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How the internet became shit

herman.bearblog.dev

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Re: How the internet became shit

#41

Post by 082349872349872 »

cogman10 wrote: post #19
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…

Wouldn't work, because it's chasing after the dollar that has ultimately destroyed the internet. Because the internet means income for so many people, doing whatever it takes to get your website to the top of search results matters a lot. That means that the hobbyist making a website cannot compete with the businesses who's lifeblood depend on edging those hobbyist pages off the search results. What made the old inte…

I can do without "creators" at all, which I guess explains why my online time these days is mostly spent scurrying around the wainscoting of the web: HN, marginalia, etc.

"Away to the hills, to the caves, to the rocks

Ere I own an usurper, I'll couch with the fox"

These days you can even find some seriously deep cuts, like some hobbyist from the XII explaining how to calculate with the newfangled arabic numerals: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b84900936/f151.item

Re: How the internet became shit

#42

Post by asdff »

cogman10 wrote: post #26
pixl97 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> But anything that has turned into a franchize is no longer about selling a product Yeah. Sadly the infinite growth mentality has destroyed many a franchise. Most of the franchises are simply rebranded sysco foods reheated in the microwave. I pretty much just don't eat at old franchise locations anymore as a result. Why get fettuccine from olive garden when it's basically exactly the same as a frozen stouffers meal…

If you aren't getting your money back in endless salad and breadsticks while engorging on that fettucine, you are doing olive garden wrong. It is a restaurant best eaten by the heavy set and the stoned.

Re: How the internet became shit

#43

Post by JumpCrisscross »

keiferski wrote: post #10
jjmarr wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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.

> I'm talking about a group, a collective, that deliberately funds stuff that is merely good content

This is a newspaper or think tank. It can be donor, ad or reader (i.e. paywall) supported.

Re: How the internet became shit

#44

Post by AnthonyMouse »

cogman10 wrote: post #19
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…

Wouldn't work, because it's chasing after the dollar that has ultimately destroyed the internet. Because the internet means income for so many people, doing whatever it takes to get your website to the top of search results matters a lot. That means that the hobbyist making a website cannot compete with the businesses who's lifeblood depend on edging those hobbyist pages off the search results. What made the old inte…

Maybe we just need a search engine more dedicated to surfacing the hobbyists over the spammers.

Re: How the internet became shit

#45

Post by j45 »

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…

Um.. being aligned with career security is nothing new, if anything it's gotten much worse.

Since most content creators dont' work on improving to the level they need to a handout would probably disable and undermine them more than not.

Maybe a partial grant or stipend to support them in their off hours after whatever their existing work is could be something to look at. Still, it likely needs to be something

There are so many areas other than social media to earn an income with content online.

Re: How the internet became shit

#46

Post by drekipus »

keiferski wrote: post #36
sharkjacobs wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 involv…

This already happens, somewhat in richer circles.

Frank Zappa has a quote about this very thing actually.

Re: How the internet became shit

#47

Post by j45 »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #18

I don't know, I came to the internet (IRC/News) ~1990 and the WWW ~1993, when I wrote my first "homepage". I lived through the dotcom boom ~2000 with my own startup. Sure internet was great back then, but I find it great today too. I create my own content on the internet just like 10 or 20 years ago on my website. I talk to people who send me an email about content on my website. I meet great people on LinkedIn. I'm…

It's great in a different way. Old ways are always dying and new ways are always emerging.

Change just has to be good for the many, and not the few.

Re: How the internet became shit

#50

Post by Minor49er »

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?

I would expect that basic computer literacy is taught in schools, but I have no idea how these classes operate today. Seeing articles like "Gen Z Kids Apparently Don't Understand How File Systems Work" [1] make me wonder whether these courses even exist at all anymore

[1] https://futurism.com/the-byte/gen-z-kids-file-systems

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