[HermanMartinus]

Creator of Bear here. Suggesting that because one project fails, others will too is a bit of a fallacy. Fact is that whether you self-host or not, you're still using someone else's platform (unless you're a real self-hoster with a box in your closet, in which case, good on you and godspeed).

I think as long as platforms have an easy way for people to backup and migrate, that's fair.

Additionally, part of the appeal of Bear is that I've made it my personal mission to get the platform to outlive me. Take that as you will. I can't prove that Bear will live on in perpetuity, but I can try my best.

[wiether]

Thank you for taking your time to reply to my comment.

I want to clarify one thing first: I don't have anything special against your platform, it's just that it seems I see at least one article a week about it on HN lastly and I'm wondering why.

I'm sure you are well intentionned and you'll do your best to keep the plaftorm as true to the mission you have chosen to take and described in your manifesto, no doubt about it.

But having been through a certain number of hype cycles around tech, I tend to become suspicious when I see too much people pushing something. That's why I understand people complaining about Kagi's omnipresence here, even though I'm totaly on the hype train here.

Furthermore, the article looks like a promotion for the platform. It probably isn't, and you don't control what people publish, so it's not your fault. Yet, it reads like "bearblog is the solution to "Resurrect the Old Web".

Which, to me, can't be, since it's a platform like the hundreds that previously came and went, no matter their creator's promise.

So, sure, bearblog exists, it offers people a way to publish content in an _old fashioned_ way, and, according to its manifesto, it will stay like this as long as it exists. Which is nice. And can be part of a solution, but it's not the solution. I don't think there is, actually.

[mallowdram]

Tech is stuck behind the symbolic threshold. We're at the point we use the symbolic, which is arbitrary, for literally everything as a substitute, mimic, representation that's in reality. Eventually the symbolic eats itself alive in arbitrariness and society capitalizing on that arbitrariness. This is basic stuff CS doesn't make itself aware of.

We're at the end of communication in this symbolic era. You can see it in politics, climate policy, fiscal policy, trade policy, media, everything is at an end-point or a breaking point.

So lacking an awareness of the end-game for the symbolic, we retreat to an easier, earlier state, which is nostalgic. But its nostalgia for a system already on the way out.

[NetOpWibby]

I don’t use Bear but bless you for building it the way you are. Not everyone has development skills to do it themselves so it’s up to us coders and programmers to build these tools.

[Terr_]

> I think as long as platforms have an easy way for people to backup and migrate, that's fair.

Once one sees how much of the current tech-economy relies on lock-in and switching-costs, it's hard to unsee.

[dcreater]

But isnt it structurally superior to not need platforms like bearblog, substack, medium etc.?

Deploying an astro blog template to netlify is literally 1-click. An instantenously superior option if you dont want to host/pay/code yourself.