than on getting the most views?

In one sense, I agree. Everyone has the right to do what they want with their site. So if your goal is to learn PHP, don’t worry too much about how long your blog posts are.

However, and this is where I would have loved it if Manuel had linked to the original post as I would then be able to judge the context, it’s entirely possible that this advice is focused on people who really want to use the web as a means of getting their words out. To be read by many others. To get as many views as possible for the writing they are doing.

In all those scenarios, this advice is really sound. “You can have a ‘basic’ blog that actually gets traffic.”

The next line is one Manuel takes offense from – “What sounds more professional to you?” According to Manuel, this is awful advice.

Here’s the thing though – from the limited words Manuel has posted from the other fellow, the word professional actually says a lot. If you have a personal blog, your goal is to do what you want with it. Often, that can be no goal at all. For example, this blog itself. I’m not bothered with metrics, writing for an audience etc. I’m mostly just having fun and if I feel strongly about something, I post here about it.

Flip side, I’m building a newsletter over at everyopsguy.com

The goal there is to write about topics closely related to my profession and industry. I plan on publishing there every week, even if it’s a bunch of links cobbled together from my daily RSS readings. There, I am writing professionally, and thus I am writing for traffic. I want people to see my writing. I want people to believe me when I say I know about the industry I’m in, and this is one way to showcase that.

When I publish on this blog, I don’t bother with posting the links online (though long ago I set it up that automatically these links should get posted online; not sure if that automation still works) or how many clicks I get to my site.

But when I publish my newsletter, I repost on LinkedIn and my other social handles. I push out into the world on purpose so I can have more visibility.

Everyone who ever gives any good advice about writing says that you should write for one person. That person is either yourself on your personal blog, or one indeterminate persona on your professional website. Either ways, it’s one person.

But writing, and marketing your writing, are two different efforts, just like writing and editing are different. Once you have written for that one person, if you want to, you should absolutely push it out to as many people as possible. Shout from the rooftops, scream into the void. Do what you need to, to get your words in front of the people who you believe should be reading them.

Again, if Manuel had linked to the original post, I would have been able to see more context. But we are also in the era of people opting for more self-owned online presence. This is true for both personal, and professional spheres.

We want to reduce people’s dependence on Facebook, twitter, Threads, and other corporate-run social media platforms. The way to do that? Get your own blog.

We want to reduce people’s dependence on LinkedIn (literally the only professional social networking site left in the market). The way to do that? Get your own (professional) blog.

I could have easily chosen to write my everyopsguy posts weekly on LinkedIn as so many other professionals do. But I want to own that experience. I want people to come to my website. I want people to subscribe directly with me. I’m a big believer in that.

I’m also a believer that if someone gives you advice, context matters.

I hope Manuel sees that.

Comment on – Net neutrality, we hardly knew ye – Marginal REVOLUTION

Internet experts Tim Wu, Cory Doctorow, Farhad Manjoo and many others were just plain, flat out wrong about this, mostly due to their anti-capitalist mentality.

Source: Net neutrality, we hardly knew ye – Marginal REVOLUTION

This sort of conclusion shows that it really, really matters where you get your information from. In this case, the author has summarized from reading a Bloomberg article, that general supply and demand handled the lack of net neutrality without government intervention.

Cool. Cool.

Except, you seem to forget that in 2014, “the average speed of Netflix streaming video content delivered to Comcast subscribers has declined by more than 25%, according to Netflix” according to this article Time Magazine and Netflix’s own data as seen from the image below, published by Quartz.

Image for article titled The inside story of how Netflix came to pay Comcast for internet traffic

So what did Netflix do? They bought speed.

The exact details of the deal have been private information, so everyone built their own estimates. One estimate from that time (2014 was before Net Neutrality rules) is that though they might be liable for about $400M per year, in reality, Netflix would be paying about $25-50M per year on a multi-year deal.

Note that every website pays for access. After all, they are the ones in demand and the ISP knows this. Your monthly home internet bill is just one source of funds for ISPs. They charge a much larger chunk to large companies like Google, Meta, Netflix, AWS, etc for the amount of data they upload to the ISP’s network. This includes general websites like this blog, but also anyone who is in the video streaming, or game server business.

