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I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

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Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#151

Post by vkk8 »

slver wrote: post #16
IgorPartola wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Memes, Discord, the “old” Twitter, and either having ad supported sites (as opposed to everything being paid) or having premium sites (as opposed to everything being as supported.

Memes won’t go away. Nor will ads.

Memes will be killed by some entrepreneuring copyright troll at some point.

In many jurisdictions, memes would either break the copyright laws or at least be in the grey zone. It's only a matter of time before someone exploits this. After one case, the platforms will ban them to avoid the risk of getting sued themselves. The same will probably happen for gaming videos.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#152

Post by jeliotj »

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…

"Romantic", as a noun for a person who has an idealized view of reality, especially one that has passed.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#153

Post by emptyparadise »

barney54 wrote: post #60

This sentiment of missing an older internet is one reason like like Hacker News. Slash dot was great in the day. Digg was so great in the day. Then the early days of Reddit were great. I’ve been her for over ten years and Hacker News is still good. So thank you to the team that runs Hacker News and everyone who comments for making it a good place to come to.

This orange website is truly a fascinating place. We reminisce about the old, less commercialized internet while rubbing shoulders with the people who made it the way it is today.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#154

Post by ipaddr »

unyttigfjelltol wrote: post #59
keiferski wrote: post #50

Million Short is a nice way to find some of these old websites. It lets you remove the first million search results from your query: https://millionshort.com The thing I really miss about the old Internet are forums. Facebook, Reddit, YouTube, and other social media sites lack a certain intimacy. Everyone is somewhat hostile by default and there is no incentive to contribute to the community. It's very different and…

Which is another way of saying part of the problem is the search engines we use to discover the web. IMO, another piece is that Wordpress and similar engines homogenized design-- it's superior but always unsurprising.

That's the only problem. Google shows big player websites now because it has lost the ability to detect spam.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#155

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

koheripbal wrote: post #99
barney54 wrote: post #60

This sentiment of missing an older internet is one reason like like Hacker News. Slash dot was great in the day. Digg was so great in the day. Then the early days of Reddit were great. I’ve been her for over ten years and Hacker News is still good. So thank you to the team that runs Hacker News and everyone who comments for making it a good place to come to.

Many of us here followed the same path. HN is good for now, but it has been changing. It's unlikely we'll still be here in a couple years.

Sadly, you are probably right. For better or worse, I keep thinking that invite only forum is the way go to maintain a decent level of 'interesting conversations'. HN still has them, but it is getting harder to filter through.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#156

Post by BruceEel »

titzer wrote: post #61
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 ...?

> Google etc... can obviously not keep up filtering out that bullshit. We drown in bullshit. It's worse than that. They are shoveling bullshit. They turned on the bullshit magnet and lit up the bullshit bat signal. They created a bullshit attention economy and sold bullshit tickets to bullshit artists. Literally everthing about Google and Facebook is creating one opportunity after another to jab you in the eyeballs w…

well put...

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#157

Post by robjan »

markus_zhang wrote: post #17

I actually enjoy today's Internet much more. I'll lay out the reasons: 1) Easy access to many high quality contents. For example HN is a good platform for accessing new knowledge. Note that I say "access", not "learn". Reading HN sometimes give people the false impression that they are learning new knowledge, which usually is not the case. I treat HN as a platform to get a peek at certain new knowledge, but reading b…

Regarding speaking with lots of cultures, I feel the current platforms have bring out the worst in people. Society has been completely divided in many places and well developed democracies undermined by the current incentives to promote and widely disseminate information which provokes strong reactions. This has been largely made possible by centralisation and consolidation of the internet.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#158

Post by emptyparadise »

ozim wrote: post #41
ori_b wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about the design, it's about the commercialization.

Thing is commercialization made it easier for people to express themselves and actually start using that resource. Commercialization made it form "only nerds sit in there" to "everyone is on the internet and it is cool", if there would be no commercialization, internet for masses would still be a silly toy. Just like going to the Mars - it is just a "hobby" for NASA, most of people on Earth are not giving a damn that…

Then maybe it's commercialization I dislike. I loved the silly toy internet. It was a place to get away from the real world. Now it's just a part of the real world.

A lot of things turn lame once real names and money are involved. And that's the fate of most things once they get big enough. It makes sense, but it's still sad.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#159

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

pixl97 wrote: post #91
titzer wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google etc... can obviously not keep up filtering out that bullshit. We drown in bullshit. It's worse than that. They are shoveling bullshit. They turned on the bullshit magnet and lit up the bullshit bat signal. They created a bullshit attention economy and sold bullshit tickets to bullshit artists. Literally everthing about Google and Facebook is creating one opportunity after another to jab you in the eyeballs w…

The bullshit asymmetry therom predicted this. Filtering bullshit is so hard it's easier making money selling it yourself.

But this also means there is a need to filter bs that can be addressed.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#160

Post by failwhaleshark »

jcfrei wrote: post #47
failwhaleshark wrote: post #5

"I miss old ATX." "I miss old [X]." There's no point to sentimentality. Zeitgeist is always missed. You can't go back without a time-machine.

I feel like a lot of those nostalgic posts are made by people who were simply happier when they were younger. And they conflate this general decline in happiness with a perceived decline in quality (of anything, be it the internet, television, music, etc). But in most cases it's just that things change and they no longer fit their desired qualities - they haven't become worse per se. For a lot of people who are young…

There doesn't need to be mutual exclusion. Views change with a person's life-stage priorities. And, it's easy to lionize the terrible when infant minds see only the best in everything.

Things in certain places, like America, are getting demonstrably shittier over time: the USPS used to work, there weren't mass shootings nearly every day, parks had water fountains, people debated, corporations didn't takeover public spaces as much, real wages were higher, the US made things, there weren't as many prisoners, healthcare costs were lower, and there weren't millions of visibly-homeless people from an unjust economic system.

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