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Time to rebuild the web?

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Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#321

Post by jefurii »

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.

I can see small services like SDF.org and Eskimo.com making a comeback. People who want to #deleteFacebook and who have woken up to the problems with FB's business model, but who don't have the tech skills to do it themselves might pay a subscription fee to get access to webmail, Diaspora, Mastodon, Riot, and other services.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#322

Post by ShabbosGoy »

supernovae wrote: post #309
hueving wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it isn't the centralisation of services that are the problem. I strongly disagree. These giant monopolies on different corners of tech caused by centralization are the very reason we end up having to have these stupid discussions about how everything should work. All of this crap tied up in walled gardens means we just have to cry on the outside with #DeleteFacebook hash tags and hope stuff changes. You claim we nee…

I agree... With centralization so pervasive in technology today its harder to carve out sustainable business models. Google is largely pay to play for search, content creators are having to leverage twitter, instagram, facebook and pinterest to try and deliver traffic so 90% of our business is derrived from creating value for thse social networks and search engines in hopes of return. It really blows when the majorit…

The alternative monetization schemes like Steemit are interesting. Overall, it will lead content that is, on average, better because of monetary rewards/incentives.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#323

Post by extra88 »

Alex3917 wrote: post #314
hueving wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it isn't the centralisation of services that are the problem. I strongly disagree. These giant monopolies on different corners of tech caused by centralization are the very reason we end up having to have these stupid discussions about how everything should work. All of this crap tied up in walled gardens means we just have to cry on the outside with #DeleteFacebook hash tags and hope stuff changes. You claim we nee…

> These giant monopolies on different corners of tech caused by centralization are the very reason we end up having to have these stupid discussions about how everything should work. NPR basically has a monopoly on public radio, and yet we don't constantly hear about all the evil stuff they're doing. Why? Because they're not being run as a loss leader to sell missiles and landmines or whatever. Centralization isn't b…

> NPR basically has a monopoly on public radio

NPR does not have a monopoly and it's answerable to the member stations so it's not a great example of centralization but I agree that centralization is not inherently bad.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#324

Post by ilkan »

gkya wrote: post #254
JBReefer wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree. It's ads and the attention economy. They thrive on controversy - it's the psychological version of the banner ads in the 90s, but 10,000x more effective.

Is there a study on the (in)effectiveness of online ad campaigns? Is it or is it not a bubble that drives all this ad publisher to the ad platforms instead of buying ads more directly? I don't know the prices but I can bet buying an ad directly from a vlogger is cheaper and more effective than any ad platform out there. Is it really the dumbness of ad publishers that keep this system alive or is it me that I'm really…

It's scale. Finding individual vloggers, making deals and tracking results would be to time consuming to scale up to $1M/day per company. An ad platform is a centralized management and spend system for large groups of individual sites, bloggers, vloggers and apps.

Some medium sized companies will test with an ad platform, find the best performing sites and make deals with them directly.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#325

Post by extra88 »

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #288
fragmede wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ongoing success of Netflix proves not everybody is a freeloader, and a report from Spotify made the news for their estimate that 2 million people are using ad-block software to get premium without paying for it - the bigger news should really be that they have 150-some million users that aren't cheating the system, and that 70 million people pay money to Spotify. Everybody wants something for free, but there are…

As a paying customer, I'm genuinely surprised that adblocking is possible with Spotify considering they control both the servers and the client. That said, I started on the free plan and have friends who still use it and the ads really aren't intrustive at all - it hardly seems like it would be worth the effort?

Yes, the visual ads in the Spotify client are no big deal, it's behind other windows most of the time when I'm using it anyway. The interstitial audio ads are pretty bad; annoying, repetitive, and too frequent. But the audio ads still take up less "air time" than ads on Top 40 broadcast radio.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#326

Post by Just_Smith »

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #288
fragmede wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ongoing success of Netflix proves not everybody is a freeloader, and a report from Spotify made the news for their estimate that 2 million people are using ad-block software to get premium without paying for it - the bigger news should really be that they have 150-some million users that aren't cheating the system, and that 70 million people pay money to Spotify. Everybody wants something for free, but there are…

As a paying customer, I'm genuinely surprised that adblocking is possible with Spotify considering they control both the servers and the client. That said, I started on the free plan and have friends who still use it and the ads really aren't intrustive at all - it hardly seems like it would be worth the effort?

I haven't used an ad blockers for Spotify in a long time (because I'm a premium user when I can afford it), but when I was using one, all it did was mute the ads when they came on.

Not perfect, but it certainly didn't break the mood as much as a randomly placed ad.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#327

Post by Just_Smith »

supernovae wrote: post #309
hueving wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it isn't the centralisation of services that are the problem. I strongly disagree. These giant monopolies on different corners of tech caused by centralization are the very reason we end up having to have these stupid discussions about how everything should work. All of this crap tied up in walled gardens means we just have to cry on the outside with #DeleteFacebook hash tags and hope stuff changes. You claim we nee…

I agree... With centralization so pervasive in technology today its harder to carve out sustainable business models. Google is largely pay to play for search, content creators are having to leverage twitter, instagram, facebook and pinterest to try and deliver traffic so 90% of our business is derrived from creating value for thse social networks and search engines in hopes of return. It really blows when the majorit…

The reason why it's so hard to build a different type of business model within the web is because the business model precedes the web - and I'm surprised that this hasn't been mentioned already. The original post blamed the business model over centralization, but the whole reason the internet was built to be centralized was to protect profits in the already existing business model for media distribution.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#328

Post by j45 »

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.

Ad revenue needs replacing with a viable alternative.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#329

Post by nailer »

jacquesm wrote: post #306
nailer wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I specifically mean for a layperson. Hi John how's things? (close all the things) Is way better than Hi John how's things? (close all the things)

Actually, it isn't. Because it left out all the moving parts that are now in the CSS. That second example is complete, the first one isn't, the second one gives me a fair idea of what the result should look like, the first could look like anything (even a blank page...).

Yes, it seperates style from presentation. That's a great way to get an understanding of the structure and content of the document and seperate concerns. 'Table data holding table data' does not do this well at all.

Not responding further after this because `Actually, it isn't.` isn't a setence typically found in a polite adult conversation.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#330

Post by CM30 »

icc97 wrote: post #67
jen729w wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the few times I’ve heard a counter to this was an old fisherman who took us out on a boat here in Melbourne, Australia. Proper bloke, skin like leather from the sun, done nothing but run fishing trips his whole life. He was lamenting the loss of a particular forum with one of the other guys. “All just on Facebook now”, he said, and he said it with sadness. He missed that old forum.

Actually that makes a lot of sense, it's not that we need to have RSS replace Facebook, we need a resurgance of forums to take back from Facebook. Perhaps if forums could talk to each other you'd have an experience more like mastodon, but in concepts that more people understand. Something like an open source Stack Exchange network. So you can log-in to one of them but then easily create an account using the credentia…

This is basically the setup I've been discussing in my articles about a decentralised Reddit alternative. A system where forums are all hosted independently, but can share login data, reputation data, post history, etc.

https://artplusmarketing.com/discussing-a-decentralised-redd...

It would hopefully avert the issue Reddit like sites have where different groups want to control what others can say on the platform, by taking control out of the hands of a large corporation.

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