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It reads like something a GPT model would write, they go all over the place. I also wonder what would their point of view be if the internet truly was wilder,
by juancn 3y ago
It reads like something a GPT model would write, they go all over the place.
I also wonder what would their point of view be if the internet truly was wilder, like 4chan or everything behind TOR.
On one hand, I kind of like the idea of spreading and atomizing the internet to the masses, a bit like it was at the beginning, but at the beginning the people that were part of the internet were a particularly well educated elite. It was definitely not for everyone.
Not everyone was online, what we had was people with disposable income to have a computer, usually with some form of college education and some technical knowledge.
Then the masses came, and social media thrived.
- digging 3y ago> It reads like something a GPT model would write, they go all over the place. It's nothing like GPT IMO; it's opinionated, for one thing. I think it's just hard to follow because it does draw from a large variety of sources and ideas and doesn't weave them together very smoothly. This is showcased with the horrible modern trend of displaying a large quote of something the article literally just said, or will say next. This practice is always a bad choice, but failure scales with the complexity of the article; the author would have done better to use more headings, which would help them organize the work. I do completely agree with your assessment of why the earlier internet was... a more rewarding experience. (I don't think "better" is a meaningful term here.) But, the article is explicitly rejecting the idea of returning to the past, and instead building something new that fosters emergent behavior and diversity. The goal is empowerment of agents who have a will to cultivate their ideas.
- sapphicsnail 3y agoWilder doesn't necessarily equal more anonymous. I spend a lot of time on little forums where I might not know someone's irl name but I know who they are.
- kombookcha 3y agoOne of the great losses that came with the end of the forum era was all these little communities with distinct cultures and regulars that you got to know. I kind of found a similar vibe in some discord servers, but they're much more difficult to join as a new user than a forum because old information isn't easily searchable and discussions aren't as longform as old forum posts were.
- account42 3y agoThere are still active forums you know.
- kombookcha 3y agoI know, I'm in some. :)
- mondobe 3y ago> if the internet truly was wilder, like 4chan I don't think they were referring to moderation in itself. 4chan isn't a decentralized platform like the Fediverse (AFAIK), so, if it was theoretically large enough (like, TikTok-sized), it would be just as big a problem.