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In my opinion, Internet can survive without commercial content. It worked in the early stages of the Internet, with people providing free services like BBS etc.

In my opinion, Internet can survive without commercial content. It worked in the early stages of the Internet, with people providing free services like BBS etc. for the good of the community. We would just move to more decentralized storage and communications solutions. We might actually end up even better than before.

onion2k 11y ago
It worked in the early stages of the Internet, with people providing free services like BBS etc. for the good of the community. People supplied small scale infrastructure for free. Supplying the sort of infrastructure necessary to run the internet at scale is very likely impossible without some sort of commercialisation. You need full time people to keep it going, so you have to pay them because they have rent and food bills. You can't run things on a voluntary basis once they get to a certain scale. Likewise with professionally produced content - you just can't expect it to happen without paying someone to do it because it takes more time to make than you can reasonably expect people to give for free. People need to eat, which means you have to pay them. That, of course, does not automatically mean you have to have a corporation involved. Something like Patreon[1] would work just as well. [1] https://www.patreon.com/ https://www.patreon.com/
- Karunamon 11y ago
  People supplied small scale infrastructure for free Maybe that's the answer, then. Speaking of media and journalism, I see very little of value coming from the large centralized outlets nowadays. There's entirely too much agenda pushing, non-objectivity being paraded around as if that's a positive, "native" advertisements, banality as "breaking news", and all the other nonsense everyone already knows. Think about it - look at how guarded you have to be when consuming news to ensure you're not consuming an advertisement or a propaganda piece. Look how often you have to ask the question "What is this person trying to get me to believe?" This shouldn't be necessary! I think we can do better. And I think the problem isn't with the players per se, but with the game as its rules are currently written. That means we start over, with a new architecture, new everything. Call me an extremist, but I'm quickly coming to the conclusion that things like news shouldn't be profit makers. The desire for more money in that industry perverts just about everything it touches. What good is paying reporters to go source facts if they're going to be distorted and manipulated by the time they're presented to the public?
  - CM30 11y ago
    100% agree with this. The state of modern journalism (in general) is pretty much appalling at the moment, and it in its current form going away would arguably be a positive for the world in general. And the kind of news and editorials provided by the community (social media posts, forum content, blog posts, wiki articles, etc) could well be a better replacement for it. After all, they're already more accurate than the vast majority of the commercial media (since there are fewer financial/political incentives to lie), and the amount of ads and tracking is a lot less as well.
roel_v 11y ago
Eh, I don't want to go back to the internet of the late 1990's, which is the earliest I knew. As much as I dislike some aspects of today's internet, it's massively better than what we had in the past - both in content and in what can be done online.
- estefan 11y ago
  and in less use of the <marquee> tag.
- raddad 11y ago
  <sarcastic_mode> Oh yes, please, more AOL !! </sarcastic_mode> I used to look forward to what I called the AOL blank floppy of the month (after I formatted them).
elorant 11y ago
Try building a decentralized search engine for the whole web the way Google does it. I don't even understand how decentralized applies in this context. We can argue all day whether content will be better or worse without the financial support of ads but many services we take for granted may not survive at all. Unless we move into a model where we'd pay for everything. I'm fine by that but the web is supposed to work for everyone, especially the poorest ones.
- striking 11y ago
  Decentralized in this context means "bring your own". Hardly helpful, seeing as the devices you keep in your pocket are definitely not capable of indexing an entire Internet.
coldtea 11y ago
>In my opinion, Internet can survive without commercial content. The question was whether commercial content can survive.
ascorbic 11y ago
An international newsgathering operation is a bit more expensive to run than a BBS.
dexterdog 11y ago
Who's going to pay people to do real news? It's not a hobby
- phkahler 11y ago
  >> Who's going to pay people to do real news? It's not a hobby IMHO the problem is that it's still too hard to pay for something like an online newspaper. From a usability perspective, I want to enter in some payment information once and then be able to read seamlessly for a year (for example). Meaning that I don't want to share a bunch of personal information, or my FaceBook profile, and I don't want to create a separate userID to log into the site. Part of this comes down to having an ID that is both reliable and portable across devices, while not being tied to other personal information, and requires zero effort from the user. That's a hard problem, but I think it's one that needs to be solved.
  - dexterdog 11y ago
    That's why the newspaper should not be charging directly. There needs to be a network that they all take part in. The big guys will get most of the money as they should, but the little guys will be able to get a piece as well. The ID thing is not difficult and keeping it anonymous is also pretty easy, but I don't think anonymity should be required. It should be an option.
    - phkahler 11y ago
      >> The ID thing is not difficult and keeping it anonymous is also pretty easy, but I don't think anonymity should be required. It should be an option. The ID thing does not exist. I've said this before, the internet needs strong identity to resolve a lot of problems. You can always strip identity away in places that require anonymity. The problem here is that if you go to the online newspaper, there is no way for them to know who you are to verify the prior payment. I guess that line of thought narrows the problem - they don't need to know who you are, only that you've paid, but that's very close to the same thing.
      - 11y ago

