Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Where Have All the Websites Gone?

fromjason.xyz

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 407 posts

Re: Where Have All the Websites Gone?

#251

Post by pphysch »

tivert wrote: post #194
Stranger43 wrote: post #25

It feels like the web grew up into an bitter old fart who takes everything way to seriously. What's missing is the culture of "anonymity" where everyone was pretty much just a screen name and people did not give that much care to their long term reputations and the fall from that more or less started with facebooks real name policy, or rather when facebook stopped being an glorified phonebook and started being an con…

It's all fun until the parasites move in. One of the magic bits of the earlier web(s) is that it was all new, participation involved an element of non-replicable self-selection, and the parasites hadn't had enough time to adapt and colonize it. I'm not even sure if it's will be possible to have a community of "pseudoanonymous amateurs" in the future. It'll probably get swamped with AI generated garbage, like the croc…

Yep -- early adopters saw it as just another way to communicate between humans, and didn't aggressively push the envelop on how much anonymity+reach could be abused. Gradually, that envelop got expanded and now we have well-capitalized influence operations (including advertisement) solely focused on exploiting the internet as much as possible for financial+political gain.

Re: Where Have All the Websites Gone?

#252

Post by kgdiem »

I dread the idea of social commerce and the like eclipsing individual apps because the support experience from these companies is already so poor. I can't even imagine what fresh hell could eclipse the walled garden (social media) inside of the walled garden (app stores).

I tried to sign up for Facebook to make a business page and was instantly banned for no reason. My appeal was denied after uploading a picture of myself. It just doesn't make sense from a consumer or SMB perspective to continue to promote this path but most can't afford not to participate.

Funnily enough though, on New Years Eve 2023 I was talking to a few people about a website that I'd made. The only criticism that I received was that there was no app... it is a one-time-use experience that takes less than 5 minutes, then you never have to use it again except to check order status.

But -- going back to "most can't afford not to participate" -- as I write this I figure that I might as well relent, make the app and start checking into the possibilities with social commerce as to not be left behind screaming about an open internet.

Re: Where Have All the Websites Gone?

#253

Post by pomian »

sdsd wrote: post #236
fullstick wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also hard to stick around when the website doesn't implement HTTPS and is insecure.

lol. i guess someone on your local wifi might intercept your posting password and delete your post to 13channel! it's an anonymous imageboard with fairly uncontroversial topics. what's your threat model such that https would make you feel safer on 13channel? fwiw i agree, we're gonna implement it soon just as a matter of principle, but it does seem a bit silly - what are you worried about happening? what is there to…

This thinking, or questioning, is needed everywhere. There is so much security paranoia, that it affects any one, just trying to do something. From setting up a wifi router, to seeing up an email account. Passwords must be used. Walt for 2FA before proceeding. Change your password to include upper lower Roman numerals and at least 5 different fonts... Why? Instead of saying up a website in 15 minutes, there is an hour of preparing to set up a webpage. If I live in the country side, have no neighbors for 50 miles, I must secure my router going to my starlink. Why? Added complexity and regulations, seem to grow around us just as the beurocracies; schools, governments, companies - maybe our lives are just all dependent on the 3rd law of thermodynamics. Higher disorder? I recommend this amazing presentation, questioning the basics, and attitude in teamwork, of the Artemis project: https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=dHI-_EbDzcqJc-vF&v=OoJsPvmFix...

Re: Where Have All the Websites Gone?

#254

Post by shuntress »

It is too difficult and dangerous to run a website without extremely deep[0] technical knowledge.

Most people who want to create and share things (which is almost everyone) need someone else to handle the website for them.

Most companies that will handle a website for you do it under condition of implicit exclusivity. Facebook, TikTok, Youtube, etc want their moats to be as large as possible and the content they publish to be as inaccessible (from outside their silo) as possible.

[0]https://xkcd.com/2501/

Re: Where Have All the Websites Gone?

#255

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

mtillman wrote: post #227
simonw wrote: post #190

I want more people to have link blogs. I have one in the sidebar of https://simonwillison.net/ which I've been running since November 2003. You can search through all 6,836 links here: https://simonwillison.net/search/?type=blogmark I can post things to it with a bookmarklet. It has an Atom feed. It's such a low-friction way of publishing. A lot of https://daringfireball.net works like this too. I also like https://w…

have you seen https://ooh.directory ?

have you seen https://curlie.org ?

