10 ms·
Everything on the Internet was much better before advertisers were willing to spend real money on the Internet. Once the advertisers began to take the Internet
by lkrubner 7y ago
Everything on the Internet was much better before advertisers were willing to spend real money on the Internet. Once the advertisers began to take the Internet seriously, and companies committed to an advertising model, everything went to hell.
- echelon 7y agoIt was also better before the influencers, celebrities, and (frankly) less educated joined. There's too much content now, and it's mostly low value. Deep, rich content and communities have evaporated save for a few vestiges such as HN. Even this lacks the camaraderie of the forums and news groups of the past.
- elamje 7y agoGenuine question: what are some other communities on the internet that have a quality level similar to HN? I have really enjoyed this site and want to find one or two others.
- darkkindness 7y agohttps://lobste.rs/ https://lobste.rs/ is a very similar community to HN. The catch is that registration is invite-only. By the way, if a lobsters user is reading this, I would love an invite :)
- muppetman 7y agoEdit: I will not be replying to anymore requests. Sorry! (was: Provide me with a way to contact you and I will.)
- darkkindness 7y agooh my, sure! [email removed]
- muppetman 7y agoDone.
- darkkindness 7y agoCheers!
- halcar 7y agoHi, could I get an invite too? halcar@firemail.cc
- muppetman 7y agoSorry, I am not inviting an account that's 10 minutes old with no HN comment history. Hope you understand.
- MegaButts 7y agoSorry to pile on here, but I would also appreciate an invite.
- muppetman 7y agoDone
- MegaButts 7y agoThank you!
- Charlie_26 7y agoWould you mind inviting me? cfin @ secure email based in Switzerland dot com
- laszlokorte 7y agoI would be interested in an invite as well. [removed email]
- muppetman 7y agoDone
- mabcat 7y agoCan I pile on too? Cheers!
- elamje 7y agoHey muppetman, I would appreciate an invite too. twitter dm @elamje
- muppetman 7y agoDM sent.
- elboru 7y agoI’ll appreciate one too, elboru at hotmail.com
- pgl 7y agoDone.
- kzzzznot 7y agoIf you’re willing to open it back up I’d appreciate an invite :) <removed> [at]<removed>
- jml7c5 7y agoTo be frank, lobste.rs seems like the same content as Hacker News + /r/programming, but with fewer people commenting.
- nickpsecurity 7y agoIt's more focused on actual tech. It's also gotten more like those sites since people have invited more people from those sites that I can tell. It's definitely changed a bit over past few years. One of its continued strengths is the number of useful or deep articles in tech combined with a high number of people in the community that write them. The audience is pretty passive. We have some people who steadily have good insights and submissions on specific topics. Then, there are some that show up out of nowhere with whopper comments you won't find in other places. They avoid high-traffic/noise sites like HN. So, you only see them on places like that. So, I read both the orange and red sites. :)
- vs4vijay 7y agoHey, Could you invite me? email is my username at google's mailing service.
- pgl 7y agoDone.
- amelius 7y agoAre cross-posts happening between the two?
- dv35z 7y agoI'd appreciate an invite if anyone is willing to share out (and is still reading this thread). Thank you!
- thedevelopnik 7y agoI would also love an invite from some awesome person :).
- shiftpgdn 7y agoAs crazy as it is, the somethingawful forums have remained relatively good (give or take) over the last 20 years. I semi-chalk it up to the fact that the average age of the forum users is around 30-35 years old.
- enraged_camel 7y agoThe main thing that has kept SA high quality is the $10 registration fee. It sounds like a small amount but I get the impression that it filters out the vast majority of shitty trolls. On top of that, if your account gets banned then you have to pay the $10 fee again, so if you’re a repeat offender then it gets expensive fast.
- CriticalCathed 7y agoI really don't think SA after around 2010-12 and before that period are the same. Vastly different communities inhabiting the same body. I was on site in 2003 and I despise what its become. As always, hope u got 10bux...
- unixhero 7y agoThe What.CD forums were stellar. Oh well.
- arpa 7y agoLoss of what.cd was somewhat like burning of alexandria library. So much lost, never to be recovered...
- mongol 7y agoWhat could you find there?
- nitrogen 7y agoIt was approaching all music in all formats, ever.
- unixhero 7y agoFormats yes, but more importantly for music fans and audiophiles, all mediums!
- r3bl 7y agoIt was an invite-only torrent tracker. What set it apart was its size. Any song you could think of, in any format you could think of. You could find lossless music that there's 0 chance that you could find anywhere else (legally or not).
