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The Public Interest Internet

berjon.com

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Re: The Public Interest Internet

#41

Post by localfirst »

laurex wrote: post #34

As someone working in this space, I think standards and standard governance are important, but just as important are the economics. Right now, tech is largely dominated by platforms designed to extract resources in various ways, and to redistribute those resources to investors. To create a public interest internet, we will have to find a dwindling sense of collective and individual responsibility to our collective in…

The weakest link of any platform is always this: where is the cash on-ramp?

Do you have mechanisms to play legal/jurisdiction arbitrage?

What happens if a bunch of government/special interest groups declare your garden illegal?

We are only as good as what is allowed.

Re: The Public Interest Internet

#42

Post by digging »

its_ethan wrote: post #39
digging wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I suppose we were arguing different points, but I disagree with your arguments. > yet things keep improving I mean, that's just obviously not true.

I have no doubt you could find some metrics to show a recent decline in, but (on the whole) is the average human not better off in the year 2024 than they were in 1954? 1924? 1824? I do have a feeling we're not talking about the same thing here, so could you clarify how it's "obviously not true" that things have been/are improving?

I'm referring to the internet, not the whole of human existence. That would be too complicated a subject to make any such simplistic statements on. But actually I also disagree with your premise that we don't have small corrupt groups already deciding what's "best" for everyone, WRT the internet or life as a whole. Just because they're openly motivated by greed doesn't make them less harmful. It's the cabals atop Google and Facebook which ushered in an age of absolute surveillance on a mass scale, how cool and fun.

Re: The Public Interest Internet

#43

Post by sdwr »

bigfudge wrote: post #11
Gormo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pretty sure that tabs were introduced by a software developer without any prior request from any user. I'm sure many, many features were introduced by software developers without any prior request from users. Users then selected what software to use based on which of those features they like the best. This is how most product design works -- features are developed prior to being marketed, and users subsequently val…

Chromes replacement of Firefox had more to do with aggressive marketing and deliberate poor performance of their web properties like gmail on non-Google browsers. Not sure how much consumer self direction was involved.

As a user at the time, Chrome just looked better than FF. It was fresh and clean. The logo was brighter, the UI was rounder and clearer.

FF looked like a Windows 98 settings menu by comparison. Tiny, fiddly, cramped controls.

Re: The Public Interest Internet

#44

Post by jujube3 »

digging wrote: post #27
cheeseomlit wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Compromise' paints an idealistic picture, its often just a euphemism for 'the more powerful/entrenched party gets what they want by default, but they'll let the other side vocally express their frustration to maintain the veneer of an actual conversation.' What you're describing sounds like a top-down restructuring of the internet at large, which is a golden opportunity for any interested party to restructure it in…

Honestly, I can't even finish reading through this comment. This is the opposite of idealism - is there a word for it? You seem to be complaining that something is impossible because it can't be implemented in a perfect utopian way. Well, guess what, we already have an implementation of the internet that imperfectly respects "the public good", and it sucks. Let's imagine something better.

> Honestly, I can't even finish reading through this comment. This is the opposite of idealism - is there a word for it?

realism

Re: The Public Interest Internet

#45

Post by ThinkBeat »

In my opinion the first step in a more decentralized internet, or at least a big part in being able to move in that direction would be a system for a global easy system for (micro)payments. That is preferably modelled like cash. (more anonymous). and ubiquitous, they can also be used in the real world.

It would be nice for me, if someone reads an article I wrote and they give me ¤0.01 ¤0.001 or something. (Given that a lot of countries, people make vastly less money than others what constitutes a "micro"payment.

That would of course mean that transactions were either utterly inexpensive or free.

We would have a ubiquitous, distributed, untraceable", distributed means of conducting international transactions.

I think we have all the technical issues solved.

but

No Western government will ever allow it. (Nor most other governments). Since it would rob them of a lot of power, and we would hear: "Terrorism, child pornography, bypass economic sanctions, election manipulation, disinformation" etc etc. The usual stuff.

(Even though all of that is going on already....

Re: The Public Interest Internet

#46

Post by kwhitefoot »

tutipop wrote: post #20
marginalia_nu wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is that it's too narrow, makes it hard to click. That's why I'm specifically looking for a native widget.