That’s normal. What’s not normal is that Comcast was knowingly (or unknowingly, for my CYA) throttling Netflix’s speed, thus giving Netflix customers a much worse streaming experience. Instead of a technical fix to the issue, the two parties struck a deal whereby Netflix bought a Direct Interconnection with Comcast and started uploading directly to their network.

Later, Net Neutrality laws prevented such behavior, but I suspect that this was a multi-year deal built under the guise of a Direct Interconnect, so it survived the Open Internet Order by the FCC and probably continues on to this day.

Also, Bloomberg claims that –

Bandwidth has expanded, and Netflix transmissions do not interfere with Facebook, or vice versa. There is plenty of access to go around.

This is flat out lies and a very bad way of thinking about the Internet.

First, of course Netflix transmissions “interfere” with Facebook (and Instagram, and YouTube, and Comcast’s own streaming service Peacock). Everyone is a video streaming behemoth. They are all uploading a lot more than when they were web 2.0 darlings way back when.

Second, Net Neutrality may not defend big players like Netflix and Facebook, but it sure can protect smaller businesses or independent website owners.

Let’s say tomorrow I post a wildly popular video on my site. Suddenly, there’s a spike in streaming traffic to my site. My own server vendor DigitalOcean may not want to charge me for the spike, because its a one time thing or maybe I’m already paying for the bandwidth and am within limits. But an ISP like CenturyLink or Comcast can easily come to DigitalOcean and ask for a bigger payout for supporting this sudden but consistent burst of video traffic. They can threaten to reduce streaming speeds for traffic to my site, so that anyone coming to my site is forced to watch the video in 480p or lower, instead of the 1080p or 4K I’ve shot the video in.

This increases transcoding costs for me, thus making me spend time, money, and energy to convert the video to multiple formats, hosting them on my site etc. DigitalOcean may also decide to punt the costs to me, so now I’m on the hook for Comcast’s lack of net neutrality. Suddenly, I have to figure out a monetization strategy to pay for video streaming at proper speeds. A nice little moment of fleeting Internet stardom then becomes either a hole in my pocket or necessitates a conversion to ad-supported or a paid website. All because Comcast realized I’m streaming video from my blog.

You might think this scenario is far-fetched, and maybe it is. But that’s how many webservices start. Someone has an idea, they try it online, and in the 15 minutes of fame they get, they have to run to get funds to cover the costs of just being a nice netizen.

Then folks like… Tyler Cowen (an Econ professor at George Mason, no less) of marginalrevolution read a tainted Bloomberg opinion piece and think they know how the Internet works.

they said on yet another social media platform

Source: The internet is now five websites – Manu

Seriously. The least these armchair commenters could do it go create an account on one of the million other websites still out there, building the Internet as it grows. A better step would be to make their own website which federates, but that’s asking for too much from some people.

GPT based “Denial of Information” attack

Academic journals, archives, and repositories are seeing an increasing number of questionable research papers clearly produced using generative AI. They are often created with widely available, general-purpose AI applications, most likely ChatGPT, and mimic scientific writing. Google Scholar easily locates and lists these questionable papers alongside reputable, quality-controlled research. Our analysis of a selection of
— Read on misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/gpt-fabricated-scientific-papers-on-google-scholar-key-features-spread-and-implications-for-preempting-evidence-manipulation/

I think we can define a new type of attack on the Internet. Much like the Denial of Service attack makes a service unavailable to ordinary users, a Denial of Information attack makes readily searchable information obscure by inundating it with generative AI based nonsense or outright misinformation.

This can be both a malicious attack or negligence.

A malicious attack would be threat actors specifically targeting information silos such as social media or SEO with misinformation intended to influence society.

A negligent attack is either in the form of misguided attempts by end users to use LLMs to churn out content faster, thereby inundating traditional systems with unverifiable data; or a negligent attack can come in the form of data retrieval infrastructure (such as search engines or LLMs) using generative AI to compile information without adequate gates to verify such information.

A Denial of Information attack is more insidious than a Denial of Service attack because it’s much more difficult to detect and even harder to neutralize due to the individualistic nature of information retrieval and consumption.

Comment for Colin Walker Blog – Sep 9, 2024

My MacBook is getting very tired so I want to mainly use it for music to get the most life out of it.