onion2k 11y ago

It worked in the early stages of the Internet, with people providing free services like BBS etc. for the good of the community. People supplied small scale infrastructure for free. Supplying the sort of infrastructure necessary to run the internet at scale is very likely impossible without some sort of commercialisation. You need full time people to keep it going, so you have to pay them because they have rent and food bills. You can't run things on a voluntary basis once they get to a certain scale. Likewise with professionally produced content - you just can't expect it to happen without paying someone to do it because it takes more time to make than you can reasonably expect people to give for free. People need to eat, which means you have to pay them. That, of course, does not automatically mean you have to have a corporation involved. Something like Patreon[1] would work just as well. [1] https://www.patreon.com/ https://www.patreon.com/

Karunamon 11y ago
People supplied small scale infrastructure for free Maybe that's the answer, then. Speaking of media and journalism, I see very little of value coming from the large centralized outlets nowadays. There's entirely too much agenda pushing, non-objectivity being paraded around as if that's a positive, "native" advertisements, banality as "breaking news", and all the other nonsense everyone already knows. Think about it - look at how guarded you have to be when consuming news to ensure you're not consuming an advertisement or a propaganda piece. Look how often you have to ask the question "What is this person trying to get me to believe?" This shouldn't be necessary! I think we can do better. And I think the problem isn't with the players per se, but with the game as its rules are currently written. That means we start over, with a new architecture, new everything. Call me an extremist, but I'm quickly coming to the conclusion that things like news shouldn't be profit makers. The desire for more money in that industry perverts just about everything it touches. What good is paying reporters to go source facts if they're going to be distorted and manipulated by the time they're presented to the public?
- CM30 11y ago
  100% agree with this. The state of modern journalism (in general) is pretty much appalling at the moment, and it in its current form going away would arguably be a positive for the world in general. And the kind of news and editorials provided by the community (social media posts, forum content, blog posts, wiki articles, etc) could well be a better replacement for it. After all, they're already more accurate than the vast majority of the commercial media (since there are fewer financial/political incentives to lie), and the amount of ads and tracking is a lot less as well.

roel_v 11y ago

Eh, I don't want to go back to the internet of the late 1990's, which is the earliest I knew. As much as I dislike some aspects of today's internet, it's massively better than what we had in the past - both in content and in what can be done online.

estefan 11y ago
and in less use of the <marquee> tag.
raddad 11y ago
<sarcastic_mode> Oh yes, please, more AOL !! </sarcastic_mode> I used to look forward to what I called the AOL blank floppy of the month (after I formatted them).

elorant 11y ago

Try building a decentralized search engine for the whole web the way Google does it. I don't even understand how decentralized applies in this context. We can argue all day whether content will be better or worse without the financial support of ads but many services we take for granted may not survive at all. Unless we move into a model where we'd pay for everything. I'm fine by that but the web is supposed to work for everyone, especially the poorest ones.

striking 11y ago
Decentralized in this context means "bring your own". Hardly helpful, seeing as the devices you keep in your pocket are definitely not capable of indexing an entire Internet.

coldtea 11y ago

>In my opinion, Internet can survive without commercial content. The question was whether commercial content can survive.

ascorbic 11y ago

An international newsgathering operation is a bit more expensive to run than a BBS.

dexterdog 11y ago

Who's going to pay people to do real news? It's not a hobby

phkahler 11y ago
>> Who's going to pay people to do real news? It's not a hobby IMHO the problem is that it's still too hard to pay for something like an online newspaper. From a usability perspective, I want to enter in some payment information once and then be able to read seamlessly for a year (for example). Meaning that I don't want to share a bunch of personal information, or my FaceBook profile, and I don't want to create a separate userID to log into the site. Part of this comes down to having an ID that is both reliable and portable across devices, while not being tied to other personal information, and requires zero effort from the user. That's a hard problem, but I think it's one that needs to be solved.
- dexterdog 11y ago
  That's why the newspaper should not be charging directly. There needs to be a network that they all take part in. The big guys will get most of the money as they should, but the little guys will be able to get a piece as well. The ID thing is not difficult and keeping it anonymous is also pretty easy, but I don't think anonymity should be required. It should be an option.
  - phkahler 11y ago
    >> The ID thing is not difficult and keeping it anonymous is also pretty easy, but I don't think anonymity should be required. It should be an option. The ID thing does not exist. I've said this before, the internet needs strong identity to resolve a lot of problems. You can always strip identity away in places that require anonymity. The problem here is that if you go to the online newspaper, there is no way for them to know who you are to verify the prior payment. I guess that line of thought narrows the problem - they don't need to know who you are, only that you've paid, but that's very close to the same thing.
    - 11y ago