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I worry about this myself. I feel like HN is the last refuge of what the old Internet was supposed to be like. I'm not sure it can be replicated. The future of

I worry about this myself. I feel like HN is the last refuge of what the old Internet was supposed to be like. I'm not sure it can be replicated. The future of the Internet seems to me to be small private "hidden" communities and mega platforms filled with garbage. No room for a middle Maybe a paid platform?

hliyan 3y ago
Either a private, paid platform, or a Wikipedia-like foundation that relies on donations.
repelsteeltje 3y ago
I'm also tempted to start by thinking about the moneys — after all it's hard to be sustainable without revenue. But that's only part of the problem and money is by no means a solution. Indeed the revenue streams discovered by Google and Meta — while responsible for the financial success of those companies — are also responsible for disinformation and degrading quality from user perspective. If the thing that makes HN enjoyable is the community, maybe we should see it more as a commons and worry about how it is/can/should be governed. Taking Wikipedia as an example, if the worst that comes out of the money problem is an occasional desperate plea from Jimmy Wales begging for a small donation, I'm perfectly happy. Would it be possible to foster a similar community using a platform like Mastodon? If, yes — it might already exist... Anyone have a pointer?
tekla 3y ago
> the last refuge of what the old Internet was supposed to be like. What, how? HN is one of the most squeaky clean - corpo - heavily moderated sites with a extreme bubble centered around SV tech. Its basically the exact opposite of the old internet.
- Auracle 3y ago
  It’s primarily filled with intelligent people interested in technology. Before smartphones, that was the primary population of many (most?) websites.
  - chx 3y ago
    > intelligent people [...] was the primary population of many (most?) websites. Oh sweet summer child.
    - derefr 3y ago
      GP post is correct in the general sense that the Internet used to be a thing only accessible to researchers at major universities; and therefore a place where everyone could be assumed to have some basic level of technical knowledge (if not common sense), and to consider themselves "an intellectual" of some kind or another. GP post is technically incorrect, though, in that during this time, the web didn't exist yet. The tech folks were on Usenet and IRC, not on "websites." (In fact, the creation of the web and "Eternal September" basically coincided: the web was the killer app that got regular people to sign up for Internet service. Despite HTML being designed for scientific-research use-cases, the web that actually formed in practice was "for normals" from the very beginning.)
      - chx 3y ago
        I came online, completely accidentally with the Eternal September crowd, we beta tested NCSA Mosaic mostly as a Usenet reader 'cos there were almost no websites yet. Still it was not only researchers, "Eternal" September is a reaction to earlier Septembers with a large influx of newbies. And even then there flame wars were a thing.
- pjlegato 3y ago
  Ha, agreed fully that the "old internet" was far more of a cesspool than most care to remember. We look back with rose-colored glasses. We remember the good and forget the bad. USENET was not only every bit as bad as the worst of 4chan -- it was worse, because there was no effective moderation. That said, there was also a large "signal" component in the "old internet" that is now lacking in most of the New Internet. Places like HN remain as lonely outposts of that lost world, where people wrote in entire paragraphs, to convey complex and meaningful ideas for mutual discussion -- rather than just firing punchy little 140 character epithets and 10 second insta-videos off into the void and then forgetting about them, moving on to the next flash in the goldfish attention span pan. That level of sustained, complex actually seems like it was more common on the "old Internet," even recognizing fully that the "old Internet" was also overflowing with dross and garbage.
justinkramp 3y ago
As much as I like my Internet free as in beer, I do think that in order to transition from ad-supported content platforms, some form of micropayment or subscription model works best to support creators and bastions of intelligent discourse. I don't mind chipping in for content, (ie independent reporters on substack, local NPR station, Wikipedia), the value exchange is positive for me.
- chx 3y ago
  Don't worry, existing entrenched tech giants will kill this idea before it could take root: this week Facebook started offering a subscription in the EU instead of using your data for ads. They however ask for 10 EUR (and 5000 HUF in Hungary which is 13 EUR) which is far , far more than what anyone sane wants to pay for FB. So they can go back to the regulators and say, see, no one wants to pay for this.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
derefr 3y ago
> The future of the Internet seems to me to be small private "hidden" communities and mega platforms filled with garbage. What you're describing are two attractor-points in community design space, for communities that don't put any effort into fixing their position elsewhere in the design space. • Managed-membership communities don't grow by default, because by default they don't advertise / recruit members. So they have strong cultures, but they're "hidden." • Unmanaged-membership communities start off small and nice, sort of like closed-membership communities; but then they grow "by adsorption" — diluting the original spirit of the community with greater and greater numbers of people who are less and less committed to the premise of the community. Until the community is a generalized nothing, a random sampling of all of humanity. A managed-membership community that advertises / actively recruits could be nice, but it would have to first also avoid the third natural attractor-pole in community design: becoming a cult-of-personality-driven money-making scheme.
safety1st 3y ago
The tildeverse? SDF? Mastodon? Slashdot? The chans? Lobsters? Gemini? Superhighway84 (not sure if this one's still alive?) Undernet or Libera on IRC? I guess it depends on exactly how picky you are about pattern matching to "the old Internet," but a lot of that stuff feels like a throwback to the early Internet or even BBS era... none of it is mega platforms and most of it isn't really hidden... all of it is pretty cool... HN fills a great niche to be sure Hold your nose and throw in a few of the better run subreddits until Lemmy takes off... And WordPress is now paying a guy to work full-time on ActivityPub integration, hold on to your hats ...!

