5 ms·

A decade ago, there use to be celebrity websites which had forums, galleries, blogs now it's just Instagram. Hell so many prominent celebrities don't even own a

A decade ago, there use to be celebrity websites which had forums, galleries, blogs now it's just Instagram. Hell so many prominent celebrities don't even own a domain name in their name. Also, it's not like the content has improved. Earlier their use to be HQ images in those celeb galleries now the highest resolution image is 1200x1200. The only thing that has improved is how easily a celebrity can reach millions everything else has gone downhill with respect to discussions, forums, galleries, blogs. Most of these are replaced by poor comments section. It's not just celebrities, so many independent artists are putting up their talent on Instagram and I don't have access to any of it because I need an Instagram account for that. Instagram web version is forcing to sign up if you scroll 1 page down on a profile. Sometimes I feel like we need to build cutting edge decentralized applications that will burn these walled gardens to the ground. /rant

r3trohack3r 6y ago
The only thing that has improved is how easily a celebrity can reach millions From Wikipedia: Celebrity is a reference to the fame and wide public recognition of an individual or a group I'd posit that celebrities are celebrities by connecting with millions. A platform that offers a "celebrity" the ability to connect easily with millions seems to be worth more than a list of any other features.
- zeckalpha 6y ago
  What has changed is the meaning of the word connected.
MYEUHD 6y ago
>I don't have access to any of it because I need an Instagram account for that. Check out https://bibliogram.art https://bibliogram.art
- JoblessWonder 6y ago
  502 Bad Gateway
  - aspenmayer 6y ago
    Old link. Here ya go https://github.com/cloudrac3r/bibliogram https://github.com/cloudrac3r/bibliogram https://sr.ht/~cadence/bibliogram/ https://sr.ht/~cadence/bibliogram/
    - aspenmayer 6y ago
      For what it’s worth, the original link is back up again.
- aspenmayer 6y ago
  https://github.com/cloudrac3r/bibliogram https://github.com/cloudrac3r/bibliogram https://sr.ht/~cadence/bibliogram/ https://sr.ht/~cadence/bibliogram/
_jal 6y ago
> like we need to build cutting edge decentralized applications Yes, please! More and faster. Centralized services are easy to build, because they offer an obvious location to do some of the things that are tricky to do in a distributed fashion. They are also, by the way, far easier to for small numbers of coordinating people to control, which makes them popular with corporations, authoritarians and sociopaths. Decentralized services will rarely be the New Shiny that attracts all the 14 year olds for a few minutes. But, unlike email, you never hear anyone whining that Myspace won't go away.
- freehunter 6y ago
  We have tons of decentralized platforms. The amount is not the problem. The problem is the user experience. For users who don’t care about anything behind the scenes and only cares about the experience, why would they go out of their way to figure out Mastodon when Facebook has a one-step signup process? The reason central platforms win is because they have to be dead simple to use in order to attract any users. Decentralized platforms get their initial users because of how cool the technology is, but those people (people like me and you) aren’t UX experts and don’t prioritize UX. It has to be easier than the central platform, and the central platform has the benefit of millions/billions of dollars to throw at it. Which means the decentralized platforms have to work even harder to overcome that. It’s not impossible, but it does require engineers to overcome their desire to build cool things and instead focusing on building a user experience that’s better than what Facebook/Twitter/etc can provide.
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    Joining a Mastodon server is just as simple as signing up to Facebook. The difference is that no single Mastodon instance has centralized control over their users; you always get the option of signing up elsewhere, or using your own instance.
    - freehunter 6y ago
      It’s the “signing up elsewhere or using your own instance” that’s the problem. You’re joining a Mastodon server and if you want to go to another server you have to actually move things. It takes actual effort. It seems like the Mastodon developers look at email and think “if it works for email it’ll work here” and don’t understand that people deal with email because they have to, not because they want to. I don’t want to have to change my email address when I switch providers and I don’t want to have to move all my stuff if my favorite Mastodon server decides to shut down. That’s not a solution that’s just another problem. It’s bad user experience.
justaguyhere 6y ago
If celebrities (with their fame, reach and money) can't bother owning their own domains, what chance does a normal guy/gal have? It would be trivial for celebrities to set up their own websites and share whatever stuff they are sharing. At minimum, they can do this in addition to whatever social media they are on. It is as if we are all becoming lazy and/or many of us don't realize the harm in giving all our info to half a dozen super mega corps. Most of these mega corps aren't even distributed in the world, they are all American (except tiktok) which is another interesting angle. This is going to happen (already happening?) in the webapps/apps world too. There are so many no-code tools popping up - most will die, the rest will get acquired by the mega corps. Made a great webapp that is successful? Now you are stuck with bubble/airtable/shopify/whatever. I cannot name many no-code tools that lets you export your application to be hosted independently. I feel like we are on a path where in a few decades, a dozen or two corporations will control every single aspect of our lives - online especially, and probably offline too.
- skybrian 6y ago
  A lot of ordinary people don't post in public, or if they do it's not under their real name, and there is a growing trend of deleting it after a few days. They don't want you to have any data about them at all. The modern alternative to Usenet is private Facebook groups that never get indexed.
- kelnos 6y ago
  > If celebrities (with their fame, reach and money) can't bother owning their own domains, what chance does a normal guy/gal have? This is a matter of demand, not capability. It seems most celebs just don't care about setting up their own stuff, and, really, why would they? There are free platforms out there that give them huge amounts of reach. Most of these people just don't need their own website. They may come to regret that decision later, but it's their decision to make. If a normal guy/gal wants to set up their own domain and website, it's not hard for them to do so, certainly no harder than it was in the 90s/00s, and probably a lot easier. The "no-code" stuff certainly has lock-in disadvantages, but you can simply choose not to use them if you want. Yes, it's more work, but it was always more work to do it yourself, and always will be.
Yhippa 6y ago
Counterpoint: does the average internet user want to download a new app or go visit a different website each time they want to get these updates?
- zozbot234 6y ago
  If the websites bother to export RSS/ATOM/ActivityPub feeds, they won't need to. They'll just "subscribe" to the stream in their preferred app/webservice, and get aggregated updates about everyone they care about.
  - smabie 6y ago
    Sure, but what about commenting on the post? No one likes creating accounts for different websites in order to post one comment. It's obvious that things like Twitter and Instagram provide value to celebrities and people who follow them. It's just that there are some serious externalities not factored in.
    - zozbot234 6y ago
      ActivityPub lets you mark a comment as a "reply" to a post (or any web resource), then all you need is a trackback-like facility to link from the post to comments on it. It doesn't need to be centralized.
      - lmm 6y ago
        How do you despam that?
        eyelidlessness 6y ago
        Or de-nazi it for that matter?
imhoguy 6y ago
These celebrities will be forgotten as soon as their Instagram account is gone or followers appear to be dead accounts mostly. Some artistically influential will get to the mainstream thanks to their fans hoarding and sharing the data, like all these last century music/film stars who left tons of material in any medium, now digitized and shared/pirated. Although I get a bit worried about p2p sharing as multimedia rental walled gardens got too popular.
- jychang 6y ago
  The venn diagram of "celebs who are influential" and "fans who are data hoarders" don't overlap as much as you think. The latter tend to be a much nerdier group than the general population.
  - imhoguy 6y ago
    Yeah, you may be right here. Also Instagram has low entry barrier, where super stars got enormous promotional budgets. Now it is full race to the bottom I would say, commoditization of popularity, massive celebritism :)
LdSGSgvupDV 6y ago
There are many projects to make network decentralized such as ipfs (InterPlanetary File System). When exposing these services to public, legality is a big issue. Plenty of rights would involve in it (copyright, privacy, and so on). Also, all kind of crimes are another issue. It is hard for people to keep monitoring if contents are safe or not. I think we need a network version of the War of Independence.

