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The internet is slipping out of our reach

injuly.in

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Re: The internet is slipping out of our reach

#121

Post by executesorder66 »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #92
executesorder66 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you aware that nothing is stopping you from only visiting websites made by individuals, and medium-sized businesses? In fact, you can also choose to use cool things like Google Earth, AND choose not to use shit things like Twitter, Facebook, Google Search etc.

Are you aware that I am not talking about my personal well-being, but the well being of society? I've never had a Facebook, and in fact I visit maybe 3-4 internet sites. I don't engage much personally as I think most of what is on the internet is garbage. What I mean to imply is that large corporate internet activities are detrimental to society . If all I cared about was myself then I would not even be typing now at…

The same applies to everyone else. Nothing was stopping them from using the crap bits of the internet, yet they did it anyway because that's what they chose to do.

The same applies to literally anything: food, exercise, etc. people choose the worse option because that's what they prefer. If you take that option away from them, then they will choose some other, similarly crappy option.

The problem is not that people have options, and some of the options are crap.

The problem is that people are physically and mentally lazy (I include myself in this), and will tend to choose the easier, but crappier option most of the time. How do we fix human nature? I don't know, but taking away people's choice isn't going to help the matter.

Re: The internet is slipping out of our reach

#122

Post by hollerith »

mikewarot wrote: post #62
pjc50 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you explain "ambient authority model of computer software"?

When you run a program under almost any operating system, the operating system assumes you trust it. The code can open any file you've got permission to access, open network ports, etc. The code is you as far the operating system is concerned, and carries with it all of your authority. The assumption that code can just do whatever it wants is baked into everything. There are permission flags on your Smartphone and ot…

An app on iOS or Android cannot access the storage of any other app, which fact does not fit into the description you give (i.e., your second paragraph).

Re: The internet is slipping out of our reach

#123

Post by skeaker »

rchaud wrote: post #112
beardedwizard wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is already happening and has almost nothing to do with llm, this is Google and Facebook business model because these are the marketable details.

Is it happening? Is there anybody who would claim that Google and Facebook are showing them better-targeted content now than before? Google and Facebook care only about shoving monetizable garbage in your face, be it through tainted search results, mindless "recommended" IG Reels/YT Shorts or FB Pages. That has driven people away from these platforms. Maybe not at the levels where their bottom line is being hit, but…

> mindless "recommended" IG Reels/YT Shorts or FB Pages

Only these clearly do work for the majority of people. They're ubiquitous in popular culture (and in fact culture is often built within them) and are essentially the whole business model for those services. If they don't work for you, great, it means you've successfully avoided using those services enough that they can't profile you accurately, but that doesn't mean that they don't work at all.

Re: The internet is slipping out of our reach

#124

Post by yetanother12345 »

nstart wrote: post #54

Someone once asked a question online about what each person's biggest fear was regarding the future of AI generated content. I thought about it. While the fears of not being able to earn money for creative pursuits are a concern, my biggest concern remains around anonymity. At some point, I fear that participating online with other humans will require "proof of self" and as AI becomes more and more able to generate c…

> participating online with other humans

There is a more significant case of "the end of anonymity", that of doing any kind of sale or purchase. The more sophisticated the possibilities for fraud become, the harder the authorities that be will (need to) push for public non-falsifiable identification (e.g. linked to your biometrics somehow, as I don't suppose a transplant ("chip") is politically feasible). If you need to trade, that is.

Consider that the past few years the use of cash is increasingly being phased out, or even outlawed (for amounts over a certain size) in various Western countries. With digital money comes digital fraud.

As a spooky aside, the Christian horror story "Mark of The Beast" is remarkably accurate in that respect, even if perhaps a bit too specific in the details (on hand or forehead) - but then magic glasses and -watches are here already.

Re: The internet is slipping out of our reach

#125

Post by yetanother12345 »

rchaud wrote: post #112
beardedwizard wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is already happening and has almost nothing to do with llm, this is Google and Facebook business model because these are the marketable details.

Is it happening? Is there anybody who would claim that Google and Facebook are showing them better-targeted content now than before? Google and Facebook care only about shoving monetizable garbage in your face, be it through tainted search results, mindless "recommended" IG Reels/YT Shorts or FB Pages. That has driven people away from these platforms. Maybe not at the levels where their bottom line is being hit, but…

> claim better targeted content

Any such claim is irrelevant. The personal opinion of the receiver of the content is not relevant, only that the content delivered somehow makes money for the sender.

