Well, the fundamental problem is that Capital comes in and builds a really great Thing, a Thing that may not have been built without Capital, but then Capital wants a Return, which causes the Thing to decay. The thing Hackers can do, as in the OPs article, is to salvage the good ideas that the initial efforts of Capital managed to prove, and leave out the rest.

This won't work for individuals, in general, because writing good software is hard. Even if you rely heavily on 3rd party libraries like Jekyll, you still have to know how to pick those libraries, and how to use them, how to deploy them.

Personally, I think it's cool that Capital is willing to get into the fray, even though it so often ends badly. Often it does contribute something, even if it dies. People get mad at Google for axing projects, like Reader, but why? Consider all the market validation they did, for you, for me, for free. Consider all the product design work they did, for all of us, for free.

I don't even think it's bad that devs at Medium are, almost by definition, currently working on nothing but anti-features. It's just part of the Capital-driven software lifecycle, and they are feeding their families, and learning a lot. I can't even hate the managers who made unethical product decisions, because it was always going to be that way, and better to participate in the Capital driven software lifecycle and contribute something then to never have participated at all.

There are amazing, sustainable, ethical, Capital-driven software ideas still waiting to be done, and that couldn't be done without Capital's involvement, but clearly that's not Medium and its ilk. But as Medium declines and eventually dies, remember that this is the fate that waits for every project, no matter how successful, and they leave behind valuable information for us.

> How can we - users, programmers, hackers - fight this?

By doing exactly what ElementaryOS did here: stop using these platforms. And if you have to use them (as a user), try to use them in the most open way possible: Never via a dedicated app, preferably via RSS or similar for the platforms where it is suitable and where it is supported (like youtube).

Improve existing platforms: Wordpress, Ghost, etc.

There's none of that nonsense on those open source platforms.

An aside: Tumblr isn't hostile like Medium is. At least not last I used it. I prefer seeing Tumblr to medium you can really just do any kind of blog you want whether it's a meme feed, or some serious blogging.

Edit: Forgot to add, also Tumblr lets you optionally advertise to non-logged in users to join Tumblr, and it's not a modal, just a button on the top right hand corner where the "Follow" button shows up to logged in users, or you can hide it entirely.

As users, a step in the right direction would be to vote with your wallet, not use nasty services and prefer respectful services wherever possible.

As engineers & designers, we need to stop being complicit and building this shit nor working for such awful companies. If the majority of engineers become ethical then companies like Facebook, Google, etc will have a hard time hiring people to do their dirty work.

agluszak, I've been around modern technology since the very beginning, before the Apple ][ days when the web wasn't much more than a gleam in Tim Berners-Lee's eyes and 'Money for nothing' by Dire Straits was the cutting edge of computer graphics and MTV was the closest thing anyone had to streaming media

I've witnessed the rise of the machines from a unique vantage point just across the y2k horizon which makes me uniquely qualified to describe the evolution of the so-called 'technology professional' born of the nexus of home-brew computing, video gaming, sci-fi and old corporatism -- the modern 'tech bro' if you will

I tell you for sure it's the attitude of the casually invested subtly egotistical tech pro intermingling with the traditional corporate stereotype that has brought us here and the only way out is to bootstrap ourselves out of the shadows and take over the system from the inside out by becoming sentient adults rather than code weaving pithicathropus. Our black monolith moment is way overdue

> How can we - users, programmers, hackers - fight this?

my_article.html

Uploaded into a public directory on a web server.

As users, I guess we can start with paying for good content, tools, apps etc. Most of us don't even pay for something as important as email, and then complain about Google's non existent support for GMail etc.

The other thing we could do is intentionally support good, honest indie makers over mega corps (but there is no guarantee they won't sell to mega corps).

Disincentivize company founders from cashing out to the detriment of their users by moving the cradle of these technologies to a place where you can respectably buy a house and raise kids without millions of dollars.

We did this to ourselves through decades of equating personal wealth to community and social value.

Which is ironic given the economic purpose of hacker news.

By use a diverse set of browsers and minimally using apps, we can slow down the silo'ing of the Internet. If users don't blindly buy into every app out there, big corps will have little choice but to interoperate on the open web.

There needs to be an app that has the ability to connect ( via oAuth, whatever ) with DigitalOcean / AWS and that can generate a static website out of a WordPress(-like) editor, keeping the state in the cloud - again DO or whatever in a managed database.

The app should cost <20$ ( or be open sourced ) and it should have a huge eco-system of themes / plugins, including paid ones.

Sadly this app will never have an IPO or growth rate worth investing, but it will fix the problem ( for a while ).

I think we should code around them, instead of writing comments on HN.

Me included. I previously wanted to write an elaborate comment, but I should really focus more on productive endeavors.

Avoid those sites, and when asked for feedback mention the problems (a great place for feedback is the customer serivce chat, followed with a FU, enter and a ctrl+w)

>How can we - users, programmers, hackers - fight this?

Pardon the interruption -> close window.

Well it is being fought on some level. More and more blogs have moved off of medium and hosting their own. I sense that rss is making a bit of a comeback as well

I believe the only way to combat this as users is to use agnostic tools. When a website, program or other service wants to force you to use a specific thing to access them just view in a web browser with ad/script blocking or choose to not view it at all if that isn't an option.

As programmers we can refuse to implement such nagware. There's not much worker solidarity in our field so quitting is usually the only option if the company has made up their mind on the matter.

Overall I don't believe it can be stopped at this point. This process is called privatizing the commons and it will continue to happen to every common good as long as capitalism is the system which we work under.

I guess you meant late 2000s? We are in the late 2010s right now!