Source: Colin Walker – Sep 9, 2024

Say, Colin, doesn’t it make sense to try to get base Linux on your MacBook? I’ve heard people say it really gives a new life to old Macs, and not just a fresh coat of paint.

Drivers are fully supported, things seem to be snappier and RAM is used better than if you were on Windows or ChromeOS Flex or anything else.

From what I recall, base Ubuntu or Debian or Linux Mint are good options.

Dare I say, I’m sending you down a new rabbit hole? 😀

On responding using your blog

but I don’t think I would like to make my blog mainly about conversing with others
Meadow over at their blog

I respect that. I follow hundreds of blogs, exactly what Meadow is musing about not doing. But I don’t converse with them all, and certainly not on my blog.

My blog sits idle most of the time, until I have something I want to write. This may be private or public. But writing goes here. (Journaling, of course, goes into Day One.) That may involve responding to someone, as this post is, or utterly random musing, as the one by Meadow.

I like this about blogs. They’re not one thing. They’re defined by whatever is important to the steward. That’s why I follow so many.

On Threads

I love blogging. It’s a world unto itself. Sites reflecting people’s personalities, their lives, the ebbs and flows of their writing muscle (or photo posting muscle – I do love photo blogs), the business of their lives.

Social media is not like that. Well, some are and some aren’t.

I was reading this post by Ally Bean over on her website where she asked and answered the question – What is Threads (the Facebook-owned twitter clone)? It’s a conundrum, she says. It’s got so many users and yet not enough interaction. Threads calls itself a social network, yet everything is algorithm-led, so you can’t really do your own discovery. And, as Ally puts it –

The thing about Threads is there is no center to it to draw people to a communal “What’s Happening” section or a Writing Prompt or a Weekly Topical Challenge. It’s all random all the time.
Ally Bean writing on thespectacledbean.com

My take on this is that there are two types of social media services and mirroring them, two types of social media users. There are the public-first services and the private-first services. There are always exceptions to the rule too.

Public-first services basically take their cue from forums – there’s less or no focus on private messaging. It’s all meant to be open. Whether they’re link aggregators like reddit, or stream of posts sites like twitter, the main goal is that whatever you do on the site is public. Your likes, comments, shares, posts are all visible to everyone. Over time, through user feedback, these services do introduce private accounts, private communities, private messaging. But they pull these features back as quickly as they create them. The intrinsic value they create for their ad-supported profit hungry shareholders is in people doing things publicly.

Private-first services take their cue from email – the first focus is on private communication, which is thoroughly monitored for profiling, again for ad-dollars. Of course, there’s a massive public component of these sites too, including public groups and communities, public profiles, etc. But these are focused mainly on creating starlets with the aim of using these to drive traffic to the site till either the starlets crash and burn, or the algorithm changes and the starlets are left in the lurch. This behavior is similar to that of the music industry, which would assiduously create the persona of a pop singer, only to push them towards drugs and then tear them down as “bad influences”. Rinse and repeat. Facebook and Instagram are examples here. It’s sad that the two main examples I have are both owned by the same company. Snapchat is a competitor service too, but I don’t talk about it because I’m not on it. No network effects for me there. (I’m not on Threads either, but Ally is, and this post is wholly based on her experience and her blogpost. Quick! Someone write a critique of Snapchat!)

The fact is that I’m ignoring two behemoths here – TikTok and YouTube. But are they social media services? No. They’re Media Consumption services. The Social aspect of these services is purely incidental and meant only as a growth vehicle. If tomorrow they are free of the constant user growth requirement, they’ll gladly rip out all of the social aspects of their apps and sites and happily serve their existing users all the content they can shove down their throats.

Within the private-first but public-stream services, the trend is algorithmic feeds. This is a little unfair, because this push into algo-based feeds is by one company – Meta. Their unbenevolent dictator believes that everything becomes better when decided by an algorithm. So that’s what he’s pushing across every one of his properties. But you can’t talk about any other service doing better when there’s one monopoly and the others are fledglings.

That brings us back to Threads. Facebook and Instagram already lean heavily on algorithms for their home feeds. You’re not allowed to see what you want to. You’re forced to see what the algo decides will create more engagement.

