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If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs (2020)

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Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs (2020)

#281

Post by lol768 »

pixelgeek wrote: post #242
thepasswordis wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what's frustrating is that you can't even search those facebook groups (AFAIK).

By design I would suspect. Facebook is an informational black hole. Even the referrer links from there are useless.

Yup - it's actively hostile to anyone trying to visit anonymously: https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/151591/facebook-...

(Never mind the overlays which take up about a third of the viewport height and beg you to login / sign-up - Twitter have started doing this recently)

Discoverability is deliberately hampered by the lack of pagination and reliance on infinite scrolling.

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs (2020)

#282

Post by AA-BA-94-2A-56 »

dsr_ wrote: post #139
anovikov wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this the whole people of blogs today? "Write something Google bot will like reading"

You're taking a tool -- a chef's knife -- and telling us that the point of it is to open packages from Amazon. Sure, you can do that. It will even work for that. But the tool has many, many more uses than that.

This isn’t it at all.

The blogs are in a race to the bottom in terms of quality because there is huge incentive to write for long-tail SEO rather than humans.

This is a lot closer to tragedy of the commons.

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs (2020)

#283

Post by cratermoon »

d3nj4l wrote: post #56

As a minor counterpoint: I've come to dread blogs and newsletters because so many of them are written by grind culture freaks who only write faux-insightful SEO'd content as a way to build an audience to sell snake oil to. These days the only blogs I trust are the ones I see on the top of HN or lobsters, which is unfortunate because I have interests beyond tech and I find it very, very difficult to find good blogs I…

Or, with a slight rewording:

> I've come to dread the internet and social media because so many of is written by grind culture freaks who only write faux-insightful SEO'd content as a way to build an audience to sell snake oil.

It's the nature of the attention economy and ubiquitous ad tech.

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs (2020)

#284

Post by cratermoon »

pers0n wrote: post #266
maskros wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discussion groups and forums used to be useful, but now they're dying out and being replaced by undiscoverable walled garden facebook groups and discord servers...

Big forums can cost a lot of money to run and managing the spam can be a mess these days. Not only that the boards that have enough proper tools to deal with the spam aren't free. Sure there are plugins for some forum software that fix a few things, but often you have to install 6 plugins and that still isnt enough, plus then you have to do updates and hope it doesnt break those un-official plugins.

Even blog comment sections are overrun with spam links.

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs (2020)

#285

Post by DoreenMichele »

Blogger has not been shut down:

https://www.techrolet.com/2021/06/why-google-will-not-shut-d...

I blog. Here's a view from the other side:

It's nigh impossible to make money blogging. People hate every means that exists to monetize it.

People hate ads. People hate SEO content with affiliate links. People hate content paid for via a content mill. Etc.

If you do something original, they accuse you of being a shill or making things up etc and few people leave tips or kick in a few bucks via Patreon.

You want to see more blog writing from original voices?

Be willing to tip or support Patreon if they are looking to monetize it. Good writing takes time and practice and if you aren't willing to pay people, eh, quit your bitching. Wanting good writing for free is an expectation of slave labor.

Don't be a creeper. There have been far too many people whose interest in my writing is lurid, overly personal and unhealthy. It's impacted me, my life and my writing and mostly not in a good way.

Share the blog writing you think is good. Repost it somewhere. It's extremely hard to self promote. Many places have rules against that or which strictly limit it. Even where it is allowed, people act all judgy if you are self promoting. It has more credibility if someone else promotes your work.

Engage constructively. Comments or reader interaction is enormously important for fueling the mind's ability to figure out what to say next on the topic. (Don't use this as an excuse to be mean and then claim "You asked for feedback!")

I have no plans to engage with anyone who decides this comment somehow constitutes an invitation to be attacked, insulted and told how I'm somehow doing something wrong and it's my fault I can't make this work.

It's not my fault. This is just one of those things where the world is currently broken and most writers are making a pittance.

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs (2020)

#286

Post by sweuder »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #85
erklik wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Discovery of good sources of information such as blogs is hard. And I think the biggest problem is the lack of trust. Everyone wants to grab your attention [1]. So how do you know that others won't waste your attention? > To solve this problem I am building https://linklonk.com that cultivates trust as you rate content. When you upvote a link you connect stronger to the feed that posted it (which could be a blog's…

LinkLonk is free, and it solves the problem. I've only used it for about 15 minutes, because in that time it fed me enough interesting stuff that I overwrote (and then closed) the tab. This isn't somebody trying to sell something. It's somebody trying to help.

What does overwrote mean in this context? thanks

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs (2020)

#287

Post by sweuder »

kixiQu wrote: post #249
adrianN wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of central discovery is one of the main appeals of blogs imho. I don't want to discover blogs via a directory. I want to discover them through links from blogs I already read or recommendations from friends. I think blogs started dieing when they optimized for maximizing their audience instead of being locations where people write about stuff that interests them without an expectation of "making it".

Handmade directories, like blogrolls, are a sweet spot IME: I keep mine at https://maya.land/blogroll.opml (human or machine-readable) and I've found a huge portion of what's on it via other people's recommendations.

And now I'm perusing your recommendations, cheers!

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs (2020)

#288

Post by lonk11 »

iainctduncan wrote: post #192
lonk11 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discovery of good sources of information such as blogs is hard. And I think the biggest problem is the lack of trust. Everyone wants to grab your attention [1]. So how do you know that others won't waste your attention? To solve this problem I am building https://linklonk.com that cultivates trust as you rate content. When you upvote a link you connect stronger to the feed that posted it (which could be a blog's feed…

This is a really nice idea. If I may make a suggestion, scrolling down takes a lot of scrolling because each link takes up so much vertical screen space on account of really big whitespace gutters, size of the thumbnail, and the general layout. I wind up being able to see only 3 on a screen compared 16 on HN! I would be much more likely to adopt this regularly if you changed the layout to pack more previews in to a v…

Would it work if we had an option for a "compact" mode that shows items without no thumbnail and description?

Or would you change something else?

I don't know if I can get rid of the bottom part with the buttons since this is where the collection selector is - where you pick what collection the item you like should go to.

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs (2020)

#289

Post by jazzyjackson »

pixelgeek wrote: post #242
thepasswordis wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what's frustrating is that you can't even search those facebook groups (AFAIK).

By design I would suspect. Facebook is an informational black hole. Even the referrer links from there are useless.

i was shocked when i found there’s no way to link or share a specific comment.

Re: If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs (2020)

#290

Post by lonk11 »

derekzhouzhen wrote: post #189
lonk11 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discovery of good sources of information such as blogs is hard. And I think the biggest problem is the lack of trust. Everyone wants to grab your attention [1]. So how do you know that others won't waste your attention? To solve this problem I am building https://linklonk.com that cultivates trust as you rate content. When you upvote a link you connect stronger to the feed that posted it (which could be a blog's feed…

> The strength of your connections to other feeds and users represents how useful their content recommendations have been to you in the past and they could be used as a measure of how likely their future recommendations will be worth your time (ie, trust that they won't waste your time). Your intention is noble, but this is still based on network effects and a positive feedback loop. I doubt you can beat the social m…

True, the network effects of the traditional social media are strong. LinkLonk needs a critical mass of users for network effects to kick in.

To make it worthwhile for the users before the project reaches that point, I am trying to make LinkLonk a better tool that helps you keep track of the content you liked (kind of a bookmarking service) and helps you follow RSS feeds in (kind of a feed reader).

If you have other ideas of how to make it more useful before we have enough users - let me know.

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