Not everyone wants to do that. In fact, I suspect 99% of the populace would rather not!
Nearly a quarter of a century ago in 1998 when I first got an internet connection and set up a website, I never dreamt that all that internet geek shit was going to change the world, in both good and bad ways.
But enough philosophising here, I’m just aiming to post links to my best online content. Here are my sites that I'm still updating and posting on as of 2022:
www.frot.co.nz
www.sift.co.nz
www.naturefoods.co.nz
www.vybrainium.com/@frot
www.bastyon.com/frot
www.gab.com/frot
www.blurt.blog/@frot
Websites on our own server:
www.frot.co.nz
The original frot website is still there – at it’s peak in 2002 it was a portal to more than 20 websites, some with thousands of pages, and a bunch of client websites too. These days it is essentially just a blog with some extra galleries of my art. But in amongst all those thousands of old blog posts is some pretty good content if you can be arsed digging around.
www.sift.co.nz
This was once another of my full sized websites – I had a lot of fun with it, but it needed thousands of updates so I wiped the slate and started again. Now the site is mainly just a bunch of image galleries, such as this big collection of “Jab Reactions” - https://www.frot.co.nz/design/sift/home/galleries/jab-reactions/
www.naturefoods.co.nz
That is our actual online business selling supplements such as probiotics and cod liver oil, to customers throughout New Zealand. Most of the time we keep that separate to blogging and social media activities, and aim to focus on providing good service.
But we do still come under attack from the government from time to time, as they try to ban products known to improve health. Fortunately they are pretty clueless, or they would have banned many more, and the banned products tend to remain available underground from other sources.
We have a bunch of other old content remaining on our server, but we have let go of most of the domain names and are not maintaining all those old sites. So those three are the only current sites hosted on our own server.
Now let’s get into some of the other platforms. Over the years I’ve tried out quite a few, and the reoccurring pattern is that they all start out full of promise, but as soon as they become large, they start censoring and controlling the content.
Some other platforms I'm posting on:
Verbrainium - www.vybrainium.com/@frot
With the Steeemit and Hive blockchains I’m not even sure where to start! I’ve been playing around on these blockchains for over five years, and have posted from more than 10 accounts.
There are multiple front ends and there have been several hardforks. All of this stems from the idea of building a blogging platform and cryptocurrency based on a blockchain. It’s a great and potentially game changing idea, but the corruption, censorship, and all out internal war that has gone on over the entire time, leaves most of us old timers cynical, jaded, and way past trusting the intentions of any of this.
A few of the blockchain front ends my own content as @frot can be viewed on include:
@frot
@frot
@frot
@frot
https://www.vybrainium.com/@frot
There are more front ends, and I have my other alt accounts too, but those ones will do for now. Except it’s probably worth adding my first account, which is mostly still online here:
These days I’m only really supporting Verify Your Brain - www.vybrainium.com which is the only front end with no downvoting where everyone is free to post whatever they want. On all the other front ends everything I post is “nuked”, and the myth of the blockchain being uncensored is constantly exposed as complete bullshit.
Why do I persist? – because the good parts are impressive, even if the bad parts suck. Several times I’ve made some real financial gains on these blockchains, and on Verbrainium I’m hoping things will work out again. We shall see... but in the meantime if you post using the #vyb tag I can fling pretty decent sized votes at you!
Many posts have been written about the ongoing sagas of the Steemit and Hive blockchains, and I’ve certainly gone on about them myself from time to time. But again, back to the point here – what’s next?
Bastyon – www.bastyon.com/frot
This is my next great social media hope, and I could go on about it extensively. It has a level of privacy and censorship resistance that no other platform comes close to. The fully encrypted chat is the best in the business.
A full introduction is available here: https://bastyon.com/help?page=faq
“Bastyon is an innovative social network and video sharing platform. Unlike the mainstream social networks, it is not ruled by a company. It is an open source project run by a team of developers and experts, and its scope is to provide a censorship-free platform where the freedom of speech is seriously respected”
Recent events have shown the strength of Bastyon’s censorship resistance. It is like a honey badger!
Gab - https://gab.com/frot
Gab is big, and unlike the blockchain sites you can’t earn money from posting on it. But it’s fun, and there is a real “we don’t give a fuck” ethos to it. This is snowflake free site, not because they are banned, but because nothing is banned so snowflakes melt.
I don’t see it as the best place to meet new people or interact with friends, or even to post original content. But it’s an endlessly entertaining feed of content that is not on any other mainstream platform, and it’s user base is growing by the day. It has also proven itself censorship resistant, and it doesn’t take any shit from governments.
Blurt - www.blurt.blog/@frot
A bunch of my friends from Hive have quit Hive and moved to Blurt which is a hardfork from Hive with a new token and no downvoting. Unlike Hive it has a good vibe, and people are actually nice to each other. I have 11k of Blurt tokens and really want it to succeed. The only reason I haven't posted more on there is lack of time. But the content several of my friends are posting is so good I'm going to have to make time to at least read their posts.
For some examples, start with these two: https://blurt.blog/@northern-tracey and https://blurt.blog/@lucylin
Other platforms? - Yes I do have accounts with most of the usual suspects including Facebook, Twitter, Discord, Pinterest etc - but they are all part of the problem rather than the solution, and I no longer look at them. If I had time I'd do more on Flote - those guys are cool and I wish them all the best.
www.flote.app/user/FROT
PS. I do also have a Bitchute account where I post some videos that I want to link to on my blog posts without them being deleted by Youtube. But Bitchute is a prime example of a site that is likely to get big then start censoring content, so I see it as a temporary work around, and am still deciding which video platform to run with. Videos are not my gig but I do need an uncensored video sharing platform, and at this point it's still Bitchute:
www.bitchute.com/frot
