If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs • Hacker News Board

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

#481

Post by z3t4 » Sun, May 17, 2020, 6:54 AM UTC

carapace wrote: post #348

polishdude20 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often notice when I start writing on a particular topic, I learn more about my thoughts and opinions of it and realize my thoughts are wrong or not really novel. Halfway in I give up since I feel like, "oh, this actually isn't really adding anything new to the conversation". Then I leave with a new humbleness about my beliefs but also a sense of "when am I actually going to know enough to warrant writing about it?"…

That's awesome! If only most people would do that, I think the internet would be a much more entertaining and enlightening place. Here's the thing: write that. Go meta, just a little, and write about your journey. "I thought this, but then I found out that, and now my questions have evolved thus..." I think it was Orson Welles who, when somebody asked him if they could write his biography, said, "No, because it will…

You can add tremendious value just by publishing your research and linking to the sources, even if you have not added anything, those hours you spent searching - that your readers dont have to, and likely your readers dont have the same experience as you, so they wont be able to read the sorces critically. So by not adding anything, you can still save someone years of time.

There is also nothing wrong with serving good knowelage, even if you can find the information somewhere else. Maybe your source is 10 years old, what has happened since? Or maybe its hard to understand for laymen. Or maybe the other sources will fall off the web, great websites disappears in the thousands every day.

Maybe someone is looking for a tech, but there's little info out there, even if the i info is good, it can still be dismissed. Help spread the knowledge.

Then there's the noise to signal problem. Your blog will be a light beacon - for others to navigate around all the crap.

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

#482

Post by tome » Sun, May 17, 2020, 7:05 AM UTC

jrochkind1 wrote: post #427

zhdc1 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Blogs and forums stopped being a thing when Google flushed them out sometime between 2009-2012… Reddit was supposed to become the trusted alternative, Are you suggesting Google had a plan to promote reddit? or what do you mean by "was supposed to"?

Presumably that it was the business plan of Reddit to become the trusted alternative.

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

#483

Post by ras2020 » Sun, May 17, 2020, 7:11 AM UTC

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…

I really understand your feelings. A ton of misinformation, disinformation, and fake news, make Twitter a terrible platform. It looks much better than Facebook. Many people are being controlled something to say what some want to hear. Attacking and harassing users is what I see every day. I don't know where we can find another platform that gives and updates us.

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

#484

Post by TwoBit » Sun, May 17, 2020, 7:13 AM UTC

josephjrobison wrote: post #361

crazygringo wrote: post #154

This article makes... no sense to me. Blogs are still around, everywhere, and show up easily in search results if a post matches a relevant query. And bloggers still list other blogs in sidebars. I genuinely don't understand the author's complaint. The only thing I can imagine is that there are a lot more alternatives for self-expression on the internet now, e.g. Instagram, Twitter, podcasts, etc. So blogs are perhap…

Essentially the author is longing for a day before social media existed, but the world has changed fast - and that's ok. The medium has diversified away from just blogs, but the amount mediums and creators has exploded. Many of those people who used to blog on Blogspot have moved on to YouTube, TikTok Twitter, Instagram, Medium, WordPress, Shopify, Webflow, and more. So the whole premise is bunk. "Blogs" in their 200…

Author's point about blogs is that Twitter, Instagram, etc aren't blogs and that's what he wants. Author's failure is that he is wrong, as blogs do still exist, including the Blogger service.

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

#485

Post by Reelin » Sun, May 17, 2020, 7:14 AM UTC

adrianN wrote: post #467

Reelin wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouble with that is that once you post something to it you can never associate it with yourself (even accidentally!) or deanonymization of everything else posted by that identity will also occur. Half baked idea: A decentralized and properly anonymized (at the protocol level) service intended for long-form articles. Employ cryptographic primitives to allow association of a single article with one or more identit…

That won't be safe for very long. De-anonymization based on writing style is pretty good already.

That's definitely true, but depending on the usecase it might not matter all that much. Also, that problem already applies to an anonymous blog anyway!

Consider the usage of semi-anonymous accounts on HN or Reddit or wherever. There's some risk of deanonymization depending on usage style and how determined the attacker is, but it's still quite different from openly publishing things in a manner that links back to you directly.

The issue for me is that (for an anonymous blog) once I decide to publish something to it the article becomes permanently and publicly linked to all the others as well. This means that I can never change my mind in the future without simultaneously changing my mind about all the other content published there. It also means that if I ever slip up (say on a non-anonymous HN account) and reveal that I'm the author then I've inadvertently and publicly tied the entire blog to myself (not just that one article).

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

#486

Post by sillycube » Sun, May 17, 2020, 7:18 AM UTC

Blog used to be a cool thing for teenagers a long time ago. Since YouTube, fb, insta are coming out, users are more inclined to images and videos instead of text.

