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The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

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Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#31

Post by aluminussoma »

The Internet today feels like a big box strip mall in suburbia. While visiting my home town, I looked for a local, independent hardware store. There was only Home Depot and Lowe's. Then I realize how few independent businesses were left.

On the Internet, you have Google, Amazon, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter. Much of the good content is hidden in their secret gardens (Facebook, Twitter, and increasingly Reddit).

Discovery needs to be reimagined. Google search directs traffic but now everyone has a SEO manager to get their site to the top. If we want to see the Internet like before, original content needs to be prioritized over content like Pinterest, without needing to do anything special.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#32

Post by jabbany »

I feel like this article doesn't address the reason why people moved away from the "old" Internet --- most people only care about their _content_ not the particular technology that backs it.

In the old times, you could only host content if you were really good with the technology. The people who had websites were people who knew how to set up and run a web server, and to compose the HTML content that was being served. Similarly, communities who ran BBS forums, mailing lists, IRC, etc. all needed at least some people who could set up and manage the technology for them.

Centralized services (Web 2.0) changed that. Now all of a sudden you didn't need to run your server --- you could just type some text and click some buttons to put up a blog on a shared service (myspace? blogger? wordpress.com?). You didn't need to run your own forum or mailing list or chat rooms, you could just put your community on an existing service that provided that (Google groups, FB/Whatsapp/ Chat). Need a forum? You have reddit. What is Twitter if not just a collection of mailing lists that you can openly subscribe to but not post on? Centralization allowed the vast majority of people to do what they wanted to do while "outsourcing" the technology part to somebody else, because most people don't care about the technology they care about their content.

The problem with the modern decentralized web (3.0?) is that we haven't focused on solving the real problem --- making it easy to manipulate _content_. If anything, setting up a Web 3.0 presence is _harder_ than it was on a centralized service, and as long as it remains harder, the new "old" Internet will always be a niche.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#33

Post by femto »

A slightly dissonant title on the article, as the premise of the article is that the Old Internet never went away. Rather, more people are beginning to discover that the Old still exists as they reach the limits of the New and start looking for alternatives. Welcome to October! :)

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#34

Post by throwhauser »

kstrauser wrote: post #5

I sure hope that's right. It was the best feeling in the world to stand up an Apache server on my Amiga, and later my little FreeBSD server, and see my friends viewing the website I was hosting on my dialup connection. It wasn't pretty, it wasn't elegant, and it certainly wasn't fast, but it was mine . I made that. From installing the server to writing the HTML, I owned that service from end to end and had completely…

How can a small website cope with GDPR compliance though? The rules that sprang up to constrain the social-media behemoths seem onerous for anyone but them to comply with.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#35

Post by matheusmoreira »

kstrauser wrote: post #5

I sure hope that's right. It was the best feeling in the world to stand up an Apache server on my Amiga, and later my little FreeBSD server, and see my friends viewing the website I was hosting on my dialup connection. It wasn't pretty, it wasn't elegant, and it certainly wasn't fast, but it was mine . I made that. From installing the server to writing the HTML, I owned that service from end to end and had completely…

Yeah. That sense of ownership has been lost. Now corporations own everything. Nobody wants a domain, they want a @name on some social media platform. Nobody wants their own website, they want to post on social media. ISPs have cgNAT now, nobody is directly connected to the internet. Everything is just so boring.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#36

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

madrox wrote: post #19

When Walmart started taking over consumer goods, everyone thought small business was dead. All that was really died was the general store, and we saw a rise in boutique storefronts. Depending on their niche, people craved more than the lowest common denominator that Walmart provided, and these small businesses filled a need. I've long held that social media is following a similar trend. Much like Shopify, the next wa…

I don't think this is correct. For somewhere in the range of 3 decades, companies like Walmart have decimated small businesses. "Boutique storefronts" have not replaced the stores that Walmart et al. helped to shutter all through the late 80s until today. They exist (mostly in large cities), but the reality is that small business, compared to the way it was in, say, 1974, did die.

It might be true that things like Shopify help to resucitate it, but I'm skeptical. I also don't care about things "feeling" small when they actually vast: this is nothing more than a marketing (de|il)lusion, and does nothing to promote the kind of diversified, distributed form of a resilient, vibrant, equitable and opportunity-filled economy.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#37

Post by kzrdude »

madrox wrote: post #19

When Walmart started taking over consumer goods, everyone thought small business was dead. All that was really died was the general store, and we saw a rise in boutique storefronts. Depending on their niche, people craved more than the lowest common denominator that Walmart provided, and these small businesses filled a need. I've long held that social media is following a similar trend. Much like Shopify, the next wa…

small shops are dead in small towns though. Only big cities can support the diversity now. And online giants have decimated the book shops, even more so, just because online book sales are so efficient.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#39

Post by matheusmoreira »

throwhauser wrote: post #34
kstrauser wrote: post #5

I sure hope that's right. It was the best feeling in the world to stand up an Apache server on my Amiga, and later my little FreeBSD server, and see my friends viewing the website I was hosting on my dialup connection. It wasn't pretty, it wasn't elegant, and it certainly wasn't fast, but it was mine . I made that. From installing the server to writing the HTML, I owned that service from end to end and had completely…

How can a small website cope with GDPR compliance though? The rules that sprang up to constrain the social-media behemoths seem onerous for anyone but them to comply with.

All you have to do is not collect any data. Don't set any cookies.
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