From our wedding (and beyond) album

VER a decade ago the mainstream (corporate) media brainwashed people into thinking they needed to hand over their personal photos to surveillance companies. In return, they would get “likes”. Is this a good exchange? No!

Less than a decade ago I set up this album for our wedding. It wasn’t the first as I had already set up a similar album in 2004 (last updated 2005 or more than 17 years ago!).

A few weeks ago our wedding (and beyond) album exceeded 5,000,000 views. We didn’t need anything like Facebook/Instagram or Flickr to share our photos. This site is not self-hosted in the sense that I host it from home (sending large images upstream from a residential copper connection would not work); but at least it’s controlled by us at the domain level. More people should quit social control media (I did completely, only months ago) and invest in their own presence online. Stop renting. Take control. There is no such thing as free hosting. The Net is not a charitable project.

ROUND AUTUMN of 2002, when work at the Office (MCC) was relatively quiet and I had spare time, I set myself up with a scholarly-type Web page. The page has since then morphed into this thing and it was moved to its own domain more than a year later. The blog was set up in 2004 along with many other MySQL-powered pieces of software.

This site is not my first site because I also had a webspace in Geocities (since around 1996 or 1997), but it was the first “proper” personal site. Later came Techrights, which isn’t about myself but about issues. Moreover, TuxMachines turns 18 in a number of days, but it was inherited, not founded.

his site, SCHESTOWITZ.COM, started in 2001 or in 2002. It used to be hosted on another domain before I registered SCHESTOWITZ.COM and moved everything over to it. As I remember it, I started developing just an academic-style profile page while I was at work and it developed a lot over time. I was about 20 at the time. SCHESTOWITZ.COM turned 18 a couple of weeks ago and later this year — in June — TUXMACHINES.ORG will also turn 18.

My first Web site was in Geocities. I was 15 or 16 at the time and I still have a copy, which might be partial/incomplete. That does not matter much as the original content in there was small and barely significant.

This domain became more active in recent weeks because I abandoned all social control media and decided to just blog more, instead. We need to bring back some of the older “web culture”, which includes simpler Web pages and RSS feeds. The corporations may not like that, governments find it harder to censor that, but that’s actually a badge of endorsement for the way things used to be.

I’ve underestimated how nice it is not to be bothered by notifications. Yes, I’ve quit more than just Twitter and things are a lot more pleasant now. WOULD RECOMMEND.

S per this account, about 7 hours ago JoinDiapora was taken offline. To quote: “As announced in our announcement, the server migration is currently underway. Given the size of JoinDiaspora’s filesystem and database, this might take a couple of hours to complete. We’ll post an update when we’re done!”

The data transfer was far faster than I had anticipated. Only a few hours passed before they posted:

And JoinDiaspora is “back”! As we’ve announced, the pod will be available in a limited mode only from now on. As such, all features are disabled, including the ability to post new content. However, you still can:

Export your data and initiate the account migration as soon as it’s done.
Send and receive private messages.
Delete your account.
Manage your profile and account details.

You can try and request an export of your profile data now. However, if the export fails for you, please hesitate the urge to try it over and over again. If it fails once, it will not work on subsequent tries. If you request an export and it looks like it never completes, that’s also fine. We will look into why the exports are failing for some users, and we have to fix those issues on a case-by-case basis. This will take time.

So what’s expected to happen now, based on this page, which I quote in part:

I am currently not able to export my data. What will happen to my profile?

Some of you are currently unable to export your profile data. You might either see an error message, or it might look like nothing is happening at all. We are aware of this.

After the infrastructure migration is completed, we will start investigating the issues with account exports. Everyone who wants a data export will get one.

If you’re currently facing issues, please do not keep retrying the export over and over again. Please don’t use automated tools like scrapers to manually acquire a copy of your data. Doing so will only cause exessive server load, which only makes our work even harder.

As we don’t know what’s actually causing the export issues and how we can best fix them, this work will take some time. For each export, we have to observe its progress and intervene manually if errors arise.

We don’t know how long it will take, but everyone will get their account data exported.

There’s no ETA.

My plan isn’t to make a real comeback to social control media but to just set up bots that link to posts in Techrights and TuxMachines. No extra overhead that way. I very much doubt there’s an intention to configure the JoinDiaspora domain and change the code to preserve existing connections between accounts. This means that even a diaspora (mind the pun) from JoinDiaspora will be very much lossy.

