4 ms·

There's one argument I don't understand when people complain about the current state of affairs: Most of the (popular) internet depends on FAANG corporations t

by tuxie_ 5y ago

There's one argument I don't understand when people complain about the current state of affairs: Most of the (popular) internet depends on FAANG corporations today, sure, but it's not like in the 90s people were hosting their own html. We were depending on Geocities, for example. What's the difference? Also, today is easier than ever to connect to the internet and host your own website, why doesn't more people go down this route? Security? Bandwidth? Maintenance? (If so, then there's clearly a lot of value in the services that FAANGs provide)

piaste 5y ago
> We were depending on Geocities, for example. What's the difference? Here's one: Geocities wasn't buying every Internet-related startup that looked like it had half a chance of becoming a contender.
- tuxie_ 5y ago
  Back then that was not the business model. Were they one of the top tech companies today, don't you think that they would be doing the same?
  - piaste 5y ago
    I'm not saying they were less evil, I'm saying they were less dangerous.
krapp 5y ago
>Also, today is easier than ever to connect to the internet and host your own website, why doesn't more people go down this route? Security? Bandwidth? Maintenance? For the same reason most people don't want to construct a kit-car to be able to drive to the store, or print and bind every book they want to read - people want to use the web to consume media and publish content without first building the infrastructure of a website by hand. Also because social media has a powerful network effect. Sure, you could publish a Wordpress blog on your own server, but no one is going to read it unless that blog is linked somewhere, and as easy as Wordpress is, it still needs administration. It's easier to find and curate an audience on social media because that's what those platforms are designed to do, and easier still to just publish from social media or a hosted service like Medium.

by tuxie_ 5y ago

piaste 5y ago

> We were depending on Geocities, for example. What's the difference? Here's one: Geocities wasn't buying every Internet-related startup that looked like it had half a chance of becoming a contender.

tuxie_ 5y ago
Back then that was not the business model. Were they one of the top tech companies today, don't you think that they would be doing the same?
- piaste 5y ago
  I'm not saying they were less evil, I'm saying they were less dangerous.

krapp 5y ago

>Also, today is easier than ever to connect to the internet and host your own website, why doesn't more people go down this route? Security? Bandwidth? Maintenance? For the same reason most people don't want to construct a kit-car to be able to drive to the store, or print and bind every book they want to read - people want to use the web to consume media and publish content without first building the infrastructure of a website by hand. Also because social media has a powerful network effect. Sure, you could publish a Wordpress blog on your own server, but no one is going to read it unless that blog is linked somewhere, and as easy as Wordpress is, it still needs administration. It's easier to find and curate an audience on social media because that's what those platforms are designed to do, and easier still to just publish from social media or a hosted service like Medium.