r3trohack3r 6y ago

The only thing that has improved is how easily a celebrity can reach millions From Wikipedia: Celebrity is a reference to the fame and wide public recognition of an individual or a group I'd posit that celebrities are celebrities by connecting with millions. A platform that offers a "celebrity" the ability to connect easily with millions seems to be worth more than a list of any other features.

zeckalpha 6y ago
What has changed is the meaning of the word connected.

MYEUHD 6y ago

>I don't have access to any of it because I need an Instagram account for that. Check out https://bibliogram.art https://bibliogram.art

JoblessWonder 6y ago
502 Bad Gateway
- aspenmayer 6y ago
  Old link. Here ya go https://github.com/cloudrac3r/bibliogram https://github.com/cloudrac3r/bibliogram https://sr.ht/~cadence/bibliogram/ https://sr.ht/~cadence/bibliogram/
  - aspenmayer 6y ago
    For what it’s worth, the original link is back up again.
aspenmayer 6y ago
https://github.com/cloudrac3r/bibliogram https://github.com/cloudrac3r/bibliogram https://sr.ht/~cadence/bibliogram/ https://sr.ht/~cadence/bibliogram/

_jal 6y ago

> like we need to build cutting edge decentralized applications Yes, please! More and faster. Centralized services are easy to build, because they offer an obvious location to do some of the things that are tricky to do in a distributed fashion. They are also, by the way, far easier to for small numbers of coordinating people to control, which makes them popular with corporations, authoritarians and sociopaths. Decentralized services will rarely be the New Shiny that attracts all the 14 year olds for a few minutes. But, unlike email, you never hear anyone whining that Myspace won't go away.

