7 ms·

This is what I liked about the open blogosphere of 2000 to 2008. Whereas something like Twitter is optimized for the fast-take and the brutal one-liner, blogs a

This is what I liked about the open blogosphere of 2000 to 2008. Whereas something like Twitter is optimized for the fast-take and the brutal one-liner, blogs allowed actual conversations. You could write something serious, develop the idea, and maybe some other people would engage with it, also at a serious level. But then the walled-gardens began to gain ground (Facebook, Twitter, and then later Instagram) and the era of the blogs came to an end. (Yes, they still exist, but they most exist as standalone essays, not engaged in conversation with other blogs.)

082349872349872 4y ago
Before 2000, there were the "shared spaces" of mailing lists. I think of Winer the same way you probably think of Zuck.
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  One of the problems I recall with such mailing-list-based discussion groups was that participants had an expectation that the discussions would stay in the group, and that members wouldn't dump such semi-private conversations (which might have included various controversial takes, etc.) onto the larger web - but in many cases, that did happen, with resulting blowback for individuals whose comments were taken out of context. The expectation of any kind of clearly attributable group discussion on the web remaining private appears to be long-gone. Even with closed, in-house corporate or institutional discussion groups, it's likely everything is logged and recorded for review by management at their whim. It's all depressingly Orwellian these days.
  - 082349872349872 4y ago
    There are indeed private mailing lists, but (for obvious reasons) they're not very discoverable.
lovvtide 4y ago
disclaimer: self-promotion This is the exact reason I started working on Satellite. To be a platform where I could have a blog that talked to other blogs. If you have feedback I'd love to hear it. https://satellite.earth/ https://satellite.earth/
- Rayhem 4y ago
  I've spent about ten minutes poking around that link and I'm still not at all sure what kind of tool Satellite either is or wants me to think of it as. Front page: > Satellite is an alternative space for writers and the beginning of an entirely new kind of network O...k? Alternative to what? New how? Presumably "alternative" here means the space is an alternative to other spaces (not a space for alternatives) and "new" means "there are features other things don't have" (not "we made it a week ago") but it's very vague branding. What are the commonly-known alternatives so I have an existing idea to latch on to? What are the new features? Moving on, it appears that wasn't actually the front page - clicking through to the named front page: > a free, open, and unstoppable network better aligned with the interests of humanity To do what! I gather this is a writing platform, but is it akin to blogging where individuals regularly put out articles? Scientific publishing that enforces a web of citations? Both? Can I have friends/subscribers of sorts? If so, do they also have to be Satellite members? Do my posts appear on any sort of front page anywhere? I'm still very befuddled at how the tool wants me to use it. Mastodon seems like the closest competitor, what does Satellite bring to the party? > Open protocols and data ownership Great! I like those things. But I'm only going to choose to use a tool if it has those things after it satisfies my primary use cases. Using a screwdriver to hammer in a nail is stupid if you do it just because the screwdriver has an open source CAD file somewhere. I'm sorry if this all comes across as harsh -- I'm trying to be as straightforward as possible. I'm not at all certain if I'm Satellite's target audience, but if I am I am already disinclined to try and find out more. Tech bro hype over trivial things (or even stupid things) has completely burnt me out on new web stuff that tries too hard and doesn't respect my attention. I very much appreciate tools that are a little opinionated and a lot forthcoming about their intended uses so I don't feel like my attention has been hijacked or co-opted. If the tool is for me, great. I know what my pains are and it's not difficult for me to imagine what it might take for them to go away and you'll win me over if I can fit you into that thought. If the tool is not for me, that's also fine! It might be for someone else. But I'm not going to spend the effort to figure that out. If I have to, it's already not for me. That said, the website is very pretty. I'm always a fan of those dynamical network images, and the layout & typographical styling is very appealing.
