The open web isn't dying, we're killing it • Hacker News Board

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

#31

Post by pdonis » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 4:06 AM UTC

alex1138 wrote: post #26

alephnerd wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

There's a massive whitewashing of what "social media" is. I don't feel there's one singular definition but I could be wrong, maybe I am the one who missed the boat. But I'd really love to see it quantified more eg "Social media leads to addiction!" - ok take Facebook Are you referring to a) non-chronological feeds? Who knows what posts you'll actually find? You come back for more. You can't just log off for a week an…

I would say "social media" is a site that is trying to monetize your data, and using convenience as a lure to get you to give it your data to monetize. ("Data" here includes everything you post there.)

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

#32

Post by chromacity » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 4:06 AM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #14

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?

Not everything is about money. People were doing it, so they clearly had a motivation of some sort. I'm sure that some folks did it for themselves - just like writing a diary - but many others wanted to make new friends, earn praise, teach others, and so on.

If nothing else, LLMs have an indisputably negative impact on the second part. Fewer people will make it to your website if there's an AI digest on top of search results (or if they can skip search altogether by asking ChatGPT).

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

#33

Post by jacquesm » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 4:07 AM UTC

musicale wrote: post #6

> We embedded the follow buttons, added the share widgets, installed the trackers, and told our friends, readers, coworkers, and communities that the right place to find us was Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Substack, or whichever silo was ascendant that year. So you're the ones who did it! But youtube is actually pretty great with the appropriate extensions and scripts.

Youtube is a complete accident. If early browsers had simply properly embedded video and there would have been a reasonable device independent standard then we wouldn't have needed youtube at all. Any website would have been able to host its own videos.

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

#34

Post by jacquesm » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 4:08 AM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #31

alex1138 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a massive whitewashing of what "social media" is. I don't feel there's one singular definition but I could be wrong, maybe I am the one who missed the boat. But I'd really love to see it quantified more eg "Social media leads to addiction!" - ok take Facebook Are you referring to a) non-chronological feeds? Who knows what posts you'll actually find? You come back for more. You can't just log off for a week an…

I would say "social media" is a site that is trying to monetize your data, and using convenience as a lure to get you to give it your data to monetize. ("Data" here includes everything you post there.)

I would say social media is any website where the connections between the participants are as important or even more important than the content. As soon as you get 'followers' it is game over.

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

#35

Post by alephnerd » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 4:11 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #34

pdonis wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say "social media" is a site that is trying to monetize your data, and using convenience as a lure to get you to give it your data to monetize. ("Data" here includes everything you post there.)

I would say social media is any website where the connections between the participants are as important or even more important than the content. As soon as you get 'followers' it is game over.

> As soon as you get 'followers' it is game over.

This is already happening on HN now via HackerSmacker [0].

I've found a couple HN users who have that have apparently been using it to follow and target me with comments whenever I post.

[0] - https://hackersmacker.org/

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

#36

Post by cosmicgadget » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 4:12 AM UTC

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…

> Is any site with a login "not the open web"?

This one. The open web is freely accessible to anyone on the internet.

> So if I'm hosting on my own metal, paid for by paying subscribers, then I'm not Open Web?

Yes. It's not necessarily bad, it's just not open.

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

#37

Post by dyauspitr » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 4:12 AM UTC

gausswho wrote: post #22

alephnerd wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

How many times must we trundle underfoot this lazy canard that HN is social media. A link aggregator with comments is not what anyone thinks of for that term.

I mean, there is discussion and a sense of community here. I’m not sure what exactly defines social media, but this is more than just a link aggregator.

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

#38

Post by nine_k » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 4:12 AM UTC

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 is the point of playing guitar any more? You're not going to be another Elvis. You're not going to be another Robert Plant or Paco de Lucia, even if you play equally good. The world is choke-full of excellent guitar music recordings.

People still play guitar nevertheless. They do it for the enjoyment of the few friends sitting next to them, and, most of all, for the fun they personally have in the process. If your motivation is seriously different, especially it it involves fame, influence, or money, you are holding it wrong.

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

#39

Post by LoganDark » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 4:14 AM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #11

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 co…

I've been fighting my ISP for years trying to get an upload speed that is not over TWENTY FIVE TIMES slower than my download speed. It took an FCC complaint for them to even get back to me.

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

#40

Post by Jensson » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 4:18 AM UTC

dyauspitr wrote: post #37

gausswho wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many times must we trundle underfoot this lazy canard that HN is social media. A link aggregator with comments is not what anyone thinks of for that term.

I mean, there is discussion and a sense of community here. I’m not sure what exactly defines social media, but this is more than just a link aggregator.

Old forums weren't called social media. I think for it to be social media it has to be about your social graph, here on HN I almost never read peoples names and I don't really connect with people so it isn't social media, its just media with comments.

If I could subscribe to peoples feeds and such then it would be social media, but HN doesn't have that feature.