4 ms·

I feel like the ratios changed a lot which makes it seem like the old Internet died. But there are probably more people running their own servers than there us

I feel like the ratios changed a lot which makes it seem like the old Internet died. But there are probably more people running their own servers than there used to be. It's just that that makes up just something like 1% of the user community instead of 100%. "The old internet" is what you got when only nerds were online. Replicate that and you got your old internet back. Cue the above mentioned decentralization work...

anongraddebt 7y ago
This comment should be at the top of the thread.
xg15 7y ago
I feel the ratio is the important thing - at least if your goal is to let the broader society benefit from your work and not just an ivory tower of people with similar background. In that regard, the "nerds" utterly failed. We're looking back at the "old" internet with some kind of sentimental sadness, but we've evidently failed to convince the general public that a noncommercial, decentralised internet is the way to go.
- shadowgovt 7y ago
  The UX on the old Internet was terrible, and I remember a solid generation of veteran users telling newbies to RTFM instead of either putting the hard work in to educate or improve the UX of the toolchain so education was less necessary (work that is hard because it is less about understanding the code and more about understanding how users think and why they don't think like the developer of the protocol or application). Average users who don't have the time to understand IPs, sockets, or authentication schemas have been served by companies willing to shoulder the burden of relieving them of those special-knowledge requirements.
  - ohyes 7y ago
    And terrible UX was a feature to some extent. The people who got through it put in some effort to do so, so it filtered out a lot of low effort people. (Think about all the garbage on reddit, facebook, twitter). Average users aren't necessarily the people I want to interact with on a daily basis. It's like an advanced version of a captcha. Maybe I'll make a technology and discussions site that is purposefully difficult to connect to. Maybe I won't use a standard protocol and you'll have to use netcat & gpg to read / upload posts or something absurd like that.
    - shadowgovt 7y ago
      Yeah, and if people want niche ecosystems, they can have niche ecosystems. They just shouldn't be surprised when organizations that build something that tries to appeal to a mass audience become much, much, to appeal to a mass audience become much, much more relevant to the masses than the niches will ever be.
    - xg15 7y ago
      Yes, except this exact sentiment, I believe, is part of why we now have the internet we have. The "old internet" was inaccessible unless you were an expert, true. The experts could have seen this as a chance to make everyone into an expert and teach the values that were important to them in the process. If all the talk about the internet as a democratising force and a tool for freedom of expression is taken seriously, this would have been the way forward. Instead, experts chose to be elitist and decided to use the information asymmetry to offset themselves from "the masses" and exploit it for monetary gain. The result is that we now have a wealth of powerful, free but arcane and hard to use tools for devs and a locked-down, commercialised and psychologically manipulative web for the rest. What kind of future is that?
      - LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
        I partially disagree because i did that educational thing, though a long time ago. All in all it was mostly a waste of time. I have an aversion of being called elitist. It's more like resignation, cynicism. Like thinking 'Eat all the shit that you want. Just don't shit on me'
  - LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
    That is why average users using dumbed down and teletubbyfied interfaces of 'trusted' sites have bean fashion victims by countless leaks, breaches, closed down sites, and so on. I remember when MS-DOS came with large printed handbooks. They were good. Maybe casual users should have read about 20% of that, for learning how to organize and separate programs and data, and doing backups accordingly. Almost none did. And then cried because of some mishap. Shrug.
    - shadowgovt 7y ago
      shrug isn't the way to bring people in. Also, what leaks and breaches are you referring to? I've never heard anyone make the claim that the big sites are sources of more leaks and breaches than smaller sites. If anything, smaller sites have fewer resources to protect against attacks; if they are less often breached, it's likely because they're smaller, less interesting targets.
      - LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
        Nobody cares about smaller sites that much, larger sites more so. Because everything counts in large amounts, therefore larger sites are a more valuable target. In general, exceptions happen and apply as alwasys.

anongraddebt 7y ago

This comment should be at the top of the thread.

xg15 7y ago

I feel the ratio is the important thing - at least if your goal is to let the broader society benefit from your work and not just an ivory tower of people with similar background. In that regard, the "nerds" utterly failed. We're looking back at the "old" internet with some kind of sentimental sadness, but we've evidently failed to convince the general public that a noncommercial, decentralised internet is the way to go.

shadowgovt 7y ago
The UX on the old Internet was terrible, and I remember a solid generation of veteran users telling newbies to RTFM instead of either putting the hard work in to educate or improve the UX of the toolchain so education was less necessary (work that is hard because it is less about understanding the code and more about understanding how users think and why they don't think like the developer of the protocol or application). Average users who don't have the time to understand IPs, sockets, or authentication schemas have been served by companies willing to shoulder the burden of relieving them of those special-knowledge requirements.
- ohyes 7y ago
  And terrible UX was a feature to some extent. The people who got through it put in some effort to do so, so it filtered out a lot of low effort people. (Think about all the garbage on reddit, facebook, twitter). Average users aren't necessarily the people I want to interact with on a daily basis. It's like an advanced version of a captcha. Maybe I'll make a technology and discussions site that is purposefully difficult to connect to. Maybe I won't use a standard protocol and you'll have to use netcat & gpg to read / upload posts or something absurd like that.
  - shadowgovt 7y ago
    Yeah, and if people want niche ecosystems, they can have niche ecosystems. They just shouldn't be surprised when organizations that build something that tries to appeal to a mass audience become much, much, to appeal to a mass audience become much, much more relevant to the masses than the niches will ever be.
  - xg15 7y ago
    Yes, except this exact sentiment, I believe, is part of why we now have the internet we have. The "old internet" was inaccessible unless you were an expert, true. The experts could have seen this as a chance to make everyone into an expert and teach the values that were important to them in the process. If all the talk about the internet as a democratising force and a tool for freedom of expression is taken seriously, this would have been the way forward. Instead, experts chose to be elitist and decided to use the information asymmetry to offset themselves from "the masses" and exploit it for monetary gain. The result is that we now have a wealth of powerful, free but arcane and hard to use tools for devs and a locked-down, commercialised and psychologically manipulative web for the rest. What kind of future is that?
    - LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
      I partially disagree because i did that educational thing, though a long time ago. All in all it was mostly a waste of time. I have an aversion of being called elitist. It's more like resignation, cynicism. Like thinking 'Eat all the shit that you want. Just don't shit on me'
- LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
  That is why average users using dumbed down and teletubbyfied interfaces of 'trusted' sites have bean fashion victims by countless leaks, breaches, closed down sites, and so on. I remember when MS-DOS came with large printed handbooks. They were good. Maybe casual users should have read about 20% of that, for learning how to organize and separate programs and data, and doing backups accordingly. Almost none did. And then cried because of some mishap. Shrug.
  - shadowgovt 7y ago
    shrug isn't the way to bring people in. Also, what leaks and breaches are you referring to? I've never heard anyone make the claim that the big sites are sources of more leaks and breaches than smaller sites. If anything, smaller sites have fewer resources to protect against attacks; if they are less often breached, it's likely because they're smaller, less interesting targets.
    - LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
      Nobody cares about smaller sites that much, larger sites more so. Because everything counts in large amounts, therefore larger sites are a more valuable target. In general, exceptions happen and apply as alwasys.