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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

#301

Post by dredmorbius »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #189
Melatonic wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is a fair comparison they just did not state it fairly well. Back in the day you could create your own radio station too or make your own TV content and do it relatively affordably. But reaching a massive audience was multiple times more difficult and required help of one of the gatekeepers. With the internet you can be heard more widely and cheaper yet (comparatively) but again if you want to really relia…

> again if you want to really reliably reach a giant audience you again need the permission of the gatekeepers. This is not true.

I suspect it is far more so than you're giving credit.

An entity which raises the ire of Facebook, Google (Web search, YouTube, and/or the Android marketplace), Apple (iOS marketplace), Amazon (AWS, publishing, retail), Cloudflare, other major hosting and service providers, etc., will have a hard time or high costs reaching an extensive audience.

Gatekeeping isn't specific to a single role or function, it's a property which emerges through cost structures, network effects, access to capital or talent, regulatory and political sway or vulnerability, and numerous other factors.

In an age of print, presses, paper, and distribution were limiting factors. Where these were controlled, fixed costs of production (writers, illustrators, editors) were amortised over the large number of copies which could be produced of a single issue or publication, and advertising attracted on that basis. Today, technical expertise in building infrastructure and support systems similarly is difficult to attain, but amortises technical staff and paid content (if any) across not and audience of merely thousands or millions, but of billions in the case of Google and Facebook.

It's possible for the equivalent of a zine to be produced and served to a much smaller audience (though one which would have made publishers of the 1860s, or 1960s, salivate), and at comparatively high per-member cost, though the absolute costs could still be low in most cases.

(Static sites and intelligent caching strategies can still make very-large-scale services on a shoestring budget viable.)

Discovery, promotion, engagement, and visitor insights / metrics are other areas in which today's media monopolies also acquire gatekeeper status.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#302

Post by johannes1234321 »

MereInterest wrote: post #173
johannes1234321 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Setting cookies is fine. If they are needed. You need a session cookie for the login function the user uses? - Use a cookie. No banner needed. The user puts something in their shopping basket? - Use a session cookie. No banner needed. You want to store information, not required, in order to identify the user again even though they didn't login, maybe to share the identity with an ad network? - You need a cookie banne…

Not only that, but storing information to identify the user again requires affirmative consent. GDPR doesn't just require that the user can opt out of tracking, but that any tracking occurs only after the user has freely given informed consent.

Yes. If your users create an account with name and address data they need to agree to that data storage.

If your shop just sells them a virtual thing there is no need to collect personal information.

If you ask for the address and more or less directly print it on the label and then delete again it is a bit of an edge case where no explicit confirmation might be needed, however having a good data policy is good practice anyways and then having the extra checkbox in the order flow is not a big deal.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#303

Post by eitland »

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.

I'm at http://erik.itland.no and also my old blog is available online at https://techinorg.blogspot.com

I also have a mastodon account.

I'll happily make money from my efforts, but my thoughts goes in direction of creating something useful and offer hosting for it, not ads. So far I have created "nothing" (at most something I created was used by up to maybe a couple of hundred happy souls for some years to simplify the life of a local community, and I didn't make any money from it).

I simultaneously want to downvote you for your dismissive attitude towards everyone here while I also want to upvote you to bring all examples provided to the front. I chose to upvote but now you know the reason.

Also remember: many people here are shy and won't post so I think there is probably a lot more going on.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#304

Post by [deleted] »

nils-m-holm wrote: post #278
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!

[deleted]

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#305

Post by taubek »

wruza wrote: post #296
taubek wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do feel nostalgic about old days (I got on Internet in mid 90s) but as Internet has grown and matured so have I. I've never played MUD but I've used IRC a lot :) Internet is now so much more than it used to be. Before you had to have much more knowledge to accomplish some things. It was not hard to learn but it was not accessible to everyone. I see it like fetching a water from the creek or turning on the tap in yo…

You’re describing the internet 15 years ago. Today you come to the kitchen, and it is full of people between you and the tap. Walls are littered with advertisements, and all those people ask you if you want to try their water. Look, my water has no asbestos, only 2.79$/lbs. Wait, wait, I know everything about water, it consists of hydroxidegenium atoms, which Archimedes invented 3570BC, so…. Wait, did you know you ca…

I was referring to the fact is that Internet has become a basic infrastructure this days and people just use it. They don't ask or understand "where does it come from". They just use it. When you are born into something ("digital natives" as some call them) you don't even consider how it used to be. Current state is normal for you. This is your starting point and you build upon it. Same as electricity, you turn the switch and the light is on.

I had a black and white TV with no remote for most of my child hood. I remember it with nostalgy but I don't miss it. I had a TV with cathode tube until some 4 years ago. Then I switched to LCD TV but I had LCD monitor for some 16-17 years at the same time.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#306

Post by galoisgirl »

nils-m-holm wrote: post #278
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!

1995 webmasters unite!

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#307

Post by robertlagrant »

rpdillon wrote: post #226
eloisius wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Hah yes if I can't see a publish date on something I often look for something else. Not saying things need to be formatted/sorted by publish date (which I think is grandparent's actual point) but definitely it helps with contextualising content.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#308

Post by paganel »

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.

Just for anecdotical purposes, I do have/host a few of my personal projects on a dedicated Linode which I've had since the summer of 2011, that's more than 10 years now (wow! times does fly).

Never ever have I thought of "monetising" them, I mean, even if I wanted that I don't see there being that big of a market for people interested in the location of Medieval villages in Walachia (even though some of them had first been mentioned in documents written during Vlad the Impaler's reign, maybe I could market that) nor for knowing where exactly were the locations and houses that used to belong to former Bucharest Jewish residents (that is until they were nationalised post-WW2), as I also have an interactive map for that.

I've worked for most of my career (~15 years now) in start-ups and small companies (that's what I think actually made me pursue those personal projects, I think working in a big company/corporation would have numbed me down) and I don't personally find unicorns that interesting, there's one located just down the street where I daily walk my dog and I don't feel any need to stand behind a big thing like that, I would have way less time to walk my dog plus I'd feel that experience would also numb me down, in a different way from working in a corporation, but numb me down nevertheless.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#309

Post by rambambram »

superkuh wrote: post #238
kradroy wrote: post #237

Today's internet is largely dominated by topics and people who maximize for marginal superficial engagement. You probably won't ever have the experience of a MajorBBS sysop breaking into your session when you're in the middle of mass downloading their mounted CD content (because the disc in the drive 2 feet away from them hasn't stopped spinning for hours), trying to exploit a bug in a door game, or bruteforcing thei…

This is part of why I've loved running my .com webserver from my home desktop for the last 20+ years. I can see the blinking (and hear, and feel the vibration of) what's going on and insert in custom messages to the directory listing or other pages to talk to visitors. They can talk back by appending "/@say/Their message here." to any URL. I do miss the old days when you could run an open netcat on a popular port and…

Your comment method is so nice. Is there a reason you don't use a textarea for visitors to enter the text? Is your current method better against spambots?
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