If You Don't Control Your Online Platform, Then Someone Else is Controlling You
The Kimmel "Cancellation" (in anything but name) is a reminder that no matter how popular you are, the vulnerability is the platform owner (or channel/network, including YouTube, which still lacks a potent business model)
Steven Vaughan-Nichols (SJVN) and I used to correspond and be like online allies/friends. That mostly changed when he became a parrot/operative of Linux Foundation because they pay him to do so. They basically "assign" him to compose puff pieces or lend his name to media "plants" for customers (marketing).
Decades ago SJVN wrote for a Web site that got bought and then shut down around late 2013 or 2014. We managed to help salvage a sister site, but not SJVN's. All his articles went missing, forever. It was a catastrophic loss; a lot of his good work vanished, along with history of GNU/Linux. He has since then hopped between IDG, ZDNet, and few other sites that he told me about (he was optimistic after that malignant buyer basically took over his site just to take it offline). He also wasted time on Twitter, which became defunct, and Google+ (then Pluspora), which went offline.
His own blog was last active two months ago (of as yesterday):
And it's not even original, it just links to a marketing company:
This article is not about SJVN per se. He's just an example. He almost never owned his own site (although he did have one for a while; he gave up on it, now it just links to other sites). "Open Source Watch" above is controlled by beehiiv.com. This one is not:
It's running WordPress.org ("WordPress 6.8.2" according to page source). He could, as he did for a while, focus on that site alone and get people to follow the RSS feed.
That is the only way for him to be (or become) independent.
It's tempting to daydream about the old (or original) SJVN making a comeback as his old (as in young) self. █
"DesktopLinux.com acquired ... — DesktopLinux.com's publisher, Ziff-Davis Enterprise, has been acquired by a Californian company -- as yet undisclosed, but rumored to be Foster City-based QuinStreet. Future plans for the site have not yet been announced ... At this point, the future of DesktopLinux.com is uncertain. What we can say ..."
It was acquired to be taken offline forever. Apparently in more recent years it was resurrected, and not the Groklaw way.