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The internet is already over (2022)

samkriss.substack.com

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Re: The internet is already over (2022)

#211

Post by _heimdall »

lapphi wrote: post #191
_heimdall wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh people have known for a long time that the average person has crazy ideas. There's a reason the US election system isn't by popular vote, our founders believed that "the mob" couldn't be trusted and there needed to be a electoral escape hatch to make sure reasonable people were elected. With that said, what's the problem with people having ideas that seem crazy and baseless? Does it really harm you at all if someo…

“The mob” being the voting citizens of a free and open democratic society, of course. Interesting point of view/source of internal tension there.

Yeah for sure. Revolutions are messy and its easy to lose sight of that when you're on the winning side. I'm personally very glad to not live under a imperial monarchy, but I do wish the founders could have kept their concerns over voters out of the way.

There are historical examples of why trusting the mob goes poorly, but keeping that on the table fundamentally ruins the point of a democratic society. Its all well and good to say we need an educated populace, but the system should offer the public a chance to live up to the ideal rather than guard against their failure.

Re: The internet is already over (2022)

#212

Post by conradolandia »

account42 wrote: post #194
chpatrick wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you'll find bigotry is actually quite popular worldwide.

Good observation. Next step is realizing which "side" is the one holding extremist views.

What in the cryptofascism are you talking about?

Re: The internet is already over (2022)

#213

Post by account42 »

DocTomoe wrote: post #127
asdff wrote: post #93

A big issue with the internet is the commercialization aspect of it. Any time you get an organic community of actual users, that's just chumming the water. That's a good quality population of users for the marketer unlike a lot of others out there. They are going to try all they can to get into that community and use it for advertising, to make some use out of it versus to leave it be on the table. Entropy favors ens…

A big part in that was ISPs who often enough deliberately killed self-hosting with dynamic IP allocation and asynchronous upload/download rates, necessitating hosting somewhere else, which came with an extra cost, either in ads or in money.

Dynamic IPs for residential connections where already the norm in the early 2000s (remember dyndns.org and freedns.afraid.org?) yet self-hosted content was much more prominent than it is now. So where asymmetric lines.

Re: The internet is already over (2022)

#214

Post by account42 »

renegat0x0 wrote: post #158

First thing - what was fun? I think fan pages with a lots of interesting content, forums with interesting topics, IIRC channels with interesting groups. All had one thing in common: interesting creators. Previously Google connected you with interesting pages, now Google is answering machine. Now you are not connected with people, but with Google algorithm. You are connected with amazon deals, news outlets. You will n…

I think a big change is also cultural. Fewer people seem to be interested in their focus of choice remaining just a hobby. It's just too tempting to turn your audience into a profit generator when that's just a few clicks away (or so it seems) and you are getting companies offering to throw money at you for promotional deals. It also doesn't help that all the big platforms like to promote those who have succeeded in making being online their job, and in return that job includes gaming the algorithms to make sure they are seen.

Re: The internet is already over (2022)

#216

Post by smackeyacky »

account42 wrote: post #199
_heimdall wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A coworker of mine tried to convince me of this during the pandemic. I guess she realized I was a bit more antic establishment than normal and thought I'd like that hypothesis. It was a small minority, but there were (and are) absolutely people who believed this. They also usually explain it poorly, I think their idea really is that 5G radio signals caused disease but it gets morphed into a claim that 5G somehow crea…

Ok but then how is this relevant? Crazy uncles have existed long before the Internet.

Crazy uncles were unable to find other crazy uncles and coagulate into the fatbergs of information flow before the internet. Now the algorithms push them together.

Re: The internet is already over (2022)

#217

Post by account42 »

sveng wrote: post #26
manuelmoreale wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d like to offer an alternative: people who still write on personal blogs and like to interact with each other. https://ooh.directory is constantly growing if you want to look for things to read. https://kagi.com/smallweb Is a fun alternative way to discover new content. I started a series almost a year ago to help people discover interesting humans and their blogs: https://peopleandblogs.com/ Bearblog has a discove…

One more: https://www.leanternet.com/ (Scroll all the way down; HN is mentioned first).

Great list until

> 8. Ads can be good

No they absolutely cannot. Ads skew the incentives whether they are intrusive or not. Also the entire point of ads is to get the user to do something aside from his own goals so they are in direct opposition of point 1.

Re: The internet is already over (2022)

#218

Post by dyauspitr »

account42 wrote: post #195
dyauspitr wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably an even worse “platitude”. Most people go with the flow so if you’re immersed in a lot of bigotry, you will probably end up being a bigot eventually. Then it just spreads, especially if you couple the bigotry with humor. Bigotry is tribalism and seems naturally engrained so it’s something you have to actively resist.

> This is probably an even worse “platitude”. Most people go with the flow so if you’re immersed in a lot of wokism, you will probably end up being woke eventually. Then it just spreads, especially if you couple the wokism with humor. Wokism is tribalism and seems naturally engrained so it’s something you have to actively resist. Funny how well a simple word replacement can work.

Exactly. It just makes my point.

Re: The internet is already over (2022)

#219

Post by account42 »

peterleiser wrote: post #18
reddalo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> everyone is here I think this is the answer. Once upon a time we were way fewer people, and many interests were shared among those people (because we pretty much were all "geeks"). We've always had trolls, spammers, etc. but it still felt like we were part of a big community. Now everybody is here, and that feeling is no more. It's like moving from a small village or town (where everybody knows each other) to a hug…

And nobody makes Monty Python or The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy references anymore. I had a boss 15 years ago who had watched all things Star Trek, just like me; Knew all the things. But at one point he mentioned he wasn't really a fan, it was just "required reading, part of the literature". This is an interesting one. There used to be certain things that all nerds knew, and could talk about, use as analogies a…

> There used to be certain things that all nerds knew, and could talk about, use as analogies and metaphors.

Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra

Re: The internet is already over (2022)

#220

Post by BeFlatXIII »

_heimdall wrote: post #181
avh02 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that it would be open and really big. I think that was the aspiration, but nobody realized there were so many people who thought 5G caused corona (and similar lack of thought process) until it was too late.

Oh people have known for a long time that the average person has crazy ideas. There's a reason the US election system isn't by popular vote, our founders believed that "the mob" couldn't be trusted and there needed to be a electoral escape hatch to make sure reasonable people were elected. With that said, what's the problem with people having ideas that seem crazy and baseless? Does it really harm you at all if someo…

> Does it really harm you at all if someone else believes 5G causes covid? And does it harm you enough to say that their speech should be limited rather than free?

I would far rather restrict their right to vote than their right to speak. If they're sufficiently influential, that also means that everyone's vote who doesn't fall for their charm is worth just that much more.

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