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Splitting the Web

ploum.net

81–90 of 201 posts

Re: Splitting the Web

#81

This post expresses something I have been feeling fro a while. We need some catchy names for these parts of the web. I'd propose "Corponet" for the big sites (borrowed from Cyberpunk). How to call the other side though? "Fediverse" is its own thing, is there any other term that encompasses the fediverse, random personal sites and so on?

I like cozyweb

Re: Splitting the Web

#82
>Most of the time, I don’t bother anymore. 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.

This has been my browsing habit for a long while now. Sure if I need to add a macro or google some compiler flags to compile an OS, I'll do it. But fiddling with noscript when I know your site is just images and text (plus trackers/ads) is not worth it.

Re: Splitting the Web

#83

From 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…

I’m moving to Firefox as my main browser, and the amount of sites that break because of me blocking JavaScript (with ublock) is staggering. I can understand SPA being JS only, but simple blogs and other content sites, no.

if it helps I have my rules here:

https://github.com/1268/blog/blob/main/2023-08/ublock-origin...

Re: Splitting the Web

#85

It's not symmetric, however. Those of us on the "full web" are still able to access everything. Which is why I don't feel compelled to "pick a side". Still, I do feel the enshittification that they're talking about. I hate that Google is less reliable and that (e.g.,) reading a recipe online requires shoveling away a mountain of spam. I think this is just the natural consequence of funding the web through ad clicks.…

Everything beyond the main page is a 404. I just wanted a technical description of how it works.

Re: Splitting the Web

#87

>People who try alternative networks such as Mastodon or, God forbid, Gemini. People who poke fun at the modern web by building true HTML and JavaScript-less pages. Mastodon is actually part of the "HTTP as a secure application delivery protocol" and is no longer part of the "HTTP as website document delivery" team. To me that seems the biggest split: self contained application versus hyperlinked documents.

I am ignorant of the underlying mastodon protocol, but couldn't there be a (mostly) HTML-only frontend for mastodon, or something like that? I really hated that about twitter too, that for reading a goddamn SMS-lenghty tiny text it couldn't just have been "prerendered" on the server, no, you have to fetch a million things and watch different spinners before you get at it.

You can thank W3C's ActivityPub charter for that, who, in their infinite wisdom, have decided it woukd make sense to use JSON for sending hypertext around, rather than, you know, HTML.

Re: Splitting the Web

#88
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I won't put up with 15mb downloads just to read some content Meanwhile my normie friends are sending me TikTok videos of people reading screenshots of Reddit comments posted to Instagram. Regular users absolutely do not care about any of this .

That's a them problem. 30 years ago we knew they'd be trouble if they ever adopted the web en masse and they (and the folks that prey on them) have proven that prediction right at every turn.

I couldn't really process your comment because you rounded up to 30. It got me thinking, there was such a huge gulf between 1993 and 1996, at least for me. 1993: derping DOS on a 386; 1996: Windows 95, Quake, dialup, the Web. The pace of change might seem rapid these days, but the 90s were insane fast.

Re: Splitting the Web

#89
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I won't put up with 15mb downloads just to read some content Meanwhile my normie friends are sending me TikTok videos of people reading screenshots of Reddit comments posted to Instagram. Regular users absolutely do not care about any of this .

That's a them problem. 30 years ago we knew they'd be trouble if they ever adopted the web en masse and they (and the folks that prey on them) have proven that prediction right at every turn.

I mostly agree, but I do think we owe it to the normies to make our part of the web approachable.

I don't want to feel like we've fed them to the machine when maybe they wanted out and didn't know how.

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