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The internet wants to be fragmented

noahpinion.substack.com

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Re: The internet wants to be fragmented

#121

Post by borski »

machina_ex_deus wrote: post #117
culi wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-d…

The simplest possible implementation of user interaction is writing a response. It's already as rich as it can be. It gives less power to bots because bots are incoherent. I feel like the internet devolved us from eloquent human speakers back into monkeys making few noises for communicating. Emoji is similar. Speak. Write text. Formulate your position. We're humans not apes. Get feedback from speaking. The video form…

> It gives less power to bots because bots are incoherent.

ChatGPT would like a word with you.

Re: The internet wants to be fragmented

#122

Post by isaacremuant »

> weirdos mad about video game journalism.

Funny how being interested in accountability, transparency and good journalism makes you "a weirdo" worth ignoring.

Oh well, if you're moderately effective about highlighting a problem you'll always get attacked with labels.

Funny too how he lumps them and other groups with "Nazis".

Feels like yet another person who is suddenly whining because their authoritarian websites are no longer controlled by their authoritarian ideologues they agreed with.

The Elon musk takeover has been very positive, if anything to display how hypocritical some of the authortiarians from any side are. It's all about censoring ideas they don't like because "they're righteous (TM)".

Having destroyed alternatives like Parler every time they got popular, makes it feel that no competition will be allowed and theres a sudden desperate turn to descentralization, which is awesome, but it will come with the same ridículous shouts of censorship when any idea authoritarians don't like, gets mainstream notoriety. Suddenly the interest of society will be to censor that descentralized network. The excuse will be one of the typical scares: terrorism, harm, crime, etc

Interesting times but not an interesting article. Just the typical "how do we go back to what I liked and agreed with me"

Re: The internet wants to be fragmented

#123

Post by borski »

seydor wrote: post #65
Taek wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment doesn't offer any practical advice on where to find content of higher quality, it just condescends people who don't feel like they have high quality options.

my comment is condescending to people who don't put the effort for searching needles in the haystack, but instead spend their whole online time in the well beaten path. The content wont always be of "higher quality" , because quality is subjective. Here are two nearby sources of such content: https://news.ycombinator.com/newest https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments

> my comment is condescending to people who don't put the effort for searching needles in the haystack, but instead spend their whole online time in the well beaten path.

Another way of saying this is that your comment is condescending to… most people.

Most people used to have an easy way to find forums on the internet, even if they were AOL chat rooms, where they could find moderated content that was interesting to them. That was the well beaten path.

Nowadays, that’s no longer the case, and most people don’t seek out those needles in the haystack.

My contention is that they shouldn’t have to, just as they didn’t have to before the 2010s.

A corollary: “just don’t be lazy” is almost never good advice, as there is almost always a reason people are “lazy.” People make similar arguments about the impoverished and how “if they just pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and stopped being lazy” they could easily get out of it, but that’s really hard to do with two kids, three jobs, and no time to think about anything other than survival. They’re not lazy, they are overwhelmed.

I’d say that applies to a lot of facets of life, including time spent on the internet; amid the firehose of nonsense, and given that most of the internet (read: where most people spend time now) is literally rigged against moving away from it, by using human psychology to generate hits of dopamine in the form of likes and views, it is hard to find a better path, and the people who don’t aren’t necessarily lazy. They just don’t live on the internet, and it shouldn’t be that hard.

Re: The internet wants to be fragmented

#124

Post by the_only_law »

seydor wrote: post #50

The internet is vast. But if your attention is fully absorbed between twitter and substack (like the author is), you feel trapped, because, well, you are. Maybe try to venture out of your internet comfort zone. It's not all spam out there, nor is it worthless because it was not recommended by someone cool. Just don't be lazy

Reminds me of people who complain about how all music sucks nowadays but only passively listen to the radio.

