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I’m not sure if this comment is a jab at the unwashed masses but you did leave out another group, corporations. BBS Sysops, and people that were putting up web

I’m not sure if this comment is a jab at the unwashed masses but you did leave out another group, corporations. BBS Sysops, and people that were putting up web sites in the mid 90s weren’t doing it for money. It wasn’t until the cult of money got involved and turned the internet into a giant direct marketing platform that things began to get really bad.

karmakaze 4y ago
I remember when corporations started showing up. They were mostly ignored. It wasn't until mainstream adoption outweighed the early adopter culture that things really started going downhill and combined with corporations accelerated.
- 0x445442 4y ago
  Yeah, I guess it’s a bit of a chicken and egg thing but corporations brought centralized servers. Of course we’re discussing a topic on a centralized server now but PG is not making any money from it.
  - karmakaze 4y ago
    I'm trying to remember when and infer why things got so consumer-y. Replaying it in my mind, there was Slashdot, Reddit which were fine. I think Digg was a downstep. Even Facebook was great at the start. If I had to pick one thing, I'd say it's about shallow consumption/interactions that kill the signal/noise. Like posting a picture/video with a caption, having it go viral with upvotes/reposts.
    - lamontcg 4y ago
      It happened right about the time of Canter and Siegel and the September that never ended.
      - karmakaze 4y ago
        That was for spam. I was thinking of regular user posts that are low quality in the way HN tries to avoid. Of course that wouldn't have happened until there was a large general population on Usenet--and the dates do check out.
        lamontcg 4y ago
        Eternal September was exactly that.
        karmakaze 4y ago
        That's what I meant by the dates lining up--correlation via common cause.
- lamontcg 4y ago
  Corporations showed up but it was all running over the NSF backbone so commercial use was suppressed, and "sysops" would e.g. immediately ban users for e-mail spam since they were worried about losing their upstream (and transitively back up to the backbone). I can't find the Bills that were passed now to commercialize the Internet and get off of NSFnet but that was early in the Clinton-Gore administration.
thefz 4y ago
Good point, I sometimes get caught in the "ah, the internet back then" fallacy but what really has driven it down in the mud was the entry of corporations, not the people involved.

karmakaze 4y ago

I remember when corporations started showing up. They were mostly ignored. It wasn't until mainstream adoption outweighed the early adopter culture that things really started going downhill and combined with corporations accelerated.

0x445442 4y ago
Yeah, I guess it’s a bit of a chicken and egg thing but corporations brought centralized servers. Of course we’re discussing a topic on a centralized server now but PG is not making any money from it.
- karmakaze 4y ago
  I'm trying to remember when and infer why things got so consumer-y. Replaying it in my mind, there was Slashdot, Reddit which were fine. I think Digg was a downstep. Even Facebook was great at the start. If I had to pick one thing, I'd say it's about shallow consumption/interactions that kill the signal/noise. Like posting a picture/video with a caption, having it go viral with upvotes/reposts.
  - lamontcg 4y ago
    It happened right about the time of Canter and Siegel and the September that never ended.
    - karmakaze 4y ago
      That was for spam. I was thinking of regular user posts that are low quality in the way HN tries to avoid. Of course that wouldn't have happened until there was a large general population on Usenet--and the dates do check out.
      - lamontcg 4y ago
        Eternal September was exactly that.
        karmakaze 4y ago
        That's what I meant by the dates lining up--correlation via common cause.
lamontcg 4y ago
Corporations showed up but it was all running over the NSF backbone so commercial use was suppressed, and "sysops" would e.g. immediately ban users for e-mail spam since they were worried about losing their upstream (and transitively back up to the backbone). I can't find the Bills that were passed now to commercialize the Internet and get off of NSFnet but that was early in the Clinton-Gore administration.

thefz 4y ago

Good point, I sometimes get caught in the "ah, the internet back then" fallacy but what really has driven it down in the mud was the entry of corporations, not the people involved.