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The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now

stephendiehl.com

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Re: The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now

#311

Post by rTX5CMRXIfFG »

stackbutterflow wrote: post #201
akudha wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most dangerous part of this addiction is that it doesn't feel like addiction. Suppose we spend 4 hours in an afternoon consuming random content - starting somewhere on a Google search, landing on Wikipedia, end up reading dozens of articles on various topics in that 4 hours. Unlike alcohol or drugs, this is knowledge addiction - afterall, we learned about a bunch of things in those 4 hours, didn't we? We didn't s…

It's all about balance. Learning about various stuff from well written articles and Wikipedia for one hour is good. Doing the same thing for the whole weekend isn't. Even reading books all the time to the detriment of other activities isn't good. What's good is doing a bit of everything. Reading a book an hour before sleep, doing a hour of exercise two to three times a week. Reading a few blog articles, wikipedia, lo…

Doing a bit of everything is what’s good? Why? Because that sounds like aimless distraction. If you had a goal in mind, doing a bit of everything isn’t even an option

Re: The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now

#312

Post by manuisin »

foobarbecue wrote: post #184
asdfman123 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're interested in what helped me overcome the worst aspects of my internet addiction, I learned to reframe it. I wasn't overcome with addiction, but I was CHOOSING to take a break. There are good reasons to read the news, there are good reasons to take breaks. End the war against yourself and take more wholesome breaks, so your subconscious doesn't take over and force them. It may involve forcing yourself to be…

Forcing a short delay is such a powerful technique. I use this when I'm at risk of binging a show. If I'm tempted to let Netflix continue into the next episode, I say "ok maybe, but let's get up and do something else for a few minutes first and see if I still want to" and before I know it I'm building a robot instead.

reverse/compliment to this to start working for me is just aiming to work for 1-2 minutes when it feels hard to get started. i usually end up getting immersed, and find it hard to stop.

Re: The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now

#313

Post by vlyan »

TFNA wrote: post #102
shostack wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also was because it became a target to influence and manipulate people both by every day scammers and marketers as well as nation state level actors.

Sure, but that didn't hit a lot of small hobby subreddits until recently. But the discussion culture there had already declined starting a decade ago, and it was ordinary subreddit denizens and their phones to blame, not bots or geopolitical intrigues.

all it takes for a sub to be good is a blanket ban on activism. if there is no "NO POLITICS" in the rules, or the rule isn't enforced, then every sub -- no matter how small -- will inevitably be subjected to public opinion campaigns.

Re: The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now

#314

Post by TFNA »

vlyan wrote: post #313
TFNA wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but that didn't hit a lot of small hobby subreddits until recently. But the discussion culture there had already declined starting a decade ago, and it was ordinary subreddit denizens and their phones to blame, not bots or geopolitical intrigues.

all it takes for a sub to be good is a blanket ban on activism. if there is no "NO POLITICS" in the rules, or the rule isn't enforced, then every sub -- no matter how small -- will inevitably be subjected to public opinion campaigns.

Many of the subs related to travel and unpopular arts and music historically had almost no political posts. Yet they started to decline years ago, already before Covid, due to increasing image posts and decreasing long-form text.

Re: The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now

#315

Post by ndriscoll »

TFNA wrote: post #264
ndriscoll wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't go on sites with "creators" then. When people say this they're talking about like 5 websites. They're not "the Internet" at all.

Why do you assume a hobby or interest still has a significant presence on the non-algorithmified open web? For travel-related hobbies, for instance, there is no longer any kind of significant open-web scene where people just share stuff to help others or because it is cool. (Yes, you can set up your own blog, but pretty much none of your peers will ever see it.) The community might be using a variety of apps beyond y…

I'm not sure what exactly a travel-related hobby app might even be for (other than e.g. a map and a calendar, but there are FOSS ones), but isn't this exactly demonstrating the "creator" mentality? You can make your blog as you like it with text, images, videos, etc. Share it with people in your social circle who are interested. Maybe others will find it too some day if you want it to be open. But if you can't send them a link, they're not really your peer, are they? And if they won't click a link, they weren't interested.

Re: The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now

#316

Post by mdnahas »

I know someone who calls it “Scamerica”.

One cause is Congress not doing its job for 30 years. The other is the advertising funding model - website users are not the customers. Therefore, websites - especially news sites - aren’t delivering useful information to their users because that doesn’t make more money.

