8 ms·

From a historical perspective, the complete opposite is true. It has never been easier to do things independently on the web than it is today and by huge orders

From a historical perspective, the complete opposite is true. It has never been easier to do things independently on the web than it is today and by huge orders of magnitude compared to even 20 years ago. The panoply of mature open source software and tooling at the disposal of a would be webmaster is so enormous that it now actually pisses people off when programmers open source their own library or framework code. As far as the rent extraction apparatus, it is enumerated almost entirely by a population that simply did not exist online back in the imagined halcyon days of "the independent internet". The masses didn't come online to tap through homespun webrings, they don't care about that stuff, these shiny hyper-optimized manipulation machines are what keep the masses online in the first place.

TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
I have friends who set up their own web pages in the late 90s armed with Notepad, free hosting supplied by their ISP, and some online help. No chance at all of most people being able to do that today. Why do you Open Source Evangelists not understand that most humans cannot do this stuff? It's great that you know what a build system and github and dependencies are, but most people don't. And IMO they shouldn't have to.
- detaro 5y ago
  You can still do all that with any competent shared hosting provider. (I guess "free, supplied by ISP" is rare nowadays, but you'll find other "free at some subdomain" offerings) Just because all these other options exist doesn't mean you need to use them. Plenty people I know still handwrite their HTML. Somehow people got to the point of thinking that the only way to host a website is renting a VPS and setting up everything themselves, and that's just not true. (and even if you do that, there's a range of how complex you need to make it)
- 542354234235 5y ago
  >I have friends who set up their own web pages in the late 90s armed with Notepad, free hosting supplied by their ISP, and some online help. >No chance at all of most people being able to do that today. I used to save my notepad files on a floppy drive. No chance at all of most people being able to do that today. Just because things are different doesn’t mean worse. The exact skills and methods used 20 years ago is not a good metric for something as nebulous as “do things independently online”. The “things” you can do are going to change and evolve.
  - friendzis 5y ago
    20 years ago you saved notepad files on a removable media. Today you still do the same. Underlying technology may have changed, but the interface remains the same.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
  > I have friends who set up their own web pages in the late 90s armed with Notepad, free hosting supplied by their ISP, and some online help. > No chance at all of most people being able to do that today. What are you talking about? You can still do all that. There's still free hosting available, just not through your ISP. You can still hand-edit HTML with Notepad and publish it to a free web host. > It's great that you know what a build system and github and dependencies are, but most people don't. All the added complexity of web deployments these days is not required for a simple personal web page. You don't need JavaScript, a build system, dependency management, etc. The plain HTML written in 1998 still works today. Even the old HTML frames still work, according to a quick Google, even though they haven't been used by any site in well over 15 years. > And IMO they shouldn't have to. Good, because they don't.
  - glenneroo 5y ago
    > You can still hand-edit HTML with Notepad and publish it to a free web host. Exactly. The last website I made for a festival early last year I wrote by hand with Notepad++. It ended up being 14 HTML files (7 files and 2 languages) and a couple CSS files and a lot of reading about current CSS standards. Initially I started with WordPress but couldn't find a decent theme to do the layout we wanted, so I scrapped it after a couple days of trying to bend several themes to my will. Not much different than how I did it in the 90s... except back then I couldn't just DuckDuckGo to find thousands of pages with HTML/CSS help.
- roywiggins 5y ago
  > No chance at all of most people being able to do that today. https://neocities.org https://neocities.org seems fine for this purpose?
whywhywhywhy 5y ago
The old internet is already compromised. Decentralization is the only way forward.
smolder 5y ago
I agree with you, with a couple exceptions. I think it's an error (and a frequently made one) to treat "the masses" as being distinct from the curious, virtuous hackers trying to build with the tools they were given. The difference in many cases is just how much they were encouraged to create, either by the example of others or by the tech itself. If we always treat consumers as strictly consumers instead of fellow humans in a process of mutual improvement... that's what we'll tend to get. Why do we on the one hand claim to have a need for more STEM workers or more competency in this or that, then on the other hand sell devices that coddle users and waste their time? Productivity tools are often behind big paywalls. I won't enumerate all the ways mainstream computing sucks, but our manipulation machines actively discourage people from engaging more positively with tech, not to mention each other. It's not very encouraging to me that Open Source is growing in absolute size when it is struggling so much in terms of mindshare. The other thing to address is about being "independent online". Many of the things that make it so easy to create a website, for example, are made easy at a cost, i.e. vendor lock-in and rent for continued service. Or github will host your code but also use it for their own purposes, training your AI replacement. Those are ultimately good things to have around but do follow the trend of being cages-with-benefits --they increase dependence on central infrastructure.
rini17 5y ago
But the maintenance bar raised. It is not the case anymore that you could set up web server as hobby and leave it running untouched for years. Now you won't connect at all in 2 months if you don't set up letsencrypt correctly. And their API and root certificate also changes regularly so you must keep software up to date. If you use some cross-domain stuff to interact with outside services from browser, that now breaks every year or two. Things like that add up.
- cm2187 5y ago
  And try running a mail server from home. Receiving is ok, sending is a non starter. It’s hard even from a server.
- philistine 5y ago
  I use a CDN (namely the one on Amazon AWS) to provide HTTPS for my website. That knocks two things at once; fast distribution across the globe, and security. Do you wish to abstain from using a CDN ?
  - gunapologist99 5y ago
    > Do you wish to abstain from using a CDN? Yes. You are missing the point entirely.
- vidarh 5y ago
  I have half a dozen websites that have been running without maintenance for the last 5+ years.
  - technobabbler 5y ago
    You're lucky. Or skilled. I have half a dozen websites that broke, with maintenance, in the same period. Often because of SSL issues configured by someone else. Plus my own screw ups. It's not impossible to do right but it's definitely not trivial. Even if you configured everything right, something up chain will probably break, in time...
darkwater 5y ago
> As far as the rent extraction apparatus, it is enumerated almost entirely by a population that simply did not exist online back in the imagined halcyon days of "the independent internet". The masses didn't come online to tap through homespun webrings, they don't care about that stuff, these shiny hyper-optimized manipulation machines are what keep the masses online in the first place. I agree, but I think people arguing over that would have expected to maintain the same ratio as the internet population grew. Frankly utopian IMO but one should dream, no?

