Re: [libreplanet-discuss] helping newcomers start blogs - but where?

[J.B. Nicholson]

Daniel Pocock wrote:
> blogger.com and wordpress are well known platforms for people to create 
> free blogs.  Github pages have also become popular with developers
> recently.
>
> What are the recommended alternatives for people who want to adhere to
> a more free / libre approach?

If you're hosting something on someone else's computer, I recommend picking 
hosting based in either something that carries no nonfree software 
requirement (I think there are multiple template-based blog programs that 
let you process a plaintext file and turn it into a blog post) or something 
that runs with free software client-side software (I'd look into WordPress 
to see if the software they send to the client is free because there are 
multiple places that host blogs with WordPress).

But there's not going to be a great solution to this until people can get 
their own domains, point them at their own box running in their home (ala 
FreedomBox), and host their blogs under their control.

Any third-party hosting can run aground of censorship -- find yourself 
saying something other people don't want to read? Recent events at 
Cloudflare[1] show us that claims to not "monitor, evaluate or judge" 
quickly become "I woke up this morning in a bad mood and decided to kick 
them [Daily Stormer] off the Internet.". Quite a ways from Noam Chomsky's 
wisdom and challenge[2] to those who think stopping publication of disliked 
messages is the right way to go.

I recommend buying one's own domain (for easily redirecting users to a new 
blog hoster without making users change their bookmarks) and hosting with 
someplace that hasn't yet censored someone's blog. The problem is I'm not 
quite sure which organizations to recommend on this right now.


[1] 
https://torrentfreak.com/cloudflare-kicking-daily-stormer-is-bad-news-for-pirate-sites-170817/

[2] "Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was 
Stalin. If you're really in favor of free speech, then you're in favor of 
freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you're 
not in favor of free speech."