111–120 of 185 posts
The web wasn't stolen we gave it to them. You didn't have to sign up for Facebook. You don't have to sign up for googles services. Look how people like RMS use the web .
If everyone "browsed" the web RMS way there would be no web.
While I agree with the gist of the article, I have a problem conflating Google and Facebook in the same evil bag. Facebook is the evilest of evil, not only for the reasons stated, but also because information entered into Facebook never comes out. You have to have an account on FB to see anything on the platform. That is contrary to everything the Web ever stood for. Since I don't have a Facebook account, most of my…
Google is a lot less useful than it used to be... Google getting rid of blog search, forum search, and google reader has done as much as facebook to silo-ize the web.
FB did steal the web and your social network. Remember how FB grew? If not, let me remind you: "See which of your friends are also on FB! Just give us your Google and Yahoo contacts". Yes, you gave FB permission to check your contacts, but FB omitted to tell us that they would be HOLDING ON to your contacts forever and ever. FB then sent those contacts, without your permission and not per your request, an email sayin…
The older Web wasn't much harder to use, but it was overrun with spam and content farms and the threats of anonymous communication were far more visible.
But what do you mean "the threats of anonymous communication were far more visible"? Threats to, or threats from?
I agree with the sentiment of this article, but only to a degree. I recommend anyone interested in this to read Open Standards and the Digital Age, by Andrew Russel. The book is a partial refutation of the idea of an 'open web' using historical examples, the most shocking being the failure of open and democratic methods to build an open Internet standard versus the success of Serf and Kahn inventing TCP/IP in a close…
You agree with the sentiment of the article but then you're muddying the waters and shifting the discussion from Big Data companies like Google and Facebook to some abstract ideal of freedom and openness. The only "misleading language" that I see here belongs to you. The author is very clear about what disease has infected software development and the internet. I don't remember many spyware as a service and data coll…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google is a lot less useful than it used to be... Google getting rid of blog search, forum search, and google reader has done as much as facebook to silo-ize the web.
I agree. Google's removal of the discussions filter was a big blow to the openness of the web. There are some hacky solutions that emulate that feature but it is not as good. I was hoping Bing might pick up on it and introduce similar features, but it looks like their ad sponsors are just not happy with people having instant access to uncensored and unmoderated product discussions and reviews.
This!
With that filter I could name a product and find common people talking about it, now all I find is companies selling the product. This is getting even worse when searching political topics because from mixed people discussing the topic I now find only news sites or biased sources promoting their point.
The worst part is that if you're employed, it's probably a job requirement to use at least one of these surveillance capitalism platforms. Most people I know in tech have to be on Slack. Most people I know in advertising and PR have to be on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. For some jobs, like journalism, even the "troops on the ground" are required to post and tweet. Even for jobs without the social media taint, a…
I like Slack, our team communication has never been better, I like Facebook (messenger) because it's a common platform for all my acquaintances. Are we forced to share anything (really) personal though?
Some would argue having access to pictures of your face (that will be processed by powerful facial analysis software), your phone number, your location and your friends (which often overshare information, perhaps even data about you) is more than enough.
While I agree with the gist of the article, I have a problem conflating Google and Facebook in the same evil bag. Facebook is the evilest of evil, not only for the reasons stated, but also because information entered into Facebook never comes out. You have to have an account on FB to see anything on the platform. That is contrary to everything the Web ever stood for. Since I don't have a Facebook account, most of my…
Google is a lot less useful than it used to be... Google getting rid of blog search, forum search, and google reader has done as much as facebook to silo-ize the web.
Not that I necessarily blame them, all the SEO and blogspam crap made searching the web with something similar to pagerank and impossibility a long time ago. I think the eulogy was served by the "miserable failure" thing when GWB was elected (it was called a "Google bomb" in the media). That and all the low-effort wikipedia copies with their advertising made it impossible.
That said, I regularly do feel creeped out by the "search results" and the advertising they present to me. Sometimes the results are pretty useless too, I was once presented with a page of results where the 7 of the top-10 were written by myself (HN comments, etc) when I was searching for the docs of an obscure GCC feature I've discussed in the web often.
I don't know if there's anything that can be done to "fix" this. I generally try to navigate directly to an url I know or e.g. do a search on Wikipedia (Firefox + Vimperator make using many search engines on the address bar easy, unlike Google Chrome where the address bar UX seems to be designed to maximize Google searches and advertising).
With the gradually worsening signal-to-noise ratio, the web is getting less and less useful to me every day.