anigbrowl 4y ago
To my mind, the blogosphere had a lot to do with political polarization. Once you added a comment widget to a blog it was easy to build a following of very devoted fans who would argue on the blogger's behalf, amplify them diligently etc. Certainly blogs could foster thoughtful discourse with a wide variety of inputs, but they were just as likely to foster combative tribalism. One interesting example of a blog that followed this path only to later reverse course: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Green_Footballs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Green_Footballs When Twitter, MySpace, and FaceBook came along, they were initially considered 'microblogs' that had the potential to democratize personal publishing (no need for complicated mechanics) and foster better discourse by getting people out of silos onto a common platform where there would be a greater diversity of opinion. Of course, you could have said the same thing about gopher v usenet, web pages v blogs, blogs v social media, social media v defederation etc. A new medium becomes available that is less centralized, early adopters hop onto it (either to gain a voice or amplify an existing voice in a new space), followings/fandoms/communities emerge (and often clash), and eventually a meta-tribal identity develops around the new medium as being in tension with the old one. Over the longer term there's a huge move away from centralized mass media publishing and the huge capital pools required to establish and compete in that market. This increases autonomy and opportunity and fosters greater diversity, but in the absence of clear market signals rhetoric is often substituted for reliable information, and influence by capital (political or financial) persists while being less visible or accountable.
- dools 4y ago
  Malcolm Galdwell discussed the trend away from “mainstreaming” and its social impacts on his Revisionist History podcast recently in the episode series beginning with “When Will Met Grace” https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/when-will-met-grace https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/when-wil...
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  > When Twitter, MySpace, and FaceBook came along, they were initially considered 'microblogs' that had the potential to democratize personal publishing (no need for complicated mechanics) and foster better discourse by getting people out of silos onto a common platform where there would be a greater diversity of opinion. Most people take extreme personal offense at the concept of diversity of opinion. A common platform is always, without exception, a way to unify opinions, not diversify them.
rufus_foreman 4y ago
>> blogs allowed actual conversations Very few did. And some of those that did in that era are still around, and they don't allow that now. I don't think it had anything to do with walled gardens, it had to do with the fact that political polarization wasn't quite complete yet. It's getting there.
jtode 4y ago
We used to do the same thing in Newsgroups. It was a sad couple of years when the ones I used to hang out in slowly hollowed out as people migrated to web forums, which was inevitable, as more and more people came onboard and chose the "easiest" route to other people who were into whatever obscure interest you suddenly had a community for. Usenet was limited to nerds and nerd-adjacent people who were shown, on a one-to-one basis, how to use it. My uncle logged me into the local university's mainframe when I was a kid in the mid-80s, absent that influence I would've jumped onboard with everyone else in the late 90s, probably. After the extreme efficiency of desktop Usenet clients, where I could traverse and keep up with many communities in one easy interface, with exactly the text size and font I wanted, I never really joined any web forums to speak of. I would've had to create an account on a different site for every single interest, most web forums had appalling crayon interfaces with zero sorting options or anything like that, they were all functionally corrals rather than intersections. There was no way to efficiently cover that many communities anymore, and the act of engaging had become detestable, but only in the context of what was lost; for those just arriving it was brilliant. I wish there was a word for the expression on my face right now. Once you've been on the internet for any length of time, you start looking back to a better one in the past. It's probably one of those internet laws, like Moore's.

