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The Public Interest Internet

berjon.com

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Re: The Public Interest Internet

#11

Post by bigfudge »

Gormo wrote: post #10
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If there are browser features that users want (like tabs) or webs standards that enable Cool Stuff (like modern JS) then users will go out of their way to install browser that support them." Pretty sure that tabs were introduced by a software developer without any prior request from any user. Same goes for "Cool Stuff". Few users even know what JS means, except that if they do not use it or disable it, they will con…

> Pretty sure that tabs were introduced by a software developer without any prior request from any user. I'm sure many, many features were introduced by software developers without any prior request from users. Users then selected what software to use based on which of those features they like the best. This is how most product design works -- features are developed prior to being marketed, and users subsequently val…

Chromes replacement of Firefox had more to do with aggressive marketing and deliberate poor performance of their web properties like gmail on non-Google browsers. Not sure how much consumer self direction was involved.

Re: The Public Interest Internet

#12

Post by Gormo »

recifs wrote: post #2

Allow me to open with a wildly speculative question: What if the internet were public interest technology? I mean "internet" the way most people understand it, which is to say our whole digital sphere, and by "public interest" I don't mean tinkering at the margins to reduce harm from some bad actors or painting some glossy ethics principles atop a pile of exploitative rent-seeking — I mean through and through, warts…

The moment you try to define a singular "common good", you wind up with a variety of competing factions all putting forth their own wildly divergent and often contradictory notions of what that common good consists of.

Most people have an unfortunate tendency to project their own values and preferences onto the world at large, and fail to recognize when they cross the boundary out of their own spaces and into other people's.

Recognizing this means advancing solutions that primarily aim to minimize conflict among many parties, each pursuing their own particular concept of the good within their own boundaries, and avoiding trying to universalize any singular set of terminal values.

Attempting to pursue solutions that depend on everyone agreeing on the same set of terminal values will always fail, and will often generate intense conflict that escalates well beyond the bounds of the original question and causes a great deal of collateral damage.

Re: The Public Interest Internet

#13

Post by mvc »

beders wrote: post #6

Summary: Someone's gotta pay for the Ramen. A good start would be to demand that internet infrastructure operators do just that - and nothing more. Internet providers do just that one job: Routing IP. No peeking into my packages please. Strengthening and regulating the underlying world-wide infrastructure: undersea cables, transcontinental fiber networks - with oversight that prevents any org (public or private) from…

> Alas, a pipe dream.

Or "tube" dream as it were.

Re: The Public Interest Internet

#14

Post by marginalia_nu »

severine wrote: post #8
marginalia_nu wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If there are browser features that users want (like tabs) [...] then users will go out of their way to install browsers that support them. The prerequisite of this is that such a web browser exists, which is not a given. I'd sacrifice an arm for a web browser that has non-disappearing natively themed scroll bars since due to accessibility issues I struggle with scroll wheels. This is not a big technical ask, yet to…

I'd sacrifice an arm for a web browser that has non-disappearing natively themed scroll bars since due to accessibility issues I struggle with scroll wheels. Doesn't Firefox work at this? 1.Go to about:preferences or open the Firefox preferences via the UI 2.Scroll down until you get to a section titled "Browsing", or search for "scroll" 3.Check the setting "Always show scrollbars" ref: https://superuser.com/question…

Problem is that it's too narrow, makes it hard to click. That's why I'm specifically looking for a native widget.

Re: The Public Interest Internet

#15

Post by Gormo »

bigfudge wrote: post #11
Gormo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pretty sure that tabs were introduced by a software developer without any prior request from any user. I'm sure many, many features were introduced by software developers without any prior request from users. Users then selected what software to use based on which of those features they like the best. This is how most product design works -- features are developed prior to being marketed, and users subsequently val…

Chromes replacement of Firefox had more to do with aggressive marketing and deliberate poor performance of their web properties like gmail on non-Google browsers. Not sure how much consumer self direction was involved.

> Not sure how much consumer self direction was involved.

It was entirely consumer self-direction, as neither browser was preinstalled by default on any platform, and all usage of either was initiated by a deliberate end-user choice.

