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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

#221

Post by zozbot234 »

d0gsg0w00f wrote: post #208
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.

A phone is a poor hosting device in a conventional sense, because it's battery powered and keeping the connection up will drain the battery. If you want to P2P-host something via your phone, it should be a service that can somehow piggyback on the ephemeral network connection strategy that mobile devices are already using. The closest thing I've seen to that might be SecureScuttlebutt, but even then it's not ideal. IPFS hosting might also work, but again only on a highly ephemeral basis.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#222

Post by jsemrau »

I don't particularly like the current Internet. A lot of traffic is captured by social with the intention promote oneself. Yes, I am part of the problem as well. Yet, the current version of the Internet values outrage over quality trending towards the lowest common denominator. I, in my own personal opinion, have high hopes for a crypto based new new social which distributes the economic value to the content originators and not the meta-middlemen.

/rant

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#223

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#224

Post by AussieWog93 »

myself248 wrote: post #177
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #156

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. Reading this thread feels like everyone is anchored to whatever methods were popular at the time they entered the internet as being the peak. The BBS people think it was all downhill after BBS decl…

Nah, I'm a BBS person and I think it's been all downhill since social media. (Specifically, Livejournal was the tipping-point between blogging platforms and social media, Myspace was unquestionably downward, Facebook is the antichrist pure and simple.) I have no problem with chronological or hierarchical content. Whatever the author wants to put out, is their prerogative. What I have a problem with is walled gardens,…

I joined in the mid-00s and have to agree.

Big social media and especially recommendation algorithms have ruined much of what made the old Internet fun.

There's no longer the discovery or organic sharing; everything is just shoved down your throat by a soulless algorithm.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#225

Post by graycat »

hellschreiber wrote: post #210
graycat wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 se…

Thanks!

Yup, you bring up some good points.

In the usual senses, approaches of getting to know users, essentially I don't want to do that: (a) Users can regard uses of such data as a threat to, compromise with, and an invasion of privacy -- an important term but ill defined and with possible negative emotional reactions. (b) E.g., what a user did for the past month going deep into the NFL does not mean that they want the NFL for this visit. Instead maybe they want the NBA, a recipe for cheese popcorn, background music for a dinner party with her boyfriend, or an art print to hang over the sofa. Uh, what key words to type in to get an art print will like -- hmm ....

Assuming that their purpose of this visit is much like that of earlier visits can irritate users. (c) Using information on users personally can require cookies, a user ID, their IP address, fingerprinting, etc., all of which can irritate users, i.e., a bad taste in their mouth, a bad user experience. Quite broadly, one way to anger people, to insult them, is to let them know you believe that you have categorized them, that they are so simple that you can pigeonhole them. So, I want no hint of any such thing.

Ah, besides, maybe they are shopping for an art print to give to their daughter for her to hang over the sofa in her new house -- so the visit isn't even about the visitor but about the visitor's daughter! Fine with me!

So, instead of using general, old information about users, the interactive iterative dialog is to get data, some new data, I can manipulate to please the user for their interest that brought them to my site THIS time. The phrasing "Users who give the same dialog on the same day get the same results" is partly to have the user execute the dialog and still be comfortable about privacy.

In simple terms, my current guess is to have a narrow audience, e.g., maybe the BMW set. Then, sure, just from that, Cadillac, Tesla, Toll Brothers, Williams Sonoma, cruise lines, etc. may discover that their ads on my site are a bargain, have a quite good click thru rate. So, that would be targeting just via broad demographics.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#226

Post by rpdillon »

eloisius wrote: post #204
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…

> 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 mo…

Almost everything I read on the internet is informed by the publish date. One of my biggest frustrations is sites that don't include publish dates because it makes the content 'evergreen'. Really frustrating.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#227

Post by yakireev »

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 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.

My personal experience does not match that. There was a time (2010-2012 or so where I used to live) when communities were migrating from older "forums" to new and shiny "social networks" - and inevitably ceasing to be communities.

One of these communities was niche enough (and I was involved enough) for me to personally knew all the regulars - they are mostly still online and still care about that thing which brought us together, but there's no meeting place for us online anymore. Facebook groups and Twitter wars do not facilitate meaningful discussion, and the old forum... "Who uses forums nowadays anyway? We have FB and Instagram and stuff", I hear from them, but I believe they're deeply mistaken and it's the other way around. FB has them, and it kinda took them away from me.

old_man_yells_at_cloud.jpg

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#228

Post by lovemenot »

largely_sitting wrote: post #106
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…

Its the data centers that are going to be responsible for end of web2, when they figure out they can undercut web2 and offer a continuous federated open data storage system and virtual machine. Advertisers will pay them for access directly. Google, Meta, would just be third party indexing services.

At best that could be only marginally profitable. Such a service would have to be a commodity in order to be interoperable. If it could have high margins the index owners such as Meta would keep it in-house. As long as they control the services users want, they control the market.

Your prediction could come to pass only in the case of the open backend being tied to a massively popular service that could compete with those giants

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#229

Post by agumonkey »

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'd say, with a very exaggerated tone :), it would be like saying you can still find trees in New York, so really nothing has changed since settlers came.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#230

Post by jackson1442 »

josht wrote: post #121
jackson1442 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got bored the other day and thought it would be funny to make a copy of the most expensive NFT and set that as my Twitter profile picture because they added that silly feature. So I downloaded MetaMask, got everything set up, and went to one of the NFT marketplaces to try to make one. Uploaded the image and got a big scary warning: > (paraphrased; I don't have a screenshot) This image was found too many times on th…

> So I downloaded MetaMask, got everything set up, and went to one of the NFT marketplaces to try to make one. Uploaded the image and got a big scary warning: One NFT marketplace shows you an error message and therefore the technology is not decentralized? That's a bit of a stretch. That NFT marketplace might have restrictions in place for their own legal reasons, but using that as an excuse to say that the technolog…

Don’t know if you read moxie’s article linked in root, but OpenSea is actually where almost all sites get their NFT information from (even metamask iirc). That’s not the site where I got the error, granted, but what happens when OpenSea (a central marketplace) removes your NFT?
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