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Where did the old web go? We followed 657,607 links to find out

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Re: Where did the old web go? We followed 657,607 links to find out

#191

Post by friendzis »

BrenBarn wrote: post #186
MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #80

Here's a contrarian timeline: maybe the old web will return? My reasoning: when the "old web" was great, most people thought the internet was for nerds. Sure even casual users would forward funny emails to their friends, but when it came time for news most people would read the paper or watch the nightly broadcast. When they paid for their Big Mac they'd lay down cash. There were plenty of people using the internet,…

> There were plenty of people using the internet, but again, they were nerds or nerd-adjacent. So, maybe the LLM-ification of everything could end up being like a huge filter, where all the non-nerds no longer see the point of anything and move on to gardens with even higher walls. One difference I see is that in the (so-called) "old web" era, if you were not nerdy enough to navigate certain technical issues, the pat…

As far as I remember, huge portion of the "old web" web was self-curated list of human-to-human channels: be it blogs, BBs, rss, news/usenet, heck even irc, or whatever personal oddities. I will never forgive Google for killing Reader to promote g+.

The facebooks of today make it effectively impossible to self-curate attention. Social media is the publishers early internauts tried to get away from.

I disagree with your last paragraph, though. The "old web" was a small walled garden. The "post slop" web is going to be very similar small walled garden, that is chased to get away from uninspiring everyday.

Here's a free idea for anyone hoping to launch anything like this: implement a MLM style transitive web of trust. The forum is invite-only. x strikes - you are out, but the strikes on invitees transitively decay over the invitation chain. If you invite someone who then invites all the normies who get striked out - eventually that strikes you out too. Invite yourself to shitpost - eventually you will get punished for that. Yes, it's bad as it can exacerbate bubbles as much as the current facebooks do. Simple updoot mechanism suffers from brigading, but something can be worked out.

Re: Where did the old web go? We followed 657,607 links to find out

#192

Post by 6031769 »

juleiie wrote: post #142
prmoustache wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or enjoy the fruits of modern design. Like web pages that load slower with high speed fiber than the old web did on 56k and ISDN connections?

If I want to read a book I have my e reader not a browser. Give me something good. hit my eyeballs with some pigments

Two words: Ling's Cars.

Re: Where did the old web go? We followed 657,607 links to find out

#193

Post by keyringlight »

onion2k wrote: post #162
sodapopcan wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing not "old" about it is upvoting, which is one of those YMMV features.

I have fond memories of Slashdot in 1998. It was the spiritual forerunner to HN, and had upvoting, and in a more complex form as there were categories of votes. I got lots of +5 Funny comments. Hard to imagine, isn't it.

I've only seen the ./ category moderation style in one other place and it's really a shame as I think it has great value if it can be linked up with filters besides raw thresholds, of course balanced against how it would be used in reality by a large group of people. Voting incentivizes populism, and that means a lot of topics degrade into "everyone's a comedian" or virtue signalling whatever is acceptable in that particular forum, mostly retreading old ground instead of moving the discussion forwards.

Re: Where did the old web go? We followed 657,607 links to find out

#194

Post by Cthulhu_ »

MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #80

Here's a contrarian timeline: maybe the old web will return? My reasoning: when the "old web" was great, most people thought the internet was for nerds. Sure even casual users would forward funny emails to their friends, but when it came time for news most people would read the paper or watch the nightly broadcast. When they paid for their Big Mac they'd lay down cash. There were plenty of people using the internet,…

The old web relies on people thinking "I'm going to make a website about X" and following through, not relying on visitors, income, validation, etc.

Re: Where did the old web go? We followed 657,607 links to find out

#195

Post by inigyou »

friendzis wrote: post #191
BrenBarn wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There were plenty of people using the internet, but again, they were nerds or nerd-adjacent. So, maybe the LLM-ification of everything could end up being like a huge filter, where all the non-nerds no longer see the point of anything and move on to gardens with even higher walls. One difference I see is that in the (so-called) "old web" era, if you were not nerdy enough to navigate certain technical issues, the pat…

As far as I remember, huge portion of the "old web" web was self-curated list of human-to-human channels: be it blogs, BBs, rss, news/usenet, heck even irc, or whatever personal oddities. I will never forgive Google for killing Reader to promote g+. The facebooks of today make it effectively impossible to self-curate attention. Social media is the publishers early internauts tried to get away from. I disagree with yo…

No dooting. Let it be simple chronological, or unread first. Dooting creates an echo chamber because the most dooted thing is the most viewed thing so it gets more doots.

