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How the internet became shit

herman.bearblog.dev

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Re: How the internet became shit

#71

Post by ryandrake »

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…

> 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.

Hasn't this been the case for most of history? "The Arts" were historically disproportionately populated by aristocrats, their families, the idle wealthy, and people who could afford to dabble and create and not worry about their art bringing in money. Only very recently has this idea taken hold that it should be possible for any old person to create art and have that somehow finance his or her life. Not saying one is better than the other, but I think making a real living from art is a relatively recent invention.

Re: How the internet became shit

#72

Post by shrimp_emoji »

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…

> depletion of natural materials older houses were made of, massive increases in population,

So you're saying depopulation is the answer. How interesting. :^)

Re: How the internet became shit

#73

Post by AnthonyMouse »

cogman10 wrote: post #63
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

And maybe we just need a new social media platform geared towards the youth ;) Unless the search engine aggressively curates it's target pages, I can't see how it wouldn't end up falling down the same trap as search engines of the past. Much like all social media sites end up overran by grandmas.

> Unless the search engine aggressively curates it's target pages, I can't see how it wouldn't end up falling down the same trap as search engines of the past.

What it would have to do is have staff actively investigating current SEO tactics and thwarting them. This is like manual curation, except that when you see some results are bad, you investigate what caused the results to be like that, and change the algorithm so it stops working in general.

For example, pick some of the known scummer sites and have automatic alerts if your current algorithm ever starts ranking them highly so you can have your engineers immediately investigate what's going on and fix it. It's like statistical sampling; even if you only have alerts for 2% of the scummy sites, you very quickly discover when there is an effective new tactic, and then very quickly shut it down for 100% of scummy sites.

> Much like all social media sites end up overran by grandmas.

I think this is specific to Facebook, possibly because of the real-name policy.

Is TikTok or Twitter overrun by grandmas?

Re: How the internet became shit

#74

Post by notacoward »

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…

> their entire industries have gone online, or in many cases, been destroyed by the tech industry itself

Interesting point. It makes me think of what happened to typesetters (including my mother) when desktop publishing came along. It was a bloodbath. Everyone was suddenly creating their own reports and newsletters, usually doing a terrible job, instead of paying professionals to do it right. Which is fine, actually, but it did lead to a lot of those skilled professionals losing their livelihoods. A few figured out ways to make it, either as a boutique business catering to those who still wanted work done to traditional standards or by teaching others how to do it themselves better, but most ended up leaving the profession.

This is what's happening to a lot of artists, musicians, essayists, and others right now - even more so with "AI" everywhere. Lots of people unable to make a living with their hard-won skills, and insult added to injury as they have to watch others do those same things poorly. And programmers, just you wait until your livelihood consists of rescuing projects that went south because someone insisted on having ChatGPT write it instead of a professional human. For a fraction of what you used to make. I'm sure each and every one of you thinks you'll be one of the winners, still getting paid top dollar to do innovative work, but most of you are wrong. You'll probably get left high and dry just like most of your colleagues, and - unlike the typesetting example - it will mostly be our own collective fault.

"Enshittification" already means something else, so we need a new term for when technology both drives people out of work and heralds a massive decline in median work-product quality. (So it's not just "disruption" which has become a word used mostly by tools anyway). Amateurization? Tyrofication?

Re: How the internet became shit

#75

Post by BobaFloutist »

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.

That sounds like an artist's network. A lot of podcasts have networks, there are some webcomic networks, etc.

The problem with networks, much like with insurance networks (but kind of backwards), is making sure that the superstars that hit it big and bring in a disproportionate amount of the money don't spin off into a solo career to keep more of the money themselves, while also not making them feel trapped and resentful in a contract jail.

Re: How the internet became shit

#77

Post by keiferski »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #75
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.

That sounds like an artist's network. A lot of podcasts have networks, there are some webcomic networks, etc. The problem with networks, much like with insurance networks (but kind of backwards), is making sure that the superstars that hit it big and bring in a disproportionate amount of the money don't spin off into a solo career to keep more of the money themselves, while also not making them feel trapped and resen…

I think that the content from the “old web” that people miss isn’t really superstar quality. It’s more like an extensive nerdy guide on a niche topic. So I wouldn’t anticipate this being a huge issue.

Re: How the internet became shit

#78

Post by jaggs »

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.

It did, for a while. It was called AdSense. And it was wonderful. Then the greed set in, the SEO farms took over, and here we are. It took a few decades, but that's the story.

Re: How the internet became shit

#80

Post by JohnFen »

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…

> the people creating content on it were gainfully employed with strong career security.

And a huge number of people weren't (depending on when in internet history we're talking about). The thing is that it doesn't actually cost much to make a website. High schoolers were doing it with allowance money and still can.

I don't think the underlying issue is that people can't afford to put stuff on the web. I think the underlying issue is that people discovered they can make money putting stuff on the web.

So the web has become primarily a marketplace of sorts, much like cable TV. That's what I think is the root cause of why the internet has become shit. Trying to make money is a powerful driver toward mediocrity, because you're going to want to maximize your customer base.

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