I Miss the Old Internet (2019) • Hacker News Board

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#141

Post by ethbr0 » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:48 PM UTC

vkk8 wrote: post #103

delecti wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think all of that independent creator culture is still out there, there's just also the mass consumer culture and walled ecosystems on top. It's a relatively insignificant proportion of things now, but big networks seem to be what most people are looking for.

Not all. While commercialization of the creator culture undoubtedly has some benefits, it also kills some of its original "soul". Someone making funny videos on the internet on their free time without any kind of expectation to make money out of it unavoidably produces different results than the same person making semi-professional videos on Youtube and making living out of it. If the latter is an option, why the hel…

That's an effect, sure. But I think it's more corrosive on the platform side.

If I start a business that makes hosting and sharing videos easier, should I sell it to hobbyists who don't have money, or semi/pros who have lots of money? And how does that affect my feature pipeline and product evolution?

The end result being... hobbyists have minimal, difficult, and (relatively) expensive platforms to enable their work, and semi/pros have well featured and cheap (or free) platforms. And that perpetuates the bifurcation and destruction of pure hobbyists.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#142

Post by vkk8 » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:48 PM UTC

j_wtf_all_taken wrote: post #46

Its still there, its just buried under all the other crap. As more and more people generate content, more and more bullshit exists. Unfortunately, Google etc. - despite all their big announcements - can obviously not keep up filtering out that bullshit. We drown in bullshit. Where's the semantic web that was promised? I wonder if we're still paying for the mistakes that were made with the whole XML stuff ...?

The beauty of the old internet was that there was no need for filtering, because it was done by the users by choosing which platforms to participate. Instead of many fragmented, special interest platforms we now have a few generic mega-platforms like Facebook and Reddit, which naturally get filled with garbage. In the old web, a place for discussion would have been a small special interest discussion forum with perhaps around a hundred active participants and a few hundred less active ones. The outsiders (i.e. the people who would post garbage) did not participate in the discussion because there was some threshold of participation (finding the website, registering, etc.). Instead they would have their own forum somewhere else with similar dynamics.

I think it's very natural for people to divide into communities of tens or, at most, hundreds of people. The modern web platforms don't respect this at all.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#143

Post by CalRobert » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:48 PM UTC

ms123 wrote: post #65

Come say hi at the Midnight ( https://midnight.pub ) if you miss the old internet. :) I built it for those reasons.

Oooh this reminds me of hoe.nu or anada or http://textfiles.com/ ! Thanks!

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#144

Post by eloisant » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:49 PM UTC

vkk8 wrote: post #128

prepend wrote: post #64

Sadly, it’s the people. The old internet had a filtering function where, because it was harder to use, people had to have some interest or skill to use it. So as a result, I think the proportion of people “online” had similar interest so more content was relevant and made by similar people. Now everyone is online with more diverse interests and capabilities.

I think that most of the filtering happened because different communities operated on different platforms rather than a single huge one like Reddit or Facebook. A small, old time discussion forum for a specific interest in my (rather small) language had only perhaps a hundred active participants and another few hundred casual posters. In that sort of environment it is actually possible for the actives to get to know…

I think it's a good point. Also everything being in the same place, easy to link or retweet means the small weirdo community will invariably see outside people coming to make fun of them or explain them that they're bad people who deserve to burn on hell.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#145

Post by globular-toast » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:49 PM UTC

prepend wrote: post #64

Sadly, it’s the people. The old internet had a filtering function where, because it was harder to use, people had to have some interest or skill to use it. So as a result, I think the proportion of people “online” had similar interest so more content was relevant and made by similar people. Now everyone is online with more diverse interests and capabilities.

