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The open web isn't dying, we're killing it

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Re: The open web isn't dying, we're killing it

#11

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

When @home first started figuring out how to IP-over-cable in the mid-90s, one of its early employees was incredibly excited that the promise was to offer symmetric up/down bandwidth, with the implicit goal that people could run servers at home.

The entire industry, from IP providers to software developers, dropped this as a goal very early on. Bandwidth wasn't available, server installation and management was too complex for almost everyone, security issues turned into a swamp of nightmarish proportions.

Had we been clear in, say, 1995, that goal of IP-at-home was "run your own server (appliance), it will be as easy as using the iPhone that you haven't seen yet", the state of the web would be very, very, very different.

But that turned out not to be the goal, certainly not a goal that was even remotely close to achieved, and we're stuck with what we now have, for now at least.

Re: The open web isn't dying, we're killing it

#12

Post by kunai »

chromacity wrote: post #5

Yes, but here's the realization I had some time ago: no one cares. The billions of people online don't care. The internet is overwhelmingly accessed from mobile devices and used chiefly for shopping, scrolling through TikTok, watching Netflix, swiping on Tinder, and so on. More importantly, we don't care, not really. We pay lip service to it, but what have we done to foster the open / small web today? Many of us work…

The reason why no one cares is because most well-adjusted adults have never interacted with the web or its many tendrils as much as the patrons of this website (and others like it) have.

Re: The open web isn't dying, we're killing it

#14

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

yalogin wrote: post #3

Why use the present continuous tense? We can safely use the past tense as llms definitely killed it. The web of course isn’t going to vanish but there is no motivation for anyone to create a new site now.

What one earth are you talking about? What ever was the motivation for creating a new site? How has it changed?

Re: The open web isn't dying, we're killing it

#15

Post by pdonis »

chromacity wrote: post #5

Yes, but here's the realization I had some time ago: no one cares. The billions of people online don't care. The internet is overwhelmingly accessed from mobile devices and used chiefly for shopping, scrolling through TikTok, watching Netflix, swiping on Tinder, and so on. More importantly, we don't care, not really. We pay lip service to it, but what have we done to foster the open / small web today? Many of us work…

> When I'm done writing this comment, I'll probably go back to doomscrolling on walled-garden social media for a while.

I won't. I don't do social media. I have a Facebook account but I never use it. I don't even have a Twitter account. I don't use TikTok or any other such apps. If I'm using my smartphone and it's not for a call, texting, or an essential app like my bank's, it means I'm reading an e-book on it. (It's true that I get most of my ebooks from walled gardens--Google and Amazon. Unfortunately the vast majority of freely available ebooks are simply unreadable because of crappy formatting. But it's still not social media.)

But I'm an extreme outlier. I wish I weren't, and to be honest I'm not sure I understand exactly why I am. But that's how it appears to be.

Re: The open web isn't dying, we're killing it

#17

Post by LoganDark »

I don't understand the point of the distinction. We say the open web is dying because a vocal minority does do all they can to preserve it and reject the influences of the worse platforms. But the rest of the world doesn't care and so the open web is dying. Its proponents aren't killing it; it's dying despite their best attempts to keep it alive.

Re: The open web isn't dying, we're killing it

#18

Post by alephnerd »

pdonis wrote: post #15
chromacity wrote: post #5

Yes, but here's the realization I had some time ago: no one cares. The billions of people online don't care. The internet is overwhelmingly accessed from mobile devices and used chiefly for shopping, scrolling through TikTok, watching Netflix, swiping on Tinder, and so on. More importantly, we don't care, not really. We pay lip service to it, but what have we done to foster the open / small web today? Many of us work…

> When I'm done writing this comment, I'll probably go back to doomscrolling on walled-garden social media for a while. I won't. I don't do social media. I have a Facebook account but I never use it. I don't even have a Twitter account. I don't use TikTok or any other such apps. If I'm using my smartphone and it's not for a call, texting, or an essential app like my bank's, it means I'm reading an e-book on it. (It's…

> I don't do social media

You do realize Hacker News is social media right? And that too owned and operated by YCombinator.

And unscrupulous data crawlers have been mining HN's datasets for years. Heck, there's a fairly robust live HN dataset on Hugging Face right now [0].

OP is right.

[0] - https://huggingface.co/datasets/open-index/hacker-news

Re: The open web isn't dying, we're killing it

#19

Post by echelon »

bruce511 wrote: post #10
chromacity wrote: post #5

Yes, but here's the realization I had some time ago: no one cares. The billions of people online don't care. The internet is overwhelmingly accessed from mobile devices and used chiefly for shopping, scrolling through TikTok, watching Netflix, swiping on Tinder, and so on. More importantly, we don't care, not really. We pay lip service to it, but what have we done to foster the open / small web today? Many of us work…

To be honest, I'm not sure I even understand what the term "Open web" is supposed to mean? Does it mean that each individual and company is hosting their stuff on their own physical hardware? Is it OK to use say AWS? Does it mean that Facebook is the Open Web as long as you work at Facebook? But it's not if you don't? Is any site with a login "not the open web"? So if I'm hosting on my own metal, paid for by paying s…

A world where hyperscalers don't dictate the technology choices of 99.99% of people and totally control distribution.

A world where platform taxes and gatekeeping don't stifle innovation or put a ceiling on startups.

A world where the balance of power is more evenly distributed.

A world where single giant point of failures can't dictate the security posture and privacy of the entire civilization.

The brief period of time between 1993 and 2008.

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