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The old internet died and we watched and did nothing

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Re: The old internet died and we watched and did nothing

#101

Post by sneakernets »

shantly wrote: post #75
rasengan wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this. It was when we designed protocols with consensus thru RFC, and apps communicating with those protocols.

And companies started dropping that when it became very important to their business model that they maximize the amount of data they can collect about a user. 3rd party clients for my service? Unacceptable, can't spy on the user as much there, and can't advertise at them. Communicating with users on other services? Unacceptable, I need those users on my service so I can spy on them too , and besides those other servi…

Don't know why you're being downvoted when this is exactly the case in my experience. They never said "spying" outright but it's definitely why walled gardens like AOL popped up like wildfire in the 90s and why stuff like AIM was the exception and not the rule.

Re: The old internet died and we watched and did nothing

#102

Post by anongraddebt »

foobarian wrote: post #46
rasengan wrote: post #4

The old internet died long before these centralized services appeared. The old internet was when we ran our own servers, built and hosted our own websites, and we were truly free in the wild wild west. Its easier than ever to run your own servers, but today few do. The old internet is dead (for now) and it looks more like the BBS era today. But we innovated past that then, and we will innovate past that now. I am gre…

I feel like the ratios changed a lot which makes it seem like the old Internet died. But there are probably more people running their own servers than there used to be. It's just that that makes up just something like 1% of the user community instead of 100%. "The old internet" is what you got when only nerds were online. Replicate that and you got your old internet back. Cue the above mentioned decentralization work…

This comment should be at the top of the thread.

Re: The old internet died and we watched and did nothing

#103

Post by shantly »

spaced-out wrote: post #100
shantly wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making it illegal so no legitimate business can do it without incredible risk of being sued/charged out of existence seems quite feasible.

Very few voters will support a bill that will result in them having to pay for things like email, facebook, youtube, etc...

Internet service used to include basic services like email and newsgroups. Still "paid", but effectively bundled, and a tiny part of the total cost.

Re: The old internet died and we watched and did nothing

#104

Post by papito »

rasengan wrote: post #4

The old internet died long before these centralized services appeared. The old internet was when we ran our own servers, built and hosted our own websites, and we were truly free in the wild wild west. Its easier than ever to run your own servers, but today few do. The old internet is dead (for now) and it looks more like the BBS era today. But we innovated past that then, and we will innovate past that now. I am gre…

TTT

Re: The old internet died and we watched and did nothing

#105

Post by na85 »

AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #41
shantly wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making it illegal so no legitimate business can do it without incredible risk of being sued/charged out of existence seems quite feasible.

You really don’t think companies would figure out a way around any such “illegality” or just use it anti competitively as is being done throughout the EU with its ham-handed policies?

So are you suggesting there's no way to defeat the tech oligarchy and we should just surrender to them?

Re: The old internet died and we watched and did nothing

#106

Post by AndrewUnmuted »

ekianjo wrote: post #40
AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may be true but it doesn’t justify the monetization of user data. If this data is useful to cross reference, let the user opt in and use it. Give the user control and insight into the data collection. The data can be useful without tricking users and making money off their private use activities.

> This may be true but it doesn’t justify the monetization of user data. I don't understand your point. If it can technically be done and it is valuable in any way, it WILL be done. No matter the justification.

My point is that if something is being monetized, what makes it monetizable is the agreement between the user and the service provider.

All sorts of data is collected every day that is not monetized, but could be.

Consumers are allowing their data to be monetized by agreeing to sign up for "free" services which take an asset from the user which they do not know how to monetize themselves.

In a way the dynamic is similar to the early 20th century BP oil fields in Iran; the Persians had oil under their feet for centuries but outsiders came in and started to pump it out of the ground, making themselves rich but the general public of Iran - not so much. They didn't even know what to do with oil at first.

Once the Iranian people saw what was going on and realized that they were being exploited, they elected a leader who sought to nationalize the oil fields, since they finally began to understand what asset they had and how and why they could monetize it themselves.

