I’ll try to make this post brief. I think that I’m going to continue this blog using WordPress. There are a couple of reasons why I think this is the best choice. Perhaps it’s not the most informed choice since I didn’t painstakingly research the issue, but it’s the one that is going to be made.
The first reason is based on what’s happening in the censorship front within Google, which includes their search engine and YouTube. The selective filtering of results within Google as well as the draconian Goolag/purgatorial features that YouTube is now rolling out is rather chilling. Additionally, Blogger has already shut down blogs without warning or for a reason that is anything more than generic. The Dennis Cooper blog erasure, which existed for 14 years before suddenly vanishing, really makes me weary of this happening to me. Now, would WordPress.com suddenly do this to me? I don’t know, but I don’t see a history of it in my searches. Regardless, keeping your own backups of content is the responsible thing to do. Don’t depend on a faceless host to do this for you when that is not their role.
There is another article recounting that Blogger is banning blogs containing sexually explicit content. While I don’t intend to go into this realm either, would a profanity-laden rant land my blog into the velvety flames of Goolag’s memory-hole?
While I don’t expect to write anything very controversial in this blog, it’s uncertain what is going to be considered as such in the future. I just don’t want to risk being a victim of an algorithm or a fervent person within Google that would want to mess with my freedom of expression because they didn’t like my politics, hair color, religion, pet choices, the MPG that my cars get, or anything else that may displease their fancy.
While some may say that this is Google’s right because it is a private company or that it isn’t a First Amendment violation; that it only limits the government’s action to exclude one’s speech, then I would say that is a conflation between the the culture of free speech and the First Amendment. It’s easy to see that Google is against free speech; it is against people from speaking freely on their platforms. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be actively trying to suppress it through such bromides as hate speech and diversity. Allowing people to freely express controversial ideas and opinions without violence or vengeance used to be what separated the U.S. from dictatorships. I don’t believe anyone should have to be afraid of retribution from an employer, intimidating shit-stirrers such as Antifa or the KKK, or the government itself because of his or her thoughts and beliefs.
My second reason is in regards to potential expansion. If I wanted to offload this content onto an independent host that uses WordPress, the migration of content may be easier. I could be wrong here as well, but it would be really short-sighted of WordPress.com to not be compatible with its .org equivalent.
As far as the current comparison between the two items. There is a limit of space on WordPress.com unless I want to pay. I also like the themes much better in the Blogger version of the page, but that could be fixed with some effort. The myriad of plug-ins for WordPress will be helpful too.
If I ever create videos, I will most likely upload them to a YouTube channel. As long as they’re “advertiser-friendly,” then all will be good. I can always post other videos to other platforms or mirror them using VidMe, LiveLeak, or other platforms yet to be found and named. For this blog, at least, I don’t think that I’m going to have any concerns.
In any case, thanks for reading. I’ll see about migrating the content from Blogger over the next couple of days.
Realivanation 