Have a Fucking Website

[lproven@social.vivaldi.net]

Have a Fucking Website

https://www.otherstrangeness.com/2026/03/14/have-a-fucking-website/

«
If you’re a hair salon, or a tattoo artist, or a restaurant, or whatever, please just have a fucking website where I can go and see your rates and hours. Not all of your potential clients are on these platforms, and I suspect that even many of the ones who are appreciate a simple, unadorned site that tells them what they need to know at a glance.
»

[amoroso@oldbytes.space]

@lproven Please also share an email address and a phone number if applicable. And if you do share a phone number please pick up the calls, don't share a number and ignore calls.

[rogerbw@discordian.social]

@lproven if you're a restaurant, it would also be polite to have the menu in HTML rather than just PDF.

[dukeduke@mastodon.social]

@lproven I was considering getting a housekeeper a couple of years ago. There was a local outfit whose vehicles I'd see regularly, so figure I'd check them out. The only contact info on the cars was a facebook logo. I tried finding any other way to reach them, but that was it. Having never been on that shit site, I decided that biz could forever fuck itself.

[david_chisnall@infosec.exchange]

@lproven The thing that made me not get a Facebook account 20 years ago was reading their T&Cs and seeing that I would grant them an irrevocable, sublicensable, commercial copyright license to anything that I uploaded, for them to use for any purpose. Oh, and there was also a thing that I agreed to be liable if I didn't have the rights to grant Facebook those rights.

It's amazing to me how many companies will click through this and literally give Facebook the right to use their brand for any purpose.

[netraven@hear-me.social]

@lproven looool yes. You are a "fake business" in my book if all you have is a facebook or similar.

[kramaker@social.vivaldi.net]

@lproven Exactly!

[christo_459@mastodon.me.uk]

@lproven
Oh yes please. I'm sick of finding websites are FB or some other platform

[thad@brontosin.space]

@david_chisnall I got an e-mail asking me to join Facebook and it had a "people you might know" list and one of the people on it was my high school girlfriend's father. And I was like "okay, that's creepy" and so I never signed up.

Like, it's not hard to see how they connected me to him. But I don't need companies making algorithmic deductions about my social circles without my consent. @lproven

[rompe@gts.rompe.org]

@lproven
As someone who regularly adds or updates businesses to #OpenStreetMap I would like to sign this.

[jonasgraphie@mastodon.social]

@RogerBW @lproven

Or at least have the menu online...

[pelle@veganism.social]

@lproven
i think it's okay to just have a mastodon because it's not login-walled and not hostile to an open web.

[dshan@mastodon.au]

@david_chisnall I did something just as effective, I watched the movie. It's beyond me how anyone who watched that movie could then sign-up to Facebook or any of Meta's other services. It tells you exactly the sort of people who run those businesses and why you should avoid them like the plague.

[lproven@social.vivaldi.net]

@pelle It would do the job but most people don't know it exists or what the address would mean.

I've been delighted to watch it take off and get active and busy, but I see vanishingly little public awareness.

[pelle@veganism.social]

@lproven discovery of businesses doesn't happen only via mastodon, so it's fine people don't know it yet. they can follow the link on the ad for your business — if they can't open a link in their web browser, then they'll not find your website either!

all the issues the author of article has with "social media" don't really apply to mastodon. it's like someone who's fed up with mcdonalds and burger king exclaiming: »everyone should cook at home! restaurants are horrible.«

but all of us here know that, of course.