Splitting the Web
ploum.net
Splitting the Web
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Re: Splitting the Web
#2From the article: But, increasingly, I feel less and less like an outsider. It’s not me. It’s people living for and by advertising who are the outsiders. They are the one destroying everything they touch, including the planet. They are the sick psychos and I don’t want them in my life anymore.
My thoughts exactly. Like the author, I don't have patience for glossy websites anymore. If a site needs third-party JS to be usable then I'm gone. I won't put up with 15mb downloads just to read some content (Twitter included). The web is not so much splitting in two. We are simply saying "no more" to the exploiters and grifters. Eventually, they will have to learn to eat with the commoners or eat by themselves.
Re: Splitting the Web
#3> It feels like everyone is now choosing its side. You can’t stay in the middle anymore. You are either dedicating all your CPU cycles to run JavaScript tracking you or walking away from the big monopolies. You are either being paid to build huge advertising billboards on top of yet another framework or you are handcrafting HTML.
Is that happening? I feel like there's a ton of middle ground, and it's only ever expanding. My personal website isn't a huge JavaScript app tracking my visitors, but I wouldn't really call it handcrafted HTML. I'm involved with a bunch of communities that aren't overly corporatized but don't take a big principled stand against it either.
I prefer Maggie Appleton's diagram of the web [1]. The click-obsessed corporations are what she calls the "dark forest of the clear web". But below that there are email newsletters and RSS feeds, there are personal blogs and digital gardens, there are communities run on Discord and Slack.
Re: Splitting the Web
#4I get where the author is coming from, but I feel like his conclusion is reductionist.
Yes, on the one extreme you have Facebook, and the other extreme is say Mastodon, but there's also a huge middle way which is well populated.
This week I've browsed hacker news, Wikipedia, done some research for an upcoming trip, kept up with OpenSSL and Jquery (yeah, that's still around, and still useful.)
I bought some waterproofing (direct from the manufacturer), looked up nearby steel manufacturers, and looked up the phone number of my electrician (on his site).
In cases where I feel I might be tracked, I just open an incognito browser [1]. Mostly though (apart from news) I don't really find myself on sites driven by advertising.
If you spend your day on social media, news sites, or buying everything online, then sure, I get it, you're gonna get tracked. But that's really (for me) a tiny part of my browser history. Everyone is different I guess.
[1] yeah I know, tracking is more than cookies, but I see so few ads anyway I haven't even bothered to load an ad-blocker. Then again, I'm not on social media...
Re: Splitting the Web
#5> The link I clicked doesn’t open or is wrangled? Yep, I’m probably blocking some important third-party JavaScript. No, I don’t care. I’ve too much to read on a day anyway. More time for something else.
Only on a rare occasion does surfing with no JS actually hamper my surfing. If a site needs JS, I make a rare exception and whitelist it temporarily with uBlock Origin. I have a dedicated browser profile for sites which require JS and I need to be logged in, like Amazon, Gmail, Reddit, etc
Re: Splitting the Web
#6> It feels like everyone is now choosing its side. You can’t stay in the middle anymore. You are either dedicating all your CPU cycles to run JavaScript tracking you or walking away from the big monopolies. You are either being paid to build huge advertising billboards on top of yet another framework or you are handcrafting HTML. Is that happening? I feel like there's a ton of middle ground, and it's only ever expand…
Well, her analogy is more for protected areas where you can hide from lifeless, aggresively public areas and where you can consume (presumably) more authentic content. It doesn't work well in this case for e.g. "cozy web" because places like Snapchat are definitely harvesting your interactions. Whatsapp is literally Facebook. The author of this article is more ranting about the "commercial web" in this case. They don't seem to have the same level of appreciation for some of the corporations that Maggie does.
Re: Splitting the Web
#7It’s the monopolistic companies aka mega corps that really restrict individuals and stifle innovation.
In the small-mid sized space, there are shitty actors but they’re easier to avoid, and don’t require resorting to living in a cave. They are competing with each other in the traditional sense of the word. They’re not on a mission to extinguish.
This is not unique to tech, it’s everywhere. Private actors that become the size of countries switch to playing zero-sum games, by acquiring and consolidating. It’s always bad for the consumer.
Re: Splitting the Web
#8Key insight:
> It’s a bit like all those layers of JavaScript and flashy css have been used against usability, against them. Against us
Re: Splitting the Web
#9Apparently I joined this movement decades ago on accident? I lurked Reddit on occasion but even that is dead to me now. Mastodon is awesome. It does need door game support though.
Re: Splitting the Web
#10I like the text, but the author seems to indicate there is a fork in the road ahead. Take left to the open web (HTML, lessJS, etc.); take right to the commercial web (Fb, GA4, JS, Ads etc). I think we can easily have both options at the same time.
If in the past we used to discuss our "work life" in opposition to our "personal life", I think we are at the point now of discussing our "small-tech text based web presence" vs. a "big-tech click based web presence" as described. Not a big deal, I think.