7 ms·

The internet is now positively a nasty place. Everyone is optimizing for "engagement" which essentially equates to "controversial content". You can't find any g

The internet is now positively a nasty place. Everyone is optimizing for "engagement" which essentially equates to "controversial content". You can't find any genuine advice because Google has been gamed to the point where top 50 pages for any query are affiliate pages. Forums and the communities they fostered are dead. Their replacement, Reddit, has a structure that favors the hive mind. There are ads everywhere and they swing between downright creepy (ads about what you were searching for an hour ago) to completely awful (semi-pornographic Taboola/Outbrain ads). When they're neither of these things, they are just plainly deceptive (sponsored content).

echelon 6y ago
I really hate the internet now. I used to love it so much. It's what taught me my current career and brought me financial independence. If I could press a button and erase Apple, Google, Facebook, and Twitter from existence I would. It's all trash.
tester34 6y ago
>Forums and the communities they fostered are dead. Not really - I still use forums (that use my native language) and they feel great! way better than Reddit and have significant active user base.
ratww 6y ago
This 1000x. I used to work at a company that pivoted into "growth hacking" and it seriously made me sick how at the end we had 1500 freelancers being paid peanuts to write about subjects they had minimum knowledge about, using other similarly shallow articles as their only reference. Today I can't search anything on the internet without coming across those. It's always the same: a shitty Wordpress blog and a 1500-word article with 1% of the depth of a Wikipedia Article. And some people have the gall to distrust Wikipedia when believing those. We have 50 websites for lyrics and guitar tabs but they are 10% content (and it's always copied from somewhere else, or each other) and 90% advertisement. If you look for software you're are either gonna get legitimate companies (Download.com) trying to inject you with install-spyware, or piracy blogs trying to infect you with legitimate malware.
- kybernetikos 6y ago
  Review sites are the worst. I frequently start reading reviews I've looked up on google that seem pretty legitimate, only to realise by part way down that it's clear the 'reviewer' has never actually seen the product and is just aggregating content from amazon reviews and spec sheets.
  - puranjay 6y ago
    It's come to a point where I have to search for reviews on YouTube because there, I can at least be assured that the person reviewing it has the product in their hands
bovermyer 6y ago
No, the mainstream internet is the nasty place. The "old" Internet is still out there, at places like https://tilde.town https://tilde.town.
- donmcronald 6y ago
  I would like the spirit of the old internet with modern graphics. I don't understand why sites like that need to look like they're from the 90s.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - webmaven 6y ago
    > I don't understand why sites like that need to look like they're from the 90s. Nostalgia and signalling (that leverages said nostalgia), basically.

echelon 6y ago

I really hate the internet now. I used to love it so much. It's what taught me my current career and brought me financial independence. If I could press a button and erase Apple, Google, Facebook, and Twitter from existence I would. It's all trash.

tester34 6y ago

>Forums and the communities they fostered are dead. Not really - I still use forums (that use my native language) and they feel great! way better than Reddit and have significant active user base.

ratww 6y ago

This 1000x. I used to work at a company that pivoted into "growth hacking" and it seriously made me sick how at the end we had 1500 freelancers being paid peanuts to write about subjects they had minimum knowledge about, using other similarly shallow articles as their only reference. Today I can't search anything on the internet without coming across those. It's always the same: a shitty Wordpress blog and a 1500-word article with 1% of the depth of a Wikipedia Article. And some people have the gall to distrust Wikipedia when believing those. We have 50 websites for lyrics and guitar tabs but they are 10% content (and it's always copied from somewhere else, or each other) and 90% advertisement. If you look for software you're are either gonna get legitimate companies (Download.com) trying to inject you with install-spyware, or piracy blogs trying to infect you with legitimate malware.

kybernetikos 6y ago
Review sites are the worst. I frequently start reading reviews I've looked up on google that seem pretty legitimate, only to realise by part way down that it's clear the 'reviewer' has never actually seen the product and is just aggregating content from amazon reviews and spec sheets.
- puranjay 6y ago
  It's come to a point where I have to search for reviews on YouTube because there, I can at least be assured that the person reviewing it has the product in their hands

bovermyer 6y ago

No, the mainstream internet is the nasty place. The "old" Internet is still out there, at places like https://tilde.town https://tilde.town.

donmcronald 6y ago
I would like the spirit of the old internet with modern graphics. I don't understand why sites like that need to look like they're from the 90s.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- webmaven 6y ago
  > I don't understand why sites like that need to look like they're from the 90s. Nostalgia and signalling (that leverages said nostalgia), basically.