Re: The internet wants to be fragmented

#125

Post by andrepd »

isaacremuant wrote: post #122

> weirdos mad about video game journalism. Funny how being interested in accountability, transparency and good journalism makes you "a weirdo" worth ignoring. Oh well, if you're moderately effective about highlighting a problem you'll always get attacked with labels. Funny too how he lumps them and other groups with "Nazis". Feels like yet another person who is suddenly whining because their authoritarian websites ar…

>The Elon musk takeover has been very positive

Of course it has. Twitter stopped censoring neonazis and harassment and started censoring things Musk doesn't like.

>authortiarians from any side. It's all about censoring ideas they don't like

How ironic

Re: The internet wants to be fragmented

#126

Post by culi »

machina_ex_deus wrote: post #117
culi wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-d…

The simplest possible implementation of user interaction is writing a response. It's already as rich as it can be. It gives less power to bots because bots are incoherent. I feel like the internet devolved us from eloquent human speakers back into monkeys making few noises for communicating. Emoji is similar. Speak. Write text. Formulate your position. We're humans not apes. Get feedback from speaking. The video form…

I agree with this, but the point of these user interactions is to whittle them down to something that others can easily relate to.

If you then say "well people can agree/disagree" with comments, then we're back where we started. Why are they agreeing? Do they find it funny, useful, or just like the way the user makes their point? How MUCH do they agree? What if they disagree?

If your reaction is that we should completely kill these interactions then... well have you ever been on giant forums with no way to sort? Sometimes they're fine. Like when there's low volume. Some forums evolve chronologically and that method works as well. But if you're not gonna commit to reading a pamphlet, you're probably not gonna find such a comment section very useful

Re: The internet wants to be fragmented

#127

Post by culi »

harvey9 wrote: post #116
culi wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-d…

The maximum amount of nuance is here: the Reply button. But I agree with your point. We need something short of the Reply button because reading large numbers of replies just to get a sentiment analysis is not practical.

Right, I generally agree. But even comments can be agree/disagreed with or voted on or saved to lists or... etc. We're back to where we started

Imagine hackernews or stackexchange if there was absolutely no upvote/downvote mechanism

Re: The internet wants to be fragmented

#128

Post by borski »

TobyTheDog123 wrote: post #120
Puts wrote: post #25

Now the article was only talking about twitter and social media, but I can't help react on the title since there really is no evidence at all of internet wanting to be fragmented. In fact it's just the opposite. - Not even the most hardcore people are using IRC anymore - All web hosting is now in the cloud - There's basically only two rendering engines left, of which one is at the moment extremely marginalized - GIT…

These are all false equivalencies, as you're talking technology and implementation instead of a consumer product or idea. The author is talking about centralization of moderation and audience, not how it's hosted or how that moderation/audience is presented to the user People moved off of IRC because it was inconvenient for less-technical users, it is far easier to just download an app. That doesn't mean they want th…

I agree, but I’d also argue discord or Slack does this, in the same way that IRC did; you essentially spin up separate servers and thus separate communities. Sure, it’s still hosted by a central entity, but the moderation and discourse is all yours to manage.

Re: The internet wants to be fragmented

#130

Post by seydor »

borski wrote: post #123
seydor wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

my comment is condescending to people who don't put the effort for searching needles in the haystack, but instead spend their whole online time in the well beaten path. The content wont always be of "higher quality" , because quality is subjective. Here are two nearby sources of such content: https://news.ycombinator.com/newest https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments

> my comment is condescending to people who don't put the effort for searching needles in the haystack, but instead spend their whole online time in the well beaten path. Another way of saying this is that your comment is condescending to… most people. Most people used to have an easy way to find forums on the internet, even if they were AOL chat rooms, where they could find moderated content that was interesting to…

I think you re making the argument that people should stick to the mainstream of every medium (in this case the internet) because it's easy. That's why i called it lazy. I 'm not saying it's bad, but people shouldn't complain that everything looks alike, when they literally only stick to things that are alike

forums are just as hard to find today, as they were before. In fact many of them are back in the places where they used to be, it's just people have forgot about them because they chose to sell their attention elsewhere

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