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> But all you for-profit types are runining it As someone who loves the internet largely due to all the cool things people have made for profit, I can’t imagin

> But all you for-profit types are runining it As someone who loves the internet largely due to all the cool things people have made for profit, I can’t imagine how they for profit people have hurt the internet more than they have helped it. You and I wouldn’t be talking right now if it weren’t for a company making hacker news for profit.

ethanwillis 7y ago
That's not true we would be talking on something else. In fact, the forums of yore were much better communities than places like Hacker News. And sadly Hacker News is probably one of the better communities on the internet today.
- whatarethembits 7y ago
  Ditto. Intrusion of for-profit entities into online communities have well and truly killed the spirit. I base that on the fact that being exposed on any online destination where people congregate these days such as, Twitter, Reddit, hacker news, Facebook, for even a few minutes a day results in me feeling tired, demotivated, sluggish, angry, confused and just generally down. This is in stark opposition to how hanging around in communities of yester year felt. Further, I'm 27 so it's not like I'm some old veteran that yearns for the 90s or something but the quality has palpably gone down year after year. Sure there are small enclaves within these behemoths that somewhat manage to preserve a pleasant community but they're increasingly hard to find and only a matter of time before they too lose that magic to effects of profit driven actions. Welp, on we go to the next post to read opinions of a nauseatingly self-assured tech nerd, who makes an above average living, declare everyone beneath as failed experiments of nature based on supreme principles of the free market..
rchaud 7y ago
> I can’t imagine how they for profit people have hurt the internet more than they have helped it. By turning the Internet into what is first and foremost an ad delivery system. Everything else stems first from the need to show people ads, track their online movements and ensure they are spending as much time as possible "engaging" with your "brand". Why is it slower than ever to load a page with text and images? It's because of the invisible fatberg of ad networks, A/B testing scripts, heatmaps and analytics trackers sending and receiving requests, all of which have zilch to do with actually sending a page from the server to the client. "All the cool things made for profit" includes the real-time bid matching system without which websites like Youtube wouldn't exist, because it wouldn't be worth the expense to Google or to some other megacorp.

ethanwillis 7y ago

That's not true we would be talking on something else. In fact, the forums of yore were much better communities than places like Hacker News. And sadly Hacker News is probably one of the better communities on the internet today.

whatarethembits 7y ago
Ditto. Intrusion of for-profit entities into online communities have well and truly killed the spirit. I base that on the fact that being exposed on any online destination where people congregate these days such as, Twitter, Reddit, hacker news, Facebook, for even a few minutes a day results in me feeling tired, demotivated, sluggish, angry, confused and just generally down. This is in stark opposition to how hanging around in communities of yester year felt. Further, I'm 27 so it's not like I'm some old veteran that yearns for the 90s or something but the quality has palpably gone down year after year. Sure there are small enclaves within these behemoths that somewhat manage to preserve a pleasant community but they're increasingly hard to find and only a matter of time before they too lose that magic to effects of profit driven actions. Welp, on we go to the next post to read opinions of a nauseatingly self-assured tech nerd, who makes an above average living, declare everyone beneath as failed experiments of nature based on supreme principles of the free market..

rchaud 7y ago

> I can’t imagine how they for profit people have hurt the internet more than they have helped it. By turning the Internet into what is first and foremost an ad delivery system. Everything else stems first from the need to show people ads, track their online movements and ensure they are spending as much time as possible "engaging" with your "brand". Why is it slower than ever to load a page with text and images? It's because of the invisible fatberg of ad networks, A/B testing scripts, heatmaps and analytics trackers sending and receiving requests, all of which have zilch to do with actually sending a page from the server to the client. "All the cool things made for profit" includes the real-time bid matching system without which websites like Youtube wouldn't exist, because it wouldn't be worth the expense to Google or to some other megacorp.