Dreamwidth is a breath of fresh air
2021-05-30 03:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
archershipsI've returned to my Livejournal roots, and have been playing with https://dreamwidth.org recently.
It's so refreshing. I'd forgotten the many ways that Facebook has slowly applied the shackles here.
* There's no fear of FB's Umbridge algorithms deleting your post or banning you for wrongthink. While DreamWidth has a TOS that allows them to delete posts/accounts at will, the founders seem committed to allowing any "speech consistent with US law". For example, early on, they dropped Paypal as a payment method, because Paypal wanted them to censor NSFW posts.
You can read more about the founder's thoughts on moderation / censorship here:
https://getting-started.dreamwidth.org/83156.html
* All of your posts appear to others in the order you post them.
* _You_ have control over who sees your posts. No shadow banned posts, no downweighted posts, no posts promoted to satisfy Facebook's advertisers. By default, all of your "circle" (think friends list) sees your posts, though you can limit a post's reach to just yourself, a community, or a custom group of readers.
* You can selectively <cut> tag posts that have spoilers, NSFW content, or lengthy posts.
* You can configure your account to look as you want it, down to the editing the CSS file. For example, I prefer a minimalist look, so here's what mine looks like:
https://archerships.dreamwidth.org/
* Unlike Facebook, which makes it hard to interoperate with any other service, Dreamwidth doesn't try to lock you in. For example, Dreamwidth offers full text RSS feeds, so people on other sites that can import RSS can read your posts, without having to join Dreamwidth. Here's my (fulltext) RSS feed:
https://archerships.dreamwidth.org/data/rss
* You can post, and post replies via email.
* You can actually search the entire site, including comments. (Though comment search is a paid feature.) Imagine being able to find your content easily again!
https://www.dreamwidth.org/search
* No ads. No constant obnoxious attempts to intrude into your attention. No one's selling a dossier based on your posts to advertisers or the government. (I don't think.)
* You can post porn.
* You can configure not only how your blog looks, you can configure how _other people's blogs_ look to you. So, even if your friends have the aesthetic sensibilities of a toddler hopped up on meth, you don't have to see it.
* You can actually make true links to other websites. No trackers, no truncated links.
* Dreamwidth is a service paid for by users. Therefore, they're incentivized to do what users want, not what Facebook's advertisers and investors advertisers want.
* All the code is open source. It's a fork of the Livejournal code before they went closed source in 2009. So if Dreamwidth does turn evil (such as being overrun by SJW Jacobins), someone else can fork it and carry on.
* Dreamwidth has been in continuous operation for almost ten years. They seem to have found a way to be self-sustaining, so I don't expect they'll disappear any time soon.
Dreamwidth does have some downsides:
* The UI is clunky. For example, while Dreamwidth does support image hosting, it requires many more steps to make an image post than it does on Facebook. (They're slowly working to fix this.)
* Because the site can be customized in great detail, it's often confusing to figure out how to do things. I've created a pinned post where I'll record my solutions here:
https://archerships.dreamwidth.org/1067142.html
* Because they don't have gobs of cash, feature development and UI improvements are slow.
* If you repost a link to a post with images, it won't be displayed properly on Facebook. I also don't think Dreamwidth allows hotlinking images hosted on DW on other sites.
* To my knowledge, there's no mobile apps, and. Again, improving the API to make mobile apps work better is a feature they're slowly working on.
* To my knowledge, there appear to be only four paid fulltime staff members. (Hence the sluggishness of new feature development / UI improvements.)
* Another user pointed out that "the community also tends to skew female, liberalish, geeky, and I would bet mid 20s-mid 40s". Unfortunately, people of similar demographics have driven deplatforming/censorship on other platforms. So, while I'm reasonably assured that the current founders would defend against censorship attempts, I'm not confident that the free speech norms would continue if they stepped down.
Despite these downsides, I think Dreamwidth is currently the best of the Facebook alternatives. (Movim, which I've advocated for before, had some bugs that only became apparent in later use. )
If anyone wants to switch, and runs into a snag I'm happy to offer help.
