NEVER PUT ALL YOUR EGGS INTO ONE BASKET

(Creators-Edition)

This topic is about you lovely content-creators & the people who admire & support you

So I have always championed this opinion ever since the FIRST YOUTUBE ADPOCALYPSE & used to spread this opinion to anyone I could; even when I was a mere content-consumer & I still do it even today. While Some people HAVE listened, agreed & even took action, others ignored this opinion & whined & cried when their favorite creators [OR themselves] got deplatformed. So I think it's high time that I made an article about that said "Opinion" as this "Opinion" is becoming more & more like a cold, hard FACT & more terrifying as time passes as the world becomes more dystopian.

Now to begin; I am pretty sure you might have seen your favorite content creator [Or Yourself as a content creator] whether They/You are on YouTube, Twitch, TikTok etc... get De-Platformed because They/You might have accidently/deliberately challenged the status-quo or exposed some shady content-creator/organization via someone abusing the CopyRight-System & or using their connections to the Platform-Staff/Administration themselves OR just sometimes for no reason at all [Actually it may due to the PLATFORM ITSELF screwing up]
This scenario/situation is basically as if you were living in a rented apartment. The owner can either evict you because of the owner's desire or via someone pressuring the owner OR you can lose your living-space via the owner going out of business. Either way you DO NOT OWN YOUR SPACE & are at the mercy of the whoever is hosting your content. Also another worrying thing is that, if or when you or your favorite creator DOES GET De-Platformed; You not only lose your Identity, but also your content that you put effort into making & most importantly you lose your precious community that was built over the years; that Community includes but not limited to:-

Your Subscribers & Your Patrons [AKA Financial-Backers]
people who comment or share your content or do both
Your Moderators & Administrators
Other content-creators you collaborate with

Of course you can rebuild your channel & restore your content [Provided you have not deleted much of them to make space for newer content on your storage]. But what about your community ? They might just disappear & you will have to start from scratch again & as time moves forward, it becomes progressively more difficult to build & rebuild your community; After all a content-creator owes most of their success to their community right ?
So what is this ??? Another lecture about how you should get into Self-Hosting & Self-Host your Content ??
A bit of yes & a bit of No.
Of course you should AIM for Self-Hosting your content eventually; after all if you truly OWN your living space then who can ever dare to evict you, except the government that is. At the very least someone cannot De-Platform you via abusing the CopyRight-System on Youtube as an example or any other vile trickery. Buuuut most of us DO NOT live in a pristine 1st-World Country & hence are not financially blessed. But hey one can always look for Alternative Platforms riiiiiight ?? But I would be lying if I did not admit that monetizing your content on these alternatives would be easy or stable; but at the very least it IS POSSIBLE.

So have you ever noticed that youtube does not charge you for hosting your videos; but when you host PodCasts & NewsLetters [Let's say for your blogs or videos] you get charged a rather hefty amount of money; eventhough hosting videos, which is an Audio-Visual media [Along with Live-Streaming, Shorts & all those Moderation & AI features] should require an even more expensive fees with all that advanced tech used to maintain such content right ? But why ??
Well that's because "Platforms" like Youtube, TikTok, Twitch & even Instagram & Twitter make money by monetizing your attention [AKA "Engagement"] & collect your Personal-Information & sell them to Data-Brokers & in-turn to Advertisers [We call this Intrusive-Advertisement] which ends up being ultimately harmful to YOU in more ways than one.

But Podcasts, AudioBooks, Newsletter, Courses & Blogs monetize the content DIRECTLY [As in the content itself]. Sometimes you might've heard of these services charging users according the amount of users you have [Which might seem strange if you come from places like Youtube, Twitch & TikTok] where you might have to pay when your userbase exceeds a certain amount.
Now these platforms usually do not have the Algorithm-Powered tools/AIs that your popular social-media "platforms" have & yet you are provided a means via which you can track your subscriptions for new content & can easily switch between different services that provide you to host such type of medias [Reminder the "Medias" here we are referring to are Podcasts, Newsletter-Blogs & occasionally AudioBooks & Courses]
But how can one switch to a different service of the same content-type & also get notified of new content ?? Well that's because of OPEN-PROTOCOLS that were BUILT-INTO these Platforms like some of the examples given:-

