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The Internet I Knew (2014)

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Re: The Internet I Knew (2014)

#71

Post by agentultra »

batbomb wrote: post #64
agentultra wrote: post #13

I recall being a bit confused about the terms, "social web," and "social network" when they were beginning to be bandied about to discuss Flickr and Facebook et al. The Internet was already a social network. You had irc, nntp, http, ftp, etc etc... communication protocols. For communicating with other humans. The only thing Facebook did, in my experience, was make the web anti-social . I distinctly recall when my gro…

It's a bit disingenuous to pretend (The) Facebook didn't do anything to connect people. Maybe it's because I graduated High School in 2003, but in early 2005 it was amazing to be able to connect to people you either went to high school with or went to your own university, people who were often living parallel lives but you just didn't know because your high school friends went out-of-state or college was large enough…

I'm not pretending that it didn't do anything to connect people. It did. In my anecdote the friends who stopped calling around started using Facebook to organize our activities together. But therein was the problem for me: nobody had to actively maintain relationships that way. Socializing became a spectator sport. Passive. It became anti-social.

But prior to its existence I still had plenty of friends and we socialized quite a lot using existing technology. It just seems like the Facebook hype-train carried us along and abandoned protocols for services. And the centralization brought along everything with it: the need for users and stickiness sucked up a lot of effort that could've been spent elsewhere but wasn't.

So I wonder what the Internet would be like today if instead we had developed the protocols to work around their short-comings rather than went on the path we did, that's all.

Re: The Internet I Knew (2014)

#72

Post by 13of40 »

agentultra wrote: post #71
batbomb wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit disingenuous to pretend (The) Facebook didn't do anything to connect people. Maybe it's because I graduated High School in 2003, but in early 2005 it was amazing to be able to connect to people you either went to high school with or went to your own university, people who were often living parallel lives but you just didn't know because your high school friends went out-of-state or college was large enough…

I'm not pretending that it didn't do anything to connect people. It did. In my anecdote the friends who stopped calling around started using Facebook to organize our activities together. But therein was the problem for me: nobody had to actively maintain relationships that way. Socializing became a spectator sport. Passive. It became anti-social . But prior to its existence I still had plenty of friends and we social…

In my experience, the "calling around" thing was something that started when everyone got a cellphone. Prior to about 1999, folks would actually just drop by your house unannounced sometimes.

Re: The Internet I Knew (2014)

#73

Post by snaky »

nerdponx wrote: post #12
waytogo wrote: post #8

OT: I don't get social networks. Till today, I don't see any value in real name social networks like Facebook. They should present content I want but they don't, they show upvoted content from my connections which is wrong from a consumer and entertainment perspective. My friends like or share mostly content of people because those people are kind of high-profile in their circles. Not because they post good content.…

Unfortunately, you missed out on the brief time in history when they did exactly what you were asking for. MySpace had no likes and no algorithm to filter your activity. Neither did Facebook for several years, nor did LiveJournal (and all the other social blogging platforms), or even Instagram at first.

Do Livejournal have likes now?

Re: The Internet I Knew (2014)

#74

Post by rahoulb »

agentultra wrote: post #71
batbomb wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit disingenuous to pretend (The) Facebook didn't do anything to connect people. Maybe it's because I graduated High School in 2003, but in early 2005 it was amazing to be able to connect to people you either went to high school with or went to your own university, people who were often living parallel lives but you just didn't know because your high school friends went out-of-state or college was large enough…

I'm not pretending that it didn't do anything to connect people. It did. In my anecdote the friends who stopped calling around started using Facebook to organize our activities together. But therein was the problem for me: nobody had to actively maintain relationships that way. Socializing became a spectator sport. Passive. It became anti-social . But prior to its existence I still had plenty of friends and we social…

Arguably we did - both WhatsApp and Facebook messenger were originally based on XMPP and built around their shortcomings (setup and discovery)

Re: The Internet I Knew (2014)

#75

Post by bluedino »

floren wrote: post #47
dijit wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I maintain to this day a personal IRC network. Many of us have been “together” for over a decade. In fact I just tried to advocate self-hosted communities at CCC. So I’m also stuck in the past and refuse to let the internet go. But I have two points I’d like to mention. 1) Forums are dead for almost all but the biggest communities that surround a product of some kind. Social forums are simply dead. 2) As an IRC-user…

> 1) Forums are dead for almost all but the biggest communities that surround a product of some kind. Social forums are simply dead. The Something Awful forums are still pretty lively. The community may not 'click' for everyone, but some of the smaller subforums especially are very welcoming and fun places (like Automotive Insanity, the subforum where people post about their car projects and project cars)

SA is dead compared to even just a few years ago. Everyone got old and left.

