The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back • Hacker News Board

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#271

Post by bloak » Wed, Jan 26, 2022, 9:06 AM UTC

piokoch wrote: post #264

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 do understand such people. A lot of forums died, they were moved to Facebook groups, since this is so simple to create a group. As a result some communities are not accessible or annoying to use for those without Facebook. In Europe GDPR was the last strike, nobody is going to maintain forum while being forced to be responsible for "Integrity and confidentiality" of registered user's data. Who will risk huge fines…

None of what you mentioned sounds particularly onerous. Just don't ask for personal data and advise users not to post it. Let people delete their own posts and have a way for an administrator to delete a post if it might in some way be illegal (probably nothing to do with GDPR), and if people want to download stuff, tell them to use "wget --mirror". On othe other hand, dealing with spammers and eccentric/mad troublemakers could be a real headache. The frequency of such people probably depends on the topic of your forum.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#272

Post by raxxorrax » Wed, Jan 26, 2022, 9:08 AM UTC

DoItToMe81 wrote: post #240

This is wishful thinking. The demographics of the internet have changed so much that you will NEVER get that 'old' back. You may get an imitation or evolution of it, but it will never return in full. The size of social media now is so gargantuan that almost every single member you get in an independent community will have been molded by it in some way, which is very different to how the webcultures of the day functio…

Content focus certainly changed as barriers for entry got lower. In classical TV there was certainly a degradation towards low production costs and simple content in the last decade. But it is still profitable even with a shrinking pool of viewers. I expect the fate of some mass social media platforms to be that same. Some people will always remain there.

I don't know when we started to take internet comments seriously, I only know that I don't like that at all.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#273

Post by amatecha » Wed, Jan 26, 2022, 9:11 AM UTC

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…

Ah, I love that the top voted comment is someone mentioning Hotline. I'm logged into my friend's server - one I've been frequenting regularly since it was started in 2001 - at this very moment! I also ran my own server for years, of course. I really want to build "IRCCloud but for Hotline" sometime. I mean, just a basic self-hosted thing to start with. One of these days... haha

Recently I've started noticing people hosting gopher sites and I've actually noticed two different people specifically mentioning they have finger support on their servers! This was especially surprising since I haven't heard someone mention finger since the 90's. Very cool.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#274

Post by toto444 » Wed, Jan 26, 2022, 9:13 AM UTC

How many of you mourning the old internet frequent neocities or have their own personal website ? I don't think the the answer is 'a lot'.

Everyone on HN complains about everything being turned into a business but everyone also wants to create their own start up and turn it into a unicorn.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#275

Post by raxxorrax » Wed, Jan 26, 2022, 9:16 AM UTC

jacobr1 wrote: post #18

ceocoder wrote: post #3

"technology is cyclical" -Dennis Duffy, 30 Rock. Jokes aside, I do not know if this is me getting older and becoming more grouchy and/or some of the tools (Gmail, Google Search, macOS/MacBook ) we've been using for a while are becoming more obtuse and less user (or power user) friendly in name of

many tools are attempting becoming (and often failing) to become more beginner user friendly. And while that implies dumbing down the tools at times, they still have advance features which are either progressively shown in context, or hidden behind additional advanced user menus or modes. Thus it makes it harder to reason about (as a power user does) and you are reduced to incantations rather than deduction. On top o…

Agreed. Another negative side effect is that power users cannot help casual users anymore. They become dependent on the developer of the software in question and won't learn about the pipeline of how things are created.

A beverage dispenser has a good UX, but its usage is fairly restricted.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#276

Post by diamondage » Wed, Jan 26, 2022, 9:16 AM UTC

Gareth321 wrote: post #263

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…

I fully agree. Technical people often get lost in the weeds. I recall someone trying to extoll the virtues of a self-hosted YouTube alternative (the name escapes me). To him it was clearly superior to YouTube. So I installed the solution, and spent an hour trying to set up and subscribe to the required indexing services. I gave up and went back to this person and explained that no one is going to spend even 10 minute…

Whilst we can debate whether open source is better or worse code, noone debates whether open source has better or worse ux/ui. Clunky UI is what we expect from open source projects...if web 3.0 could create incentives for this phenomena to change.. It would be a lot more interesting

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#277

Post by theelous3 » Wed, Jan 26, 2022, 9:23 AM UTC

Miner49er wrote: post #125

idiotsecant wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth noting that there is a core of people doing real work in crypto who are not trying to peddle NFTs or other sleight of hand rungpulls designed to separate the gullible from their money. Ethereum, for example, is full of people building interesting things like off-chain low-cost trading using non-interactive zero knowledge proofs and actively working to make crypto less energy intensive and more useful. They…

You can't trust Ethereum at all. When it comes to picking between their principles, and money, they'll always pick money. This is all shown by the hard fork when the DAO was was "hacked". The code was supposed to be law, until it meant they lost some money.

Yep. That fork was a big fat juicy dead canary. Absolutely infinitely worse.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#278

Post by nils-m-holm » Wed, Jan 26, 2022, 9:27 AM UTC

toto444 wrote: post #274

How many of you mourning the old internet frequent neocities or have their own personal website ? I don't think the the answer is 'a lot'. Everyone on HN complains about everything being turned into a business but everyone also wants to create their own start up and turn it into a unicorn.

Anecdatum: I have maintained my web site since 1995 and have my own domain since 1999 (http://t3x.org). I have never had a "business" nor have I dreamt about big money. Give me back the old internet anytime!

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#279

Post by hypertele-Xii » Wed, Jan 26, 2022, 9:29 AM UTC

AussieWog93 wrote: post #224

myself248 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ban algorithmic recommendation. It's the only way people actually start organizing and curating content. You know, like libraries do.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#280

Post by yvdriess » Wed, Jan 26, 2022, 9:33 AM UTC

yakireev wrote: post #227

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 (…

The SomethingAwful forum somehow survived the migration and keeps going strong. Goons do populate Twitter and Discord, but it did not empty the forums.

I think that the strong moderation has helped to make the forums offer something you cannot easily find on the newer social platforms.