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A retrospective of my time on the internet

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Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet

#271

Post by sanderjd »

mock-possum wrote: post #211
sanderjd wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, "gamergate" - or I dunno, the "alt right" thing more broadly, it's hard for me to remember which thing begat which, or maybe I never knew - was when I first remember thinking "what's with all the nastiness?". I was on twitter back then, and it felt to me like some kind of flood gate opening.

You were never on 4chan before that I guess?

I was certainly never on 4chan, but I certainly know a lot about 4chan. My experience of that time was that it seemed like 4chan was escaping its bounds and infecting the real world. (And it's pretty much felt like that ever since.)

Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet

#272

Post by noja »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #77
noja wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with a paranoid-level of lists added to my pihole This is your regular reminder that many websites you are visiting are proxying your data to facebook for them. There is no host to block here. Check out the Facebook Conversions API Gateway.

Does uBlock Origin block this by default? If not, what are the counter-measures?

No and none.

Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet

#273

Post by sanderjd »

microtonal wrote: post #80
sanderjd wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but it does seem like there have been multiple distinct changes, rather than this just being an age-based phenomenon. I seem to be about a decade older than the OP, and I'd also say that the early '10s is when things got less fun. Although I dunno, I thought "web 2.0" was just hype (and thus bad) and that Facebook was ruining everything, and those were five to ten years before 2012. So maybe it's less of a spec…

Facebook only took off in a big way worldwide around 2010-2012 though (at least worldwide). I joined in 2009 (and long left) and I remember still having to explain to a lot of people what Facebook was. But yeah, it's not a single point, there are many points around that time that are pivotal, like Google acquiring DoubleClick in 2008. GMail taking off around the same time and increasingly making blocking more and mor…

Within my bubble of college aged people in the US in the late 2000s Facebook was already mainstream by 2007 (and I would say 2006, even, though I'm a bit more worried that I'm misremembering that).

But yes, I'm generally in the "it's the phones" camp of grumpy olds :)

Edit: Oh I just looked up the rollout schedule and it looks like it is more likely that I started my account in 2004. It might have taken it a year (at most) to become fully mainstream among my peers after that, so call it 2005 or 2006.

Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet

#274

Post by sanderjd »

someonebaggy wrote: post #240
jameshart wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Web 2.0 wasn’t just hype. It was also rounded corners and glassy lozenge buttons implemented with CSS sliding door background sprites.

Web 2.0 has a few different definitions but one of them is when HTML pages started to contain significant JavaScript, and another is when websites started to be middlemen between users rather than users interacting only with the website operators.

Yeah I think of it as when user to user generated content became prevalent. I think the increasing prevalence of javascript interactivity was more of a response to making such websites more functional.

Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet

#275

Post by sanderjd »

jameshart wrote: post #270
someonebaggy wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Web 2.0 has a few different definitions but one of them is when HTML pages started to contain significant JavaScript, and another is when websites started to be middlemen between users rather than users interacting only with the website operators.

To give it some value as a term, what Tim O’Reilly meant by it was a shift to participatory, user content driven websites. Blogs, Flickr and Wikipedia were quintessentially Web 2.0 phenomena.

To me, Wikipedia was like proto- web 2.0. That is, yes, it fits the definition, but significantly predated the trend. It was ahead of its time.

I think it's a bit fuzzy for "blogs". To me, it wasn't really until blogging became extremely accessible, that is without spinning up a website running software on your own servers, did I consider it "web 2.0". But then, yes, I agree that the explosion of blogs was fully part of that trend. (I was dismissive of this at the time, but in hindsight I think it's rad and I don't understand what my probably was.)

Definitely flickr is quintessential here!

Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet

#276

Post by sanderjd »

thegrim33 wrote: post #168
sanderjd wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but it does seem like there have been multiple distinct changes, rather than this just being an age-based phenomenon. I seem to be about a decade older than the OP, and I'd also say that the early '10s is when things got less fun. Although I dunno, I thought "web 2.0" was just hype (and thus bad) and that Facebook was ruining everything, and those were five to ten years before 2012. So maybe it's less of a spec…

>> Facebook was ruining everything, and those were five to ten years before 2012 Facebook didn't even exist 10 years before 2012 ..

Facebook was released at my university in 2004 (just looked this up), and I'm sure I had an account within the first month (as did 90% of people at the school, probably). This is smack in the middle of my 5-10 year window preceding 2012...

Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet

#277

Post by bluedino »

ryandrake wrote: post #268
bluedino wrote: post #87

Things we don't have to worry about anymore: 10 ISPs worth of free trials and shortcuts on your Windows 95 desktop. AOL, MSN, Compuserve, Prodigy, AT&T, NetCom, UUNet, NetZero, EarthLink, MindSpring, countless local and regional providers... Your Windows 98 machine being taken over by viruses minutes after booting up Pop-ups! Pop-ups everywhere! Adware infesting your system. WeatherBug, HotBar, BonziBuddy, Ask Jeeves…

> 10 ISPs worth of free trials and shortcuts on your Windows 95 desktop. AOL, MSN, Compuserve, Prodigy, AT&T, NetCom, UUNet, NetZero, EarthLink, MindSpring, countless local and regional providers It sucked having them installed by default on your desktop, but I'd argue the availability of numerous ISPs was a good thing that we have lost. Today is far worse, where at most two of Comcast, Charter, Cox, AT&T, and Verizo…

Sort of, but they were all dial-up providers and it ended up being a race to the bottom, which seemed to be $9.95 a month, full of busy signals, then they all merged.

Seeing something similar today, we have the phone company and cable company, and now we've got a third option of fiber, the same lines being re-sold by 4 different companies, I'm sure in few years we'll be down to two companies.

Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet

#279

Post by dredmorbius »

1over137 wrote: post #185
mghackerlady wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like there's a tendency to lump the net and the web into the same thing, when in reality the net isn't dead, the web is

But what non-web parts are left? email lists, usenet, gopher, etc. are deathly quiet.

Podcasts aren't exactly a pre-Web aspect, but they're a non-Web form of online content. Some quite good.
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