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Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

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Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#461

Post by zdkl »

Veen wrote: post #455
zdkl wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well we can't all make a living as authors or librarians. Ads supported this delusion for a while but historically most people trying to live from their creativity/written work (or modernly, video work) have actually starved to death. If you're in it to get rich or to mke a living exclusively from your art, you better be good enough rather than expecting a sense of duty from your public to subsidise your effort. Not…

> makes ads or extracting value from your public by all means ok Certainly not by all means. But it isn't unreasonable to expect that if people gain value from something you create, some of that value accrues to you as the creator. I make most of my living as a freelance writer, but I just charge other people to write the content they can't or won't. There is also another problem here: the market doesn't typically in…

The use-case you describe as freelance writer or proper investigative journalism is the one place I expect targeted (and author curated) advertising to be able to pay the bills in the ideal market-fit theory. If as an author and "provider of opinions" you can't convince commercial actors in your niche to funnel value to you, I'd argue you shouldn't be writing non-fiction commercialy.

And in this not strictly commercial writing context, I believe client side mining may be a good form of low-commitment compensation.

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#462

Post by submeta »

digi_owl wrote: post #426
visarga wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subreddits resemble IRC from that point of view - you just need to join the right one.

Kinda, but not as real time. I recall having on the fly conversations about TV programs on IRC.

Twitter! When it comes to the real time aspect I know nothing better than Twitter.

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#463

Post by tim333 »

ataturk wrote: post #26

The part where the author tries to tie Brexit and the election of Donald Trump to the user-hostile web is bonkers. People, you have to understand this: There exists a large number of others out there who desperately want government reformed, want more localized control over their lives, and who voted accordingly. It wasn't some trick pulled on them by corporations or Russians manipulating social media. I realize that…

>The part ... Brexit and the election of Donald Trump ... is bonkers.

For me that was the good part. I like the web, actually like facebook and don't give a damn that people collect data on me to try to show me ads that uBlock then blocks.

Having whole countries screwed by idiot politics however is a problem.

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#464

Post by throwanem »

submeta wrote: post #462
digi_owl wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kinda, but not as real time. I recall having on the fly conversations about TV programs on IRC.

Twitter! When it comes to the real time aspect I know nothing better than Twitter.

What makes it so good?

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#465

Post by beobab »

eggpy wrote: post #235
_jal wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with you on this. Honestly at this point, if the information is only contained within a video, I skip it and move on[1]. (I usually leave video in the browser crippled, only turning it on when I actually want to watch something.) [1] The trend of support docs for enterprise software going video is horrible, stupid, and a negative mark when I'm evaluating products. If someone has to spend hours of eyebleed rewindi…

My office provides a license for Pluralsight. I have found some courses with high quality content and interesting information, and it's really useful to have it all in one place. BUT, especially with programming, I find video to be a really challenging medium. It's so much more useful to scan for things you don't know or context of examples and spend some time digesting, or just playing around with sample code. Not e…

I love the transcripts that Pluralsight provides to go with the videos. I use them after I have watched the video to find the section I'm interested in. I only actually noticed them when another staff member pointed them out to me, but they're available from the course details page.

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#466

Post by saladeen »

Pushing of apps onto mobile users viewing sites inside browser has really gone evil. Reddit makes you click 'No, I don't want to install reddit app' or similar at least 3 times before letting you view the content.

Unrelated to that, as a HAM I've long (since 2000 or so) been preaching that if you want to know how internet will be changed by commercial and government interest, look into early radio history - it has many parallels with development of internet: an open, free to publish network primarily ran by enthusiasts that got progressively locked down until you had to be a major player to publish content on it, turned into ad-driven economy etc.

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#467

Post by boomlinde »

s73ver_ wrote: post #320
gowld wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the videos are distracting and seize the user's attention for ad delivery. Imagine that I followed you around all day bumping into you, waiting for you to drop some money and then walk away without noticing, so I could pick it up. That's annoying and hostile to you, but profitable to be with sufficient automation. That's the modern commercial web.

sigh No, no it isn't. Not even close. The fact of the matter is, people want to be paid for the stuff they create. That's how they're enabled to create more of that stuff. We learned a long, long time ago that people didn't want to outright pay for things. That doesn't leave many options.

Well, you could force people to pay you at gunpoint. There are plenty of options, it's just a matter of how far down the ladder of morally reprehensible alternatives you are willing to go. Actively manipulating people into wasting time to make a buck from your particular diversion-of-many by exploiting their curiosity is already low enough as far as I'm concerned.

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#468

Post by hasenj »

tomc1985 wrote: post #259
hasenj wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? I think it's quite the opposite. The GPL allows you to run your code on a server that clients connect to without you having to give them the code to your server. This is the only way to profit off of GPL licensed libraries.

GPLv3 was supposed to patch that hole but isn't really seeing much use. With regards to hosted services, yes GPLv2 is quite liberal and prone to abuse

Not really. The AGPL is what is supposed to counter that.

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#469

Post by lukevers »

pmoriarty wrote: post #76
shangxiao wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the fact that IRC is still alive and kicking. The #django channel on freenode is still pretty active as opposed other communities that flock to slack or gitter.

Technical chat on IRC is still alive and well on Freenode, but non-technical chat has mostly moved on from IRC to other media.

I have an IRC channel that myself and a few friends use every day. It’s probably 30% technical and 70% chat. I do wish more people still used it, but I guess most people like chat platforms with fancy features now.

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#470

Post by submeta »

throwanem wrote: post #464
submeta wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter! When it comes to the real time aspect I know nothing better than Twitter.

What makes it so good?

Whatever event happens right now (WhatsApp down? Elections in a country? A TV show running on TV [1]?) go to Twitter and search for it with relevant keywords and you'll find people writing about it.

[1] at least in Germany

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