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The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

cheapskatesguide.org

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Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#201

Post by akprasad »

I'm glad the article hits the central point that what is valuable about this change is the rise of the non-corporate internet. And fundamentally, what is valuable about non-corporate spaces (in my view) is that we have social ownership of them. A poster on MetaFilter has a very different relationship to their site from what a Reddit user might have to theirs.

At the same time, the corporate internet means high investment in useful centralized platforms that reduce the expertise required to publish and share something to near zero. It's not clear to me that such platforms could survive in a non-corporate setting. Maybe if they were user-owned in some material way.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#202

Post by zozbot234 »

jkhdigital wrote: post #184
throw_nbvc1234 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely agree with this point. Discovery in the long-tail of content (without resorting to sort by new which is a nightmare) is a must solve problem in a independent/decentralized web. I have a feeling the "answer" is "all of the above" options; the ability to choose what discovery/recommendation mechanisms to use. Being intentional about which lens your viewing your recommendations through. Being able to easily…

I was reading a security paper today that made a killer observation about trust infrastructure: public trust systems will always succumb to problems of informational asymmetry (moral hazard, adverse selection) so responsible users must always rely on private trust assessments first. Same problem with information discovery—trust, reputation, it’s all the same social mechanism. Any public signaling will be degraded by…

> public trust systems will always succumb to problems of informational asymmetry (moral hazard, adverse selection)

Ironically, this is something that the "smart contracts" powering some future development of Web 3.0 might eventually solve. By making it possible to verifiably put real-world money behind one's assertions and trust assessments, these problems are significantly reduced.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#203

Post by zozbot234 »

XorNot wrote: post #187
wolpoli wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The barrier of entry was actually lower than that. We didn't need to stand up an Apache server. We could just sign up for a Geocities/Xoom/Tripod account and upload HTML or use the built in site editor to create content. Somewhere along the way, people stopped building well organized sites and started producing chronologically organized writings and content. These chronologically organized articles and content have d…

The counter point is that the rise of quality search engines has reduced the value of "well organized". Consider that one of the premier features of the Jetbrains IDE is "search everywhere" which will search command help text for you as well and then return the command as a possible result - much easier to describe what you're trying to do and be led to the exact command, then try to understand the mind of the person…

It was the rise of tagging and folksonomies (now known as #hashtags) which made the blogs halfway usable. Because they allow you to search within the archived posts for the sub-topic you're interested in.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#204

Post by eloisius »

wolpoli wrote: post #67
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…

The barrier of entry was actually lower than that. We didn't need to stand up an Apache server. We could just sign up for a Geocities/Xoom/Tripod account and upload HTML or use the built in site editor to create content. Somewhere along the way, people stopped building well organized sites and started producing chronologically organized writings and content. These chronologically organized articles and content have d…

> Somewhere along the way, people stopped building well organized sites and started producing chronologically organized writings and content.

For news or personal diary-format blogs, it makes sense, but I agree. Why did the blog become the default way to present a page on the internet? Aside from serving as an indicator of 'freshness,' publication date usually has no relation to the content I read. It's weird that most content is organized around publication date by default.

I like reading old bike websites with stories about touring and such published around the 90s [1][2][3]. Most sites back then had a small section called "News" with short blurbs letting readers know about the status of the author, or new content added to the site, but it was not the main content itself. Content was usually organized in a way that makes sense to humans, rather than feed aggregators and content recommender systems.

It's so much better to explore a site by navigation through a few index pages. Ken's site [1] is especially a pleasure to browse. Right on the home page he lists his directories along with straightforward descriptions of what you'll find in them. On a directory page will be a list of pages organized under subheadings, and each one has a brief description. To me, this may be peak internet. It's easy to get a sense of what's there, how to get to the part of it that interests me, and doesn't keep me on a treadmill searching for something I want to read co-mingled with everything else.

I can't help but think that if WordPress was the default when Ken decided to make a website, it would be much worse. Each page does have a tiny 'last updated' date at the bottom, but as a reader 30 years later, the publication date has no relevancy to me any of the content here. It would be a pity to center everything on the site around that minor detail. And adding tags or category labels to blog pages usually doesn't help. It still squishes is all into a feed, just a subset feed.

