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The internet existed without ads and big centralized sites. People ran their own sites, link rings, email and other services. The big guys have taken away so mu
by throwawa14223 3y ago
The internet existed without ads and big centralized sites. People ran their own sites, link rings, email and other services. The big guys have taken away so much of the ability to effectively self-host, but fundamentally we do not need them and we do not need ads.
- insanitybit 3y agoYou're talking about the internet when it was tiny and inaccessible, and you're acting like that was good. That's a position to take, but I don't think it's a good one - again, I would not have been able to write my blog for free, the sites we take for granted today would not exist. The only way to actually publish would be to have technical skills and money, which I don't think is good.
- suslik 3y agoThere a plenty of non-ad-driver services that allow hosting blogs for free. Github, cloudfare’s free tier, and many others - and you can certainly find a one-click vm deployment of a blogging platform for less then 5$. I believe this implies that saying that you must have ads to have free online services is a fallacy.
- insanitybit 3y agoAll of those businesses subsidize their sites because they're billion dollar companies. Is that better than just... using ads? > I believe this implies that saying that you must have ads to have free online services is a fallacy. I'm saying someone has to pay for it.
- skydhash 3y agoHosting a static cheap is cheap. And even something powered by a CMS can be hosted on a cheap droplet. No one really expects you to share contents like video and music for free (and even that can be done cheaply if you’re only loking at a few TB of monthly bandwith). So yeah, someone should pay for it, but the internet itself isn’t free and everyone is paying for it.
- g-b-r 3y agoIt was NOT inaccessible Look up geocities maybe, most providers gave you some free space anyhow
- GuB-42 3y agoGeocities had ads for most of its life. It also ended up dead because it wasn't profitable anyways. Not the best example. Providers didn't offer free space, you paid for it with your subscription, and you would lose if you changed provider.
- Erratic6576 3y ago[dead]
- g-b-r 3y agoI think that it died because of the dotcom bubble, the purchase by Yahoo and it being overall crappy... Yeah it had ads but without much targeting Providers: you still pay for internet subscriptions; you used to get several services included for a fair price
- GuB-42 3y agoThe problem with provider supplied services like hosting and email is that people understandably don't want to tie cloud services to their home internet connection. What if you move, or find a provider that offers better/cheaper internet service. As a result, few people use them, and because they stopped being a competitive advantage, providers stopped offering them, and when they do, it is usually not free and a borderline scam. A way to add fees to unsuspecting users for something they won't even use.
- g-b-r 3y agoI think that they stopped offering them (when they did) mostly because there are so many cheap, or free, good other services now
- 3y ago
- JKCalhoun 3y agoWe didn't blog. We posted on USENET — for free.
- insanitybit 3y agoOK so are proposing that we shift the internet to a completely decentralized system somehow? And we'll just kill ads in the meantime while the entire world switches off of the current infra?
- JKCalhoun 3y agoIf you're asking me, I don't have a problem with that at all. I know full well it will never happen though since big money is now involved.
- g-b-r 3y agoIt was good, and you probably would have been to write your blog for free. Yes a lot of crappy sites would not exist; very expensive ones such as (ads-filled) YouTube probably wouldn't either, but YouTube was the beginning of the downfall; we'd definitely have been better off without it.