It's so refreshing. I'd forgotten the many ways that Facebook has slowly applied the shackles here.
* There's no fear of FB's Umbridge algorithms deleting your post or banning you for wrongthink. While DreamWidth has a TOS that allows them to delete posts/accounts at will, the founders seem committed to allowing any "speech consistent with US law". For example, early on, they dropped Paypal as a payment method, because Paypal wanted them to censor NSFW posts.
You can read more about the founder's thoughts on moderation / censorship here:
https://getting-started.dreamwidth.org/83156.html
* All of your posts appear to others in the order you post them.
* _You_ have control over who sees your posts. No shadow banned posts, no downweighted posts, no posts promoted to satisfy Facebook's advertisers. By default, all of your "circle" (think friends list) sees your posts, though you can limit a post's reach to just yourself, a community, or a custom group of readers.
* You can selectively <cut> tag posts that have spoilers, NSFW content, or lengthy posts.
* You can configure your account to look as you want it, down to the editing the CSS file. For example, I prefer a minimalist look, so here's what mine looks like:
https://archerships.dreamwidth.org/
* Unlike Facebook, which makes it hard to interoperate with any other service, Dreamwidth doesn't try to lock you in. For example, Dreamwidth offers full text RSS feeds, so people on other sites that can import RSS can read your posts, without having to join Dreamwidth. Here's my (fulltext) RSS feed:
https://archerships.dreamwidth.org/data/rss
* You can post, and post replies via email.
* You can actually search the entire site, including comments. (Though comment search is a paid feature.) Imagine being able to find your content easily again!
https://www.dreamwidth.org/search
* No ads. No constant obnoxious attempts to intrude into your attention. No one's selling a dossier based on your posts to advertisers or the government. (I don't think.)
* You can post porn.
* You can configure not only how your blog looks, you can configure how _other people's blogs_ look to you. So, even if your friends have the aesthetic sensibilities of a toddler hopped up on meth, you don't have to see it.
* You can actually make true links to other websites. No trackers, no truncated links.
* Dreamwidth is a service paid for by users. Therefore, they're incentivized to do what users want, not what Facebook's advertisers and investors advertisers want.
* All the code is open source. It's a fork of the Livejournal code before they went closed source in 2009. So if Dreamwidth does turn evil (such as being overrun by SJW Jacobins), someone else can fork it and carry on.
* Dreamwidth has been in continuous operation for almost ten years. They seem to have found a way to be self-sustaining, so I don't expect they'll disappear any time soon.
Dreamwidth does have some downsides:
* The UI is clunky. For example, while Dreamwidth does support image hosting, it requires many more steps to make an image post than it does on Facebook. (They're slowly working to fix this.)
* Because the site can be customized in great detail, it's often confusing to figure out how to do things. I've created a pinned post where I'll record my solutions here:
https://archerships.dreamwidth.org/1067142.html
* Because they don't have gobs of cash, feature development and UI improvements are slow.
* If you repost a link to a post with images, it won't be displayed properly on Facebook. I also don't think Dreamwidth allows hotlinking images hosted on DW on other sites.
* To my knowledge, there's no mobile apps, and. Again, improving the API to make mobile apps work better is a feature they're slowly working on.
* To my knowledge, there appear to be only four paid fulltime staff members. (Hence the sluggishness of new feature development / UI improvements.)
* Another user pointed out that "the community also tends to skew female, liberalish, geeky, and I would bet mid 20s-mid 40s". Unfortunately, people of similar demographics have driven deplatforming/censorship on other platforms. So, while I'm reasonably assured that the current founders would defend against censorship attempts, I'm not confident that the free speech norms would continue if they stepped down.
Despite these downsides, I think Dreamwidth is currently the best of the Facebook alternatives. (Movim, which I've advocated for before, had some bugs that only became apparent in later use. )
If anyone wants to switch, and runs into a snag I'm happy to offer help.