[1]: https://www.phred.org/~alex/kenkifer/www.kenkifer.com/bikepa...

[2]: https://web.stanford.edu/~jcolwell/

[3]: https://sheldonbrown.com/

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#205

Post by jonwalch »

alfl wrote: post #192
jabbany wrote: post #32

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…

For now. My company kubelt.com is fixing this.

Your white paper isn't loading for me. Is there somewhere else I can read it?

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#206

Post by makeitdouble »

aeturnum wrote: post #171

I have never understood people who mourn the death of the "old" internet because I do not feel I have lost it. Particular communities come and go, as they always have, but I have found that the I can find the same sorts of gathering places for the same kinds of people I always have - in about the same numbers too. The thing that has changed is that a huge swath of new people have come online and, though some of what…

I agree with you in that there are still any number of small communities pretty comparable to what was on the "old" internet, including as you say, on the servers still running on the old applications.

The main difference would be on accessibility, where the "old" internet were mainstream services that people just flocked to almost by default, while now you have to do your homework to join communities that will match the same criteria.

It is not old at all, but to me Reddit is a good representation of that: at some point it was small enough you'd just go there and find something interesting. From there the communities stayed, but you had to heavily filter what you wanted to see. And now you'll be using specific clients, disable the crap in your settings, force the old interface, or any of the trick du jour to keep having a sane experience.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#207

Post by danvayn »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #85
aluminussoma wrote: post #31

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). Discover…

The problem is, a lot of the content quality is pretty bad. I remember being a kid in the '90s and viewing page after Geocities page on "Pokemon hacks" which were collections of hearsay versions of what is now known as MissingNo hack, many of which were just plain incorrect. Some of these sites would ask people to send in $5 to get access to the hacks (which was obviously a scam.) The reason the SNR of independent si…

We can try to be better. DAOs or some form of self-governing community are a strong option.

If done correctly, they can provide the 'manual moderation' needed for these smaller communities.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#208

Post by d0gsg0w00f »

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…

> I can picture someone running an IPv6-only service on their phone to impress their friends. I know what their smile would look like because that was once my smile, too.

Wow. Do you know if there's any enthusiasts out there doing this? A phone would actually be a great hosting device for tinkerers. It's always on, always connected, and supports IPv6.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#209

Post by pcthrowaway »

Melatonic wrote: post #66

I don't think Web 3.0 is going to be the kind of decentralization people are all hyping up now - we are still too close to Web 2.0 and the innovations are nebulous at best. However I do think there will be a Web 3.0 and it is going to come about when processing power, battery life, efficiency, global internet, and easy power generation all start reaching a critical point. Combine that with a general psychological bac…

What does the cheapness of power generation have anything to do with web3? If power was 1/10 the price, Proof of work blockchains would use 10X as much.

But there is web3 and blockchains without proof of work

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#210

Post by hellschreiber »

graycat wrote: post #170
marginalia_nu wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting take. Just curious how you plan to make money off this. I think profitability is what has killed most recommendation ventures. It's easy enough to find something that's fun (like StumbleUpon). But they usually eventually self-cannibalize by inserting ads in the recommendations. On the flip side, if you attempt to do some sort of gated boutique thing where you need a subscription to see the resul…

Thanks! Yes, I saw StumbleUpon early on. I just intend and hope to do better pleasing the users. So, it's recommendation -- maybe the user has heard of the content but wants the quality of the curated results. Uh, now the Internet has a lot of specialized content (e.g., as in this OP) and, presto, bingo, that means that there are also some specialized AUDIENCES, e.g., audiences the mainstream media (MSM), back to TV,…

It is very interesting that you describe a system which points people to web content they would like and yet you do not intend to collect data on these visitors. Or did I misunderstand? Wouldn't you need to "get to know" your visitors / customers / users before you are able to show them sites they will like?

Also- I applaud you on the way you plan on serving ads. I do know that there are mechanism by which one can serve relevant ads with high likelihood of these being useful hence clicked and yet without the need to build user profiles.

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