hliyan 3y ago

Either a private, paid platform, or a Wikipedia-like foundation that relies on donations.

repelsteeltje 3y ago

I'm also tempted to start by thinking about the moneys — after all it's hard to be sustainable without revenue. But that's only part of the problem and money is by no means a solution. Indeed the revenue streams discovered by Google and Meta — while responsible for the financial success of those companies — are also responsible for disinformation and degrading quality from user perspective. If the thing that makes HN enjoyable is the community, maybe we should see it more as a commons and worry about how it is/can/should be governed. Taking Wikipedia as an example, if the worst that comes out of the money problem is an occasional desperate plea from Jimmy Wales begging for a small donation, I'm perfectly happy. Would it be possible to foster a similar community using a platform like Mastodon? If, yes — it might already exist... Anyone have a pointer?

tekla 3y ago

> the last refuge of what the old Internet was supposed to be like. What, how? HN is one of the most squeaky clean - corpo - heavily moderated sites with a extreme bubble centered around SV tech. Its basically the exact opposite of the old internet.

Auracle 3y ago
It’s primarily filled with intelligent people interested in technology. Before smartphones, that was the primary population of many (most?) websites.
- chx 3y ago
  > intelligent people [...] was the primary population of many (most?) websites. Oh sweet summer child.
  - derefr 3y ago
    GP post is correct in the general sense that the Internet used to be a thing only accessible to researchers at major universities; and therefore a place where everyone could be assumed to have some basic level of technical knowledge (if not common sense), and to consider themselves "an intellectual" of some kind or another. GP post is technically incorrect, though, in that during this time, the web didn't exist yet. The tech folks were on Usenet and IRC, not on "websites." (In fact, the creation of the web and "Eternal September" basically coincided: the web was the killer app that got regular people to sign up for Internet service. Despite HTML being designed for scientific-research use-cases, the web that actually formed in practice was "for normals" from the very beginning.)
    - chx 3y ago
      I came online, completely accidentally with the Eternal September crowd, we beta tested NCSA Mosaic mostly as a Usenet reader 'cos there were almost no websites yet. Still it was not only researchers, "Eternal" September is a reaction to earlier Septembers with a large influx of newbies. And even then there flame wars were a thing.
pjlegato 3y ago
Ha, agreed fully that the "old internet" was far more of a cesspool than most care to remember. We look back with rose-colored glasses. We remember the good and forget the bad. USENET was not only every bit as bad as the worst of 4chan -- it was worse, because there was no effective moderation. That said, there was also a large "signal" component in the "old internet" that is now lacking in most of the New Internet. Places like HN remain as lonely outposts of that lost world, where people wrote in entire paragraphs, to convey complex and meaningful ideas for mutual discussion -- rather than just firing punchy little 140 character epithets and 10 second insta-videos off into the void and then forgetting about them, moving on to the next flash in the goldfish attention span pan. That level of sustained, complex actually seems like it was more common on the "old Internet," even recognizing fully that the "old Internet" was also overflowing with dross and garbage.

justinkramp 3y ago

As much as I like my Internet free as in beer, I do think that in order to transition from ad-supported content platforms, some form of micropayment or subscription model works best to support creators and bastions of intelligent discourse. I don't mind chipping in for content, (ie independent reporters on substack, local NPR station, Wikipedia), the value exchange is positive for me.

chx 3y ago
Don't worry, existing entrenched tech giants will kill this idea before it could take root: this week Facebook started offering a subscription in the EU instead of using your data for ads. They however ask for 10 EUR (and 5000 HUF in Hungary which is 13 EUR) which is far , far more than what anyone sane wants to pay for FB. So they can go back to the regulators and say, see, no one wants to pay for this.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

derefr 3y ago

> The future of the Internet seems to me to be small private "hidden" communities and mega platforms filled with garbage. What you're describing are two attractor-points in community design space, for communities that don't put any effort into fixing their position elsewhere in the design space. • Managed-membership communities don't grow by default, because by default they don't advertise / recruit members. So they have strong cultures, but they're "hidden." • Unmanaged-membership communities start off small and nice, sort of like closed-membership communities; but then they grow "by adsorption" — diluting the original spirit of the community with greater and greater numbers of people who are less and less committed to the premise of the community. Until the community is a generalized nothing, a random sampling of all of humanity. A managed-membership community that advertises / actively recruits could be nice, but it would have to first also avoid the third natural attractor-pole in community design: becoming a cult-of-personality-driven money-making scheme.

safety1st 3y ago

The tildeverse? SDF? Mastodon? Slashdot? The chans? Lobsters? Gemini? Superhighway84 (not sure if this one's still alive?) Undernet or Libera on IRC? I guess it depends on exactly how picky you are about pattern matching to "the old Internet," but a lot of that stuff feels like a throwback to the early Internet or even BBS era... none of it is mega platforms and most of it isn't really hidden... all of it is pretty cool... HN fills a great niche to be sure Hold your nose and throw in a few of the better run subreddits until Lemmy takes off... And WordPress is now paying a guy to work full-time on ActivityPub integration, hold on to your hats ...!