Re: The Internet I Knew (2014)

#76

Post by bluedino »

agentultra wrote: post #13

I recall being a bit confused about the terms, "social web," and "social network" when they were beginning to be bandied about to discuss Flickr and Facebook et al. The Internet was already a social network. You had irc, nntp, http, ftp, etc etc... communication protocols. For communicating with other humans. The only thing Facebook did, in my experience, was make the web anti-social . I distinctly recall when my gro…

Facebook did two things: make everyone part of the network (from your grandma to your 9 year old nephew), and made it not nerdy to use. the raw web, irc, newsgroups, were all for nerds.

Re: The Internet I Knew (2014)

#77

Post by batbomb »

13of40 wrote: post #72
agentultra wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not pretending that it didn't do anything to connect people. It did. In my anecdote the friends who stopped calling around started using Facebook to organize our activities together. But therein was the problem for me: nobody had to actively maintain relationships that way. Socializing became a spectator sport. Passive. It became anti-social . But prior to its existence I still had plenty of friends and we social…

In my experience, the "calling around" thing was something that started when everyone got a cellphone. Prior to about 1999, folks would actually just drop by your house unannounced sometimes.

That's a good point. I also didn't get a cell phone until very late in 2004, and most people I know got them in 2003-2005. I prefaced my comment with my graduation year (2003) because I think the thing that maybe matters a lot is when you came of age between ~1999-2007. Technology was changing so fast on almost a yearly basis in that time frame it's probable people with a 2 year age difference has a widely different experience of being teenagers and young adults. I don't think the same can be said of 2009-2017.

Re: The Internet I Knew (2014)

#78

Post by z3t4 »

Facebook killed most of the old social communities. The big ones where very lucrative basically swimming in cash, they where only replaced by a bigger fish. The non profit forums and IRC channels are still alive. What worries me though is that so many people use smartphones instead of work-station computers. With a smartphone you are mostly a consumer/by-stander. While on a work-station you are actively taking part by both producing and consuming. There are a lot of really high quality content produced by professionals for profit. But the best content and Internet culture is still made by "ordinary" people for the love of sharing. I hope the good content is not buried by monetized content. There should be more "Hacker News" and less Google and Facebook ads.

Re: The Internet I Knew (2014)

#79

Post by lyra_comms »

ukulele wrote: post #30
lyra_comms wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's absolutely hearbreaking to see the independence, critical thinking and self-determination that Western society has been building up since the Enlightenment, weakening under the forces of big data and targeted advertising. Communication should be open, profit should not be involved in discourse, and advertising should not corrode conversation. Viva la revolucion! www.hellolyra.com/introduction

> advertising should not corrode conversation. You really followed this with a link to your website?

Yes, we did! Self-promotion in a relevant context (in a discussion of a worsening problem which affects many) is a very different undertaking than paid, off-topic advertising.

Re: The Internet I Knew (2014)

#80

Post by lyra_comms »

watwut wrote: post #34
lyra_comms wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's absolutely hearbreaking to see the independence, critical thinking and self-determination that Western society has been building up since the Enlightenment, weakening under the forces of big data and targeted advertising. Communication should be open, profit should not be involved in discourse, and advertising should not corrode conversation. Viva la revolucion! www.hellolyra.com/introduction

The period since Enlightenment in West contains two world wars, genocide, nationalists movements, monarchy keeping in power through censorship, revolutionary attempts, KKK ... All of them totally full of critical thinking and self-determination for sure.

These aren't developments that should be encouraged. The political influence of targeted advertising on social media has encouraged and enabled several nationalist movements. We believe that the lack of an open communication platform makes accessing and discussing complex ideas, whether ethical or political, much harder.
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