Why I Ghosted Squarespace

I promised in Monday’s newsletter that I would explain the switch from Squarespace to Ghost, so here we go.

Price 💵

There’s a reason cable is going the way the of the dinosaurs. No one wants, and we absolutely don’t need, 3000 channels. Why pay a premium for channels you don’t watch, when you could steal your brother’s Netflix password for free? Sounds like you can’t do that anymore. Point being, people want to pay for what they need, that’s it.

I was paying a premium for Squarespace. On top of that, I was paying Patreon a cut of revenue on top of the processing fee from the credit card companies. In both cases, I was paying for features I didn’t need and branding that wasn’t important to me or my community. Ghost offered the opportunity to bring the important features under one roof without the bloat of premium features that are distracting and slow down the performance of the site. As a member, you may or may not tangibly feel these changes, but just know, this wasn’t a selfish endeavor. I’m always thinking of you, boo.

Values ⭐️

I wrote a story last year about how to avoid big tech platforms like Amazon and Facebook. They continue to abuse their power for corporate greed and have a criminal disregard for their “users” in favor of their shareholders and C-suite employees. Between their users and Congress, Big Tech doesn’t have many friends left, which is why they go beyond what one would considered reasonable to keep their position in the marketplace.

Squarespace isn’t inherently bad, but Ghost does more to stand for what I believe in when it comes to our relationship with technology. They are a non-profit that is explicit about the ways they do business and the values they prioritize including team culture, fighting climate change, and putting users’ needs first and foremost. Crazy, right? Sticking up for the planet and the people who pay you money. Maybe it’ll catch on.

Connections 🤝

Something my friend Ryan tweeted the other day (ironically) is that people who spend time trying to get good at social media do just that; get good at social media. They don’t get good at their preferred craft. Unless it’s social media, to which I say, God bless.

That’s not what I’m trying to do here. If you know me, you know that I have a genuine desire to connect with people and connect those people to the other people, places and things around them. The Internet, and more specifically, social media, promised us this connected utopia and instead we got a lack of privacy and authoritarianism. Pretty raw deal.

Social media isn’t going away. I don’t hate it 100% of the time, but I recognize a need for all of us to spend far less time on the platforms. My goal is to connect with you less on social media and more on this site, in your email inbox from time to time, and perhaps a future Discord server (I cannot and will not stop talking about my affection for Discord. You can’t make me). If we’re lucky, maybe even an in-person event. Remember those? I remember those…

My email inbox is always open! If you like a particular podcast or post on the site, let me know why. If you absolutely hated something, you’re welcome to share that too, if you must. Thanks for being a part of this journey. Here’s to less tweets, more podcasts, and that livestream show I’ve been working on. 🤫