131–140 of 201 posts
Biggest issue will be to keep government and public services on the non-corporate web, as they probably jump ship for "security" reasons.
The assumption all citizens use those private services is wrong and dangerous.
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I thought that there must be a middle ground after reading that part, too. But we, the people who know, run and support that cozy web, are actually a minority compared to the mass of internet users. It's not a good comparison, but my family and friends know absolutely nothing about all the things that make up the cozy web. Dozens of people and literally nobody knows what RSS, Mastodon or blogs are. When asked about p…
> Nobody except my brother uses ad blockers How are they using any modern website without despairing? The web, particularly news sites, is unusable without ad blockers. It's insane, some pages insert ads every two paragraphs of content.
- Most horrible one is that they are either used to it and just accept the way it is without questioning it.
- News can be consumed in other ways, TV is popular especially for older generations. My wife for example listens to the podcast of one of the biggest newspapers: 10-12 minutes of the most important news with only a short break for commercials.
- Not sure about that one, but there's also the option to pay. From what I know the prices for access to a digital version of a newspaper without ads is kinda fair.
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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…
That’s why I feel like the author is trying to force a square peg into a round hole. WhatsApp is literally Facebook, but all my messages are end-to-end encrypted; I don’t feel like they’re tracking me the same way I do on Instagram. Meanwhile, plenty of people’s blogs have all sorts of nasty tracking shit. People love trying to fit things into dichotomies, but reality is always a lot messier.
Only Meta know if they’re using that information for sure.
Their track record on abusing things like 2 factor phone numbers for snooping isn’t great though.
another virtue signaler using false equivalence to avoid personal discomfort. his "solutions" do nothing to address the power of these monopoly platforms.
Oh, his solutions DO address the problem in a way that works best: Walk away.
> 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…
I thought that there must be a middle ground after reading that part, too. But we, the people who know, run and support that cozy web, are actually a minority compared to the mass of internet users. It's not a good comparison, but my family and friends know absolutely nothing about all the things that make up the cozy web. Dozens of people and literally nobody knows what RSS, Mastodon or blogs are. When asked about p…
From Facebook breaking copy/paste so you can’t email calendar events to people not on the platform to Twitter closing APIs to third party clients to Google attempting to stop ad blockers.
It’s all just to make life worse for a tiny group of people.
> 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. This is only true because the UX of mastodon, Gemini, GrapheneOS, and other darlings of…
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> This is only true because the UX of mastodon, Gemini, GrapheneOS, and other darlings of the non-commercial web crowd are so bad I don't know... many "commercial websites" are really, really slow. Slack, for one, regularly takes seconds to show me a few text messages. A big bloated website I absolutely hate is HelloFresh: I see how they may think it looks good, but loading it feels like I'm compiling a kernel or som…
It's common to assume around here that most people care about snappy UIs and corporations are just dumb and give in to designers who need to justify their paycheck, but... what if that isn't true? What if the people who care about load times in apps like Slack are a tiny minority, and the majority actually likes the "glossy, useless UI stuff"? It's easy for a native computer user who grew up with (or before) Windows…
We know from experience, a lot of work gets signed off as soon as they can put a tick in the box to say it’s done and not when it’s actually done well! ;)
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I'm one of the people who's leaning towards the small web, yet I don't go to these extremes. I use no adblockers, yet I use services that are part of the small web. I host my own webpage. However, if I need to use some part of the "common" web, I use that part. It just doesn't get used anymore. Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, many news sites are distant places. I have nothing to block them, but my lifestyle pushed them ou…
Hmm from your description, you sound very close to the author of that article. What makes you think they are extreme and you are not? Genuinely interested.
The author frames the situation as "us vs. them". I don't do that. I have strong opinions too, but I don't act with despise or a hatred towards these entities.
I have seen the small web, and rise of web 2.0. So, it's just a progressive "I'll do this the old way" process for me.
What opened the floodgates for me was registering a domain. After getting it, I was able to put more and more of my life under it. My webpage, blog, other invisible infrastructure which improves my life started to move under it, yet I take a pragmatic approach. I'm a sysadmin and developer by trade, and I don't want a dozen more servers to manage, so I don't self-host everything myself, but use small/minimalist services which allows me to use my own domain.
Also, I'm not shy of sharing albums over Google Photos for example, because it's convenient for the recipients of the said albums. We're living in a social world, and I think balancing social aspects with personal choices is wise.
Because while I don't prefer bigger corporations, it doesn't give me the right to make other people's life harder. Life is already hard as it is.
You can see the balance from the links in my homepage: https://www.bayindirh.io
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There's nothing unapproachable about a 100% static site with some server-rendered navigation elements, much like livejournal was in the early 2000s. Much like HN is today. Perfectly 'approachable' even on mobile devices. The only thing that makes sites like this and that 'unapproachable' is stunningly high (genuine, not stat-massaged) levels of functional illiteracy.
Also that unless you play the stupid SEO games, your approachable site is never going to rank on Google. And as we know, the normies won't even scroll the search page, let alone go to page 2 (or use a better search engine). So they'll only get whatever scammy ridiculous clickbait the SEO agencies have put together for the corporate sites so they can rank for that keyword (and not even relevant keyword - ranking for a…
They don’t want to direct traffic to my website, I’ll get by on word of mouth.
To me it seems dangerous to go to the author's side of the split, if you work in tech: you won't be exposed, at all, to the web that most people experience. Which is bad for you, professionally speaking - it's bad to be completely in the dark about "the web" as most people experience it. It's bad if you work in a startup which is on that web. And it's bad if you're entrepreneurial and would like to make money off tha…
To me, that’s a competitive advantage.
I am self-employed and make a good living from that website. The hardest part of my job is going against advertiser expectations. I control if, when and how I mention products, and that’s very unusual to some of them.