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The web's original sin

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Re: The web's original sin

#121

Post by groovy2shoes »

Diamons wrote: post #70
AlexandrB wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The internet is for people, not for businesses. This doesn't square with the fact that, at the end of the day, someone has to pay for hosting and bandwidth - not to mention that content creation costs time (money) as well. Ignoring these realities and pretending that the internet is free just externalizes the cost onto those who aren't savvy enough to use an ad blocker or avoid ransomeware.

That's not my problem. You're not entitled to that hosting and bandwidth. If I wanted to, I could host a website off my laptop for a couple hours a day if I wanted to. There is no law of the internet that guarantees a user can be subjected to ads without their consent. The only rule is that any device with a browser can view your content across the world. A user is not entitled to pay / reward a content creator for c…

> But a content creator cannot tell me I should not be using an ad blocker because it's how they make money.

Yes, they can. I see such messages all the time while surfing the Web.

Re: The web's original sin

#122

Post by fenomas »

liotier wrote: post #12

When I open my mouth to talk to my neighbor, I am not producing "content" - I am communicating. The Web is a communication medium. The lack of commercial functionality baked in the communication medium is a feature not a bug. Whoever uses the word "content" betray his bias as a commercial publisher.

This is a non-argument. When you chat with your neighbor you don't deliver comprehensive lists of browser quirks, carefully researched news stories, wikipedia articles, and so forth. Yet the web has such things, and they are content.

Re: The web's original sin

#123

Post by Terr_ »

jacquesm wrote: post #117
Terr_ wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It certainly includes more than just HTTP, but you've gotta be careful not to go too far in the other direction: On an hardware/network level "the internet" was actually about tolerating more "middlemen", moving away from single-owner corporate or governmental networks and dedicated pipes.

> On an hardware/network level "the internet" was actually about tolerating more "middlemen" It still is. And the web was all about that too, but billions of $ were spent to push it in the direction of walled gardens and data silos.

I'm confused, are you saying that the operators of walled-gardens and app-stores are not middlemen?

Re: The web's original sin

#124

Post by jacquesm »

Terr_ wrote: post #123
jacquesm wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On an hardware/network level "the internet" was actually about tolerating more "middlemen" It still is. And the web was all about that too, but billions of $ were spent to push it in the direction of walled gardens and data silos.

I'm confused, are you saying that the operators of walled-gardens and app-stores are not middlemen?

No, they are middlemen. But they are also consolidated. And that need not have happened. See, hosting your own homepage is work, and it made some sense to farm out parts of the work that needed to be done to others, just like not everybody maintains their own car, but they do own their own car.

And now we have moved in a totally different direction, where all the would-be-small-middlemen and their functions have been absorbed into a couple of giant data warehouses/web properties. That's about as far away from the 'peer-to-peer' nature of the internet as you could be. Firewalls were also a huge nail in the coffin, the fact that to be able to securely connect a computer to the net at a consumer level your best bet is to make it a device that does not allow connections from the outside in.

Re: The web's original sin

#125

Post by m52go »

Terr_ wrote: post #115
m52go wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but consider how much less it costs, per-viewer, to distribute a paragraph on the web versus printed on paper. From my understanding of publishing, most of the cost is in creation, editing, design, and marketing...not in actually printing it. It's common to assume that electronic versions of paper media should be cheap (if not free) but that's very mistaken.

True, but even some of those aspects are lessened, ex: 1. It makes sense to invest a lot to minimize defects (e.g. typos) before printing, but digitally it's much easier to issue a revision. 2. Marketing is less-critical for reaching "already interested" consumers, due to search-engines and the ease of passing links around. 3. Marketing is less-critical for pushing copies into "nearby retailers", because consumers ca…

I see what you're saying with your first point, but does that mean it's more acceptable for people to put out less-polished professional work now that it's easier to go back and correct it? I hope not.

Regarding points two and three, very few authors have an adequate following of "already-interested" customers.

Sharing is easier with digital networks and social networks, sure, but the siloed nature of these media is a new challenge for authors/publishers.

There's a big struggle right now within publishing to figure out discovery.

