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There was some semblance of openness and creativity in most of the previous walled gardens. Myspace let you style your profile with CSS and embed stuff. Faceboo

There was some semblance of openness and creativity in most of the previous walled gardens. Myspace let you style your profile with CSS and embed stuff. Facebook used to let you run your own chat client. AIM/ICQ/MSN/Yahoo all had semi-open protocols and as a result we had Trillian/Pidgin/others. Things were somewhat centralized but they were connected via open protocols. It was a beautiful time. To say nothing of the fact that the cultural zeitgeist has changed from kids distrusting "the man" to kids openly bragging about sponsorships and "influencers" whoring themselves out for likes and free product. Content that was accessible, linkable, archivable, and searchable now lives in millions of miniature jails. And then we get something like the Reddit apocalypse that just happened and now the internet is missing vast swathes of vitally important information, because one stupid fucking CEO wanted to take his company public. So yes, kids these days.

majormajor 3y ago
This sounds like rose colored glasses. By AOL I don't mean AIM, I mean "AOL keyword [whatever]" sites, especially pre-opening-up-of-AIM, which was as walled garden and corporate as you could get compared to what the open web or Usenet was then. And Facebook beat MySpace in large part because of the comparative lack of control (and wasn't even "chat" in those days at all). I personally don't place nearly as much value on diversity of clients to access centralized services as you. Isn't that exactly what led to that "Reddit apocalypse"? An illusion of openness with a giant corporate SPOF, just like all the other ones? Chosen by the kids of 10-15 years ago? If not for the transitory nature of Reddit becoming popular as the surge of the mobile migration catching people off guard, you probably never get the same appearance of openness in the first place - but as long as the content was centrally hosted, it was the same closed-garden story. Same with all the old no-longer-viewable picture tweets that relied on one or another flash-in-the-pan image hosting service... Reddit, Twitter, all of them were never anything but walled gardens, and people in the fading non-walled-gardens in the last 2010s certainly called that out. Nor is thinking everyone else is a sellout anything new. Certainly not newer than the 90s. The target of that message was the huge number of people who always did buy the pop products in the first place. Nobody would care about raging against the machine if the machine wasn't dominant. And isn't it telling that all those generations still ended up going with The Man or becoming The Man? Maybe it isn't an effective approach.
- pdntspa 3y ago
  There was never a substantial amount of informational content on AOL proper, it was all advertising or mass media-generated stuff. User-generated content in the discussion boards that I remember was insubstantial and in any case there weren't really proper search engines back then anyway. None of your friends were like, "check me out on AOL keyword Bob Smith", putting content on AOL was effectively impossible outside discussion boards or chat. (Which IIRC was inundated with a/s/l bullshit) I'm OK with the patchwork of image hosts fading out because they are archivable. I can still right-click to save what interests me, and the image is hosted at a URL anyone could punch in or scrape. Except more recently, where we all apparently hate bots and we've let our bandwidth providers become highwaymen for a resource that is supposed to be free. I'm not saying this stuff needs to be immortal, it just needs to be distributed, archiveable, linkable, and accessible from the client of your choice. Reddit suppresses scraping and nobody seems to have anything cached in an accessible way, at least judging by Google results. > And isn't it telling that all those generations still ended up going with The Man or becoming The Man? Maybe it isn't an effective approach. Where there is an effective ecosystem that avoids "The Man" I think you will still find those people. They are not highlighted or lifted up by the masses. Instead most folks will make the contemptible choice of sucking off the corporate cock in exchange for a relatively easy and mindless, monotonous, consumptive, pathetic little life. I know this because I did it too. But I am much happier having weaned myself from its bosom.
  - majormajor 3y ago
    "Instead most folks will make the contemptible choice of sucking off the corporate cock in exchange for a relatively easy and mindless, monotonous, consumptive, pathetic little life. I know this because I did it too. But I am much happier having weaned myself from its bosom." Yeah, it's not just "kids of today", is it? Almost all of us have chosen convenience over distributed, decentralized, robust, linkable, exportable platforms at some point. All the way back to the days of those corporate media and commercial advertising sites inside of AOL bringing more new users to the web than plain Usenet. I just don't think it's despicable at all. Running a discord channel instead of hosting a web forum? A lot easier to spin something up quickly with multimedia capabilities for a community without technical knowledge. It could all go away tomorrow, or slowly get shittified... and people will move on to something else again. People having to ask questions anew that have already been answered in the past? In-depth knowledge of yesterday's culture fading away? To me, that isn't a high price to pay. I talk to people on HN (walled garden), some others on forums (a mix of corporate walled garden or independent ones), some others on Discord (walled garden), it's all good enough IMO. Certainly not a moral failing for anyone. Saying something like "contemptible choice of sucking off the corporate cock in exchange for a relatively easy and mindless, monotonous, consumptive, pathetic little life" doesn't make me think you're any happier for avoiding it... those are not the words of the content.
randomdata 3y ago
> There was some semblance of openness and creativity in most of the previous walled gardens. Yet the original Reddit, Usenet, was right there as open as decentralized as can be and they flocked to the walled gardens anyway. Kids those days.
ansible 3y ago
> Myspace let you style your profile with CSS and embed stuff. Which resulted in most pages being a horrific travesty in terms of readability.
- pdntspa 3y ago
  It was a beautiful mess!