freehunter 6y ago
We have tons of decentralized platforms. The amount is not the problem. The problem is the user experience. For users who don’t care about anything behind the scenes and only cares about the experience, why would they go out of their way to figure out Mastodon when Facebook has a one-step signup process? The reason central platforms win is because they have to be dead simple to use in order to attract any users. Decentralized platforms get their initial users because of how cool the technology is, but those people (people like me and you) aren’t UX experts and don’t prioritize UX. It has to be easier than the central platform, and the central platform has the benefit of millions/billions of dollars to throw at it. Which means the decentralized platforms have to work even harder to overcome that. It’s not impossible, but it does require engineers to overcome their desire to build cool things and instead focusing on building a user experience that’s better than what Facebook/Twitter/etc can provide.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  Joining a Mastodon server is just as simple as signing up to Facebook. The difference is that no single Mastodon instance has centralized control over their users; you always get the option of signing up elsewhere, or using your own instance.
  - freehunter 6y ago
    It’s the “signing up elsewhere or using your own instance” that’s the problem. You’re joining a Mastodon server and if you want to go to another server you have to actually move things. It takes actual effort. It seems like the Mastodon developers look at email and think “if it works for email it’ll work here” and don’t understand that people deal with email because they have to, not because they want to. I don’t want to have to change my email address when I switch providers and I don’t want to have to move all my stuff if my favorite Mastodon server decides to shut down. That’s not a solution that’s just another problem. It’s bad user experience.

justaguyhere 6y ago

If celebrities (with their fame, reach and money) can't bother owning their own domains, what chance does a normal guy/gal have? It would be trivial for celebrities to set up their own websites and share whatever stuff they are sharing. At minimum, they can do this in addition to whatever social media they are on. It is as if we are all becoming lazy and/or many of us don't realize the harm in giving all our info to half a dozen super mega corps. Most of these mega corps aren't even distributed in the world, they are all American (except tiktok) which is another interesting angle. This is going to happen (already happening?) in the webapps/apps world too. There are so many no-code tools popping up - most will die, the rest will get acquired by the mega corps. Made a great webapp that is successful? Now you are stuck with bubble/airtable/shopify/whatever. I cannot name many no-code tools that lets you export your application to be hosted independently. I feel like we are on a path where in a few decades, a dozen or two corporations will control every single aspect of our lives - online especially, and probably offline too.

skybrian 6y ago
A lot of ordinary people don't post in public, or if they do it's not under their real name, and there is a growing trend of deleting it after a few days. They don't want you to have any data about them at all. The modern alternative to Usenet is private Facebook groups that never get indexed.
kelnos 6y ago
> If celebrities (with their fame, reach and money) can't bother owning their own domains, what chance does a normal guy/gal have? This is a matter of demand, not capability. It seems most celebs just don't care about setting up their own stuff, and, really, why would they? There are free platforms out there that give them huge amounts of reach. Most of these people just don't need their own website. They may come to regret that decision later, but it's their decision to make. If a normal guy/gal wants to set up their own domain and website, it's not hard for them to do so, certainly no harder than it was in the 90s/00s, and probably a lot easier. The "no-code" stuff certainly has lock-in disadvantages, but you can simply choose not to use them if you want. Yes, it's more work, but it was always more work to do it yourself, and always will be.

Yhippa 6y ago

Counterpoint: does the average internet user want to download a new app or go visit a different website each time they want to get these updates?

zozbot234 6y ago
If the websites bother to export RSS/ATOM/ActivityPub feeds, they won't need to. They'll just "subscribe" to the stream in their preferred app/webservice, and get aggregated updates about everyone they care about.
- smabie 6y ago
  Sure, but what about commenting on the post? No one likes creating accounts for different websites in order to post one comment. It's obvious that things like Twitter and Instagram provide value to celebrities and people who follow them. It's just that there are some serious externalities not factored in.
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    ActivityPub lets you mark a comment as a "reply" to a post (or any web resource), then all you need is a trackback-like facility to link from the post to comments on it. It doesn't need to be centralized.
    - lmm 6y ago
      How do you despam that?
      - eyelidlessness 6y ago
        Or de-nazi it for that matter?

imhoguy 6y ago

These celebrities will be forgotten as soon as their Instagram account is gone or followers appear to be dead accounts mostly. Some artistically influential will get to the mainstream thanks to their fans hoarding and sharing the data, like all these last century music/film stars who left tons of material in any medium, now digitized and shared/pirated. Although I get a bit worried about p2p sharing as multimedia rental walled gardens got too popular.

jychang 6y ago
The venn diagram of "celebs who are influential" and "fans who are data hoarders" don't overlap as much as you think. The latter tend to be a much nerdier group than the general population.
- imhoguy 6y ago
  Yeah, you may be right here. Also Instagram has low entry barrier, where super stars got enormous promotional budgets. Now it is full race to the bottom I would say, commoditization of popularity, massive celebritism :)

LdSGSgvupDV 6y ago

There are many projects to make network decentralized such as ipfs (InterPlanetary File System). When exposing these services to public, legality is a big issue. Plenty of rights would involve in it (copyright, privacy, and so on). Also, all kind of crimes are another issue. It is hard for people to keep monitoring if contents are safe or not. I think we need a network version of the War of Independence.