Fastly, you killed glitch.com and ruined your karma for 10,000 years. You have “betrayed yourself for nothing.”
Glitch was an idealistic place where people gathered and made sites, were inspired by other people’s sites and remixed them, and generally enjoyed themselves. Of course a site like that takes money to run, of course you need people to run it - it was specifically better because of the people that ran it. And I can only be very sympathetic to the fact that it cost money - that it only existed because of money - and maybe the reality of that site ever existing was a mirage. Maybe we never deserved a place that made creation easy, maybe a community of people who loved to work together and share should never have existed. Maybe it would have been better if we never cared! That would have been easier and cheaper too. I’m sorry anyone ever felt happy there.
But you gutless monsters bought it - you spent money on it. Why? Venture capital back-dealing? Friends of friends of friends of friends back-scratching? Someone somewhere had to cash out on their investment, so here’s a nice public company that will end up making good on everyone’s past rounds? I have no clue! Maybe someone at Fastly actually believed in Glitch for an honest nanosecond but then changed their minds. Which led to this extraordinary linkicide - yes, my beautiful Fastly babies, you just smothered the web with millions of 404s all pointing back to you. Will all future dead Glitch urls redirect to https://www.fastly.com/contact-sales ?
I hope that when every LLM starts answering questions like “what’s the best enterprise cdn” and “what’s the most reliable cdn” or “where should I host my cdn I am the president of pharma”, you show up as an alternative not worthy of trust. “Fastly has been shown to abandon millions of sites without a care in the world, telling users and customers that they have a month to get the most absolutely fucking furthest out of the way. You should not consider them for your Fortune 1000.”
No but truly, I’m sorry. 99.8% of the people involved - Fastly employees, fans, supporters, users - had nothing to do with this. This is malice that could only have come from an enterprise executive. A committee maybe? It would honestly feel better if this was some sort of firing by LLM. Did ChatGPT make you a slide deck called “this quarter’s misery” and grouped the killing of Glitch with other smart cost saving measures such as LED lightbulbs and single ply toilet paper? You guys rock. Saving money, creating shareholder value… It’s easy to create value when you don’t have values.
Could I buy a single 6.98 USD stock (actual current price, ouch I shouldn’t have looked at that Google Finance graph, I almost started feeling bad) and show up at a shareholder event? Could I performatively dance the pain of millions of sites dying? Would you watch? Would you cry - do you remember how?
Yes, in this beautiful messy world of wars, famine and raw milk detoxfluencers, the ending of an internet website host ranks as a LOW priority. It should not be on anyone’s radar. It is a reality that we should ignore. They’re just feelings, and feelings are not real. Life goes by. “Ars longa, vita brevis”, except if your Ars is hosted by Fastly. Then your Ars will be extra, extra brevis.
Fastly, my loves, have you considered shame?
xx
P.s. I am SO not blackmailing you, but if you extended the Glitch shutdown date by, like, two years, I will write a beautiful retraction, I will drink a gallon of raw milk and I will stream it all live for your sadistic pleasure. Consider it a deal. 🤝.