Re: The web's original sin

#126

Post by jbpetersen »

I don't expect there will ever be a lack of high quality content produced for free by hobbyists.

Instead of pointing your analytic engines at finding the perfect ad to send my way, why not let me pay you to find me the best content instead?

Re: The web's original sin

#127

Post by Supraperplex »

jacquesm wrote: post #124
Terr_ wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused, are you saying that the operators of walled-gardens and app-stores are not middlemen?

No, they are middlemen. But they are also consolidated. And that need not have happened. See, hosting your own homepage is work, and it made some sense to farm out parts of the work that needed to be done to others, just like not everybody maintains their own car, but they do own their own car. And now we have moved in a totally different direction, where all the would-be-small-middlemen and their functions have been…

Moore's Law will ensure the cycle will come back. When a smartphonesque device can robustly house your private cloud. At that stage the brick and mortar warehouses will have to offer other solutions than just enabling cloud services.

Re: The web's original sin

#128

Post by Supraperplex »

barney54 wrote: post #120
DenisAyumu wrote: post #106

I browsed the web for 15 years without an ad blocker because I could care less about harmless banners and text ads. It was a good time. Then you added tracking cookies that followed me wherever I went. Then you added sound to your ads. Then you added video. Then you added full screen popups, seizure-inducing flashing ads and banners that mimic'ed Windows alerts. Then you added transparent Facebook "like" buttons over…

Yep. The problem is not free content entitlement, it's bad ads. Ads that are intrusive. Ads that are ugly. Ads that kill the user experience. How much content is actually worth paying for?

>>How much content is actually worth paying for?This is the real question in the pot.

Re: The web's original sin

#129

Post by nnq »

icebraining wrote: post #69
nnq wrote: post #52

Am I the only one who believes app stores should have a minimum mandatory price of like $5 (maybe geographically customizable)?! And yes, you should also be allowed to publish free apps, but they should be really-free , so if you set your apps price to $0, you are forbidden to have any-kind of in-app purchases (and maybe even forced to be open-source ). Want to do have the in-app-purchases: then put a goddam minimum…

Define "make profit from the users attention". Would HN have to charge? It's certainly a valuable resource for YC, even if the profit is indirect. What about Wikipedia? Do donations count as profit? Should search engines have to charge? By the way, you'd be destroying a whole lot of community-driven sites that charge for certain extra perks to keep the lights on.

...the "destroying" part seems like a pretty good thing imho. Setting some forests on fire to make room for some new sprouts seems pretty appealing :)

"Community destruction" in the online landscape is pretty much a synonym for "pushing people towards better communities where they are better off anyway"... So a good thing.

(And I don't see the place of Wikipedia and donations in this. Wikipedia is obviously not selling any in-app purchases and the software they run on is "open source". HN is also "true free". Even their platform is open-source: https://github.com/wting/hackernews not that this should count that much. And donations are obvious not profit, they are not even taxed as such. No ambiguity here.)

Re: The web's original sin

#130

Post by icebraining »

nnq wrote: post #129
icebraining wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define "make profit from the users attention". Would HN have to charge? It's certainly a valuable resource for YC, even if the profit is indirect. What about Wikipedia? Do donations count as profit? Should search engines have to charge? By the way, you'd be destroying a whole lot of community-driven sites that charge for certain extra perks to keep the lights on.

...the "destroying" part seems like a pretty good thing imho. Setting some forests on fire to make room for some new sprouts seems pretty appealing :) "Community destruction" in the online landscape is pretty much a synonym for "pushing people towards better communities where they are better off anyway"... So a good thing. (And I don't see the place of Wikipedia and donations in this. Wikipedia is obviously not selli…

Fair enough regarding donations, but the idea that HN is "truly free" while Facebook isn't is shows how unclear the proposal is. HN may not sell ads, but it does have them[1], it's just for their own companies. It's more than a little naive to think that HN makes no profit for YC and its investments.

The analogy of burning the forest to allow the new sprouts to grow is quite pretty, but I'm not sure you'd actually get better trees in the end.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11295614

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