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The internet isn't dying, it's changing

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Re: The internet isn't dying, it's changing

#21

Post by ants_everywhere »

bruce511 wrote: post #9
JohnFen wrote: post #2

When people say "the internet is dying" (and really, they mean "the web", not "the internet"), they don't mean it will cease to exist. They mean that it's changing in a way that makes it increasingly worse for them. "Dying" is an appropriate analogy because if the decline gets far enough, it may as well not exist to those people who are affected. At least, this is what I mean when I say the web is dying. Most of it i…

When people say the Internet is dying, they typically don't even mean the Web, they mean one site on the Web that matters to them. The article us a rebuttal to [1] where someone is complaining that Reddit is going public. For some reason this strategy, or indeed the need for reddit to earn revenue, seems to be shocking to the author. To anyone with half a brain, and has seen the internet since it was an infant in the…

A basic test is to ask how quickly you can find information about a topic that is unbiased by commercial interests.

On some topics it's nearly impossible: - medicine - cosmetics - cooking/nutrition/recipes

For many other topics, it's only really possible by finding forums where people who are not blog spammer discuss things. This used to be possible by appending "reddit" to a search term, but this is getting harder as Reddit's quality is decreasing.

Re: The internet isn't dying, it's changing

#22

Post by fragmede »

It’s Balkanizing. Every community ends up having a general other chat channel and we’ve made all these small tiny islands for that general chat channel to be in. That’s what we’re losing. The hacker Slack that I’m in the Lisp enthusiasts group, the factorial discord. All those general chats are in their own tiny little islands instead of being in a bigger, wider world. That’s what’s changing. We’ve got these small private secret tiny islands and that’s great. I love them and protect mine and nobody’s allowed in unless you know someone. Is that the way it’s supposed to be? Because there are marauders out there that are just going to come in as bots and mine it for content if it’s not protected. We’ve lost the earnest here I am, out in the world sort of feeling, to be replaced by like oh, there’s a wild world out there and we better protect and put up a wall to protect the world around us.

Re: The internet isn't dying, it's changing

#23

Post by Barrin92 »

The 'open web' I think is genuinely dying, but it has been for a while. Generic/Garbage AI content is just automation and commodification taken to its conclusion, spam and SEO content have been driving the signal to noise ratio down for a long time.

There's no genuine defense against it and people are increasingly moving to private spaces be that Discord servers, Telegram groups, decentralized networks etc. that are more human in scale. Patreon funded creators and streamers are gaining against public broadcasters etc.

Unless someone has a really new idea how you can make a defensible, healthy 'public townsquare' (which Twitter in its newest iteration is definitely not) that kind of accessible web is wasting away rather than changing.

Re: The internet isn't dying, it's changing

#24

Post by gxs »

This is an honest question and something I happen to have been thinking about recently.

Recently I questioned my assertion that the internet isn’t all that great anymore, but I couldn’t really come up with reasons beyond the shitty bloated websites we are served.

It seems like we are lamenting the fact that the internet is providing exactly what was promised.

The only thing we didn’t anticipate was the amount of noise that would come with it.

But it’s easier now more than ever to tell your story online with very little expense.

With that said, I feel like I’m missing the mark and would love to hear other opinions.

Re: The internet isn't dying, it's changing

#26

Post by Forgeties79 »

fragmede wrote: post #22

It’s Balkanizing. Every community ends up having a general other chat channel and we’ve made all these small tiny islands for that general chat channel to be in. That’s what we’re losing. The hacker Slack that I’m in the Lisp enthusiasts group, the factorial discord. All those general chats are in their own tiny little islands instead of being in a bigger, wider world. That’s what’s changing. We’ve got these small pr…

I can tell you right now I’m going to be chewing on this comment for a few days. I think you’re really striking at the heart of a major issue here.

Re: The internet isn't dying, it's changing

#27

Post by Forgeties79 »

ants_everywhere wrote: post #21
bruce511 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people say the Internet is dying, they typically don't even mean the Web, they mean one site on the Web that matters to them. The article us a rebuttal to [1] where someone is complaining that Reddit is going public. For some reason this strategy, or indeed the need for reddit to earn revenue, seems to be shocking to the author. To anyone with half a brain, and has seen the internet since it was an infant in the…

A basic test is to ask how quickly you can find information about a topic that is unbiased by commercial interests. On some topics it's nearly impossible: - medicine - cosmetics - cooking/nutrition/recipes For many other topics, it's only really possible by finding forums where people who are not blog spammer discuss things. This used to be possible by appending "reddit" to a search term, but this is getting harder a…

I mean in all fairness, name one unbiased source you’ve heard of ever.

