The Case for Owning Your Online Identity

Most people do not really own their online identity. They rent it. They may have a username, a profile photo, a following, and years of posts. The address belongs to someone else. The rules belong to someone else. The archive sits in someone else’s database. If the company changes direction, sells itself, breaks search, locks an account, shuts down an API, or decides the old product no longer fits the business plan, the user gets to adapt. That arrangement can work for a while. Platforms are convenient. They bring an audience, handle hosting, smooth over technical details, and make posting easy from whatever device is in your hand. There is a reason people use them. The mistake is treating a platform account as a permanent home. The web already has a better answer: a domain name you control, a site you can move, and public formats that other tools can read. That does not require a huge operation. It can be a simple website, a blog, a static page, a small WordPress install, or any…