There are many people who haven't seen the internet before 2010. Their internet experience of limited to Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and WhatsApp.
The internet wants to be fragmented
101–110 of 246 posts
Re: The internet wants to be fragmented
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Internet is television with lower production value and longer commercials.
I spend far less time subjected to advertisements on the internet than when I used to watch TV. Near zero time, actually. Now it is a game of figuring out the shills that are advertising, but trying to disguise their content as not advertising.
That is exactly what “spending your time dealing with advertising” means. See also cigarettes and food products with the labels turned out. Soap operas are literally named after advertising. At least they’re honest about it.
Re: The internet wants to be fragmented
#103The biggest problem is the like button. The like button is not only a bad metric - it's the worst possible metric. Speaking up used to be something you do to change someone's mind or yours. What's the point in speaking up if nobody does anything with what you said? The like button reprogrammed people. They started getting positive feedback for speaking in an echo chamber, for saying and doing things their audience al…
Why does someone’s position need to change? That implies that somebody is wrong, and that’s not necessarily the case. More often, the “wrongness” comes from having a different point of view. For example, it’s easy to say “fuck cars” when you live in the city and they are only polluting, noisy nuisances that are, at best, optional for living your life. But when you live where I do, not having a car means a significant…
Ever heard of someone saying "fuck cars" in person? Where the conversation just stood on "fuck cars", and stopped there? When someone on the internet says "fuck cars", it's because he's expecting to get some dopamine from getting liked by similarly minded friends who also hate cars.
If his purpose was to have a discussion, to convince you, it wouldn't be "fuck cars", it would be "cars are polluting". And even if he's an arrogant asshole in real life, you could explain how cars are useful to you, and ask what he's suggesting to do. Maybe 1% are such total careless assholes you shouldn't be talking to them, but others will try to come up with an answer, and if they fail to give it, they will remember it.
Re: The internet wants to be fragmented
#104Heavily agree with this. The internet of 1998 or even 2006 is very very different than the Internet of today.
However, I think this desire for fragmentation and divisiveness was inevitable. People were always in conflict with each other; we just didn't have the means to butt heads like we can now. If the Internet existed in 1920, I think we would (a) have some amazing historical artifacts, and (b) see a lot of the same behaviors we're seeing today.
Re: The internet wants to be fragmented
#105The biggest problem is the like button. The like button is not only a bad metric - it's the worst possible metric. Speaking up used to be something you do to change someone's mind or yours. What's the point in speaking up if nobody does anything with what you said? The like button reprogrammed people. They started getting positive feedback for speaking in an echo chamber, for saying and doing things their audience al…
I'm pretty sure I agree with you 100% but as I write this I'm wondering how different an upvote is from a like button...
Also wondering if there was a pre-internet social equivalent of a like button. Maybe there wasn't one. It's probably dangerous to assume there was always some version of a like button. But it's probably just as dangerous to assume there wasn't?...
Re: The internet wants to be fragmented
#106The biggest problem is the like button. The like button is not only a bad metric - it's the worst possible metric. Speaking up used to be something you do to change someone's mind or yours. What's the point in speaking up if nobody does anything with what you said? The like button reprogrammed people. They started getting positive feedback for speaking in an echo chamber, for saying and doing things their audience al…
The biggest problem is that you can make money from the internet. The internet was more about self-expression and fun. Then people realized they can sell things or themselves (being a "content-creator", "thought-leader", etc.). As a result the most active people are tailoring their actions towards increasing engagement, getting you to buy something, getting you to think a certain way, etc. and we have a divide betwee…
Money does this to everything.
Radio used to be cool, now it's mostly ads.
Circulating pamphlets was once a potent political tool, now they come sandwiched between ads in a newspaper that nobody reads.
Evaluate a randomly chosen NFT-referent for artistic merit and see how it stack up to a randomly chosen pre-nft art.
I'm still optimistic about the web though. It's more configurable than the other media. We may yet find a way to wall off the advertising cancer and make some space for cool stuff to survive.
Re: The internet wants to be fragmented
#107The biggest problem is the like button. The like button is not only a bad metric - it's the worst possible metric. Speaking up used to be something you do to change someone's mind or yours. What's the point in speaking up if nobody does anything with what you said? The like button reprogrammed people. They started getting positive feedback for speaking in an echo chamber, for saying and doing things their audience al…
I think the like button is fine. There have been ways of expressing agreement or disagreement long before that idea came along. (See also: "This")
In my opinion, infinite scrolling is substantially more damaging. If you have poor self control, which I think many people do, using an app that does nothing to tell you when to quit is an open invitation to addiction.
Re: The internet wants to be fragmented
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why does someone’s position need to change? That implies that somebody is wrong, and that’s not necessarily the case. More often, the “wrongness” comes from having a different point of view. For example, it’s easy to say “fuck cars” when you live in the city and they are only polluting, noisy nuisances that are, at best, optional for living your life. But when you live where I do, not having a car means a significant…
Isn't the whole point that you can change the position of a person who says "fuck cars" by talking to them and telling them why some people need them? If they are not trolls, learning about how much of the world is reliant on cars should absolutely change their position.
My experience is that people who say "fuck cars" are entirely aware of how much of world is absolutely reliant upon them.
Re: The internet wants to be fragmented
#109The biggest problem is the like button. The like button is not only a bad metric - it's the worst possible metric. Speaking up used to be something you do to change someone's mind or yours. What's the point in speaking up if nobody does anything with what you said? The like button reprogrammed people. They started getting positive feedback for speaking in an echo chamber, for saying and doing things their audience al…
Why does someone’s position need to change? That implies that somebody is wrong, and that’s not necessarily the case. More often, the “wrongness” comes from having a different point of view. For example, it’s easy to say “fuck cars” when you live in the city and they are only polluting, noisy nuisances that are, at best, optional for living your life. But when you live where I do, not having a car means a significant…
The "fuck cars" position is a great example. I advocate for pedestrian and cyclist friendly infrastructure for our city at our local planning board. The quality of online discourse even for people that share my position is terrible. There's a lot to discuss like fire apparatus access or construction labor shortages causing backups, street classifications, but the online discourse has so little of that.
A lot of these folks are driven by YouTubers who do advocacy work for those unfamiliar with the debate. But actually showing up at a planning meeting with that kind of rhetoric makes no sense. And this isn't even beginning to engage with people with different positions on road infrastructure. It's the double edged sword of the internet that raises awareness for issues but loses nuance because nuance loses engagement.
Re: The internet wants to be fragmented
#110The biggest problem is the like button. The like button is not only a bad metric - it's the worst possible metric. Speaking up used to be something you do to change someone's mind or yours. What's the point in speaking up if nobody does anything with what you said? The like button reprogrammed people. They started getting positive feedback for speaking in an echo chamber, for saying and doing things their audience al…
Imo there's dimensions to which different systems let users express themselves.
1. The like button (e.g. Twitter) [1 dimension, discrete]
2. Clapping (e.g. Medium) [1 dimension, (kinda-)cotinuous]
2. Upvote/downvote (e.g. Reddit) [1 dimension, 2 directions, discrete]
3. Preset reactions (e.g. iMessage) [multiple dimensions, discrete]
4. Any emoji reaction (e.g. Slack) [(kinda-)infinite dimensions, discrete]
5. User-defined tags (e.g. Steam) [infinite dimensions, discrete]
6. Tags you can agree/disagree with (e.g. Kongregate) [infinite dimensions, bidirectional, discrete]
I could go on, but my point is that maybe the reason the like button is so bad is because it's literally the simplest possible implementation of user interactions to content. Perhaps a system that allowed for more nuance would make users consider their interaction more