Re: The internet isn't dying, it's changing

#28

Post by ToucanLoucan »

bruce511 wrote: post #9
JohnFen wrote: post #2

When people say "the internet is dying" (and really, they mean "the web", not "the internet"), they don't mean it will cease to exist. They mean that it's changing in a way that makes it increasingly worse for them. "Dying" is an appropriate analogy because if the decline gets far enough, it may as well not exist to those people who are affected. At least, this is what I mean when I say the web is dying. Most of it i…

When people say the Internet is dying, they typically don't even mean the Web, they mean one site on the Web that matters to them. The article us a rebuttal to [1] where someone is complaining that Reddit is going public. For some reason this strategy, or indeed the need for reddit to earn revenue, seems to be shocking to the author. To anyone with half a brain, and has seen the internet since it was an infant in the…

To those of us who remember them, internet forums were amazing. You'd have one or a handful of cool people who'd pay for hosting, and then you'd have a completely free to use web forum for whatever niche interest you had and wanted to learn more about, converse about, meet others over, etc.

Then, companies like reddit came on the scene with tons of borrowed money. Suddenly those forums were less attractive because, why pay money to host it somewhere on vBulletin when reddit was free? Just make a subreddit. And reddit was cool with that, for years. That's what it was for, afterall, and it barely ever made any damn money but the users didn't care. Why should they? It's not their problem. And Imgur came alongside it, too, to provide image hosting.

Then, the money dried up. Interest rates started creeping up. Suddenly all these services that had been free to use^1 for a decade or more suddenly had to put on grown up pants and be profitable, and not just regular ordinary profitable, but VC profitable. They had to go public and be big corporations and be worth billions of dollars. Then the enshittification starts. Service quality suffers. They start walling things off that had been free for again, a decade or more. Staff get fired and replaced. Companies are bought and sold. And soon all these "FREE" services are not only not free, but are markedly shittier than they were before.

And before the free market peeps come roaring in to explain how nothing is free, yes it was. It was free for YEARS, no not for everyone, you needed someone willing to buy an instance on a hosting service or whatever. But these sites came in to service a userbase that was already getting everything they needed for free, also for free, but centralized. And then once everyone moved over, only then did they put their hand out and demand money for doing exactly what enthusiasts already were, except they did it with massive platform sites that were bloated as fuck, mired in technical debt, subject to constant and often unwanted changes, scrutinized by advertisers with zero investment in their users who could blow away everything they'd put together in an instant because it was unsuitable to run Toyota ads beside.

So yeah, I get it, Reddit needs to make money. But maybe that being the case, they shouldn't have gone into a business that was demonstrably, provably unprofitable.

1: Yes yes you aren't the customer you're the product congratulations for having the most obvious observation about the economics of social media hot off the presses from 2011. Good for you.

Re: The internet isn't dying, it's changing

#29

Post by MeImCounting »

ants_everywhere wrote: post #21
bruce511 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people say the Internet is dying, they typically don't even mean the Web, they mean one site on the Web that matters to them. The article us a rebuttal to [1] where someone is complaining that Reddit is going public. For some reason this strategy, or indeed the need for reddit to earn revenue, seems to be shocking to the author. To anyone with half a brain, and has seen the internet since it was an infant in the…

A basic test is to ask how quickly you can find information about a topic that is unbiased by commercial interests. On some topics it's nearly impossible: - medicine - cosmetics - cooking/nutrition/recipes For many other topics, it's only really possible by finding forums where people who are not blog spammer discuss things. This used to be possible by appending "reddit" to a search term, but this is getting harder a…

There are other search engines than google. I really have no problem finding what Im looking for except when I use google.

Re: The internet isn't dying, it's changing

#30

Post by Dalewyn »

fragmede wrote: post #22

It’s Balkanizing. Every community ends up having a general other chat channel and we’ve made all these small tiny islands for that general chat channel to be in. That’s what we’re losing. The hacker Slack that I’m in the Lisp enthusiasts group, the factorial discord. All those general chats are in their own tiny little islands instead of being in a bigger, wider world. That’s what’s changing. We’ve got these small pr…

IRC is like that, the command line nature rather violently excludes all the noise from the signal such that those who still use it today are usually worth chatting with.
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