Many thanks go out to the various people involved in this. It’s understandable that technical debt added up to the point where a ‘lifeboat’ approach is required. At least they try to offer us lifeboats.

will soon make changes to my microblogging routine. Probably some time next month. Here’s the alta vista of it.

“Social Control Media” is a term I coined many years ago; many people, even Wikileaks, have adopted the term since then. When I say “Social Control Media” I don’t limit myself to Twitter and Facebook; it also applies to LinkedIn (Microsoft claiming to ‘own’ your identity), GitHub (Microsoft claiming to ‘own’ your work/code), YouTube (video), and TikTok (crap). More importantly, as I’ve repeatedly pointed out in Techrights, Free software- and freedom-based sites aren’t robust to many of the same issues (volatility, misinformation) and even if they’re self-hosted, decentralised, federated etc. their existence is transient. Some sites or software will cease to be maintained within 5 years or less (in the case of self-hosting, a new version of PHP, for instance, can break the software you self-host).

Static sites with simple files are generally a good idea if you intend to keep your data, not only through the Web but whatever protocols will exist and get popularised in the future. More importantly, never rely on making “connections” online; make them “in real life” as real friends don’t need the Internet to keep in touch. I’ve hardly used the Internet at all to keep in touch with real friends.

Next Friday JoinDiaspora will go offline after more than a decade. When it comes back online it’ll be “read-only”, available temporarily only for users to be able to export their data and move it elsewhere (to another pod). All the connections will be lost, even if posts and comments are going to be preserved, according to the promises from the project’s core team.

Maybe I’ll fondly remember those 3,000+ “followers” I gained in JoinDiaspora.

What about the 2,000+ “followers” of Linux (TuxMachines)? I hardly ever knew them.

After thinking about it for over a month and having spoken to another person who has posted heavily to JoinDiaspora for over a decade (with many “followers”, too) I am pretty certain I’ll migrate both accounts to another domain, another pod. I’ve not decided which one yet, but it needs to be something that can last and keep alive for at least another decade. As I explained here a few days ago, I’ve already lost more accounts than I can remember. I don’t want to jump from one dying pod to another soon-to-die pod. As for self-hosting, it’s out of the question due to complexity (Diaspora became bloated; I tried installing it almost 8 years ago and it was already very heavy and complicated to manage).

For me, IRC provides a more reliable means of communication and it’s vastly easier — not to mention a lot cheaper — to maintain.

Previously in this mini-series: Part I, Part II, What Bad BT Engineering Looks Like, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI

T has been confirmed that my order is now canceled. I’ve had enough! I was so patient and forthcoming; I was willing to wait and forgive, but everybody has limits and this is well past the “third strike”…

I phoned BT at 8AM when the lines opened. I spoke to a guy to whom I made very clear it needs to get done as soon as possible and I don’t want delays and obstruction; he attempted to pass me to the “customer retention” team (cancellation team; they use other euphemisms) and I made it clear to him it would need to take less than 5 minutes.

As advised, he said he would speak to them about it first.

I waited on the line for 7 minutes before giving up and hanging up.

I phoned the number again.

It did not go through to an advisor.

I phone the number again (third time).

Once again, it did not go through to an advisor.

Weird. Is that like some ‘DDOS protection’ or something?

I phoned a fourth time and finally got through to a lady, who after further questions said that the order has been canceled. But then we proceeded to cancellations and finally, after 27 minutes, she said she would need to speak to a manager.

I said she would need to settle that and would phone me back when it’s all confirmed.

So, in summary, it took half an hour, even in a rush (I made it clear several time it needs to be done quickly) just to cancel an already-problematic order. That’s not even counting the compensation.

They make it really hard for people to cancel things like impending orders, even if they are assertive yet polite. I kept apologising to the lady in case that seemed tone-dead, knowing it was not her fault and nothing for her to take personally. I know they’re subjected to tough working standards. Here’s a new article about it. They’re human beings, unlike the corporations.

I kept my manners and composure and went through it as fast as I can. I knew they would probably try to slow things down, tire me, and so on. As I type this she has phoned me back to confirm the compensation, assuring I will hear nothing more about this case and won’t be bothered by it. Time will tell if that promise is kept. I want to spend not a moment more on this. I never even asked for this service. BT pushed it onto me. Don’t let the same thing happen to you. Don’t become an early adopter or an experiment of corporations. They’d lie to people for their consent.