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I think I hate the internet

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Re: I think I hate the internet

#161

Post by salawat »

mexicocitinluez wrote: post #157
mancerayder wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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? It's not necessarily entitlement for everyone - from a cognitive point of view, some people find it stressful or painful to maintain concentration on written paragraphs when there's flashing, bouncing, colorful s…

> It's not necessarily entitlement for everyone It is entitlement. Nobody forced you to visit a web site with ads. The thing I said about people pretending they have no agency is exactly what you're implying. Thinking you deserve free stuff because you don't like how it's presented is nothing but entitlement. If someone has to pay for your traffic, it's theft. I don't know why it's so difficult for people to come to…

People who serve ads never ask whether the user whether they wish their computer hardware to be utilized for advertising. They just use it. Ads are 100% predisposed on trespassing. Your average ad supported site wants discoverability by being free, then when the hosting costs bite, hope the end user conveniently forgets that they (the end user) have ultimate sovereignty over what code the hoster hosts they (the end user) desires to run on the end user's own hardware. You (the hoster) don't have a right to eyeball monetization. Old school Internet before SEO & mercantilization worked this way just fine.

LLM companies never asked to train on scraped content when they damn well intended to rent the result back commercially.

There is no incoherence here unless you accept axiomatically the Internet should make money. That was never the original purpose. Nor should that become it's ultimate purpose. In fact, I argue that this goes beyond the purpose of the Internet. Society is not yours to monetize. Period. Commercial relationships are not default.

For the last 30+ years, I've watched as society has completely forgotten how to be humans talking to humans and building relationships in lieu of trying to discover the fastest way to plug into someone else's wallet by selling something that isn't theirs to sell.

Re: I think I hate the internet

#162

Post by VortexLain »

> For racists to find other racists and amplify their unsavoury views. For paedophiles for groom children with anonymity.

Sounds like yet another call for government overreach to amplify mass censorship even more (which is also used against things like abortion information), and ban anonymity to "protect the children".

Re: I think I hate the internet

#163

Post by fusslo »

packetlost wrote: post #133
pmdr wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bluesky was a decent little community for a minute. I found it interesting before the mass-exodus from Twitter/X. Now it's mostly politics and negativity. Not much different in that regard from X, just at the other end of the political spectrum. X still has, for me at least, most of the relevant accounts.

Bluesky has gotten considerably more tolerable by... adding an algorithmic feed ("For You"). It's developed by just some guy with the server running in his living room or something. I know people in this thread are down on algorithms, but a non-attention hacking algorithm is super, super nice because it helps cut out crap and show content in the niches I care about.

I get a LOT of untagged NSFW and political posts in my For You. I'm guessing it's influenced by the likes of people I follow. I don't know WHO to unfollow... and I don't really want to unfollow anyone.

I kinda wish I could influence my For You with rules:

> No more than 2 degrees of separation from me

> Posts with fewer than 150 likes

Re: I think I hate the internet

#164

Post by packetlost »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #160
packetlost wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bluesky has gotten considerably more tolerable by... adding an algorithmic feed ("For You"). It's developed by just some guy with the server running in his living room or something. I know people in this thread are down on algorithms, but a non-attention hacking algorithm is super, super nice because it helps cut out crap and show content in the niches I care about.

The reason that algorithmic feeds were introduced was essentially that Zynga and various heavy posters were killing Facebook (but mostly Zynga). Back near the dawn of time, FB's feed was chronological, and that meant that Every.Single.Farmville.Notification showed up in your feed (and there were a lot of Farmville notifications). This was actually causing real problems for Facebook, and they introduced an algorithmic…

Algorithmic feeds make large "pile of all posts everywhere" social networks like Twitter and BlueSky viable IMO.

The mentioned "For You" feed for BlueSky appears to be a variation of LinkLonk's algorithm (by the same author), so how it works is partially known: https://linklonk.com/item/3292763817660940288

Re: I think I hate the internet

#165

Post by pmdr »

swed420 wrote: post #128
pmdr wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bluesky was a decent little community for a minute. I found it interesting before the mass-exodus from Twitter/X. Now it's mostly politics and negativity. Not much different in that regard from X, just at the other end of the political spectrum. X still has, for me at least, most of the relevant accounts.

The problem with X is it forces you to hand over personal information to sign up, and even then many have said it leaves them in a "we're having difficulties" loop. It might be a fair trade if this exchange of info helped them eliminate bots, but it sounds like bots on X are more rampant than ever, so no thanks to that.

> but it sounds like bots on X are more rampant than ever, so no thanks to that.

I used to get a lot of spambot followers, but that has ceased entirely in the past year. I would say the bot problem is no longer that relevant at the moment, but rather people posting AI replies are.

Re: I think I hate the internet

#166

Post by swed420 »

pmdr wrote: post #165
swed420 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with X is it forces you to hand over personal information to sign up, and even then many have said it leaves them in a "we're having difficulties" loop. It might be a fair trade if this exchange of info helped them eliminate bots, but it sounds like bots on X are more rampant than ever, so no thanks to that.

> but it sounds like bots on X are more rampant than ever, so no thanks to that. I used to get a lot of spambot followers, but that has ceased entirely in the past year. I would say the bot problem is no longer that relevant at the moment, but rather people posting AI replies are.

For some people it might be hard to tell or may even be non existent in their sphere of it.

But if it's blanket rejecting certain signups based on identity, that suggests the company is interested in censorship and echo chambers, which means who knows what other dark patterns and less-detectable bot nets it has behind the scenes.

Doesn't seem worth it imo, except maybe for people who want their opinion echoed back to them (as well as other momentum that takes time to dissipate).

Re: I think I hate the internet

#167

Post by krapp »

VortexLain wrote: post #162

> For racists to find other racists and amplify their unsavoury views. For paedophiles for groom children with anonymity. Sounds like yet another call for government overreach to amplify mass censorship even more (which is also used against things like abortion information), and ban anonymity to "protect the children".

Except for the part where the author never actually calls for government censorship to "protect the children" or anything of the sort, sure.

Re: I think I hate the internet

#168

Post by mexicocitinluez »

salawat wrote: post #161
mexicocitinluez wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not necessarily entitlement for everyone It is entitlement. Nobody forced you to visit a web site with ads. The thing I said about people pretending they have no agency is exactly what you're implying. Thinking you deserve free stuff because you don't like how it's presented is nothing but entitlement. If someone has to pay for your traffic, it's theft. I don't know why it's so difficult for people to come to…

People who serve ads never ask whether the user whether they wish their computer hardware to be utilized for advertising. They just use it. Ads are 100% predisposed on trespassing. Your average ad supported site wants discoverability by being free , then when the hosting costs bite, hope the end user conveniently forgets that they (the end user) have ultimate sovereignty over what code the hoster hosts they (the end…

> People who serve ads never ask whether the user whether they wish their computer hardware to be utilized for advertising.

People who serve ads don't force you to visit their site. You do this on your own free will.

You're not a victim. You don't deserve other people's stuff for free because one site has deceptive practices. It's such an immature worldview.

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