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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

#261

Post by inigyou »

inigyou wrote: post #171
Yhippa wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Every platform with votes does that. Including HN. A community's feeling is largely determined by its sorting algorithm, and voting selects for engagement/ragebait. Chronological is more balanced, but you have to prevent spam because it also doesn't punish spam. You could make it difficult to get an account, but we're all used to moderators abusing the power now, so that leads to self censorship. You could retry the…

The other main way would be manual curation. That basically makes a non-interactive website.

Re: The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now

#262

Post by FranOntanaya »

bakugo wrote: post #197

Fully AI generated article complaining about the state of the internet. The sheer irony of the word "grift" being used 13 times within it...

Blows my mind that several trillions in I still see so much LLM text with no stylistic awareness.

Re: The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now

#263

Post by orwin »

TFNA wrote: post #247
ssl-3 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use the Internet about how I used to 30 years ago. I chat with friends. Sometimes, I make a new friend or lose track of one. On rare occasion we get together to do whatever it is that we have a common interest in. That used to be IRC. I learn new shit by interacting with people I don't know at all. Sometimes, that means hanging out in much more anonymous places (like HN) and sharing ideas. That used to be Usenet. I…

How do you make new IRL friends now in 2026? Where are you hanging out online where there is a culture of people not only revealing their location and age (which platforms and individual internet users have become more guarded about), but even meeting up with other users?

Not OP, and I will assume you ask about making irl friends online: niche multiplayer videogames always were the best way to make irl friends. I still have a few friends from a web game where you had to coordinate 5-10 people for ~1h a day (and enemies could counter if they chose to connect around the same time) that I played from 2004 to 2013 (with breaks in between). Later it has mostly Hoi4 and civ6 (which are now less niche, but the mp communities used to be extremely niche before ~2020) (civ6 still is). I have a friend who I've met through another because they played on a SWTOR roleplay server together. Also, now that I remember, a friend of mine turned 40 a year ago, and I was surprised of the younger friends (less than 30) he made. They told me they met through WoW classic, managed to find out they lived close from each other, and decided to hang out/play RPGs (pen and paper) together.

Re: The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now

#264

Post by TFNA »

ndriscoll wrote: post #196
sodapopcan wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me the difference today is that most people sharing their passions are now doing for The Algorithm. It's a far cry from the scrappy days of the early web where people just posted stuff because they thought it was cool. I'm not saying their passion is any less, more just that is so much noise. People are now "creators" and are pressured to constantly create.

Don't go on sites with "creators" then. When people say this they're talking about like 5 websites. They're not "the Internet" at all.

Why do you assume a hobby or interest still has a significant presence on the non-algorithmified open web?

For travel-related hobbies, for instance, there is no longer any kind of significant open-web scene where people just share stuff to help others or because it is cool. (Yes, you can set up your own blog, but pretty much none of your peers will ever see it.) The community might be using a variety of apps beyond your "like 5 websites", but all those apps are designed around phones and minimize text content, and so they are just as pathological as "sites with 'creators'".

Re: The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now

#265

Post by ssl-3 »

TFNA wrote: post #259
ssl-3 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit. Discord. HN. (Definitely not Facebook. That whole thing is resolutely toxic.) I do not care what the platform encourages or discourages. If others do care and this precludes friendship, then: So it is.

You have seriously made contacts on Reddit or HN that have led to meeting people IRL when you visit their regions or they visit yours? Even way back when IRL meetups between users of internet forums were common, Reddit was already famous for having a culture where that wasn't at all likely due to the design of the site. As for HN, there is no DM feature and only a minority of users give any contact info in their prof…

Of course I have. I've flown and driven many thousands of miles to hang out with some of these folks. We've even planned and executed public events together. We help eachother out. When the distance is great and we want to borrow, lend, or trade some small stuff, we spend a few dollars and send it in the mail.

It'd be pretty great if we all lived closer, but we do not. We've all got our reasons to live wherever we individually live.