Re: Where did the old web go? We followed 657,607 links to find out

#196

Post by dsego »

x______________ wrote: post #168
MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #80

Here's a contrarian timeline: maybe the old web will return? My reasoning: when the "old web" was great, most people thought the internet was for nerds. Sure even casual users would forward funny emails to their friends, but when it came time for news most people would read the paper or watch the nightly broadcast. When they paid for their Big Mac they'd lay down cash. There were plenty of people using the internet,…

> And then what you have left will be a small subset of people who know how to reach their desired corners of the internet, just like before. Blue skies mentality. The old web was good because it wasn't crowded or accessible to most, and everything was new. That, great filter, was unique and will never happen again; Pandora's box is open and cannot be shut. Pretty much akin to one's childhood being yearned at old age…

Just connecting to other people all over the globe was novel. At least for me as a kid, my window to the world in the 90s was TV and a satellite dish, and maybe a local library. Speaking to relatives in other european countries meant a long distance phone call over a landline and it was expensive. My view of the world was shaped by physical books like encyclopedias or comic books, magazines, TV shows and documentaries. But everything was filtered through translations and choices made by local editors (a famous example is a local TV editor who spent decades at the national broadcasting service selecting foreign documentaries for broadcast, so his name in the credits meant a quality choice). A similar shift happened when we got the satellite dish and could get hundreds of new programs (mostly german, but some english) after having only a handful on terrestrial channels. And then suddenly with dial up, I could connect to the internet and find various web pages from all over the world and join forums and download images and later on videos, join discussions on forums. I would say this lasted from the late 90s to maybe 2010s or even before, things changed with wider facebook adoption and when youtube started streaming high definition videos and you could just watch it like it was TV.

Re: Where did the old web go? We followed 657,607 links to find out

#197

Post by inigyou »

inigyou wrote: post #171
AuthAuth wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most niches dont have to self censor. Even the ones that do still have no trouble communicating their message. I follow a lot of military channels and they post uncensored versions of their videos off yt but there is little reason to go because seeing the gore is not why im watching the video. I still get the entire value of the video from youtube even though you might argue its self censoring.

There's a lot of people who want to talk about things like Gaza or Luigi Mangione more, but can't because of platform rules. The new web has been successful at changing society at large by preventing discussion of these things. Even here on HN I have to be careful how I describe this effect, because an account that is flagged a few times in quick succession is automatically rate-limited, which is effectively a ban.

Edit: it's not just about a niche being forced to censor, it's also about everyone being forced to censor talk about that niche. In a video games discord you couldn't talk about piracy, no matter what the owner thinks about piracy, he'd be forced to ban you for talking about piracy or else he would be banned.

Re: Where did the old web go? We followed 657,607 links to find out

#198

Post by pluc »

b3ing wrote: post #85
mattkevan wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m old and it’s definitely not the old web. I consider the old web to be when PNGs were sliced with Fireworks and laid out in tables. 2009-2014 is Web 2.0, back when people still thought social media was a good idea.

2003-2009ish was Web 2.0, part of it was CSS/web standards and AJAX and blogging becoming more mainstream

Ha, people who didn't live it will have a hard time believing AJAX was as strong a buzzword as AI is today. Crazy to think asynchronous requests were peak innovation at the time

Re: Where did the old web go? We followed 657,607 links to find out

#199

Post by pluc »

darknavi wrote: post #54
drooopy wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right? When I think of the old web I think of my Xena and X-Files fan sites on Geocities circa 1997

I was a few years late to the start (early 90s kid) but I am nostalgic for the vast amount of myfreewebs + dot.tk websites out there. Hit counters on the front page was mandatory of course.

Hit counters showing 00000089

Re: Where did the old web go? We followed 657,607 links to find out

#200

Post by friendzis »

inigyou wrote: post #195
friendzis wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I remember, huge portion of the "old web" web was self-curated list of human-to-human channels: be it blogs, BBs, rss, news/usenet, heck even irc, or whatever personal oddities. I will never forgive Google for killing Reader to promote g+. The facebooks of today make it effectively impossible to self-curate attention. Social media is the publishers early internauts tried to get away from. I disagree with yo…

No dooting. Let it be simple chronological, or unread first. Dooting creates an echo chamber because the most dooted thing is the most viewed thing so it gets more doots.

Dooting does not have to be contribution ranking mechanism, it can be contributor ranking mechanism, which is a bit less likely to succumb to bubbling. Otherwise, yes, dooting is one of the core pillars of facebookization.
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