Blog can never go back to be the most popular media. However, blogs will continue to specialize in long form articles, e.g. tutorials, how-to, reviews, ebook, courses, etc

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

#487

Post by matheusmoreira » Sun, May 17, 2020, 7:19 AM UTC

aazaa wrote: post #178

The best way to bring back blogs is to start with your own. It looks like this is the author's fourth post and s/he hit a home run with the top post on HN. But that's rarely how things work. The thing few people tell you when you start blogging is how futile it will seem - for a long, long time. You'll start by posting something you put a lot of work into. You'll publish, thinking of all the comments and emails you'l…

> Then, nothing. You'll check the analytics. Abysmal. Nobody is reading!

Open source software development can be like this as well. Most of my projects ended up being useful to me alone. I started some just to see if some fundamental idea was possible: lost all motivation to actually finish the project once I proved to myself that it was.

I contributed some features to an existing project and they got a lot more attention. Interacting with fellow developers and users is a great experience. Made me care a lot more about the end result and whether it got merged.

Perhaps a personal wiki would be better than a blog. As long as the articles are useful to their writers, they should have enough motivation to keep writing.

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

#488

Post by robot » Sun, May 17, 2020, 7:21 AM UTC

aazaa wrote: post #178

The best way to bring back blogs is to start with your own. It looks like this is the author's fourth post and s/he hit a home run with the top post on HN. But that's rarely how things work. The thing few people tell you when you start blogging is how futile it will seem - for a long, long time. You'll start by posting something you put a lot of work into. You'll publish, thinking of all the comments and emails you'l…

this is true, though with the assumption of blogging as it is in today's world where it is lonely and only a search engine can find you. if blogging was done inside a supportive community and network it could be less lonely and you could get frequent feedback and interactions.

If I was to make an analogy using your perspective on blogging with facebook or instagram - you post about yourself or post personal photos for a long time. It is futile, for a long long time, nobody sees your content... you post photos for years, and you realize it changes you. You will notice patterns, you will get better at posting photos ...

I am exaggerating to make a point and it is this, you may find yourself needing to perfect your content strategy(blog, photos or facebook-style posts) for years and the main reason it doesn't pay back is there is no network or community anymore. You shouldn't have to be a pro to get noticed.

People tried decentralized networks and that didn't work so well, because one - you need modern blogging software (newsfeed, real time comments, spam moderation, good recommendation algorithms) and it has to be managed by a centralized authority that offers a great user experience. Today, closest thing to this is facebook and twitter (and instagram). All in all you must have these for a great blogging experience: first, good software and central authority, then network. It must be focused on serving authentic bloggers, and it must be backed by a commercial solution.

That in turn means, a paid service, whose customers are bloggers. That means, how badly do you want an amazing blogging experience, where you blog with great writing tools, search, discover, and interact with others (and probably in today's world, be able to hop on a video chat with your viewers and share that in comments). Yes, so how much do you desire to have it, would you pay $5/month? $30/month? $100/month? It comes down to this.

If there was monetary backing, this problem could be solved with a 'solution'. Chances are that not enough many people want it, and people are content with free posting on instagram, twitter, or facebook, and happy to live with ads. If this was a high demand service, chances are that it would have already been built, or existing ones would already be prospering (tumblr didn't make money and got acquired, blogger shut down, medium serving writers looking to make money, recreational blogging is not their target and so on). So is this a real problem to solve or not?

Maybe people don't know they want it and aren't organized enough to support it, - if you built an amazing experience maybe lots of bloggers will pay for it, then it will become another, facebook where the network is funded by its users.

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

#489

Post by larsrc » Sun, May 17, 2020, 7:29 AM UTC

rland wrote: post #356

mawise wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those blogs from the time before were written for the purpose of writing, not for the purpose of getting lots of viewership. The blogs the author misses aren't written to make money off of ad traffic, they were just written to put down ideas. Today that need is filled with Facebook/Twitter/... and even there with the currency of likes/comments those motivations get twisted. Some of the internet has also shifted to a…

Well, this is why I don’t have a blog. I have a lot of strong opinions that might be interesting to some people, but I don’t want to miss opportunities because some HR person googled my name and found a post they disagreed with. Or, in the future, not a real person but an algorithm.

https://xkcd.com/137/

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

#490

Post by Reelin » Sun, May 17, 2020, 7:30 AM UTC

jstanley wrote: post #475

Reelin wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouble with that is that once you post something to it you can never associate it with yourself (even accidentally!) or deanonymization of everything else posted by that identity will also occur. Half baked idea: A decentralized and properly anonymized (at the protocol level) service intended for long-form articles. Employ cryptographic primitives to allow association of a single article with one or more identit…

How would such a system be "abused"? What does abuse of a blogging platform even look like? People might write text that others don't want to read?

I hadn't really thought it through honestly. I'm just assuming that if an anonymized publishing service with a low barrier to entry exists that people will find creative ways to misuse it. Semi-related Google Drive usage: (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19907271)

Consider all the issues that Reddit and HN have with spam and other sorts of abuse. Then again, BitTorrent and IPFS seem to work well enough. At a minimum, I suspect that issues will tend to crop up anywhere a search or other curation mechanism exists that can potentially be gamed in order to gain an audience.