Added in edit: As of 15:00 BST, 14:00 Zulu, all three major discussions (including this one) are still active and seeing contributions. If you want to know what people are saying, rather than just your own "fire and forget" comments, you'll need to visit all three submissions."
Can't help but repeat: See whatever you have in the public cloud as a cache copy of your information, a copy that can disappear at any moment, and you can't do anything about it. Have a local master copy of everything you care about, properly backed up.
Is this a common thing? I can't imagine writing a book stores entirely on blogspot. UI aside, most of the writers I know are at least somewhat cognizant of the need for backups.
This is why IndieWebCamp came up with POSSE (Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere (https://indieweb.org/POSSE). By all means, use Blogger, Facebook, G+, Flickr, Medium, Nautilus and any other outlets you care to, but remember that only you can be the caretaker of your own data.
Question for @dang (or other mods) - this is now marked as a dupe and so won't appear on the front page, even though it got over 80 points and nearly 20 comments in just 40 minutes.
Does that mean the comments here will sink without trace and forever be ignored?
Art is supposed to be challenging but if you think about it even porn hosts do censorship. We live under a privitized tyranny of terms and conditions with no due process.
How long before other companies (like Medium) will start doing this?
That's why I'm advocating hosting your own blog. Github Pages basically provide free hosting for static pages, and you can use a blog generator like Pelican or Jekyll. Sure it's a hassle to set-up for the average person but the peace of mind might be worth it.
Sure, but you are more likely to keep your local clone up to date and it is easier if the need comes up to migrate to any other static file host or jekyll build host that accepts a git repository push. Backing up and restoring most traditional CMS is much more onerous that git pull/push.
More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12097063
Another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12097707
Yet another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12089980
Another submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12088543
And another: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12100781
Added in edit: As of 15:00 BST, 14:00 Zulu, all three major discussions (including this one) are still active and seeing contributions. If you want to know what people are saying, rather than just your own "fire and forget" comments, you'll need to visit all three submissions."