I agree. It hasn't just ruined the internet, though. The internet has ruined them. Back in the day we didn't have any illusions about what the internet was. When you connected to a website you were literally just reading information from some random dude's computer. Nowadays there are older people who think the internet is finally lifting a veil on everything because anyone can say anything and mainstream media censors everything (ie. conspiracy theorists), and younger people who don't know anything except the internet and don't realise that there is so much stuff still out there that isn't online.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#146

Post by 5e92cb50239222b » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:50 PM UTC

scambier wrote: post #107

fabbari wrote: post #34

I miss text. It seems now that whenever I search for 'how to do X?' there is a lot of video results for sometimes very trivial things. A 10 minutes video with the usual 'subscribe and hit the bell icon', a word from the sponsor, a long winded introduction and then "click on menu, then click on this item, then select the size".

I almost never watch videos, unless it's the necessary medium for the context (i.e. music teaching or movie analysis), because I _need_ text to learn. But. Two weeks ago there was a small video on Discord that crashed the client when you played it. Here's a 8m30s long video explaining how it works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuBNQ6tiNcI tl;dw: they used ffmpeg to stitch 2 videos with a different aspect ratio tog…

Why are you not skipping the bullshit? I feed most of my youtube addiction through mpv and have configured several key combinations which allow me to quickly bisect the video. These videos are always full of comments like "why did I have to spend 20 minutes on this", while they never take more than 15 to 20 seconds from me.

By the way, with a proper youtube-dl config in place you don't even have to open the browser:

  $ mpv 'never gonna give you up'

It the best way to watch youtube by any measure that I can think of right now.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#147

Post by runawaybottle » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:50 PM UTC

superasn wrote: post #139

Is there a term for when people reminisce something and think those were the days at the same time think everything contemporary has gone to the dogs? Like my uncle who is an old car enthusiast who thinks ambassador was the greatest car ever made in India yet if you are really objective about it was truly a bad car (wrt milege, comfort, safety, design, etc). I feel the same reading the comments here. Really don't mis…

There is a term, it’s called memberberries:

https://youtu.be/OJoQJKTc3nM

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#148

Post by akudha » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:51 PM UTC

I guess this is a good thread to ask - can you share your favorite, lesser known, hidden gem corners of the internet that are still around?

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#149

Post by robjan » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:51 PM UTC

MentallyRetired wrote: post #75

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So who takes on the full-time job of curation? Could probably get donations eventually, but the portal would have to sufficiently succeed first.

Wiki? With a double approval before the edit happens?

Just bring back DMOZ, it was by no means perfect but was a great curated directory of the old internet despite SEOs always trying to spam it. Apparently Curlie is trying this but I haven't really looked much into it: https://curlie.org/en

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#150

Post by ratww » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 1:52 PM UTC

mopsi wrote: post #44

jumploops wrote: post #20

Admittedly, I miss the “old internet” too, however I have hope we can build it again. As I see it, there are two main issues to solve: 1) It’s no longer trivial to build a “home” page that fits one’s diverse interests. People are lured into frameworks which prescribe a certain level of structure. How do we make it easy for people to freely add content to their “pages” , in whatever form they envision? 2) The “early”…

> It’s no longer trivial to build a “home” page that fits one’s diverse interests. People are lured into frameworks which prescribe a certain level of structure. How do we make it easy for people to freely add content to their “pages” , in whatever form they envision? 1. Sign up to $5/mo virtual hosting service and choose a domain name. 2. In their control panel, click "Install Wordpress". 3. Open Wordpress. 4. Write…

I love how everything about your list is harder and less flexible for non-technical people than what existed in the 90s... while also glossing over non-dev-focused solutions. It's like the famous HN Dropbox dismissal [1].

Buying virtual hosting, domain names and using a control panel to install Wordpress is already harder, pricier and less anonymous than most users had to endure in the 90s. Also, Wordpress doesn't allow you to easily edit the templates the same way Dreamweaver and Frontpage allowed. Those tools were useable by anyone with knowledge about Word. But to customise Wordpress you need deep HTML knowledge and time. Most Wordpress templates are way more bloated than some bespoke HTML made with Dreamweaver.

You could have said Tumblr, or, if you wanna go commercial, Wix or Squarespace, but self-hosted Wordpress is like the worst of both worlds put together...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224