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It's interesting, I wonder if the internet would have been successful at all without something to monetize? Yeah, e-commerce probably would have been doable, b

It's interesting, I wonder if the internet would have been successful at all without something to monetize? Yeah, e-commerce probably would have been doable, but it would have been like the dotcom era - generic domain names running ads to try to get you to walk over to a desktop computer and type in the domain name. Digital communities would have been really hard - a lot of online forums, I know, depend(ed) on advertising to pay for the then-expensive hosting costs. I'm a believer that Facebook now is long past its prime, but I remember how exciting it was in the early days when it was connecting me with family members and friends. Advertising is how all of those things were able to become accessible to everyone. Maybe a better solution would have been to ban personalized advertising? A lot of the really gross behaviors with ad exchanges, data brokers, ISP interception, etc. are all to allow for highly targeted and personalized ads. Maybe you could only target ads towards "interests", which could be set at a browser level, and a user could configure if they wanted to see more relevant ads.

runjake 5y ago
There were thriving communities like MUDs and IRC and Usenet before e-commerce and corporations moved in.
- mattzito 5y ago
  Absolutely true, but I would say that MUDs and IRC and Usenet are the definition of pre-Internet boom culture. It was a big deal when my parents were able to get online and use a browser to engage with other people. My dad could have been playing chess online via IRC and email for years, but it wasn't until he had a browser that it was within his technical comfort level.
- Dracophoenix 5y ago
  E-commerce existed before MUDs and IRC and was contemporaneous with Usenet. Online Services like Compuserve, Prodigy, and Qlink (which became AOL) allowed people to buy and trade products like you do on E-bay.
jjav 5y ago
> without something to monetize? Not without something to monetize. Just no advertising. Commerce sites would exist largely as-today in this alternate universe. Early on there was a lot of interest in micropayments for funding sites with interesting content. That pretty much all dies because it was a harder problem to kickstart off the ground than just stuffing every page full of ads. But, with ads prohibited, the Internet would've evolved differently and we'd probably have a very convenient way to pay some fraction of a penny to any site we frequent, all with zero ads and none of the toxic consequences of forcing people to view ads.

runjake 5y ago

There were thriving communities like MUDs and IRC and Usenet before e-commerce and corporations moved in.

mattzito 5y ago
Absolutely true, but I would say that MUDs and IRC and Usenet are the definition of pre-Internet boom culture. It was a big deal when my parents were able to get online and use a browser to engage with other people. My dad could have been playing chess online via IRC and email for years, but it wasn't until he had a browser that it was within his technical comfort level.
Dracophoenix 5y ago
E-commerce existed before MUDs and IRC and was contemporaneous with Usenet. Online Services like Compuserve, Prodigy, and Qlink (which became AOL) allowed people to buy and trade products like you do on E-bay.

jjav 5y ago

> without something to monetize? Not without something to monetize. Just no advertising. Commerce sites would exist largely as-today in this alternate universe. Early on there was a lot of interest in micropayments for funding sites with interesting content. That pretty much all dies because it was a harder problem to kickstart off the ground than just stuffing every page full of ads. But, with ads prohibited, the Internet would've evolved differently and we'd probably have a very convenient way to pay some fraction of a penny to any site we frequent, all with zero ads and none of the toxic consequences of forcing people to view ads.