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Internet was still an alien thing to a lot of people throughout the 2000s, and if you think about it - that’s only 14 years ago! And look at this article - it’s

Internet was still an alien thing to a lot of people throughout the 2000s, and if you think about it - that’s only 14 years ago! And look at this article - it’s reflecting on the good old days as though it happened thousands of years ago. Yes, the problem definitely lies in social media and its evil attention-grabbing algorithms, but the fact that people never got to experience the old-school Internet also plays a role in this. People just don’t know any better! For a lot of folks, the web is merely a source of news, a means to pay bills, and to engage in mindless short-form entertainment. I am all for bringing back individual sites and communities back tho! Is money the real root problem of this? Not just from an advertising perspective but also from the perspective of a person. Fundamentally, the Internet provides freedom of communication with the entire world, but these days we can hardly engage with that world because the ability to support oneself financially comes first. As such, you either don’t spend a lot of time online, or you spend your entire time online chasing the cheddar…

ThrowawayTestr 2y ago
> I am all for bringing back individual sites and communities back tho! And if you do find a community you like, make sure you support it financially. Hosting isn't free and banner ads don't pay like they used to.
JJMcJ 2y ago
Now if RSS would just make a comeback it would be a new Golden Age.
- MrVandemar 2y ago
  It never went away.
  - JJMcJ 2y ago
    Most blog sites don't have an RSS link any more. Of course the protocol still exists and is usable to track sites that allow it.
- giantrobot 2y ago
  The issue with RSS is it is tied to the "long form" blog model* where a post requires a subject line. Most RSS readers do not do a great job displaying posts with no title. They also don't typically do anything with inline hash tags (inside the body content). With Facebook/Twitter/Etc (short form content) there's a very informal text box. Hash tags get processed inline with the body. It makes posting something incredibly low friction. A blog post that will actually show up correctly in an RSS reader has much higher friction. Boosting a blog post (reTweet or equivalent) is also high friction. Blogging never went away and blog hosts exist but "Social Media" style short form content exploded because it's low formality and low friction. Other features like direct messaging or posting picture and video are done online in the apps. A lot of early effort with that sort of stuff on blogs died early because it requires not just support in the blogging engine, but moderation/administration done by the owner of the blog and support inside the RSS software. * long form might only be a sentence
  - hagbard_c 2y ago
    > It makes posting something incredibly low friction. Yes, that is what makes places like TwiXXer and the like such cesspools, the fact that they invite anyone to post whatever lies on the tip of their fingers at any moment without thinking it over for more than a few seconds. This may be fine if you're just 'talking shit' but it has the side effect of turning every conversation into 'talking shit'. If RSS does 'force' people to put more effort in to post their thoughts I say more power to RSS, the 'net is not just for 'talking shit' after all.
yallpendantools 2y ago
Sorry for the pedantry. I agree wholeheartedly with the thought of your comment but your timeline rubs me off. > Internet was still an alien thing to a lot of people throughout the 2000s I agree but... > and if you think about it - that’s only 14 years ago 14 years ago is 2010 which is no longer 2000s. It could be the end of 2000s, but that's pushing it. And it bothers me because by 2010 I don't think the Internet was "new" or "alien" at the time to anyone other than business bureaucrats or out-of-touch politicians[1]. The algorithmic news feed has been recognized as a problem by then[2]. I'd say 2010 was the time when the Internet was starting to become ubiquitous, the transition period between the good old days and the age of walled-garden platforms we have to day. For more context, the iPhone---whose form factor, at least, put the Internet in everyone's pockets---was released in 2007 and in 2010 Google released the Nexus line for Android. [1] In 2013, Angela Merkel was ridiculed for calling the Internet "uncharted territory". [2] https://archive.is/m8pjM https://archive.is/m8pjM Article written in 2017 but the pertinent part is "Facebook says its own researchers have been studying the filter bubble since 2010".
- tsavo 2y ago
  While message boards and irc still exist and could be considered "echo chambers", social media began kicking off in mid-2000s with their algorhythmic echo chambers. Also around this time period was growth in blogging, further pulling people away from homepages to "personal pages". Even in the days of Geocities, many people would hit a homepage prior to potentially visiting their own site. And while smart phones did play a role in the trend, changes to web browsers on PC devices with their own "start pages" with news/content operating as pseudo-homepages further contributed to the shift for non-smartphone users.
JohnFen 2y ago
I went the opposite way and put my personal websites behind a login. It's the only way I could think of to protect my sites from being scraped and used to train LLMs. I hope a better solution comes around, though. I want to have my sites available again.
swingingFlyFish 2y ago
"it’s reflecting on the good old days as though it happened thousands of years ago." Internet time is different than real time

