When I first started using the Internet there were 3 rules that were pounded into my head repeatedly. 1. Don't believe everything or anything you read or see on the Internet. 2. Never share personal information about yourself online. 3. Every man was a man, every woman was a man and every teenager is an FBI agent. I have yet to find a problem with the Internet thats isn't because of breaking one of the above rules. M…
When I first started using the Internet there were 3 rules that were pounded into my head repeatedly. 1. Don't believe everything or anything you read or see on the Internet. 2. Never share personal information about yourself online. 3. Every man was a man, every woman was a man and every teenager is an FBI agent. I have yet to find a problem with the Internet thats isn't because of breaking one of the above rules. M…
You've always needed skepticism, of course. But it used to be if you came across an article about a super obscure video game from the early 90s (referencing the blog post here) you could be reasonably sure that it wasn't completely made up. There just wasn't the incentive to publish nonsense about super niche things because it took time and effort to do so.
Now you can collate a list of thousands of titles and simply instruct an LLM to produce garbage for each one and publish it on the internet. This is a real change, IMO.
The internet has gone from a high-trust society to a low-trust society, all in the span of a couple of decades. Enshittification strikes again. And it doesn't have appear to have any means to rid itself of the bad apples. A sad situation all around.
to be boring, the term "enshittification" was invented by one individual, recently, and has a specific meaning. it does not refer to "things just get worse" but describes a specific strategy adopted by corporations using the internet for commercial purposes.
This is why my friends and I are setting up a mesh network in our town. The open internet has been going downhill for a while, but LLMs are absolutely accelerating it's demise. I was in denial for the last few years but at this point I've accepted that the internet I grew up on as a kid in the late 90s to mid 2000s is dead. I am grateful for having experienced it but the time has come to move on. The future for peopl…
I "got online" in 1985. I don't recall a single point in time that a geographically local internet was ever useful or of interest to me.
Interesting theory. I'm inclined to disagree, however. Prediction markets essentially allows people to trade information for money, even the types historically more difficult to trade. There aren't enough people betting on things for deliberate misinformation to become worthwhile, IMO, and most people would stop betting after being in the wrong too often, unlike casinos which always let you win sometimes. I believe t…
It's the same as with crypto rug pulls, nobody is going to fall for that several times. Was still money to make in that before everyone and their grandma wisened up.
I don't think prediction markets work well for that. It is a market and you can't really prevent anyone else from benefitting from the same victims, which dilutes your earnings.
The internet has gone from a high-trust society to a low-trust society, all in the span of a couple of decades. Enshittification strikes again. And it doesn't have appear to have any means to rid itself of the bad apples. A sad situation all around.
The WWW has never been a high-trust place. Some smaller communities, sure, but anyone has always been able to write basically what they want on the internet, true or false, as long as it is not illegal in the country hosting it, which is close to nothing in the US. The difference is that there historically weren't much to be gained by annoying or misleading people on the internet, so trolling is mainly motivated by p…
I agree. It's not that the web was high-trust. It was more that if you landed on a niche web page, you knew whoever put it together probably had at least a little expertise (and care) since it wouldn't be worth writing about something that very few people would find and read anyway. Now that it's super cheap to produce niche content, even if very few people find a page, it's "worth it" to produce said garbage as it gives you some easy SEO for very little time investment.
The motivation for content online has changed over the last 20 years from people wanting to share things they're interested in to one where the primary goal is to collect eyeballs to make a profit in some way.
This is why my friends and I are setting up a mesh network in our town. The open internet has been going downhill for a while, but LLMs are absolutely accelerating it's demise. I was in denial for the last few years but at this point I've accepted that the internet I grew up on as a kid in the late 90s to mid 2000s is dead. I am grateful for having experienced it but the time has come to move on. The future for peopl…
I "got online" in 1985. I don't recall a single point in time that a geographically local internet was ever useful or of interest to me.
What about when you want to find hot singles in your area?
Jokes aside, probably 10-20% of my browsing is related to local things, up to the country scale. From finding local restaurants or businesses, to finding about relevant laws or regulations, news, etc. That's not negligible.
This is why my friends and I are setting up a mesh network in our town. The open internet has been going downhill for a while, but LLMs are absolutely accelerating it's demise. I was in denial for the last few years but at this point I've accepted that the internet I grew up on as a kid in the late 90s to mid 2000s is dead. I am grateful for having experienced it but the time has come to move on. The future for peopl…
This seems like solving the problem at the wrong layer? The issue isn’t the actual network connection between people, it is the content. You could easily create your own forum or something and only include people you trust. You don’t need an entirely separate internet.
The internet has gone from a high-trust society to a low-trust society, all in the span of a couple of decades. Enshittification strikes again. And it doesn't have appear to have any means to rid itself of the bad apples. A sad situation all around.
to be boring, the term "enshittification" was invented by one individual, recently, and has a specific meaning. it does not refer to "things just get worse" but describes a specific strategy adopted by corporations using the internet for commercial purposes.
Words change meaning as they are used. Especially negative words that may start rather specific tend to get used more generally until the specificity is lost.
This is why my friends and I are setting up a mesh network in our town. The open internet has been going downhill for a while, but LLMs are absolutely accelerating it's demise. I was in denial for the last few years but at this point I've accepted that the internet I grew up on as a kid in the late 90s to mid 2000s is dead. I am grateful for having experienced it but the time has come to move on. The future for peopl…
I "got online" in 1985. I don't recall a single point in time that a geographically local internet was ever useful or of interest to me.
I think before Friendster, Myspace, then Facebook, there was a period where there were discussion forums for local communities. I think it was useful for meeting people. I remember friends in the late '90s used them frequently for chatting and some made new friends in real life that way. It was a short period, though, as more established companies came along that had a wider reach.