TheOtherHobbes 5y ago

I have friends who set up their own web pages in the late 90s armed with Notepad, free hosting supplied by their ISP, and some online help. No chance at all of most people being able to do that today. Why do you Open Source Evangelists not understand that most humans cannot do this stuff? It's great that you know what a build system and github and dependencies are, but most people don't. And IMO they shouldn't have to.

detaro 5y ago
You can still do all that with any competent shared hosting provider. (I guess "free, supplied by ISP" is rare nowadays, but you'll find other "free at some subdomain" offerings) Just because all these other options exist doesn't mean you need to use them. Plenty people I know still handwrite their HTML. Somehow people got to the point of thinking that the only way to host a website is renting a VPS and setting up everything themselves, and that's just not true. (and even if you do that, there's a range of how complex you need to make it)
542354234235 5y ago
>I have friends who set up their own web pages in the late 90s armed with Notepad, free hosting supplied by their ISP, and some online help. >No chance at all of most people being able to do that today. I used to save my notepad files on a floppy drive. No chance at all of most people being able to do that today. Just because things are different doesn’t mean worse. The exact skills and methods used 20 years ago is not a good metric for something as nebulous as “do things independently online”. The “things” you can do are going to change and evolve.
- friendzis 5y ago
  20 years ago you saved notepad files on a removable media. Today you still do the same. Underlying technology may have changed, but the interface remains the same.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
> I have friends who set up their own web pages in the late 90s armed with Notepad, free hosting supplied by their ISP, and some online help. > No chance at all of most people being able to do that today. What are you talking about? You can still do all that. There's still free hosting available, just not through your ISP. You can still hand-edit HTML with Notepad and publish it to a free web host. > It's great that you know what a build system and github and dependencies are, but most people don't. All the added complexity of web deployments these days is not required for a simple personal web page. You don't need JavaScript, a build system, dependency management, etc. The plain HTML written in 1998 still works today. Even the old HTML frames still work, according to a quick Google, even though they haven't been used by any site in well over 15 years. > And IMO they shouldn't have to. Good, because they don't.
- glenneroo 5y ago
  > You can still hand-edit HTML with Notepad and publish it to a free web host. Exactly. The last website I made for a festival early last year I wrote by hand with Notepad++. It ended up being 14 HTML files (7 files and 2 languages) and a couple CSS files and a lot of reading about current CSS standards. Initially I started with WordPress but couldn't find a decent theme to do the layout we wanted, so I scrapped it after a couple days of trying to bend several themes to my will. Not much different than how I did it in the 90s... except back then I couldn't just DuckDuckGo to find thousands of pages with HTML/CSS help.
roywiggins 5y ago
> No chance at all of most people being able to do that today. https://neocities.org https://neocities.org seems fine for this purpose?