But what does this lead to? Silence. Almost everyone I know who is active on Instagram no longer uses their home feed. It’s the list of folks you’ve subscribed to, yes. But never shown in the manner you want to, so might as well use the Explore feed to browse and the private messages to chat with friends about the latest news/memes/gossip (that’s why Instagram uses your private messages to create your profile too). Also, Silence in that, those who I’ve talked to about this no longer comment or hit like on instagram posts. Comments on public pages almost always lead to harassment and unnecessary visibility. Likes are exclusively used by the algo to make your feeds progressively worse by trying to push the same content at you over and over. So why hit like? Incidentally, this is why TikTok prefers to use “seconds watched” as the metric for whether the person was engaged rather than Likes.

Ally complains that it feels rude when people do not interact with her comments on Threads – forget replying, they don’t even hit Like. I argue that this is because the users on Threads are a reflection of the social media service they’re coming from. Almost all the users of Threads have come over from Instagram. They’ve been trained not to interact with content, as that’ll either train the algo or cause unnecessary headache. They’re not rude, they’re simply a reflection of Facebook’s vision of “users”.

Threads isn’t doomed to fail. It can recover and it’ll definitely keep trudging along as long as Meta is willing to lose money on it. Once they decide it’s not the next billion dollar idea though, they’re sunset it post haste. Looking forward to it. Till then, Ally’s words about Threads ring true –

it just kind of bores me.

Playing with a new iOS app

Playing with new quick notes app called Funnel. Pointed by Agam on his blog.

The power of such apps is to quickly get to a writing place. The problem with such apps is that they need a prominent place on your homescreen.

My homescreen has been locked to the current set of apps since a very long time. The second page is flexible. But I don’t see how the first page would be. I’m not sure what the fate of this app will be either.

I mean, I literally have the free version of Drafts sitting on the second page and I rarely use it. Maybe I should just use the back tap feature of iOS to do quick thoughts capture?

Parents on Art Advice

She said that you have to be willing to disappoint other people in order to be a writer.

Source: How Do You Write a Book?

What an interesting thought! And so true, not just for writing but for all art, all hobbies, all creativity; heck, even spirituality and meditation. All of these are deeply personal. The satisfaction from these is almost never monetary, by which you could justify the time spent on the activity to the world, but more importantly your friends and family. Instead, the satisfaction is deeply personal too. You’ll be called selfish and greedy. “Your time and your energy”, instead of being devoted to this abstract thing, “should be devoted to people around you”, they’ll say. You’re going to ignore children and thus force your partner to take up more work. You’re going to eat into their personal time or into shared personal time, which is even rarer for parents.

But it’s worth it. In the end, you get a book, a piece of art, a more settled personality, or none of these. But the journey is important, no matter who it may disappoint.

I changed the title from “How do You Write a Book?” to “Parents on Art Advice” simply because there’s so much more that this advice applies to. Maybe it shouldn’t be “Art” but “Life”, because Life is all about balancing other people’s disappointments with your own needs.

DNR’d two books back into 2023

Not a 2023 roundup post.

Just wanted to note that I was trying to finish 2023 with two audiobooks – To Her Credit and Classic Women’s Short Stories. Could not finish either of them. To the point that these are the only books that I picked up in 2023 that I will not finish.

“Classic Women’s Short Stories” is just too dated to read. There are a few short stories in there by some famous authors – Katherine Mansfield, Kate Chopin, Virginia Woolf. But most of the stories were just too… boring… to read. Ultimately had to drop the entire book. Woolf’s story, A Mark on the Wall, and Mansfield’s The Garden Party and Daughters of the Late Colonel, were the only ones I finished. I would recommend you to read these stories individually instead of through this book.

I thought To Her Credit would be similar to Figuring by Maria Popova, the book that kick-started my love for Feminist Memoirs. Instead, it was just a series of “here’s a woman who did amazing things and here’s a man we want to put down through her”. We need more writing like Popova’s which celebrates women’s accomplishments (or non-accomplishments, like Three Women by Lisa Taddeo) without demeaning them with comparisons. I’m still looking for anything as well written as Figuring.

I’m starting 2024 with a wondering book named Berlin by Bea Setton. It’s very along the lines of A Year of Rest and Relaxation. I’m loving the inner monologue of the main character and the audio narration by Ell Potter.