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How the internet became shit

herman.bearblog.dev

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Re: How the internet became shit

#31

Post by greenavocado »

keiferski wrote: post #28
CactusOnFire wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The politics of who does vs doesn't make the cut sounds difficult to manage. I think an individualist model makes sense, or barring that, a group Patreon (i.e. a music label instead of an individual band).

It would be difficult to manage, but not impossible. Certainly if you have a strong organizational culture and know what your org values. Like universities, for example. At least in the past. Otherwise you’re just dependent on the popularity of the market, which I don’t think is a great thing all of the time. There are a lot of things I’d enjoy reading or writing that have zero monetary value and thus are strongly in…

You just discovered what a corporation is. Corporations have "boards" that decide what is "good" and can invest in those things to develop them and sell them or give them away with approval from this board. The corporation receives funding from customers and investors to keep going.

Re: How the internet became shit

#32

Post by btbuildem »

zero-sharp wrote: post #2

I'm just confused about how the average person is supposed to navigate the internet. Is the assumption now that everybody knows about ad blocking plugins?

The average person is locked into multiple walled gardens where ad blocking doesn't work, and the "feed" is curated specifically for maximum advertising exposure and lowered attention span.

Re: How the internet became shit

#33

Post by chx »

jjmarr wrote: post #7
keiferski wrote: post #6

When lamenting the "old Internet", a lot of people forget that the vast majority of the people creating content on it were gainfully employed with strong career security. Meaning that they didn't need to make money from their hobbyist online projects, so they didn't need to monetize it. This is a lot different from today, where any sort of journalist/writer/artist/filmmaker is basically dependent on making content th…

> It makes me wonder if a sort of "basic income for Internet creators" would work. Instead of individuals trying to optimize their content for maximum income, it would instead work like this: if the group determines that you make great content, you get a small stipend monthly. There are no other expectations or optimization requirements, merely that you continue making the content I think you invented Patreon.

Except Patreon banned a lot of Ukranian vloggers and did not ban Russian propaganda.

For example, WarGonzo is still on it (just checked) and Ayder Muzhdabayev and Serhii Sternenko are not. Check https://youtu.be/91US4DNcBGw as well.

This made me delete my Patreon.

Re: How the internet became shit

#34

Post by sharkjacobs »

sharkjacobs wrote: post #25
keiferski wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but Patreon is still beholden to the individual-market optimizer model. I'm talking about a group, a collective, that deliberately funds stuff that is merely good content. Maybe a collective Patreon-like "guild" would be a starting point.

Either you're inventing reddit-but-each-upvote-is-worth-a-fraction-of-a-cent, or there is some sort of select professional board who is responsible for deciding what is "good content" on behalf of the public. Sort of like national public arts grants, or maybe public broadcasters like the BBC. Right? Or are you imagining some third model

the thing about "basic income" is that it's basic. It's unconditional. It's a an efficient way for a government to guarantee a minimum quality of life for its citizens. As soon as you tie it to producing "good content" or something, the whole thing becomes about meeting that criteria.

Ad views are a gameable target. So are upvotes. So is board approval.

Re: How the internet became shit

#35

Post by 082349872349872 »

xbpx wrote: post #11

You ever drive down a main drag of any town or city pretty much anywhere that has a fairly unregulated capitalist system? Advertising everywhere. Signage. People dressed as hotdogs paid a few bucks an hour to wave a sign shaped like a ketchup bottle. The mystery to me is why this group of early web pioneers thought it could be any different. Enshitification isn't new, it's not even different from "making money and ma…

> The mystery to me is why this group of early web pioneers thought it could be any different.

It's obvious now that bringing the world to the net would make the net a lot more like the world, but you see, those of us who came up in the pre-Canter & Siegel days had actually hoped that it would make the world more like the (in the before times) net.

Re: How the internet became shit

#36

Post by keiferski »

sharkjacobs wrote: post #25
keiferski wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but Patreon is still beholden to the individual-market optimizer model. I'm talking about a group, a collective, that deliberately funds stuff that is merely good content. Maybe a collective Patreon-like "guild" would be a starting point.

