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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

#111

Post by carapace »

First, it didn't die, it attenuated. It's still there. Even Gopher is still there.

Second, when one says, "we did nothing", well, speak for yourself, eh? Lots of people did a lot of things and are still doing them.

But the normals do not care. It's that simple: apathy and complacency (the twins demons of our New Age) and a good stiff whollop of ignorance.

(Over a billion people don't know that Facebook isn't the Internet! Chew on that.)

Meanwhile, you know who didn't lose all their content? This guy. Because backups. (Another thing normals try not to think about.)

I've been saying for years now that the world is bifurcating into Eloi and Morlocks.

This is "victim" blaming, yeah, but in this case IMO the "victims" are to blame: no one's forcing people to be Eloi. If you care about your digital shit, back it the frak up already.

(E.g. Tarsnap, Amazon Glacier, a box of DVDs!?)

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

#112

Post by rasengan »

flir wrote: post #99
Timberwolf wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought similar. To me what Buzzfeed are calling the "old Internet" here is something I very much remember bemoaning as the "new Internet" in which dedicated protocols such as NNTP and IRC got displaced by brattish commercial upstarts whose web-based versions had 10% of the quality-of-life features and about 5% of the community etiquette. However they displaced everything that came before them because you could emb…

You've put your finger on something important - innovation moved from collaborative protocols to antagonistic web sites, and we're all the poorer for it.

Exactly. The protocol era was hijacked for profit.

I believe that incentivized, decentralized protocols are the evolution of all of this and will bring the protocol era back AND properly incentivizes participants.

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

#113

Post by xg15 »

MisterTea wrote: post #44

As far as I'm concerned the internet is just a global IP network. I can still ssh to my openbsd server and connect to my plan 9 system at home. I can rent a server that is still a PC. I can rent a VPS that feels like a pc. Until the day comes when I can no longer send whatever IP traffic where and when I want, I'm still using the same old internet. The roads are still the same. The scenery just changed with time. Eve…

That's all fine and good as long as you only build things for yourself (even then you'll have more trouble routing niche protocols and defending against hacking attempts) - but the scenery becomes extremely important once you involve others.

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

#114

Post by spaced-out »

shantly wrote: post #68
ekianjo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you make monitoring logs illegal? Because that is pretty much enough to start tracking users.

You don't need to make IP logging illegal to make collecting user info that's not absolutely necessary to a transaction illegal, and to make selling or using any necessarily-collected data for anything other than e.g. auditing or further service to the transaction (returns, say) also illegal. I don't know how this became about Apache logs or whatever. [EDIT] my point is there's a ton of info being collected that goes…

You forgot another vector of how companies monetize user data: using it to train ML models.

You don't need to keep the data long-term (though it would be more profitable if you could). You can still get a lot of value using the data to train an ML model, then use that model to build valuable decision-making systems, which few other companies could produce.

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

#116

Post by zozbot234 »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #66

Interesting that they don't mention the business model that powered the old internet: VC money based on a vague promise that a large enough user base, coupled with ad revenue, would bring untold riches. As TFA says, most of those sites switched to paid accounts as the promise of "build a huge audience and work out how to monetise them later" didn't actually deliver any money. So it's not that they died (they're mostl…

> I think the next decade will see this more and more: people actually paying for the things they use on the internet, because they realise that's the only way this will work now.

I think that "pay what you want"/crowdfunding models can fund a lot of the stuff that used to be provided "free" back in the day. The thing about paying for stuff on the internet is that many people find it quite inconvenient. It's not about the actual monetary expense, that's a minor factor (although it is a barrier to causal browsing, in and of itself). It's everything else you have to deal with as part of paying for something.

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

#119

Post by AndrewUnmuted »

shantly wrote: post #108
AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

> we should attempt to change things until they develop a way we like, where "we" is any interest group.

OK, then my interest group is "respecting contracts and continuing to place the burden on consumers to make informed decisions, and on corporations to not commit fraud."

What you present is, frankly, a disgusting way to think, and gives absolutely no volition to or consideration of the rights of the individuals who work in and operate these companies. Their rights are just as valid as yours, and you have no legitimate right to change or invalidate the contractual relationship a company has with its customers.

It's also not a "free software" way to think about the problem. FOSS methodology suggests that you present a better alternative, not to use the violence of central authorities to force your way upon everyone else.

> democratic states

Speak for yourself buddy. I live in a Constitutional Republic, not a democracy.

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

#120

Post by peterwwillis »

The saddest thing about this is how desperately people cling to records of the past, as if they matter.

If you actually missed something from back then, you would remember it, and it's not really gone. If you don't remember it, it wasn't important. But here people are, trying to convince you you've lost something that you don't even know what it is.

The first time you lose all your files, it feels like disaster. The second time, you realize it's just digital materialism, and you get along just fine without it.

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