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The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now

stephendiehl.com

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Re: The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now

#111

Post by TFNA »

dilyevsky wrote: post #93
TFNA wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internet addiction in the early millennium wasn't so destructive, because so much internet content was somehow related to quality interaction with other people. You could meet cool new people (even occasionally IRL friends) from forums and blogs, and they were a hub for discussion for real-life communities like music-band fandom or travel subcultures. Besides the deleterious nature of engagement-maximizing social med…

Even 25 years ago being “too online” - back then it was icq, livejournal, and forums - was already destructive as hell and always led to some pretty cringe outcomes. At least these days some people make a career out of it, back then it was purely negative

It wasn't purely negative for everyone. I still maintain ties with several people I hung out with on an IRC channel in the 2000s, and a couple of fellow heavy commenters on one blog in the same decade. Granted, this was aided by the fact that we were all in Europe and all traveled regularly, so we could do the IRL interaction that solidifies friendships.

Today, if one is heavily online, many platforms no longer offer a space where one can tell a fellow user, "I'll be in your town soon, let's meet up", or even if it does, the general culture has changed away from that.

Re: The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now

#112

Post by a-dub »

the internet is home to plenty of predatory cesspits, but the real stuff is still there too. it's not as convenient or addicting as content that doubles as a funnel for the ad machines, but the real spaces and media that aren't dominated by the advertising industrial complex still exist- just like in other forms of media that preceded the internet.

Re: The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now

#115

Post by sefrost »

Biologist123 wrote: post #24

> People increasingly behave like addicts because addiction is the business model. I sense my internet addiction got a lot worse in recent years. I don’t use social media, but I consume news, blogs and newsletters - and comment threads - voraciously. I think the addiction began as soon as I started to work at a desk behind a computer which had internet access - 20+ years ago. Like putting an alcoholic to work behind…

> Like putting an alcoholic to work behind a bar and thinking he’d restrain himself.

I've been thinking about this recently. The tools we use as desk workers are only ever one step away from endless streams of addictive content. And in many cases the software we use to do our jobs are adopting dark patterns similar to those which have been successful in consumer apps.

Often the advice is to opt out of the system. I make mobile apps, I can't simply drop out and use a dumb phone (unless I get a new career). My workplace is essentially inside the addictive environment. I have to keep my knowledge up to date and be on top of app/design trends to be successful in my job. This used to feel rewarding to me, but increasingly it doesn't.

I used to be able to go to Twitter and read+learn+be inspired a lot about web development for example, but now it's almost entirely short form video content. And I fall for it every time. And I actively tried to avoid this from happening, I barely use YouTube and I've never used TikTok.

My Dad was a carpenter and it's as if his day-to-day tools were cigarettes or something. It's hard/impossible to avoid this environment when we are increasingly working in it.

Re: The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now

#116

Post by snapetom »

Yhippa wrote: post #108
TFNA wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What killed Reddit wasn't just its corporate chase for profit. It was also the fact that the general public's default internet device shifted to the smartphone and its limited keyboard and screen, no longer the computer. That led to comments largely being reduced to 140-character quips, no longer substantial discussion. I am skeptical any non-corporate replacement like Lemmy can bring the old internet feeling back, b…

Reddit ended up gamifying for engagement/rage-bait instead of natural, authentic discussion.

Just a hunch, but I think Aaron Swartz would be disappointed.

(Then you bring up Aaron Swartz and Obama's DOJ on reddit and it's massive downvotes calling you a MAGA nazi blah blah blah.)

Re: The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now

#117

Post by A_D_E_P_T »

aureate wrote: post #90

This reads to as pure AI slop to me, and Pangram agrees (100% AI). To use one of the idioms that give this impression, this is not just knee-jerk whining. It's material to what the article is about. If you're going to raise this topic, be a human and say something constructive. An AI generated ragebait whinge about ragebait is ragebait squared with a heaped serving of hypocrisy on top. This exemplifies everything it…

Yes. "High confidence." I confirmed it myself:

> https://i.ibb.co/m5tPKPYS/Screenshot2026829-1.png

But forget Pangram. This passage, from the conclusion, is 100% rock-solid proof that Claude was a key contributor.

> "The question is not whether the internet contains useful things. It does. The question is whether human existence should be organised around alien and inhuman objective functions no human chose and nobody can inspect or understand."

Also, I think that "grift" (repeated throughout the article) is very poorly defined. I also think that most cryptocurrencies are, in the general case, a bad example of a "grift."

Re: The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now

#118

Post by pixl97 »

dumberquestions wrote: post #58
shuwix wrote: post #25

Internet didn't change, it's population did. It's 8 billion potential victims and all bit more sophisticated thieves under one roof. Can't blame Internet. People which were scammed "offline" are now scammed online.

The internet is the people using it, if many of its users have come up with more effective ways to exploit the rest than the internet has become a worse place.

The internet is an ecosystem just like any other one on earth. Being it's a pretty new one the typical parasites and viruses that grow in every environment hadn't really developed to fill that ecosystem in the first decade or two of it. Now we are reaching the cambrian explosion of bullshit that the human animal isn't innoculated against.

So yea, the internet is a worse place, but really because the early internet wasn't realistically behaved for the amount of free energy it left around.

Re: The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now

#119

Post by abixb »

anal_reactor wrote: post #82
TFNA wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internet addiction in the early millennium wasn't so destructive, because so much internet content was somehow related to quality interaction with other people. You could meet cool new people (even occasionally IRL friends) from forums and blogs, and they were a hub for discussion for real-life communities like music-band fandom or travel subcultures. Besides the deleterious nature of engagement-maximizing social med…

> You could meet cool new people My first date was a guy with fake photos. Ten dates later I settled for a married guy cheating on his wife. He eventually divorced but then I left him.

Username checks out. /s
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