Either you're inventing reddit-but-each-upvote-is-worth-a-fraction-of-a-cent, or there is some sort of select professional board who is responsible for deciding what is "good content" on behalf of the public. Sort of like national public arts grants, or maybe public broadcasters like the BBC. Right? Or are you imagining some third model

I’m imagining something like this: a rich guy who likes art takes a million dollars and makes an organization that funds people writing about art, paying them $1,000 a month. (Exact amounts don’t matter.)

He sets up a list of values and rules that are broad enough to not be limiting and specific enough to get what he wants.

He personally picks the first 100 people involved, and then all further decision making involves him + those 100 people + new entrants. The specific setup could be debated but the basic idea is just that the group funds things that match its values.

Re: How the internet became shit

#37

Post by keiferski »

greenavocado wrote: post #31
keiferski wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be difficult to manage, but not impossible. Certainly if you have a strong organizational culture and know what your org values. Like universities, for example. At least in the past. Otherwise you’re just dependent on the popularity of the market, which I don’t think is a great thing all of the time. There are a lot of things I’d enjoy reading or writing that have zero monetary value and thus are strongly in…

You just discovered what a corporation is. Corporations have "boards" that decide what is "good" and can invest in those things to develop them and sell them or give them away with approval from this board. The corporation receives funding from customers and investors to keep going.

I guess? But clearly this corporate model isn’t really being used to make the kind of content people wish existed.

Re: How the internet became shit

#38

Post by asdff »

pixl97 wrote: post #14
tempsy wrote: post #4

I feel like this applies to more than just the internet. New construction houses are crap quality. Restaurant food quality seems like it's gotten worse and much more expensive. But yes Google is probably the best example of this...type in any shopping term and Google search basically turns into a more cluttered Amazon search result page.

>New construction houses are crap quality This is called survivorship bias. Plenty of hold houses were total shit. They're not around any longer. There is also a second bias of the depletion of natural materials older houses were made of, massive increases in population, and massively changed consumer tastes/requirements. >Restaurant food quality seems like it's gotten worse and much more expensive. This is a mix of…

>There is also a second bias of the depletion of natural materials older houses were made of

This affects not just homes but like absolutely every consumer product thats been cheapened. Take furniture. It used to be even cheap furniture was solid wood. Now the cheap stuff, even the mid tier stuff, is all glued sawdust. Its hard to find good snags of furniture on the side of the road because that glued stuff dissolves like paper mache in like one day of rain. You chip a corner and it looks like hell and starts flaking and falling apart at that busted seam. Old stuff made from real wood can take quite a bit of abuse, get resanded, restained, and look like its worth some $$$ after an afternoon of elbow grease put into it.

Re: How the internet became shit

#39

Post by bdw5204 »

keiferski wrote: post #6

When lamenting the "old Internet", a lot of people forget that the vast majority of the people creating content on it were gainfully employed with strong career security. Meaning that they didn't need to make money from their hobbyist online projects, so they didn't need to monetize it. This is a lot different from today, where any sort of journalist/writer/artist/filmmaker is basically dependent on making content th…

I think a better solution would be to bring back strong career security.

Allowing companies to increase their profits by laying off workers is a policy choice. As is allowing companies to outsource jobs to cheaper jurisdictions. There is no law of nature that says that the US has to allow free trade to impoverish and dispossess its middle class so that its upper class can get even wealthier.

Re: How the internet became shit

#40

Post by greenavocado »

keiferski wrote: post #37
greenavocado wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just discovered what a corporation is. Corporations have "boards" that decide what is "good" and can invest in those things to develop them and sell them or give them away with approval from this board. The corporation receives funding from customers and investors to keep going.

I guess? But clearly this corporate model isn’t really being used to make the kind of content people wish existed.

The main roadblock for content creators is the distribution channels. Content creators require attention. Attention is the hardest thing to obtain. TikTok broke through and stole lots of attention away from YouTube. Content creators aren't able to grow a massive following of their own because of the discoverability crisis on the Internet. Google and many other platforms are putting up high wall prisons (I refuse to called them "walled gardens") to hold on to user attention as tightly as possible.
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