majormajor 3y ago

This sounds like rose colored glasses. By AOL I don't mean AIM, I mean "AOL keyword [whatever]" sites, especially pre-opening-up-of-AIM, which was as walled garden and corporate as you could get compared to what the open web or Usenet was then. And Facebook beat MySpace in large part because of the comparative lack of control (and wasn't even "chat" in those days at all). I personally don't place nearly as much value on diversity of clients to access centralized services as you. Isn't that exactly what led to that "Reddit apocalypse"? An illusion of openness with a giant corporate SPOF, just like all the other ones? Chosen by the kids of 10-15 years ago? If not for the transitory nature of Reddit becoming popular as the surge of the mobile migration catching people off guard, you probably never get the same appearance of openness in the first place - but as long as the content was centrally hosted, it was the same closed-garden story. Same with all the old no-longer-viewable picture tweets that relied on one or another flash-in-the-pan image hosting service... Reddit, Twitter, all of them were never anything but walled gardens, and people in the fading non-walled-gardens in the last 2010s certainly called that out. Nor is thinking everyone else is a sellout anything new. Certainly not newer than the 90s. The target of that message was the huge number of people who always did buy the pop products in the first place. Nobody would care about raging against the machine if the machine wasn't dominant. And isn't it telling that all those generations still ended up going with The Man or becoming The Man? Maybe it isn't an effective approach.

pdntspa 3y ago
There was never a substantial amount of informational content on AOL proper, it was all advertising or mass media-generated stuff. User-generated content in the discussion boards that I remember was insubstantial and in any case there weren't really proper search engines back then anyway. None of your friends were like, "check me out on AOL keyword Bob Smith", putting content on AOL was effectively impossible outside discussion boards or chat. (Which IIRC was inundated with a/s/l bullshit) I'm OK with the patchwork of image hosts fading out because they are archivable. I can still right-click to save what interests me, and the image is hosted at a URL anyone could punch in or scrape. Except more recently, where we all apparently hate bots and we've let our bandwidth providers become highwaymen for a resource that is supposed to be free. I'm not saying this stuff needs to be immortal, it just needs to be distributed, archiveable, linkable, and accessible from the client of your choice. Reddit suppresses scraping and nobody seems to have anything cached in an accessible way, at least judging by Google results. > And isn't it telling that all those generations still ended up going with The Man or becoming The Man? Maybe it isn't an effective approach. Where there is an effective ecosystem that avoids "The Man" I think you will still find those people. They are not highlighted or lifted up by the masses. Instead most folks will make the contemptible choice of sucking off the corporate cock in exchange for a relatively easy and mindless, monotonous, consumptive, pathetic little life. I know this because I did it too. But I am much happier having weaned myself from its bosom.
- majormajor 3y ago
  "Instead most folks will make the contemptible choice of sucking off the corporate cock in exchange for a relatively easy and mindless, monotonous, consumptive, pathetic little life. I know this because I did it too. But I am much happier having weaned myself from its bosom." Yeah, it's not just "kids of today", is it? Almost all of us have chosen convenience over distributed, decentralized, robust, linkable, exportable platforms at some point. All the way back to the days of those corporate media and commercial advertising sites inside of AOL bringing more new users to the web than plain Usenet. I just don't think it's despicable at all. Running a discord channel instead of hosting a web forum? A lot easier to spin something up quickly with multimedia capabilities for a community without technical knowledge. It could all go away tomorrow, or slowly get shittified... and people will move on to something else again. People having to ask questions anew that have already been answered in the past? In-depth knowledge of yesterday's culture fading away? To me, that isn't a high price to pay. I talk to people on HN (walled garden), some others on forums (a mix of corporate walled garden or independent ones), some others on Discord (walled garden), it's all good enough IMO. Certainly not a moral failing for anyone. Saying something like "contemptible choice of sucking off the corporate cock in exchange for a relatively easy and mindless, monotonous, consumptive, pathetic little life" doesn't make me think you're any happier for avoiding it... those are not the words of the content.

randomdata 3y ago

> There was some semblance of openness and creativity in most of the previous walled gardens. Yet the original Reddit, Usenet, was right there as open as decentralized as can be and they flocked to the walled gardens anyway. Kids those days.

ansible 3y ago

> Myspace let you style your profile with CSS and embed stuff. Which resulted in most pages being a horrific travesty in terms of readability.

pdntspa 3y ago
It was a beautiful mess!