Why I'm moving away from Listed.to
Since 2020, I’ve been hosting my blog on the free blogging/journaling platform Listed.to. Developed by Standard Notes, Listed was the perfect minimalist blogging platform that offered a distraction-free environment that prioritised privacy and simplicity. It was perfect. I could just write stuff within Standard Notes and with a click of a button, it would be published without effort.
Lately, however, the experience has degraded to the point I’ve decided I am going to host my blog on my own website. Here is why I am making the switch.
The bot invasion
One of the great things about Listed is the “Recent Authors” list. It’s a chronological feed where you can could discover other writers and read genuine human thoughts.
Today, that feed is completely unrecognisable. It has been thoroughly overrun by bots. Instead of personal, honest writing, the platform is now continuously spammed with AI generated slop and fake, SEO driven business blogs. It is incredibly disheartening to see a platform built for focused writing become a dumping ground for this type of content. The genuine bloggers on Listed have been entirely drowned out.
Constant access headaches
Beyond the decline in platform quality, the backend experience hasn’t been so great.
Listed uses a unique authentication model tied to author keys rather than traditional logins. In theory, this aligns with the Standard Notes security ethos. In practice, it has become a constant hurdle for me personally. I continually lose access to my own blog if I update any part of my domain that’s connected to my Listed blog, forcing me to repeatedly go through the tedious process of requesting new author keys just to gain access back to my blog.
Moving forward
I am currently in the process of building my website and migrating my Listed blog posts over to here. I am going to keep my Listed blog up, but I don’t plan to use it going forward. I just hope that the AI slop and SEO spam on the platform is combated in some way so genuine bloggers can have a spotlight on the home page once again.
Until next time…