Re: Where Have All the Websites Gone?

#256

Post by rchaud »

We all miss the opinionated blog era of the 2000s, but even if the Buzzfeed-like aggegator sites that replaced them in the 2010s hadn't existed, the blogs were going to die out eventually.

Great blogs were always seasonal, in that the best content posted on it was written when the writer was in a particular phase of their life. Once that phase passes, the writing dries up. Great websites therefore have a start and an end. We should be archiving these websites, not telling people to "just post anyway" so that the site doesn't disappear from Google Search.

For a Gen Z parallel to this, look to any Reddit thread about how some Youtuber they worshipped a decade ago has either disappeared or is making low-quality content to pump affilliate links. We wouldn't want that happening to our favorite writers of yesteryear. There's no shame in calling time on something.

20 years ago, maddox.xmission.com was my go-to place for rants and laughs. The site is still around, but I've changed, so my interests are elsewhere. Similarly, I can't expect the site's author to still be playing the same character that made me bookmark the site all those years ago.

Re: Where Have All the Websites Gone?

#257

Post by pomian »

keiferski wrote: post #244
mym1990 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is uninteresting is your weak spine in succumbing to "societal inertia", without considering what is possibly good or bad, just what is. You clearly don't know what you're describing because you're just flip flopping between 2 things. Just read your comments back in a couple of hours and you'll understand. Like I actually can't understand how your argument is: "people are watching more videos, therefore reading…

You really don’t seem to understand that one can observe things separately from passing judgment on them. It’s a basic principle of science. I don’t know why you seem to have such a hard time understanding this, but judging by your hostile remarks in every comment, you just want to argue. And in case this isn’t already crystal clear (and apparently it isn’t for you): I like books. I like reading. I have studied the h…

And here we are, the HN consumers, reading(!) the comments. No videos or pictures. I mention this to support your comment, that there are people who like to read, and learn from reading, but it requires more time, more involvement, and more imagination. We are a minority? Few have that luxury, and inclination - it turns out, so the massive onslaught of easy, entertainment. One music video can have 500 million viewers. I don't know how many viewers of HN there are, but, I doubt it's a million. It is interesting to see where (and how) the information flow goes from here on.

Re: Where Have All the Websites Gone?

#258

Post by LaurenSerino »

"Creating content" meant for a platform tends to reduce quality to the lowest common denominator of what will work for that platform. When the algorithm reigns supreme, there's less incentive to try something new. The internet has lost its sense of fun creative trial and error.

Re: Where Have All the Websites Gone?

#259

Post by keiferski »

pomian wrote: post #257
keiferski wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really don’t seem to understand that one can observe things separately from passing judgment on them. It’s a basic principle of science. I don’t know why you seem to have such a hard time understanding this, but judging by your hostile remarks in every comment, you just want to argue. And in case this isn’t already crystal clear (and apparently it isn’t for you): I like books. I like reading. I have studied the h…

And here we are, the HN consumers, reading(!) the comments. No videos or pictures. I mention this to support your comment, that there are people who like to read, and learn from reading, but it requires more time, more involvement, and more imagination. We are a minority? Few have that luxury, and inclination - it turns out, so the massive onslaught of easy, entertainment. One music video can have 500 million viewers…

For sure, I love HN and love reading. But if we’re honest here, it’s a niche thing. A random TikTok video gets more views than a link that’s on the HN front page all day.

Re: Where Have All the Websites Gone?

#260

Post by nvm0n2 »

cgearhart wrote: post #7

I have been feeling this quite acutely for several years now, but it does seem like it’s been accelerating. In my head I’ve been blaming LLMs—appification was already driving content into silos, but the locks came out quickly this past year as the silos realized they were giving away very valuable data for free. I guess the sad part for me is that the internet mostly feels like a waste of time at this point—everythin…

Cookie banners aren't designed to optimize engagement, they're forced on websites by the EU.

Paywalls aren't designed to optimize engagement, they kill it! Paywalls slaughter almost all your traffic and kill social media virality dead, but they can still work out better than trying to fight ad blocking.

Spam, well, most spam is short. They want to get your attention and bring you to their shop. It's not really about doomscrolling from there on.

So if you're complaining about both ads and paywalls then really you just want content made by volunteers for free. But as Wikipedia has shown, that can work great for a short time until the normies get exhausted and move on, leaving behind the truly crazy fanatics to stay in charge. It's not necessarily better.

Post reply on HN