I think there is a need for a place where people can post a long article without having a blog of their own. In as far as *Medium* was able to provide that, I liked it. But everything else on top of that was unnecessary. This BoingBoing post lists a few alternatives I like. I like txt.fyi in particular.
Brutalist blogging platforms!!
But to be honest, I think Mastodon could be a viable Medium alternative. I keep telling people that extending the 500 character limit and allowing for simple emphasis (italic) and strong emphasis (bold) would do wonders. Google+ has shown that some people will use it to write amazing posts. But I’ve met a resistance on Mastodon which seems to be deeply rooted and I don’t get it.
@saper said Pleroma already has a 5000 character limit so perhaps that is simply the way forward. And it has a single column layout which is better for long posts. The CSS for mobile is terrible, though. We could use Pleroma with Brutaldon, the simple HTML client for Mastodon on without any Javascript! (“Brutaldon is a brutalist, Web 1.0 web interface for Mastodon.” – source)
#Blogs #Text