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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)

#291

Post by NetOpWibby »

lonk11 wrote: post #79
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…

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…

Neat project, thanks for sharing.

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

#292

Post by wyclif »

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…

I was disappointed that the author never mentioned ownership. A lot of the problems discussed there are caused by not owning your own content. It's still super easy to register a domain and roll your own content using Ghost, Hugo, or 11ty.

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

#293

Post by wyclif »

godshatter wrote: post #246
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...

This, pseudonymous de-centralized discussion groups and forums, is what I would pick as the one thing I would like to bring back to the internet. There used to be a forum about everything, each one it's own community, most of which didn't require ties to a real-world identity. I'm sure they exist, but they are really hard to find.

They exist in abundance on IRC.

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

#294

Post by wyclif »

pixelgeek wrote: post #186
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...

This was my immediate response. The number of forums available has plummeted. And as @maskros says, they are all in private Facebook groups now. Private because no-one wants their personal life trickling into their Facebook feed in case someone from work sees it.

On Facebook, you don't need to use a private group for privacy. You set up a different audience group that isn't public and change the audience to one that is non-public.

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

#295

Post by ajsnigrutin »

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…

SEO destroyed the cooking/recipe blogs.

What was once a "Ingredients:" .... "Instructions:" ... "Tip: goes well with sour cream", is now a whole story, how the author woke up one day, when the were 7, and noticed they peed their bed, and then their mother came to check on them, and started cleaning the pee, and the dog was barking, and the dog also pooped that day, and there was wheel of fortune on tv, and a friend came over for a lunch, but they ordered pizza for lunch, and then there was a rerun of mission impossible on tv, and then daddy had a beer or five, and mommy made sandwiches, and those sanwiches remind the author of this chicken tikka masala recipe, that was converted to a non-spicy vegan variant.

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

#296

Post by frogulis »

Lamad123 wrote: post #162
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…

I used to hate canned tuna in the past but I love it now!! Your mechanism doesn't account for this!

Canned tuna is just about the only food I can't bring myself to like. What changed for you?

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

#297

Post by wibblewobble123 »

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…

Your comment shows you didn’t read the page fully. I miss when people had time to read a whole page.

The author already wrote about blogs that are trying to get views with various tactics vs old proper blogs that were just people rambling about their quirky interests or bad day.

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

#298

Post by unraveller »

lonk11 wrote: post #79
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…

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…

You are still going get splash damage from people who trust people who fall for plausibly non-clickbait clickbait, as is the top item for me right now [1]. As this system gets larger and more overlapping you are going to have to work more diligently to undo bad follows to get tinier amounts of content referrals.

The discovery problem should be solved on page and spread that way, to remain decentralised and free from the all the centralised incentives that lead to clickbait. You almost have to punish hosts that appear anywhere centralized lest they get a taste for clickblood.

[1] https://linklonk.com/item/2226616383778586624

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

#299

Post by lonk11 »

Lamad123 wrote: post #162
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…

I used to hate canned tuna in the past but I love it now!! Your mechanism doesn't account for this!

Your connections to feeds and other users on LinkLonk evolve over time as you rate content. If you start upvoting tuna-related content then LinkLonk will connect you to other tuna lovers and your connections will gradually "forget" your past hate for it.

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

#300

Post by elzbardico »

pixelgeek wrote: post #193
elzbardico wrote: post #58

video and podcasts killed blogs. When we figured out it the spoken world has truly dismal bandwidth compared to reading, it was already too late, blogs were dead. Also, SEO trickery completely drowned the honest blogger, not to mention rampant plagiarism from the same SEO farms.

> Also, SEO trickery completely drowned the honest blogger, not to mention rampant plagiarism from the same SEO farms. Well it makes it impossible to find any good information about a topic. I wonder if stackoverflow would be as popular if there weren't 101 content farm articles for every subject you want to search for.

People could try books instead of stack overflow.
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