71–80 of 91 posts
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Doesn't Flash, the tool, export to JS now? It was having Flash player, the browser plugin, that was an ongoing security and privacy problem for browsers.
Flash isn't even available anymore. It was discontinued in Dec 2020.
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EDIT: this was largely just to strengthen one of your points. Every single time something becomes big, the hardcore early fans of that thing will complain about the change. This used to happen with bands. Early die hard fans enjoyed having their own tribe or clique built around the band, and then when the band became too successful they'd say that the band "sold out" and that the newfound fans aren't really fans and…
I agree, tribalism of this nature has a huge effect. With the internet, though, I think there's another factor that reduces its "fun level" -- the internet has also shifted to being a heavily commercialized environment, and commercialization has a very strong anti-fun effect.
Commercial enterprises were hounded if they dared try to sell a product. Remember when the law firm's fax machine was crippled ( fax DDS attack?) in retaliation?
If you wanted to see the Olympics up close, you posted what sports you were interested in and folks would take pics for you and upload them onto an FTP server. You only used the server during off hours out of politeness.
Simtel is where you found your dos programs.
You downloaded Linux one disk at a time.
When AOL opened it up to its users, they destroyed many of the cozier aspects. But the porn definitely exploded.
Life is change.
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Do you have an accurate model of what TikTok is though? Does anyone?
Surveillance, profit and evil. We are talking about an app made in one of the most surveillance states of the world, heavily moderated to that where if you don't look pretty your binned and making profit off the data you provide.
In 1998 when I was 14, on my ISP portal there was a link called "CHAT", with a list of channel and topics. In a channel targeted to teenagers, it was full of teenagers.
No bots, no FBI, no creepy adults. Kids my age from all over the country talking and having fun, in a public space. I know because over the years I have met and even had my first real-life relationship with people met in there.
I do not believe for a single second anyone that says today's Internet is more fun, safe, approachable, original than today.
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> I've seen it evolve from java applets and flash to something better. With the advances in technology I wish it had. However, we now have Material Design, oversized UIs, autoplaying videos when you are immediately on the site, anti-adblockers, "Please Subscribe" crap, the desktop being an afterthought (hamburger menus), etc.
I don't like those things either. But a counter argument is that uBlock origin, Pi-hole, and Reader mode in Firefox go a long way to blocking those things and creating a nice reading experience.
Yeah, true. What I mean is that I miss when the web sites were still lighter pretty much and the desktop was still one of the main platforms (heck, one of the reasons of increased PC sales from the late 90s-early 00s was internet access). An example for me is that I had a better time viewing YouTube on a old computer and old OSes on VMs than YouTube today since back then, the site was still light enough and easy to use. Heck, back then you could even run it on Windows 98 and 2000.
Apologies I had to reply again. Been a while I actually used this so I forgot that there was an edit button.
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I don't like those things either. But a counter argument is that uBlock origin, Pi-hole, and Reader mode in Firefox go a long way to blocking those things and creating a nice reading experience.
That's not really a counterargument. Having to do those things sucks in and of themselves. They just mitigate some of the other suckage.
I think a lot of the problem today is there’s no continuity in community or conversations by design, so a lot of sites feel extremely transactional. For example: you might read a YouTube comment that makes you laugh, but you’ll likely never read anything else from that person as long as you live.
On forums you had people putting absurd effort into their “posting persona” and these people would be around for years and decades. They weren’t motivated by likes or retweets. They weren’t trying to get you to listen to their podcast or subscribe to their Patreon. They were just humans having a conversation.
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I also spent a ton of time on BBSes, pre Internet. A few of these developed into early dialup ISPs. One thing I really miss is the "community" aspect. Local message boards, etc. That is all gone now. The closest thing you can find is maybe a subreddit or Discord, but it's not the same. The community and locality aspect is gone. You can't even meet a weirdo on Craigslist anymore. For many people, the Internet of today…
Local message boards are gone because they end up becoming dominated by weirdos and the people who don't have anything else to do, so end up posting constantly. Think of the comments section of a local newspaper website.