ThrowawayTestr 2y ago

> I am all for bringing back individual sites and communities back tho! And if you do find a community you like, make sure you support it financially. Hosting isn't free and banner ads don't pay like they used to.

JJMcJ 2y ago

Now if RSS would just make a comeback it would be a new Golden Age.

MrVandemar 2y ago
It never went away.
- JJMcJ 2y ago
  Most blog sites don't have an RSS link any more. Of course the protocol still exists and is usable to track sites that allow it.
giantrobot 2y ago
The issue with RSS is it is tied to the "long form" blog model* where a post requires a subject line. Most RSS readers do not do a great job displaying posts with no title. They also don't typically do anything with inline hash tags (inside the body content). With Facebook/Twitter/Etc (short form content) there's a very informal text box. Hash tags get processed inline with the body. It makes posting something incredibly low friction. A blog post that will actually show up correctly in an RSS reader has much higher friction. Boosting a blog post (reTweet or equivalent) is also high friction. Blogging never went away and blog hosts exist but "Social Media" style short form content exploded because it's low formality and low friction. Other features like direct messaging or posting picture and video are done online in the apps. A lot of early effort with that sort of stuff on blogs died early because it requires not just support in the blogging engine, but moderation/administration done by the owner of the blog and support inside the RSS software. * long form might only be a sentence
- hagbard_c 2y ago
  > It makes posting something incredibly low friction. Yes, that is what makes places like TwiXXer and the like such cesspools, the fact that they invite anyone to post whatever lies on the tip of their fingers at any moment without thinking it over for more than a few seconds. This may be fine if you're just 'talking shit' but it has the side effect of turning every conversation into 'talking shit'. If RSS does 'force' people to put more effort in to post their thoughts I say more power to RSS, the 'net is not just for 'talking shit' after all.

yallpendantools 2y ago

Sorry for the pedantry. I agree wholeheartedly with the thought of your comment but your timeline rubs me off. > Internet was still an alien thing to a lot of people throughout the 2000s I agree but... > and if you think about it - that’s only 14 years ago 14 years ago is 2010 which is no longer 2000s. It could be the end of 2000s, but that's pushing it. And it bothers me because by 2010 I don't think the Internet was "new" or "alien" at the time to anyone other than business bureaucrats or out-of-touch politicians[1]. The algorithmic news feed has been recognized as a problem by then[2]. I'd say 2010 was the time when the Internet was starting to become ubiquitous, the transition period between the good old days and the age of walled-garden platforms we have to day. For more context, the iPhone---whose form factor, at least, put the Internet in everyone's pockets---was released in 2007 and in 2010 Google released the Nexus line for Android. [1] In 2013, Angela Merkel was ridiculed for calling the Internet "uncharted territory". [2] https://archive.is/m8pjM https://archive.is/m8pjM Article written in 2017 but the pertinent part is "Facebook says its own researchers have been studying the filter bubble since 2010".

tsavo 2y ago
While message boards and irc still exist and could be considered "echo chambers", social media began kicking off in mid-2000s with their algorhythmic echo chambers. Also around this time period was growth in blogging, further pulling people away from homepages to "personal pages". Even in the days of Geocities, many people would hit a homepage prior to potentially visiting their own site. And while smart phones did play a role in the trend, changes to web browsers on PC devices with their own "start pages" with news/content operating as pseudo-homepages further contributed to the shift for non-smartphone users.

JohnFen 2y ago

I went the opposite way and put my personal websites behind a login. It's the only way I could think of to protect my sites from being scraped and used to train LLMs. I hope a better solution comes around, though. I want to have my sites available again.

swingingFlyFish 2y ago

"it’s reflecting on the good old days as though it happened thousands of years ago." Internet time is different than real time