4 ms·
Here's my theory: One of the reasons the Internet is (was) so good is that it was a communication mechanism with a filter. It used to be that you had to work
by acyou 3y ago
Here's my theory:
One of the reasons the Internet is (was) so good is that it was a communication mechanism with a filter.
It used to be that you had to work hard (and pay more) to host anything on the Web and get your content seen. That meant that the Web had more high-quality content, written by high-quality people.
Inaccessibility on the content authoring and hosting side is a feature, not a bug.
Now that anyone can easily and cheaply host or dump out content, the quality has gone down. Internet content will continue to go down in proportion to how easy it is to get your content out in front of people.
Is this a new theory? Or am I repeating what is already a widely shared theory?
- spencerflem 3y agoI've heard it before, don't know if the theory has a name though. Fwiw, I disagree. To me, the best sites on the old internet we made by generous people donating their time and energy to make something cool, and nowadays 1. The internet is no longer cool in the same way, 2. The community is different & most importantly 3. The vast amount of ad-based commercial websites. Adding a financial barrier would just make it more dominated by commercial entities, and people wanting to share their stuff for fun would be more likely to post in a silod social media app instead of a website.
- chasing 3y agoFeels like a variation on the idea of Eternal September. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mikeiz404 3y agoThat makes sense to me. Additional theory: Online payments weren’t initially possible / trusted and that meant lots of content online was put there out of passion rather than to derive a profit (another filtering criteria).