RSS → Which is apparently utilized by PodCasts; RSS = Really Simple Syndication
Email → Which is utilized by NewsLetters & uses SMTP = Simple Mail-Transfer Protocol
XMPP → XMPP = eXtensible Messaging & Presence Protocol; which can be used for MicroBlogging too
ActivityPub → Which is used for MicroBlogging as well as video-hosting in case of PeerTube

Reminder that all these said "Open-Protocols" we just mentioned are NOT truly OWNED BY ANYONE, so by extension those platforms that host content like PodCasts, NewsLetters etc... are technically open platforms in some sense [Similar to Online-Platforms in the good old days of the internet AKA "Internet 1.0"] which are not found in your typical social-media "platforms" like Youtube, twitch, TikTok, Instagram & Twitter [I REFUSE to call it X, it's a riddiculous name]; which are essentially "Walled-Gardens" & hence not Open-Platforms; Meaning you cannot really view the content from anywhere OTHER THAN those specific Social-media "platforms" & Obviously to even see those content, you'll might need to create an account as well [& Co-Incidentally they are giant monopolies too]

So you as a creator can take advantage of these Open-Protocols to make sure that you do not lose your community. So as a creator try to create a podcast [If you are can afford to/wish to that is] or have a newsletter to inform your subscribers [Whether it be for your videos/your blogs]. Hell the best thing you can do right now is try to Create & even Host a Personal Website for your content; since a Website gives you a lot of flexibilty & a solid presence on the internet [Especially if you somehow manage to create your own infrastructure].
You might have noticed that you can listen to podcasts pretty much on any platform/app of your choosing & it's due to RSS & you don't need any special app to view newsletters [ANY email application will do] & for RSS-feeds of let's say a blog, you can use ANY RSS Feed-Reader [Some recommendations are RSS-Guard & for those who like the terminal-apps, check out NewsBoat]. Although You CAN use ThunderBird to view Newsletters & RSS-Feeds, since it's a suite of applications including an Email-client, RSS-Feed-Reader, NewsLetter-Client & even a Chat application & a calendar application.

Let's say your youtube account gets taken down; well if you had a podcast, your community can still listen to your content there & if you get banned there, all you have to do is import your podcast episodes & export them to another podcast-host & update your RSS-Feed link & as for newsletters, you'll have a list of emails of your subscribers with you that you can import/export to a new newsletter-service & again these Open-Protocols/Technologies end up being a superpower when you have a website of your own [Look at my website as an example]. THIS along with other Alternative Platforms to host your content [A topic that I have already covered, but may re-visit one day] makes sure that All your eggs are not in ONE BASKET [Those "eggs" being your content in this case] & that you do not lose your community/audience if & when that said "walled-garden" social-media platforms DE-PLATFORMS you.

Oh WOW!!, this has been quite a wall of text for an article :-D

And let me remind you again; if & when you/your favorite content-creator gets De-Platformed, there will not be a single god-damn thing that you can do to recover your lost audience & we ARE beginning to see the internet as we know & love become more & more dystopian as governments & corporations exert more & more control & tighten their grip & try to smother the last vestiges of the Free & Open Internet. Along with the Enshittification of Social-Media platforms via AI-driven content [Which is not REAL AI, let's be honest it's just manipulative marketting] which will be used to replace human content-creators [When will happen when AI-Driven content makes those Walled-Garden "Platforms" more money than the human content-creators]; So putting all your effort & hence "Eggs" into these "walled-garden" Social-Media platforms that I mentioned is nothing short of stupidity

So EMBRACE the Open-Protocols along with DECENTRALIZING your content & RE-DIRECTING your Community/Audience towards those other Alternative Platforms as much as possible [Whether via incentivising them/educating them]. I mean it's not as if we are already paying the price for NOT embracing alternatives or those Open-Protocols right ??? So get cracking.