whywhywhywhy 5y ago

The old internet is already compromised. Decentralization is the only way forward.

smolder 5y ago

I agree with you, with a couple exceptions. I think it's an error (and a frequently made one) to treat "the masses" as being distinct from the curious, virtuous hackers trying to build with the tools they were given. The difference in many cases is just how much they were encouraged to create, either by the example of others or by the tech itself. If we always treat consumers as strictly consumers instead of fellow humans in a process of mutual improvement... that's what we'll tend to get. Why do we on the one hand claim to have a need for more STEM workers or more competency in this or that, then on the other hand sell devices that coddle users and waste their time? Productivity tools are often behind big paywalls. I won't enumerate all the ways mainstream computing sucks, but our manipulation machines actively discourage people from engaging more positively with tech, not to mention each other. It's not very encouraging to me that Open Source is growing in absolute size when it is struggling so much in terms of mindshare. The other thing to address is about being "independent online". Many of the things that make it so easy to create a website, for example, are made easy at a cost, i.e. vendor lock-in and rent for continued service. Or github will host your code but also use it for their own purposes, training your AI replacement. Those are ultimately good things to have around but do follow the trend of being cages-with-benefits --they increase dependence on central infrastructure.

rini17 5y ago

But the maintenance bar raised. It is not the case anymore that you could set up web server as hobby and leave it running untouched for years. Now you won't connect at all in 2 months if you don't set up letsencrypt correctly. And their API and root certificate also changes regularly so you must keep software up to date. If you use some cross-domain stuff to interact with outside services from browser, that now breaks every year or two. Things like that add up.

cm2187 5y ago
And try running a mail server from home. Receiving is ok, sending is a non starter. It’s hard even from a server.
philistine 5y ago
I use a CDN (namely the one on Amazon AWS) to provide HTTPS for my website. That knocks two things at once; fast distribution across the globe, and security. Do you wish to abstain from using a CDN ?
- gunapologist99 5y ago
  > Do you wish to abstain from using a CDN? Yes. You are missing the point entirely.
vidarh 5y ago
I have half a dozen websites that have been running without maintenance for the last 5+ years.
- technobabbler 5y ago
  You're lucky. Or skilled. I have half a dozen websites that broke, with maintenance, in the same period. Often because of SSL issues configured by someone else. Plus my own screw ups. It's not impossible to do right but it's definitely not trivial. Even if you configured everything right, something up chain will probably break, in time...

darkwater 5y ago

> As far as the rent extraction apparatus, it is enumerated almost entirely by a population that simply did not exist online back in the imagined halcyon days of "the independent internet". The masses didn't come online to tap through homespun webrings, they don't care about that stuff, these shiny hyper-optimized manipulation machines are what keep the masses online in the first place. I agree, but I think people arguing over that would have expected to maintain the same ratio as the internet population grew. Frankly utopian IMO but one should dream, no?