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I think I hate the internet

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71–80 of 165 posts

Re: I think I hate the internet

#71
post #21
post #6

> The internet was about connection, but the way I see it, it’s become a great way for bad actors to... There seems to be a profound confusion somewhere in here that people come with an evil bit and we're going to toggle technology so that those people can't use it and everyone else can. Y'know, racists use cars to drive to their racist conventions or whatever. On publicly funded roads. Possibly with time freed up by…

Roads are neutral, social networks are not. Twitter is run by white supremacist openly trying to stroke racial violence. Facebook moderation favored pro-genocide side before the genocide. And it continues to favor outrage stroking groups.

Agreed but the word is stoke not stroke.

Re: I think I hate the internet

#72
You don't hate The Internet, you hate The Web.

The Web can be forked and I don't know why people aren't working on this.

An ad free, zuck-less ungoogle Web is possible.

I don't like the current web either. I like The Internet though. I can get free satellite imagery of the world and tons of other cool stuff. This doesn't need to use The Web, except for some relatively simple and replaceable metadata channels.

Re: I think I hate the internet

#73
post #16

Every time people use costs I really wonder what’s going on. My wife still uses an iPhone 13 and life for her is not particularly different from my iPhone 16. You don’t have to do any of this stuff: > I have to service and finance a £600 phone, pay a monthly contract and subscription to Apple, I then have to install an adblocker because otherwise sites are just unusable No one is going to connect you to a network fro…

Are you kind of implying that you can have a bank account without internet access in 2026? Extremely disingenuous

How so? I have 1 bank account with a local credit union and I have never logged into any of the online stuff. What do you take issue with, specifically?

Re: I think I hate the internet

#74

You don't hate The Internet, you hate The Web. The Web can be forked and I don't know why people aren't working on this. An ad free, zuck-less ungoogle Web is possible. I don't like the current web either. I like The Internet though. I can get free satellite imagery of the world and tons of other cool stuff. This doesn't need to use The Web, except for some relatively simple and replaceable metadata channels.

What seems more likely: There are literally zero people working on a web alternative, or all existing alternatives and forks are so unpopular that you have never heard of any of them?

Re: I think I hate the internet

#75
post #14
post #10

I think they hate the commercialized Internet, and I do too.

It's becoming an increasingly bad time to be hosting anything on your own, having to worry about whichever 0-day the clankers are going to find and/or exploit within minutes of it being patched. I'm not sure even nginx is safe in all of this. I used to think there was software that should be basically safe but I'm not sure hosting anything (open-source) yourself anymore (i.e. directly participating in the Internet on…

Is this actually grounded in real experiences and not headlines? Have real projects / people actually experienced this hyperbolic insta-hack you describe? People are getting DDoSed regularly sure, but no, you don't get hacked the instant you forward a port, in my experience hosting a few public services in my community.

Re: I think I hate the internet

#76
It will take the thinking persons a while to realize that like the utility curve for wealth, the utility curve for modernity also has decreasing marginal returns:

A basic bit of modernity is very useful, but as we become more modern, it becomes more nuisance, less comfort.

Re: I think I hate the internet

#77
post #6

> The internet was about connection, but the way I see it, it’s become a great way for bad actors to... There seems to be a profound confusion somewhere in here that people come with an evil bit and we're going to toggle technology so that those people can't use it and everyone else can. Y'know, racists use cars to drive to their racist conventions or whatever. On publicly funded roads. Possibly with time freed up by…

The road is neither public nor neutral, and that's where the analogy breaks.

This road is owned by a casino, and its signs are scientifically placed so that you take the wrong turn and reach their business. They place guardrails in the specific spot to hide places they don't want you to see. They actively encourage your children to grab a car and drive on it, even at risk of their health, to groom a new generation of casino clients.

Re: I think I hate the internet

#78

You don't hate The Internet, you hate The Web. The Web can be forked and I don't know why people aren't working on this. An ad free, zuck-less ungoogle Web is possible. I don't like the current web either. I like The Internet though. I can get free satellite imagery of the world and tons of other cool stuff. This doesn't need to use The Web, except for some relatively simple and replaceable metadata channels.

What seems more likely: There are literally zero people working on a web alternative, or all existing alternatives and forks are so unpopular that you have never heard of any of them?

[deleted]

Re: I think I hate the internet

#79

You don't hate The Internet, you hate The Web. The Web can be forked and I don't know why people aren't working on this. An ad free, zuck-less ungoogle Web is possible. I don't like the current web either. I like The Internet though. I can get free satellite imagery of the world and tons of other cool stuff. This doesn't need to use The Web, except for some relatively simple and replaceable metadata channels.

What seems more likely: There are literally zero people working on a web alternative, or all existing alternatives and forks are so unpopular that you have never heard of any of them?

I think the more likely reason is that there's nothing wrong with the web per se, but rather with the way people use it.

Even the argument against the Javascript/CSS/APIs explosion and browser complexity... all that can be "avoided" if you make a JS-less document-centric webpage, for example.

Re: I think I hate the internet

#80
post #16

Every time people use costs I really wonder what’s going on. My wife still uses an iPhone 13 and life for her is not particularly different from my iPhone 16. You don’t have to do any of this stuff: > I have to service and finance a £600 phone, pay a monthly contract and subscription to Apple, I then have to install an adblocker because otherwise sites are just unusable No one is going to connect you to a network fro…

> I then have to install an adblocker because otherwise sites are just unusable

I've been raw-dogging the internet for years now and have had very little issues. Sure, some sites have ads. But if they don't generate revenue from those ads, then I'd expect those sites to no longer exist.

It's a level of entitlement that's insane to me. If someone is hosting their own blog and use ads to help offset that, why should I be able to get their content for free AND cost them money for the traffic?

People consistenty act like they have no agency.

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