"Aggressive marketing" indeed only has its effect through "consumer self-direction" as its whole purpose is to persuade end users to make a purposeful decision.

Re: The Public Interest Internet

#16

Post by Hasu »

roenxi wrote: post #4

> So, say you want to create a new web standard... This and the following image have a misguided understanding of the market. We know how this situation plays out because we ran exactly that experiment in the 2000s with Firefox and IE6. Those market share numbers are contingent on Google doing the best possible job as curators insofar as the userbase can tell. If there are browser features that users want (like tabs)…

> With crypto we are surely getting to spitting distance of advertisers paying users directly to look at ads instead of paying Google to organise the web such that users look at ads.

Who would take that deal? Getting paid $.02 in some cryptocurrency to look at an ad? So that I can then maybe spend more money on the product being advertised? Why would I ever agree to that? It's a bad deal for me. Why would the ad agency do that? It's a bad deal for them versus paying for captive eyeballs.

Re: The Public Interest Internet

#17

Post by darreninthenet »

roenxi wrote: post #4

> So, say you want to create a new web standard... This and the following image have a misguided understanding of the market. We know how this situation plays out because we ran exactly that experiment in the 2000s with Firefox and IE6. Those market share numbers are contingent on Google doing the best possible job as curators insofar as the userbase can tell. If there are browser features that users want (like tabs)…

This is coming around full circle to the early days of the internet when people had toolbars installed on their browser that displayed adverts and they slowly earned pennies for the time they spent browsing (and seeing the toolbar adverts).

Re: The Public Interest Internet

#18

Post by mistermann »

Gormo wrote: post #12
recifs wrote: post #2

Allow me to open with a wildly speculative question: What if the internet were public interest technology? I mean "internet" the way most people understand it, which is to say our whole digital sphere, and by "public interest" I don't mean tinkering at the margins to reduce harm from some bad actors or painting some glossy ethics principles atop a pile of exploitative rent-seeking — I mean through and through, warts…

The moment you try to define a singular "common good", you wind up with a variety of competing factions all putting forth their own wildly divergent and often contradictory notions of what that common good consists of. Most people have an unfortunate tendency to project their own values and preferences onto the world at large, and fail to recognize when they cross the boundary out of their own spaces and into other p…

This (the last 2 paragraphs) certainly seems correct, but what if the fact of the matter is you have it ~backwards?

Re: The Public Interest Internet

#19

Post by GoblinSlayer »

roenxi wrote: post #4

> So, say you want to create a new web standard... This and the following image have a misguided understanding of the market. We know how this situation plays out because we ran exactly that experiment in the 2000s with Firefox and IE6. Those market share numbers are contingent on Google doing the best possible job as curators insofar as the userbase can tell. If there are browser features that users want (like tabs)…

Usually it's salesmen who want Slow New Stuff, users want fast interoperable software. And to force them install one electron app per site they need to be nagged by "we don't like your browser" error pages.

Re: The Public Interest Internet

#20

Post by tutipop »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #14
severine wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd sacrifice an arm for a web browser that has non-disappearing natively themed scroll bars since due to accessibility issues I struggle with scroll wheels. Doesn't Firefox work at this? 1.Go to about:preferences or open the Firefox preferences via the UI 2.Scroll down until you get to a section titled "Browsing", or search for "scroll" 3.Check the setting "Always show scrollbars" ref: https://superuser.com/question…

Problem is that it's too narrow, makes it hard to click. That's why I'm specifically looking for a native widget.

In about:config

  widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.size.override 20 
  widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.style  4
  widget.gtk.overlay-scrollbars.enabled   false
I even use a custom gtk.css to improve things further:

  scrollbar, scrollbar button, scrollbar slider {
    -GtkScrollbar-has-backward-stepper: true;
    -GtkScrollbar-has-secondary-forward-stepper: true;
    -GtkScrollbar-has-forward-stepper: true;
    min-width: 20px;
    min-height: 20px;
    border-radius: 0;
  }
It's a shame we have to resort to this to get decent scrollbar behavior.
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