082349872349872 4y ago

Before 2000, there were the "shared spaces" of mailing lists. I think of Winer the same way you probably think of Zuck.

photochemsyn 4y ago
One of the problems I recall with such mailing-list-based discussion groups was that participants had an expectation that the discussions would stay in the group, and that members wouldn't dump such semi-private conversations (which might have included various controversial takes, etc.) onto the larger web - but in many cases, that did happen, with resulting blowback for individuals whose comments were taken out of context. The expectation of any kind of clearly attributable group discussion on the web remaining private appears to be long-gone. Even with closed, in-house corporate or institutional discussion groups, it's likely everything is logged and recorded for review by management at their whim. It's all depressingly Orwellian these days.
- 082349872349872 4y ago
  There are indeed private mailing lists, but (for obvious reasons) they're not very discoverable.

lovvtide 4y ago

disclaimer: self-promotion This is the exact reason I started working on Satellite. To be a platform where I could have a blog that talked to other blogs. If you have feedback I'd love to hear it. https://satellite.earth/ https://satellite.earth/

Rayhem 4y ago
I've spent about ten minutes poking around that link and I'm still not at all sure what kind of tool Satellite either is or wants me to think of it as. Front page: > Satellite is an alternative space for writers and the beginning of an entirely new kind of network O...k? Alternative to what? New how? Presumably "alternative" here means the space is an alternative to other spaces (not a space for alternatives) and "new" means "there are features other things don't have" (not "we made it a week ago") but it's very vague branding. What are the commonly-known alternatives so I have an existing idea to latch on to? What are the new features? Moving on, it appears that wasn't actually the front page - clicking through to the named front page: > a free, open, and unstoppable network better aligned with the interests of humanity To do what! I gather this is a writing platform, but is it akin to blogging where individuals regularly put out articles? Scientific publishing that enforces a web of citations? Both? Can I have friends/subscribers of sorts? If so, do they also have to be Satellite members? Do my posts appear on any sort of front page anywhere? I'm still very befuddled at how the tool wants me to use it. Mastodon seems like the closest competitor, what does Satellite bring to the party? > Open protocols and data ownership Great! I like those things. But I'm only going to choose to use a tool if it has those things after it satisfies my primary use cases. Using a screwdriver to hammer in a nail is stupid if you do it just because the screwdriver has an open source CAD file somewhere. I'm sorry if this all comes across as harsh -- I'm trying to be as straightforward as possible. I'm not at all certain if I'm Satellite's target audience, but if I am I am already disinclined to try and find out more. Tech bro hype over trivial things (or even stupid things) has completely burnt me out on new web stuff that tries too hard and doesn't respect my attention. I very much appreciate tools that are a little opinionated and a lot forthcoming about their intended uses so I don't feel like my attention has been hijacked or co-opted. If the tool is for me, great. I know what my pains are and it's not difficult for me to imagine what it might take for them to go away and you'll win me over if I can fit you into that thought. If the tool is not for me, that's also fine! It might be for someone else. But I'm not going to spend the effort to figure that out. If I have to, it's already not for me. That said, the website is very pretty. I'm always a fan of those dynamical network images, and the layout & typographical styling is very appealing.

anigbrowl 4y ago

To my mind, the blogosphere had a lot to do with political polarization. Once you added a comment widget to a blog it was easy to build a following of very devoted fans who would argue on the blogger's behalf, amplify them diligently etc. Certainly blogs could foster thoughtful discourse with a wide variety of inputs, but they were just as likely to foster combative tribalism. One interesting example of a blog that followed this path only to later reverse course: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Green_Footballs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Green_Footballs When Twitter, MySpace, and FaceBook came along, they were initially considered 'microblogs' that had the potential to democratize personal publishing (no need for complicated mechanics) and foster better discourse by getting people out of silos onto a common platform where there would be a greater diversity of opinion. Of course, you could have said the same thing about gopher v usenet, web pages v blogs, blogs v social media, social media v defederation etc. A new medium becomes available that is less centralized, early adopters hop onto it (either to gain a voice or amplify an existing voice in a new space), followings/fandoms/communities emerge (and often clash), and eventually a meta-tribal identity develops around the new medium as being in tension with the old one. Over the longer term there's a huge move away from centralized mass media publishing and the huge capital pools required to establish and compete in that market. This increases autonomy and opportunity and fosters greater diversity, but in the absence of clear market signals rhetoric is often substituted for reliable information, and influence by capital (political or financial) persists while being less visible or accountable.

dools 4y ago
Malcolm Galdwell discussed the trend away from “mainstreaming” and its social impacts on his Revisionist History podcast recently in the episode series beginning with “When Will Met Grace” https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/when-will-met-grace https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/when-wil...
thaumasiotes 4y ago
> When Twitter, MySpace, and FaceBook came along, they were initially considered 'microblogs' that had the potential to democratize personal publishing (no need for complicated mechanics) and foster better discourse by getting people out of silos onto a common platform where there would be a greater diversity of opinion. Most people take extreme personal offense at the concept of diversity of opinion. A common platform is always, without exception, a way to unify opinions, not diversify them.

rufus_foreman 4y ago

>> blogs allowed actual conversations Very few did. And some of those that did in that era are still around, and they don't allow that now. I don't think it had anything to do with walled gardens, it had to do with the fact that political polarization wasn't quite complete yet. It's getting there.

jtode 4y ago

We used to do the same thing in Newsgroups. It was a sad couple of years when the ones I used to hang out in slowly hollowed out as people migrated to web forums, which was inevitable, as more and more people came onboard and chose the "easiest" route to other people who were into whatever obscure interest you suddenly had a community for. Usenet was limited to nerds and nerd-adjacent people who were shown, on a one-to-one basis, how to use it. My uncle logged me into the local university's mainframe when I was a kid in the mid-80s, absent that influence I would've jumped onboard with everyone else in the late 90s, probably. After the extreme efficiency of desktop Usenet clients, where I could traverse and keep up with many communities in one easy interface, with exactly the text size and font I wanted, I never really joined any web forums to speak of. I would've had to create an account on a different site for every single interest, most web forums had appalling crayon interfaces with zero sorting options or anything like that, they were all functionally corrals rather than intersections. There was no way to efficiently cover that many communities anymore, and the act of engaging had become detestable, but only in the context of what was lost; for those just arriving it was brilliant. I wish there was a word for the expression on my face right now. Once you've been on the internet for any length of time, you start looking back to a better one in the past. It's probably one of those internet laws, like Moore's.