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What I want from the internet

chrbutler.com

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Re: What I want from the internet

#101

Post by specproc »

bsder wrote: post #69
visarga wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would keep Wikipedia, the Internet Archive, Stack Overflow. I'd be very sad to lose YouTube. It's the jewel of the internet.

Except that it's not. YouTube is a giant hole of suck that brings everybody else down to their level. YouTube being subsidized has driven any competitor out of the space. Since YouTube has a monopoly, your content will get copied and posted over there even if you don't give permission . Since YouTube is backed by Google, they are larger than lawsuits which could bring them to heel. If you wanted YouTube to improve, s…

I don't disagree that YouTube would be better off away from Google, nor that it's a monopoly, but in terms of content it is magnificent.

Vintage films, tutorials for the most niche practices, 4K videos of exotic locations, a better music selection than Spotify: all at your fingertips on one site.

Re: What I want from the internet

#102

Post by camgunz »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #82
camgunz wrote: post #29

I mostly buy Eternal September, or as rephrased by David Foster Wallace: "[The internet] is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests." Like, the internet is banal because we're (the rich world) all on it. It's not a weird little niche anymore. So it's now subject to all the (…

You list social issues and then list a collection of privacy-oriented technology as if it's a solution. Those two domains are orthogonal. Perfect privacy won't make racism or banality go away. It may make it harder to be targeted by ad farms, but it will make it easier for scammers and other bottom feeders to infiltrate and exploit online communities for personal and sometimes political ends. Instead of being flooded…

It was just a random list off the top of my head. I don't think there is anything privacy oriented about blockchains (which publish and store your transactions publicly forever) or activitypub (which literally publishes your activity to other people). They weren't meant to seem like solutions to humanity's problems.

The rest of your post I agree with; mostly that was my point.

Re: What I want from the internet

#103

Post by flippinburgers »

camgunz wrote: post #29

I mostly buy Eternal September, or as rephrased by David Foster Wallace: "[The internet] is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests." Like, the internet is banal because we're (the rich world) all on it. It's not a weird little niche anymore. So it's now subject to all the (…

Are you saying that racism is only a problem in rich countries?

Re: What I want from the internet

#104

Post by StrictDabbler »

pixl97 wrote: post #81
marcosdumay wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In 1997 there wouldn't have been 50,000 spam responses in the query. If what the GP wants exists, and none of the given options are any bit similar to it, why do you think the amount of spam is relevant? If Google couldn't find a real thing between a mountain of invented low quality content, you would have a point. But Google keeps pushing unrelated results instead.

Define "real thing". Again in the past it's really easy, people didn't put much "fake" content up. Now there is mountain of documents that have 'content' that matches your request... How much energy are you going to put in to determine if its low or high quality content? I did the search that OP did and I got tangentially related documents, but not the exact think that OP was likely looking for. And this defines the…

The content doesn't match the request, though.

I click on it and search for the keywords I gave and they aren't in the result.

Put the search in quotes. Nope.

Add +, -, whatever. Uh-uh.

Inspect the source. Search for the keyword in hidden keyword tags. Nada. The result is not fake, it's just not a result for my search.

Google is no longer a search engine. It is only a suggestion engine. It is the Mega-Clippy. "You look like you might want to buy Modal underwear!"

This works for the majority of searches but it's useless for research into any novel corridor. And now Bing using ChatGPT to get closer, for sure, but only until they figure out how to inject advertising into it better.

We really needed the first big search engine to stay focused on search instead of suggestion and they chose not to. That's where we are.

Re: What I want from the internet

#105

Post by themadturk »

carlosjobim wrote: post #95
bombcar wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It went from an Internet of amateurs (those with an actual love for what they are talking about) to professionals (which are very slick, but the money is always there). You can still find great content in videos and music from amateurs, but the professionals "outshout" most of them; and the best amateurs end up getting sucked into being professionals. Once your livelihood is on the line, things change.

What exactly do you mean with "outshout"? Where are the professionals taking away the amateurs' space exactly?

Not bombcar, but I take it to mean that professionals have more resources they can pour into publicizing their stuff. It's not so much taking away amateurs' space as overwhelming amateurs' voices, thereby diminishing their power.

Re: What I want from the internet

#106

Post by carlosjobim »

themadturk wrote: post #105
carlosjobim wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly do you mean with "outshout"? Where are the professionals taking away the amateurs' space exactly?

Not bombcar, but I take it to mean that professionals have more resources they can pour into publicizing their stuff. It's not so much taking away amateurs' space as overwhelming amateurs' voices, thereby diminishing their power.

I just don't understand it. Publishing space online is infinite and will continue to be infinite no matter how popular somebody else gets. Who gets overwhelmed by somebody else publishing something?

Re: What I want from the internet

#107

Post by agumonkey »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #3

> And the internet used to be more work to experience. Today, it’s more work to avoid. Since the author likes analogies, I'll add mine: the internet now has become roads, bridges, towns. The internet used to be forests, rivers to ford, camps. There used to be an exploration-aspect to the internet, not sure what you would find if you took this trail or that one. Now we all seem to travel the few, well-worn roads to th…

It's always like that. New space is .. new space. It's unknown, sometimes almost empty, sometimes dense.. you never really know what to expect.

There was a natural aspect to it, that people who wished to spend time would discover wild things, and not organized boring monetized stuff.

Of course people wish for a little bit of help, then someone provide it (Google, later facebook) and the magic starts to fade away.

No more strange shores.. it's urbanized, with robbers and scammers, fluff and administration to "protect".

Re: What I want from the internet

#108

Post by nicbou »

carlosjobim wrote: post #106
themadturk wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not bombcar, but I take it to mean that professionals have more resources they can pour into publicizing their stuff. It's not so much taking away amateurs' space as overwhelming amateurs' voices, thereby diminishing their power.

I just don't understand it. Publishing space online is infinite and will continue to be infinite no matter how popular somebody else gets. Who gets overwhelmed by somebody else publishing something?

The publishing space is infinite but users only see a few results per page.

Re: What I want from the internet

#109

Post by carlosjobim »

nicbou wrote: post #108
carlosjobim wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don't understand it. Publishing space online is infinite and will continue to be infinite no matter how popular somebody else gets. Who gets overwhelmed by somebody else publishing something?

The publishing space is infinite but users only see a few results per page.

The users have a certain responsibility for finding what they are interested in themselves. If you rely only on Google in this year, you will miss out. Everything can not be on the front page at the same time. It's the same if you go to a store IRL, with the exception that you of course are free to start your browsing anywhere else than on Google - like most people do today with social media.

Re: What I want from the internet

#110

Post by selfhoster11 »

bsder wrote: post #69
visarga wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would keep Wikipedia, the Internet Archive, Stack Overflow. I'd be very sad to lose YouTube. It's the jewel of the internet.

Except that it's not. YouTube is a giant hole of suck that brings everybody else down to their level. YouTube being subsidized has driven any competitor out of the space. Since YouTube has a monopoly, your content will get copied and posted over there even if you don't give permission . Since YouTube is backed by Google, they are larger than lawsuits which could bring them to heel. If you wanted YouTube to improve, s…

YouTube is the modern-day video library of Alexandria. Yes, there are many negatives to it running the way it is, but it's undeniable that such a powerful gathering of information resources is available only on their platform.
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