6 ms·

I really would disagree on how the internet was better, sure you could find a few people that were saints that just relesed things for free, but the internet ba

by 0dayz 4y ago

I really would disagree on how the internet was better, sure you could find a few people that were saints that just relesed things for free, but the internet back then was really barren and it was very slow to see new releases of said content and the only alternative was to pirate. Do I wish we had better money option back in the day? Yes. Most importantly I wish another model of how content is stored was implemented to ensure maximum diversity of said content, like specialized sites for different types of video content.

Dalewyn 4y ago
>but the internet back then was really barren The internet back then was a forest into which you couldn't really see, you just went dumpster diving and it was an adventure. Today's internet is barren, with most content centered around Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and Youtube, and various commercial propaganda campaign sites known colloquially as journalism. That is a fucking desert, a wasteland.
- 0dayz 4y ago
  I do agree and disagree, yes there were more diverse websites for sure, but quite a lot of it were just copies of others (flash games is a good example of how many different hosts there were with almost nothing unique to it). And two of the examples you brought up are social media focused, with one also being heavily focused on content discovery. And the places you did find was very slow with new content being added and limited because as I said you could mostly only get the juicy stuff through piracy (as most things was still heavily reliant on offline distribution).
  - prmoustache 4y ago
    >(flash games That was not the old internet but already the current one.
- jmye 4y ago
  That seems like a real romanticization of the early internet - comparing, essentially, Geocities to a forest and simultaneously calling the plethora of content-creator sites available today (sites like Substack, not 'influencer' brands on IG) a "fucking desert, a wasteland" seems sort of disingenuous. Sure, if you never leave FB or Reddit, you're not going to see a ton of diversity. But it's still all there if you can get more than a page into search results, or put in literally the exact same level of effort you used to have to put in when AltaVista and Lycos were out giving horrendous search results. Even on Reddit, if you spend your time on what used to be the defaults versus finding the niche subs, you're going to have a vastly different understanding of forest/wasteland.
  - Dalewyn 4y ago
    >the plethora of content-creator sites available today (sites like Substack, They all exhibit a tremendous level of "likethink" bubbling, I find everyone on a given platform to be more or less the same spewing the same crap over and over again. Contrast Geocities, where you could find everyone and everything imaginable, short of straight up illegal stuff.
z3c0 4y ago
> Do I wish we had better money option back in the day? Yes. I didn't. Digital content is the closest thing to a post-scarce resource that we have ever achieved. Ushering in a business model based on the limited resources of physical mediums was a tremendous mistake, and was only done so because media companies couldn't stop salivating at the notion of charging $10 for something they could copy infinitely at almost no cost.
- kelnos 4y ago
  Charging for digital content is (or at least should be) about recouping the cost it took to make it, not the (near-zero) cost to distribute it.
  - thfuran 4y ago
    And at scale, the cost ceases to be remotely near zero. Netflix would implode rapidly without income even if they stopped producing content.
    - z3c0 4y ago
      Netflix never would have existed to begin with in a world without DRM-loaded media. (The streaming platform, that is, not the original movies-in-your-mailbox service)
    - layer8 4y ago
      > remotely near zero That sounds like an oxymoron ;), had to take a double-take when reading.
  - z3c0 4y ago
    There are other methods to recoup the cost that actually hand something of tangible value to the customer (the physical mediums I mentioned, for example.) Handing over a digital asset for the same price, and then lambasting those who choose to distribute it freely, is 100% the shittiest way to do it.
  - account42 4y ago

by 0dayz 4y ago

Dalewyn 4y ago

>but the internet back then was really barren The internet back then was a forest into which you couldn't really see, you just went dumpster diving and it was an adventure. Today's internet is barren, with most content centered around Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and Youtube, and various commercial propaganda campaign sites known colloquially as journalism. That is a fucking desert, a wasteland.

0dayz 4y ago
I do agree and disagree, yes there were more diverse websites for sure, but quite a lot of it were just copies of others (flash games is a good example of how many different hosts there were with almost nothing unique to it). And two of the examples you brought up are social media focused, with one also being heavily focused on content discovery. And the places you did find was very slow with new content being added and limited because as I said you could mostly only get the juicy stuff through piracy (as most things was still heavily reliant on offline distribution).
- prmoustache 4y ago
  >(flash games That was not the old internet but already the current one.
jmye 4y ago
That seems like a real romanticization of the early internet - comparing, essentially, Geocities to a forest and simultaneously calling the plethora of content-creator sites available today (sites like Substack, not 'influencer' brands on IG) a "fucking desert, a wasteland" seems sort of disingenuous. Sure, if you never leave FB or Reddit, you're not going to see a ton of diversity. But it's still all there if you can get more than a page into search results, or put in literally the exact same level of effort you used to have to put in when AltaVista and Lycos were out giving horrendous search results. Even on Reddit, if you spend your time on what used to be the defaults versus finding the niche subs, you're going to have a vastly different understanding of forest/wasteland.
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  >the plethora of content-creator sites available today (sites like Substack, They all exhibit a tremendous level of "likethink" bubbling, I find everyone on a given platform to be more or less the same spewing the same crap over and over again. Contrast Geocities, where you could find everyone and everything imaginable, short of straight up illegal stuff.

z3c0 4y ago

> Do I wish we had better money option back in the day? Yes. I didn't. Digital content is the closest thing to a post-scarce resource that we have ever achieved. Ushering in a business model based on the limited resources of physical mediums was a tremendous mistake, and was only done so because media companies couldn't stop salivating at the notion of charging $10 for something they could copy infinitely at almost no cost.

kelnos 4y ago
Charging for digital content is (or at least should be) about recouping the cost it took to make it, not the (near-zero) cost to distribute it.
- thfuran 4y ago
  And at scale, the cost ceases to be remotely near zero. Netflix would implode rapidly without income even if they stopped producing content.
  - z3c0 4y ago
    Netflix never would have existed to begin with in a world without DRM-loaded media. (The streaming platform, that is, not the original movies-in-your-mailbox service)
  - layer8 4y ago
    > remotely near zero That sounds like an oxymoron ;), had to take a double-take when reading.
- z3c0 4y ago
  There are other methods to recoup the cost that actually hand something of tangible value to the customer (the physical mediums I mentioned, for example.) Handing over a digital asset for the same price, and then lambasting those who choose to distribute it freely, is 100% the shittiest way to do it.
- account42 4y ago