In about:config widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.size.override 20 widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.style 4 widget.gtk.overlay-scrollbars.enabled false I even use a custom gtk.css to improve things further: scrollbar, scrollbar button, scrollbar slider { -GtkScrollbar-has-backward-stepper: true; -GtkScrollbar-has-secondary-forward-stepper: true; -GtkScrollbar-has-forward-stepper: true; min-width: 20px; min-height: 2…

Thank you! How the hell is anyone supposed to discover things like this?

Re: The Public Interest Internet

#47

Post by zzo38computer »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #46
tutipop wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In about:config widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.size.override 20 widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.style 4 widget.gtk.overlay-scrollbars.enabled false I even use a custom gtk.css to improve things further: scrollbar, scrollbar button, scrollbar slider { -GtkScrollbar-has-backward-stepper: true; -GtkScrollbar-has-secondary-forward-stepper: true; -GtkScrollbar-has-forward-stepper: true; min-width: 20px; min-height: 2…

Thank you! How the hell is anyone supposed to discover things like this?

Software should include documentation, which should mention all of the commands used there, so that you can know how to do it. Unfortunately, many of the settings are not very well documented, and the document is hard to find.

Re: The Public Interest Internet

#48

Post by its_ethan »

digging wrote: post #42
its_ethan wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no doubt you could find some metrics to show a recent decline in, but (on the whole) is the average human not better off in the year 2024 than they were in 1954? 1924? 1824? I do have a feeling we're not talking about the same thing here, so could you clarify how it's "obviously not true" that things have been/are improving?

I'm referring to the internet, not the whole of human existence. That would be too complicated a subject to make any such simplistic statements on. But actually I also disagree with your premise that we don't have small corrupt groups already deciding what's "best" for everyone, WRT the internet or life as a whole. Just because they're openly motivated by greed doesn't make them less harmful. It's the cabals atop Goo…

I never said anything about corruption one way or another, I said we don't have groups with an agreed upon definition of "common good" - look at basically any healthy decision-making group (government, party planning committee, whatever) and you'll find two sides with differing definitions.

I think we'd maybe both agree that Google and Facebook ushering in "absolute surveillance" probably came about from a single-minded view of "common good" within those companies - aka an example of a group of people aligned on a common good leading to things going poorly.

But it's silly to think that some other group with a different (but also single-minded) definition of common good is going to somehow fix all the problems and not cause new, potentially worse, problems. That's what I was attempting to get at with my initial comment.

Given that we weren't even really talking about the same thing from the start, and that I don't care enough to continue, I'm gonna opt out from this convo. Have a nice day though.

Re: The Public Interest Internet

#49

Post by Vinnl »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #46
tutipop wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In about:config widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.size.override 20 widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.style 4 widget.gtk.overlay-scrollbars.enabled false I even use a custom gtk.css to improve things further: scrollbar, scrollbar button, scrollbar slider { -GtkScrollbar-has-backward-stepper: true; -GtkScrollbar-has-secondary-forward-stepper: true; -GtkScrollbar-has-forward-stepper: true; min-width: 20px; min-height: 2…

Thank you! How the hell is anyone supposed to discover things like this?

Good luck designing a UI that includes settings for scrollbar width and other settings of that granularity in which any of those settings are discoverable...

Re: The Public Interest Internet

#50

Post by roenxi »

Hasu wrote: post #16
roenxi wrote: post #4

> So, say you want to create a new web standard... This and the following image have a misguided understanding of the market. We know how this situation plays out because we ran exactly that experiment in the 2000s with Firefox and IE6. Those market share numbers are contingent on Google doing the best possible job as curators insofar as the userbase can tell. If there are browser features that users want (like tabs)…

> With crypto we are surely getting to spitting distance of advertisers paying users directly to look at ads instead of paying Google to organise the web such that users look at ads. Who would take that deal? Getting paid $.02 in some cryptocurrency to look at an ad? So that I can then maybe spend more money on the product being advertised? Why would I ever agree to that? It's a bad deal for me. Why would the ad agen…

> Why would I ever agree to that?

You're already looking at the ad. $0.02 > $0.00, so the situation is a strict improvement.

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