- unixhero 7y agoArtists launched their own albums there first and became famous, the so called "Vanity house". An example of an artist that got big is "The Flashbulb".
- arpa 7y agoWhat sibling comments said, also, great community, great recommendations, relationship graphs between artists/styles, very neat and tidy metadata (accurate tags, releases with serial numbers, etc).
- clydethefrog 7y agoTildes, Metafilter.
- vatys 7y agohttps://www.metafilter.com https://www.metafilter.com "Best of the Web" since 1999 A broad set of interests are represented there, not just programming or technology focused. The submission quality is high, and it is well moderated. MetaFilter has always had a pretty strong community. The addition of a $5 membership fee, similar to SomethingAwful, seems to have helped filter out the riff raff. There's also an "ask" section, and ones for projects and music. Overall, it's a good community for general discussion of things happening on and offline.
- qwsxyh 7y agoYouTube comments.
- throwaway9d0291 7y agoFirst one that comes to mind is this: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/
- paulcole 7y agoDon’t worry, I’m quite uneducated and doing what I can to bring this place down to my level. Check my comment history if you don’t believe me!
- hackerbrother 7y agoWow this is really something. You realize that, for example, Puerto Rico has mass protests going on, which are helped to organize with social media? To cite one example. https://beta.washingtonpost.com/national/puerto-rico-has-turned-on-its-governor-as-deep-unrest-reaches-the-surface/2019/07/21/c4e14b4c-ab4e-11e9-a3a6-ab670962db05_story.html?outputType=amp https://beta.washingtonpost.com/national/puerto-rico-has-tur...
- runeblaze 7y agoI really would not call HN deep. It is just another public discussion site focused on programming. There are much more niche and focused places with higher quality, but they are, well, niche.
- kjeetgill 7y agoI'd love to hear of a few. I always want to get into lobste.rs but while the submission quality is high the conversation is sparse.
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoSome subreddits can be good, /r/askhistorians /r/askscience .. but I too am curious if they don't rate HN as being relatively deep what they do rate in that category.
- utf985 7y agoSubreddits are what's considered niche and high quality these days? That's... disheartening to say the least.
- hxegon 7y agoPlease point out something legitimately wrong with those subreddits instead of just implying they're shitty by association with reddit. There are hard working people contributing great stuff and it just bothers me when people say stuff like this without pointing anything specific out. Just because there are terrible subreddits doesn't mean that all subreddits are terrible :(
- reymus 7y agoIf someone recommends me a subreddit, I would check it out. Reddit is not inherently bad. However, you have to understand a lot of us have a negative perception of subreddits, given how many jerks, trolls and bullies participate in them. Even in the good ones there's so much negativity and discourtesy. It's so sad, I personally am afraid to participate most of the time because I admittedly have very thin skin and those kinds of interactions can ruin my day.
- iamverysmart 7y ago"Hello i'm very smart and i think that not everyone should have access to the internet".
- echelon 7y agoYou're not wrong. Just as I ignore certain people in my day to day life, I also want to filter them out of my Internet experience. signal: noise is a thing. And while we're at it, I also want to get rid of the advertising that came chasing after these people.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- spookthesunset 7y agoWhat are you talking about? The content on YouTube has never been better. There is so much good stuff on youtube these days that it can easily give traditional media a run for their money.
- amiller2571 7y agoI would agree that advertisement has done a lot of damage. However, there have been a lot of really awesome things that could not have happened without it. Like YouTubers for example, so many people are able to make a living making content they love and people love to watch. I say that as many of them are now having to turn to things like patreon because advertisement is now hurting them...
- brianberns 7y agoIt's just part of the Eternal September. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
- simonh 7y agoTo be fair, a lot of the good things on the early Internet were funded on the basis they would eventually find a way to make money. They simply were not sustainable in the absence of a revenue stream, and Advertising turned out to be the answer. We can't pretend that Google, Youtube, etc could have continued indefinitely in their original forms without ever having to become profitable, or having to make any compromises.
- endgame 7y agoAdvertising ruins literally every communication medium: Your mailbox? Likely stuffed with junk. Your inbox? Likely stuffed with junk, or if it's not, make sure to check your spambox in case someone real is trying to contact you. Your phone? Nobody answers calls because they're mostly telemarketers. SMS? Yeah that's spammed to hell too. Walls? Covered in billboards, in a tacky Red Queen race that nobody actually wins. Public space? Nobody talks to each other in part because people who appear friendly are often trying to sell you something.
- hombre_fatal 7y agoAnd the massive societal cost of everyone expecting everything for free even though they were paying all along or being subsidized by suckers.