Therefore author is right. Reinforcement learning with this ecosystem is dangerous.

Re: The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now

#317

Post by TFNA »

ndriscoll wrote: post #315
TFNA wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you assume a hobby or interest still has a significant presence on the non-algorithmified open web? For travel-related hobbies, for instance, there is no longer any kind of significant open-web scene where people just share stuff to help others or because it is cool. (Yes, you can set up your own blog, but pretty much none of your peers will ever see it.) The community might be using a variety of apps beyond y…

I'm not sure what exactly a travel-related hobby app might even be for (other than e.g. a map and a calendar, but there are FOSS ones), but isn't this exactly demonstrating the "creator" mentality? You can make your blog as you like it with text, images, videos, etc. Share it with people in your social circle who are interested. Maybe others will find it too some day if you want it to be open. But if you can't send t…

Let me give you long-haul bicycle travel as an example: back when there was an active blogging scene, people sharing route tips and bike-build breakdowns could be sure that a decent amount of other people would find it and benefit from it: the blogs got picked up by search engines and were readily findable, and there was still a culture of using the open web.

Today, no one you will see the content that you posted to help other people out. Google began deprioritizing personal blogs a decade ago already, and now a whole generation has come up that doesn't know the open web is a thing. When people look for tips in this hobby, it is overwhelmingly on phone apps like Komoot or PolarSteps, on the general image-based social media like YouTube or Instagram, or (already for an older-skewing crowd that still uses browsers) on the big for-profit website Bikepacking.com that grew by using its SEO-fu to wipe out the non-profit-driven scene.

There is a community around this hobby, one with a lot of IRL interaction, and people do enjoy that feeling of community. But claiming that people "aren't really your peer" if they don't use the old open web that we knew, is just cutting yourself off from that.

Re: The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now

#318

Post by tim333 »

Good news on some of the worst predatory cesspitness - they've been shutting the Asian forced labour scam centers:

>China executes 11 members of Myanmar scam mafia https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2gdrvy9gjo

>Myanmar approves death sentence for cyberscam offences https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20260728-myanmar-appro...

> Cambodian authorities rescued and deported 58,266 foreign nationals... 3,477 criminal suspects placed in pretrial detention https://apnews.com/article/cambodia-online-scam-compounds-cy...

Re: The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now

#319

Post by Taikonerd »

busymom0 wrote: post #282
dominick-cc wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not pick up on this being ai generated. I guess this was the first time I am realizing I can no longer tell, and it doesn't feel good.

This below example of "it's not x, it's y" often seems to be a giveaway of LLM: > The platforms did not invent fear, greed, loneliness, or status anxiety. They industrialised their extraction.

I wish that weren't such a signal now. What if I really want to use "it's not X, it's Y" in my actual writing?!

Re: The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now

#320

Post by senordevnyc »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #309
senordevnyc wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying we’ve been in a decline for the last fifty years? If so, I would agree, but for fairly narrow definitions of “we”. Globally, the median human is wildly better off than 50 years ago. Even in the US, I see your point for straight white men (of which I’m one), but would the median woman be better off fifty years ago? What about if you’re gay, disabled, black, etc? That’s not even getting into things like…

In terms of US macroeconomics, yes. End of the gold standard and the Vietnam War put the US in a position 9f slumping it's post WW2 command of the world, and the 80's accelerated the breakdown of all the structures that gave the US prosperous times. Socially speaking, it's been a much better curve, albeit not without its own share of slumps. Especially recent updates on Roe v.Wade. There's certainly a conversation fo…

I totally agree with your second paragraph.

I don’t know enough about macroeconomics in the global sense to say about the first one though. My sense is that we’ve gotten much richer, more innovative, more technologically advanced, etc as a nation over the last half century. More so than basically anyone else. And no one is really catching up to us in those areas, with the possible exception of China. Is that wrong?

I agree that we seem to have destroyed a lot of institutions and safeguards that might precipitate our decline, but those things seem very subjective and qualitative. If we look at it quantitatively and holistically, we see pockets of decline all over, but the overall picture of the metrics doesn’t look like decline, does it? But I suppose that depends on how you weigh the pockets of decline against the pockets of advancement.

I guess maybe a better way to frame the question would be: what would you expect to see from the US economically over the last 50 years if we had not been in the decline you’re claiming?

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