I've also made other, more-temporary friendships online in recent years. When they're nearby it's actually pretty easy, upon recognizing that things click well-enough, to go out for drinks with other friends, or sushi, or whatever. It isn't necessary to commit to keeping a friend forever in order to make these minor moves and put a face with their words and just hang out for a bit.

For HN in particular, there are ways to initiate out-of-band comms. It's not exactly rocket surgery to just drop an email address (a throwaway one? a real one? sure!) here in a comment, or leave a clue in a bio, or even to do both things to validate who's who and connect.

It works for me, and I'm somewhat private about what I share here. Meanwhile, some users here are very public about who they are and don't hide behind a pseudonym at all. It's OK. Both types fit.

There's nothing that would motivate me to lie about this stuff. I do not stand to gain or to lose anything whether you believe me or not. :)

Re: The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now

#266

Post by Biologist123 »

jolmg wrote: post #186
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…

> I don’t use social media, but I consume news, blogs and newsletters - and comment threads - voraciously. > It seems to have worsened in recent years. I’d like out, but the dealers are on every corner. That's just anxiety from worsening politics, don't you think? Getting out of that anxiety may just be a matter of recognizing that just because bad stuff's happening in certain places that may eventually have repercus…

I don’t think I’m necessarily caught in a doom loop news cycle. My reading habits are around philosophy, sociology, anthropology, technology.

That’s not to say I’m immune to clickbait!

Re: The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now

#267

Post by tejohnso »

akudha wrote: post #134
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…

The most dangerous part of this addiction is that it doesn't feel like addiction. Suppose we spend 4 hours in an afternoon consuming random content - starting somewhere on a Google search, landing on Wikipedia, end up reading dozens of articles on various topics in that 4 hours. Unlike alcohol or drugs, this is knowledge addiction - afterall, we learned about a bunch of things in those 4 hours, didn't we? We didn't s…

It's not learning unless you put it into practice. 4 hours of woodworking videos is nothing for you unless you get to work.

I've been watching framing videos for weeks feeling like I'm being less unproductive than if I were playing video games. But at a certain point it's just as bad. Not a single nail driven.

Re: The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now

#268

Post by Biologist123 »

akudha wrote: post #134
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…

The most dangerous part of this addiction is that it doesn't feel like addiction. Suppose we spend 4 hours in an afternoon consuming random content - starting somewhere on a Google search, landing on Wikipedia, end up reading dozens of articles on various topics in that 4 hours. Unlike alcohol or drugs, this is knowledge addiction - afterall, we learned about a bunch of things in those 4 hours, didn't we? We didn't s…

That’s a good point. Internet addiction didn’t have a name, or a stigma, in the way alcohol or other drugs did so in a sense I had no idea that the slide I was on was harmful. It also felt a lot like what I did a lot of at university - library research.

Re: The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now

#269

Post by Biologist123 »

asdfman123 wrote: post #131
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…

If you're interested in what helped me overcome the worst aspects of my internet addiction, I learned to reframe it. I wasn't overcome with addiction, but I was CHOOSING to take a break. There are good reasons to read the news, there are good reasons to take breaks. End the war against yourself and take more wholesome breaks, so your subconscious doesn't take over and force them. It may involve forcing yourself to be…

Thanks - useful to think about as I try and wean myself off the novel information highs. I’ve been consciously aware of the problematic aspect of my behavior since about the pandemic - but struggle to make much change.

Re: The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now

#270

Post by sodapopcan »

ndriscoll wrote: post #196
sodapopcan wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me the difference today is that most people sharing their passions are now doing for The Algorithm. It's a far cry from the scrappy days of the early web where people just posted stuff because they thought it was cool. I'm not saying their passion is any less, more just that is so much noise. People are now "creators" and are pressured to constantly create.

Don't go on sites with "creators" then. When people say this they're talking about like 5 websites. They're not "the Internet" at all.

Ha, yes I wanted to keep my comment short without trying to cover every base, but figured I might get this comment. Of course such sites still exist, but still a different phenomena when that was the entire internet. There are a lot of interesting people who run YouTube channels that be so cool to see a GeoCities-type site from, for example.
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