> That has driven people away from these platforms.

Platforms? These entities do not derive profits only from visits to their own domains. Please inspect the source code of any random site you read next. On the majority of web sites in the Western hemisphere you will find either a Facebook script or a Google script, or both. Often more than these two.

Re: The internet is slipping out of our reach

#126

Post by yetanother12345 »

injuly wrote: post #27
roenxi wrote: post #14

This reads to me like a rant. Good material for a blog post but I don't think there is anything particularly profound going on. The internet is not a static place, and parts are always being born and dying. Maybe today is going to be Google search. There was an interesting question early on in the internet of whether content would be aggregated by corporate entities or whether people would self-host and communicate p…

> This reads to me like a rant It was. I agree with most of what you said. > I don't even think communities retreating to Discord is a bad thing. I don't dislike discord myself, but don't like the fact that most of it closed off. You don't get to see what's inside a server before creating an account and joining it.

I don't know if you were around when the US internet was inside AOL? And the French inside Minitel?

All the rest of us didn't really care what you all did in there. Platforms and Walled Gardens alike come and go.

Re: The internet is slipping out of our reach

#127

Post by yetanother12345 »

tiborsaas wrote: post #45
injuly wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good catch! I had originally written "travel plans"/"workout routine", but changed it to "movie reviews". If you try to plan a trip to Dubai with Google, the first 4 posts are sponsored. With workout routines, The first post for me has ads + newsletter prompt + notification access request. I should change it back :)

Why are you not using an adblocker if your current experience bothers you?

I think a better question is: Why do you insist on using Google?

There are several search engines on the WWW. Google is just one, and I hear people complaining about that one a lot. I don't use it personally, and I haven't done so for more than a decade. Life goes on perfectly fine without it.

(no, I don't use Kagi or Marginalia either, it's not one of those posts.)

Re: The internet is slipping out of our reach

#128

Post by seoulmetro »

HeckFeck wrote: post #9

Another victim of LLM-'enhanced' search results is serendipity. Many times I've found random, fun and unrelated websites from mistyping a query. Now the AI tries to guess what I meant and adjusts the search results, meaning such gems are lost.

That's been happening long before the "AI trend" but it was still using what people call AI now. It's just called sabotaged search. Every big tech company does it as it improves profits.

Re: The internet is slipping out of our reach

#129

Post by [deleted] »

jajko wrote: post #69
nstart wrote: post #54

Someone once asked a question online about what each person's biggest fear was regarding the future of AI generated content. I thought about it. While the fears of not being able to earn money for creative pursuits are a concern, my biggest concern remains around anonymity. At some point, I fear that participating online with other humans will require "proof of self" and as AI becomes more and more able to generate c…

The parallel concern - we saw how too open communities just don't work in modern world. Way too many sides have their own 'pitch', be it marketing, politics, propaganda, always to manipulate opinions via emotions to steered goal which is never actual simple truth. Truth doesn't need much marketing among reasonable people. This is how flat earthers, climate change deniers, blind supporters of putin's war on ukraine et…

[deleted]

Re: The internet is slipping out of our reach

#130

Post by TimeBearingDown »

PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote: post #96
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unless you're the sort of person who doesn't understand why IRC got marginalised Or X Windows. I still hear the occasional diatribe, on how X is "just as good as" Windows or Mac (usually from a person that pretty much exclusively uses CLI). These folks can't understand why desktop Linux hasn't crushed the Microsoft/Apple hegemony. People who hang in like-minded communities can often assume that "everyone" is just l…

What are you talking about, X just works. I haven't had to go diving in and manually configure X in _years_ and I remember when you had to tell X to treat your mouse wheel as an extra button just to get it to work. And I say this as someone who uses exclusively nvidia GPUs. The most I have to do is set the monitor layout and KDE/gnome work exactly like windows with a graphical UI. I get it. You prefer wayland, as do…

The parent post never brought up Wayland, and it’s off-topic, but the security of having input only going to specific apps and not every X client is a massive win and one reason I’ve used sway since 2018.
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