The internet needs its own Mohammad Mosaddegh, so to speak. Not to commit property crimes and break contracts like Mosaddegh did - but to show the masses what is going on in a way that encourages them to change their behaviors in a fundamental way.

Re: The old internet died and we watched and did nothing

#107

Post by xg15 »

foobarian wrote: post #46
rasengan wrote: post #4

The old internet died long before these centralized services appeared. The old internet was when we ran our own servers, built and hosted our own websites, and we were truly free in the wild wild west. Its easier than ever to run your own servers, but today few do. The old internet is dead (for now) and it looks more like the BBS era today. But we innovated past that then, and we will innovate past that now. I am gre…

I feel like the ratios changed a lot which makes it seem like the old Internet died. But there are probably more people running their own servers than there used to be. It's just that that makes up just something like 1% of the user community instead of 100%. "The old internet" is what you got when only nerds were online. Replicate that and you got your old internet back. Cue the above mentioned decentralization work…

I feel the ratio is the important thing - at least if your goal is to let the broader society benefit from your work and not just an ivory tower of people with similar background.

In that regard, the "nerds" utterly failed. We're looking back at the "old" internet with some kind of sentimental sadness, but we've evidently failed to convince the general public that a noncommercial, decentralised internet is the way to go.

Re: The old internet died and we watched and did nothing

#108

Post by shantly »

AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #98
shantly wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this kind of defeatism entirely baffling . Regulating corporations is hard so we shouldn't try? This is a lot less complicated than many sorts of regulation we attempt. Just give up on all of it, it's pointless? Where's the bottom on this line of thought?

Yes, it's pointless. There is nothing illegal about what is going on now, and nothing which should be illegal about what is going on. In this context, "regulating" simply means making a behavior we didn't see coming illegal. It's a short-sighted, unimaginative, and blatantly violent way to solve a problem which stems entirely from the consumer public, not from big bad corporations. It will be used by major corps as a…

> There is nothing illegal about what is going on now, and nothing which should be illegal about what is going on. In this context, "regulating" simply means making a behavior we didn't see coming illegal.

When we don't like they way corporate-driven markets (so... all of them, really) are developing we should attempt to change things until they develop a way we like, where "we" is any interest group. If we're not harnessing the activity of companies to the collective good, why let our democratic states charter them in the first place?

Re: The old internet died and we watched and did nothing

#109

Post by mumblemumble »

prox wrote: post #94
mumblemumble wrote: post #59

> Can you think of a picture of yourself on the internet from before 2010, other than your old Facebook photos? Nah, because I never felt compelled to put pictures of myself on the Internet before then. I still don't. What I miss is the personal website, where people shared information and opinions about things they loved. That Web has been crowded out by, well, people posting pictures of themselves. It's like that p…

I think the advance of mobile phones and the cool factor that surrounded it for a long time, and “Hey look at this picture of my coffee I am drinking right now” kind of drowned the blogosphere. It was the time Facebook could count on being cool. Which evaporated after 2010/2012. I think my personal take is that the idea of “your content is your own” got lost in the process of sharing-everything culture. Luckily it is…

Even blogs feel a little bit stilted to me. They encourage a certain way of organizing things that is useful for RSS syndication, but at the cost of placing some fairly tight editorial limits on the person running the site.

What I really miss is what came before the blogosphere really took off: Geocities-style loosely organized collections of static pages.

Re: The old internet died and we watched and did nothing

#110

Post by DataWorker »

shantly wrote: post #84
AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really don’t think companies would figure out a way around any such “illegality” or just use it anti competitively as is being done throughout the EU with its ham-handed policies?

I find this kind of defeatism entirely baffling . Regulating corporations is hard so we shouldn't try? This is a lot less complicated than many sorts of regulation we attempt. Just give up on all of it, it's pointless? Where's the bottom on this line of thought?

The same spirit was what kept slavery viable for so long. They said abolishing slavery wasn’t practical. Many had conflicting interests, as do many here.
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