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Time to rebuild the web?

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Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#111

Post by grzm »

quantumwoke wrote: post #38
bhaak wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sound like a buzzword machine. A simple RSS feed can easily be hand written. But of course, you don't do that because there are so many mature tools to create or manipulate an XML feed already. Whereas with jsonfeed there is not much yet because it is so new. If you can hack JSON, you can hack XML as well. Even programmer novices can do this. Edit: Reworded the last sentence that could be interpreted as a persona…

Please be civil :). Avoiding ad hominem attacks is more conducive to discussion. I have already justified my preference for jsonfeed. XML has proved many times to decrease developer productivity. To my knowledge open source projects that have dropped or diminished their use of XML have only become more popular over time. Extrapolating a little bit, switching to JSON can only be a good thing.

A key difference now compared to the early days of XML and RSS is there weren't great libraries out there to handle the processing, both output and input. Many people were rolling their own. That definitely wasn't great. It was similar to using JavaScript prior to the widespread adoption of JQuery. However, that's not the case anymore. I think there are possibly a lot of benefits to recommend jsonfeed over RSS (or, a better solution, in my opinion, Atom), but you can build yourself a bit of a straw man by ascribing the problems of early XML usage with the situation today.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#112

Post by noir-york »

The web reduces the cost of information transfer to pretty much zero so anyone can publish, with no gatekeepers (of old).

Scale matters. Information inequality was inevitable.

Free trade led to growing concentrations of economic power and rising economic inequality. We also have information inequality to go with it, and because information transfer is much lower cost than trade, information inequality will be much higher and power more concentrated (social media stocks should thus be valued higher than companies which make real things)

Not sure the article understands that inequality is inherent in the structure of the web.

If you wanted to reduce inequaliy there are two options: 1. redistribution 2. raising the 'transaction' costs

In economics we know what those look like:

1. progressive taxation and a welfare state 2. legislation to raise environmental standards, increase minimum wages, etc.

What's the equivalent of a social welfare state and higher minimum wage when it comes to information?

Another way of looking at this is in terms of externalities: free social media generates both positive (connecting with old friends) and negative externalities (fake news, election mischief, etc).

One way of internalising both would be for Facbook to charge users. That is never going to happen. Carbon credits and the like make polluters internalise the costs that society would otherwise incur. So, what kind of legislation (and it will have to be legislation) would get social media companies to be pay for the negative externalities?

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#113

Post by klokoman »

ElCapitanMarkla wrote: post #99
freehunter wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like subreddits.

I was reading something the other day about how reddit has killed the community feel of forums. And thinking about it I agree, I can remember pre reddit I used to be reasonably active on a few forums, made friends etc. Reddit interactions feel a lot more ephemeral if that’s the right word.

Because there aren't avatars and signatures. Those are essential to recognize users and also find out what they're about (signatures with links to other sites helped everyone). Also even a little personalization will be an incentive to invest a little more time in the community.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#114

Post by corobo »

realpeopleio wrote: post #108
corobo wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But a user might pay $9/year for all websites Nope. Not going to happen. A HN user might, but regular user? No way in hell. Honestly I'd be surprised if you managed to win them over with $1/year or whatever the card minimum TX cost is. Even I was blindsided by it with a "wooah, whats this about" and I'm happy paying up for apps etc just to test them once. I thought I'd accidentally signed up to the website side of…

At first maybe for most people they won't want to pay the cost. What (hopefully) will happen is that smaller sites who have problems keeping bots and fake accounts at bay will decide it's worth it to them to require all their users to use RealPerson. And then (hopefully) over time users face no additional cost using RealPerson on other sites because they already have an account. Incidentally, this is how RealPeople.i…

The way you're addressing this site is confusing, you're talking as if your username isn't "realpeopleio" - are you affiliated with the site or just registered under a confusing username?

I apologise for asking this rather than any actual followup questions but it's got me proper distracted

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#115

Post by throw2016 »

martin_drapeau wrote: post #30

When I ask friends and family who use Facebook daily, privacy and security never come up as pain points. Media is blowing everything out of proportion. Replacing Facebook with RSS or Feedly is nonsense. My friends and family have no idea what those are. Facebook makes it easy for people to connect with old friends and family members through active human interactions: like this, follow her, read that. By doing so you…

There is nothing wrong with Facebook. Its a legitimate use of the web.

We just need to tweak the advertising model to disable micro targeting by both advertisers and platforms. Google is a far worse offender here. This will kill the incentives for surveillance and stalking at source.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#117

Post by johnsea »

What I miss in the article is tax. Yes, "Much as we may complain about Facebook, selecting relevant content from an ocean of random sites is an important service". Same with google, they do a terrific job with providing YouTube and the Search infrastructure.

But YouTube, Facebook, Google destroy (a.o.) the 'normal media' as they oligopolize advertising. They hinder progress/competition as they cross-subside their ventures with ad-money.

The simplest solution imho would be to tax advertising strongly. This could be done independently by countries. E.g. every single advert in Germany would bear a tax of 30 - 70 %. This gives a country the power (and money) to steer in directions which benefit the country as a whole, i.e. support traditional media, public broadcaster, culture.

Concentrated advertising money is dangerous. It should be regulated. The same approach is being done with e.g. cigarettes and gas. Tax is here to contain an unwanted action (smoking) or to build infrastructure (roads). Couldn't the same approach be taken for the internet?

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#118

Post by zimpenfish »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #75
lioeters wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the idea of a text-only browser, back to the basics. Oh and I miss web rings!

I'd kinda like to reinvent the "web" as a TUI. Like, every site is just a program compiled to a portable bytecode that interfaces in terminal codes and you'd "browse" it with a modified telnet client. No more bullshit styling you can't read supported by 200 javascript dependencies that refuse to let you click buttons if you have the audacity to be behind a dns filter, no more style over substance, no more animated gi…

Sounds a bit like Gopher. Which didn't really catch on.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#119

Post by snarf21 »

randomsearch wrote: post #105

I don't believe the problem lies in any technology. We don't need blockchain, it's not JavaScript minification, it isn't the centralisation of services that are the problem. It's the business model. No amount of tech is going to change that. If you want to change the situation, start social media businesses with a different business model.

Agreed 1000%. Everyone wants unlimited high quality content that is also free but no ads and conditional privacy and "true" information and ... and ... and ...

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#120

Post by cdata »

Hedja wrote: post #23

It feels like this is already a work in progress using Beaker Browser and Dat. - Beaker lets you browse entire websites (dat archives) and fork them. - It lets you create and serve your own sites directly from the browser and seed it from a server (like a torrent). - It lets other sites create templated sites under your name for user generated content. - Visitors by default temporarily seed your website which may red…

It seemed to me that the OP was making a distinctly different suggestion: the real challenge is offering a better UX.

Emerging distributed tech won't fix a UX problem just because it happens to be technologically sophisticated (he calls out TOR, but I think he is making a general comment here).

Instead, he asks, why not spend some effort giving older tech like RSS a better UX?

I'm inclined to agree, but on the other hand it seems like the marketplace of ideas speaks for itself and we should be keeping our eyes on the future.

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