The Illusion of Ownership
What if I told you owning your platform isn't actually what it sounds like? Faybomb.com is going bye bye. Here's why I'm not looking back.
The second point I’ve tried to hammer home for readers is own your platform. Own your platform has evolved a bit but the spirit of the idea is still there.
I wrote that in late June in The Apology Phase knowing that I’d one day have to elaborate. “Own your platform” has been a bit of a personal mantra since January 2021. My thinking at the time was essentially all of these third party platforms like Medium or Substack could ultimately choose to de-platform any writer or user that they wish. It is well within their right as private companies to do that. To me, the only logical step one could take as a writer was to build their own platform through their own domain.
Faybomb.com is the domain that I have been operating for 23.5 months. Why do I know that figure so precisely? Because the domain needs to be renewed in early August or it will cease to exist. You see, even though I created and operate the domain name “faybomb.com,” I don’t actually own it. I rent it. So despite my best efforts I’m essentially renting my platform, not owning it. The Web 2 domain is a bit like a house without a mortgage if the owner doesn’t pay property taxes.
This is why my views on “owning your platform” have evolved. I think a better way to explain it is “owning your audience.” Obviously not in a literal sense. But let’s say I amass a large following on Twitter - it is virtually impossible for me to move that exact audience to another social media platform if Twitter ceases operations. The reason is I don’t know the individual contact for each of my followers. And even if I did, my Twitter followers may have no interest in creating additional accounts at whatever new social platform I move to. In this example, I have essentially zero audience ownership. Hence, my sensitivity to alternatives.
Fortunately, Substack has been entirely different. I can export my email list every day if I want to. I can download all of my data. That way if Substack ever ceases to operate, I still have my list. I still have my files. I can rebuild elsewhere with the realistic expectation that I can get Heretic Speculator back to a similar quality of publication with a similar audience reach in a fairly short amount of time. This is audience ownership and I now believe it’s a better expression of what I was trying to explain back in January of 2021. Do I own the url faybomb.substack.com? Of course not. But I don’t own the url faybomb.com either.
I’m sharing all of this because faybomb.com is coming to an end.
Don’t worry, Heretic Speculator isn’t going anywhere. I’m staying right here on Substack. In fact, faybomb.substack.com just became Heretic Speculator’s primary residence. I’ll still syndicate some of my work to Publish0x, Read.cash, and my Seeking Alpha blog when I think there is an audience fit for the content on those platforms. But the main site is going away. You might ask why?
Why after pounding the table so strongly on getting a web domain am I willing to let mine expire? The answer lies in “Web 3.” Web 3 might have a fairly ambiguous meaning but I view it simply as the decentralization of ownership online. With this definition in mind, Bitcoin plays in web 3. NFTs play in web 3. Public blockchain-based domains play in web 3. Web 3 changes the game for content creators because we don’t have to rent anymore.
Owning the domain for faybomb.com would have cost me about $20 to renew for another year. Not a big deal and until yesterday it was set to auto-renew. But then there’s the whole hosting component that we sometimes forget about. Owning the domain isn’t enough. I also need a web-host who will provide the server for the domain and I got my renewal quote last night. Renewing with my host provider would have seen my hosting cost move from a promotional rate to a standard rate. A 348% increase over what I previously paid.
Not happening.
The traffic just doesn’t justify that. Furthermore, why pay for the hosting upfront and then have to build and maintain the site myself when I can get hosting, a clean template, an email service, and a paywall through Substack at virtually no cost? I only pay a nominal figure if someone buys a paid subscription. If traffic was equal, there’s an admittedly low subscriber threshold where renting a domain nets a higher gross margin than using Substack for hosting. But traffic isn’t even close to equal. My Substack has a far larger audience.
At this point, the real purpose faybomb.com has been serving over the last 8 months or so has been as “cancel culture insurance.” The problem is I already own my cancel culture insurance outright through faybomb.crypto. Essentially my traditional dot com domain is term life insurance and the whole life price is peanuts by comparison.
I own and control faybomb.crypto. I purchased that domain through Unstoppable Domains for $40. It lives on the Ethereum blockchain. As long as Ethereum continues as a decentralized blockchain, I will have total control over that NFT domain. No renewals. No carry cost. I can route decentralized payments, build an IPFS website, and receive emails while keeping my email address private by using faybomb.crypto essentially as my digital identity.
To me, it is a far better expression of domain ownership. I’ve learned a lot over the last two years. Building a website is not easy. It’s not cheap nominally or figuratively. It’s time consuming. It requires service add-ons and plugins. On top of that, it’s not how most people want to consume the content. And ultimately, it could all get taken away anyway if my hosting provider decides to pull an AWS and de-platform me because it doesn’t like what I’m saying. It’s expensive insurance that might not even payout the claim. In Web 2, that will always be a risk whether I publish on Substack or on Faybomb.com.
To this point, Substack seems committed to letting writers have a voice and I really appreciate that. But Web 3 is where I want to ultimately build if I’m forced to start this all over. For now, keeping it simple both for you and for myself is the way to go.
Living life as a purist is great but if you actually build anything you’ll find you have to make compromises.
Nic Carter, Maxi Enemy #1