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If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs

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Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs

#121

Post by dewey »

ironmagma wrote: post #120
dewey wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand, what's the problem with following people and using the timeline (maybe even in a third party client that sorts it chronologically)? What do you gain by only navigating to profiles manually?

The timeline is controlled via algorithm, and either filters or selects things to show you based on an uncontrollable process which is likely just meant to make you more outraged, annoyed, etc. to keep you engaged with the platform. Not only is that unhealthy, but it doesn’t make for an enjoyable experience almost by definition.

But if you only follow people which profiles you would want to visit manually you wouldn't see all this outrage?

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs

#122

Post by snackematician »

Mizza wrote: post #58

Flip side: I would destroy Twitter. Twitter is absolutely the worst thing to happen to the internet. Low effort, inherently self-aggrandizing and standoffish, literally impossible to express a complex or nuanced thought. The only people I know who regularly engage with Twitter are extreme narcissists and conformist thinkers, and yet all of Twitter considers themselves to be the Important People. This mentality has cr…

Counterpoint: Twitter is the preferred social media among scientists, and a good place to keep up with the latest papers and developments. The quality of discussion on science twitter can be pretty good too, despite the character limit.

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs

#123

Post by pkamb »

zhdc1 wrote: post #72
dewey wrote: post #32

Blogs are still there, just not easily findable through Google as most of the ones you find are low-value SEO blogs aiming at search engine traffic. Discovery is a problem but I just subscribe to blogs when I find them via RSS (Blogs still have RSS, it's hard to find one without which is surprising but I'm glad that's the case), over time I build up my list of blogs I like and they usually link to other blogs and the…

Blogs and forums stopped being a thing when Google flushed them out sometime between 2009-2012 (with the Panda update? I'm not an SEO guy so I wasn't really following it at the time). Anyway, it felt like a bunch of places went from having active communities to stagnating or dying outright overnight. People forget just how much general innovation was being driven by these sites - Styleforum and AskAndy for men's fash…

Don't discount Instagram killing many of those communities.

So much easier to take a picture on your phone and post it to your Instagram page or story. Better dopamine rush, too, from a bunch of Like/Comment notifications rather than maybe a single forum reply hours later.

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs

#124

Post by ironmagma »

dewey wrote: post #121
ironmagma wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The timeline is controlled via algorithm, and either filters or selects things to show you based on an uncontrollable process which is likely just meant to make you more outraged, annoyed, etc. to keep you engaged with the platform. Not only is that unhealthy, but it doesn’t make for an enjoyable experience almost by definition.

But if you only follow people which profiles you would want to visit manually you wouldn't see all this outrage?

You might miss other more positive or neutral messages from those people.

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs

#125

Post by angstrom »

afiori wrote: post #102
angstrom wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I characterize Reddit as true neutral. It has the potential to be any alignment, but it's mostly the will of the moderator to impose what alignment any subreddit will be. It's the only place on the Internet that still has the feel occaisionally of the 90s/00s.

Surely that is/was reddit's promise, but it does not live up to it.

I think where it breaks down is when you have to run plugins that identify the kind of person a user is. I find that reduces the crapiness of the interactions if I can see someone is a POS without investing much time in finding that out. It's a step that shouldn't be necessary, but the faster that can be discerned the less I find myself second guessing their intent.

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs

#126

Post by dewey »

bckmn wrote: post #116
dewey wrote: post #32

Blogs are still there, just not easily findable through Google as most of the ones you find are low-value SEO blogs aiming at search engine traffic. Discovery is a problem but I just subscribe to blogs when I find them via RSS (Blogs still have RSS, it's hard to find one without which is surprising but I'm glad that's the case), over time I build up my list of blogs I like and they usually link to other blogs and the…

In a vein similar to your annoying technology site, you would probably appreciate https://grumpy.website/ One of my favorite blogs of all time.

Grumpy is amazing! We very much enjoy their content and actually got inspired by that site in the first place. Theres a link to them on our About page:

https://annoying.technology/colophon/

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs

#127

Post by NicoJuicy »

progre wrote: post #114
NicoJuicy wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an entire setup for crawling rss hourly http://handlr.sapico.me

Is this your site? It's really nice! I have something similar (although without all of the features on this site). I also scrape a bunch of blogs that doesn't have rss. One thing, people really like https, especially when sending form data such as the signup.

Thanks, I'm dogfooding it mostly. But I added https :) ( https://handlr.sapico.me )

I'm currently the only one that can add RSS-feeds though.

It has custom actions also, eg. https://handlr.sapico.me/Item/Details?id=ab43c38d-3d96-ea11-... where comments by HN are loaded in the post.

( Custom tag that adds a form field to input the HN Id )

Eg. CommentsByHackernews is the tag.

I also have a variation for the city were I live in ( Bruges / Belgium )

https://brugge.sapico.me/

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs

#128

Post by dewey »

ironmagma wrote: post #124
dewey wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if you only follow people which profiles you would want to visit manually you wouldn't see all this outrage?

You might miss other more positive or neutral messages from those people.

I don't think messages are filtered out, they are just shuffled to show you the ones first that the algorithm thinks you like best.

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs

#129

Post by heavyset_go »

specialp wrote: post #13

There is just a problem with self curated content in general. There used to be a lot of experts making their own sites with information that was never available before. It was easy to just upload some HTML files somewhere. Now this information is being put in inaccessible areas like Facebook Groups. Then people tried running their own sites with wordpress and stuff but that becomes hard as you are usually on a crappy…

What are these Facebook Groups with expert content?

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs

#130

Post by jerrac »

Heh. I remember the days before blogs. Everyone posted on community forums. You'd get some amazing, long, and lasting conversations that way. Then everyone who posted in the forums started blogging, and I saw the forums dry up. Sure, part of it was that teenagers grew up and went to college and didn't have time for the forums, but a good portion was due to blogs.

I suppose good communities still exist out there, somewhere... But, like the OP said about blogs being hyper focused, there don't seem to be many general forums. I've mostly stumbled across tech related forums.

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