10 ms·

Making the Internet the Web Again

5 points by mcwhittemore 2y ago

Before it was called the internet[1], it was called the web, the World Wide Web. That name wasn’t just a label; it was a bold proclamation of intent. Unlike the desktop platforms that came before it, this new platform wasn’t isolated software. It was connections. The web let users explore and discover content made by many producers. Discovery was the core experience. The interconnected nature of the platform was so central, it became its very name. But over time, we stopped “browsing the web” and started “using the internet.” In that shift, we lost something fundamental. The transitions that drove to this change made sense at first. Who can “crawl the web” better than a human? A computer. So we built search engines: Yahoo, AltaVista, Google. What can discover appealing content more efficiently than clicking links and opening tab after tab? A recommendation algorithm. So we built feeds: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. But these sites, once tools for exploration, grew dependent on ad revenue, twisting their incentives toward a single goal: maximizing the time you spend looking at ads. What started as a better way to explore the vast content of the web became a system for keeping your eyes locked on a small subset of its content—ads. Where does that leave those of us who want to explore? Who crave ideas that challenge our assumptions? Personally, I find myself stuck on the same few sites, longing for the original promise of the web while recognizing that version of it is dead. But I also find myself wondering: Can we bring it back? Not to destroy the ad-driven aggregators (a lot of people seem to like them), but to build something for the rest of us. Something that makes exploring the internet feel more like surfing than doomscrolling. If this resonates with you, let’s talk. I’ve started to ideate and build prototypes toward this goal and would love to collaborate with fellow explorers. What tools would help you explore the web more? What tools would improve the quality of your time exploring? Drop a comment below. I’d love to hear your thoughts. [1] Okay, yes, before it was the web, it was the internet. And yes, the internet and the web are not the same thing. All valid points, but not the point. I’m talking about how the average person thinks about going online. First, it was "the web." Then, over time, the webbiness of the web, was lost.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
simpixelated 2y ago
The YouTube channel Technology Connections recently made a video [1] about this and used the term "Algorithmic Complacency" to encompass how many people would rather be fed content determined by their algo of choice than seek it out. But for those who do want a return to the "Web", I think there are plenty of existing tools for this. RSS feeds allow you to follow independent blogs and websites. BlueSky and Mastadon can be used to curate a list of like minded people who will suggest other cool people or content to check out. YouTube has a Subscriptions tab that is not influenced by the algorithm. That being said, I applaud anyone who wants to make the independent web more accessible and popular. We need alternatives to the infinite scroll fed to us by massive tech companies. [1] https://youtu.be/QEJpZjg8GuA https://youtu.be/QEJpZjg8GuA
- mcwhittemore 2y ago
  How do you find new RSS feeds today? RSS readers is something I've never really loved. But I also haven't tried them in a while. I should probs go look at some RSS feed readers to try
  - JohnFen 2y ago
    You should. An RSS reader has become my primary window into the web these days. It really improves the experience.
- mcwhittemore 2y ago
  Thinking about why I've tended to avoid RSS, there is a consumption vs exploration divide in my mind that I feel RSS readers lean the wrong way on. That is probs an assumption I should challenge in my own thinking.
  - simpixelated 2y ago
    At some point you have to stop exploring and actually consume what you've collected. I think that's one psychological trick of infinite scroll feeds... our minds naturally want to see what's next. Personally, I spend more time searching and saving things to my various lists instead of actually watching or reading what I've saved.
JohnFen 2y ago
> Can we bring it back? Not to destroy the ad-driven aggregators (a lot of people seem to like them), but to build something for the rest of us. I don't think that's really possible, if what you mean is an open web like it used to be. It's too far gone, too many people don't remember or never experienced what it was in its heyday, and I doubt that the attitude that everything must be monetized is going away anytime soon. Now, a "good web" protected behind login walls may be possible, but that's no longer the open web.
- mcwhittemore 2y ago
  I'm not really convinced its gone. Its small. It was small 20+ years ago too though. I think the problem now is its hard to find the web where before that was all that was.
  - JohnFen 2y ago
    Oh, it's not gone, but as you say it's small and getting smaller. About half of my regular haunts (the ones that still exist, anyway) have withdrawn from the public web in the last couple of years and gone behind login walls in order to protect against crawlers. That's why I suspect this is the direction things are going to go.
    - mcwhittemore 2y ago
      Care to share the examples?
mapoulos 2y ago
We've been in a world for 10-15 years where recommendation systems needed tons of data and tons of compute. That drove things towards a) large user bases and b) largely free-to-use, ad-supported models (it was only very expensive to produce audio and video where subscription based models worked, a la Spotify and Netflix). The resurgence of long-form text (Substack) definitely seems to rhyme with the earlier days of blogs and forums. It does seem like people still like to write things and put them on the web. What's interesting is whether the technological paradigm has changed enough to where you could get interesting get discovery without getting mired in the slop of social media.
- mcwhittemore 2y ago
  There are some interesting players taking another attempt at helping people explore the web by being aggregators - kagi.com for example. And I hope they make cool things. At the same time, I feel like we've walked that path a few times now and it hasn't made too different of an outcome. I wonder if there are laws in averages that mean it will become the same thing no matter intent. Even if that is wrong, I do worry we are stuck trying to make a faster horse.
anenefan 2y ago
I know the feeling well. I spent a few years on and off few days at a time as a distraction from the mid 00's in a design phase of a alternative area that embraced the notion of world wide web, web for all. Even way back then I was fed up with the endless near pointless search results offered up more and more. The idea in its simplest form was a limited tool that would help a website correctly tag each content page, with a value representing 200 or more definable characteristics each page could fall into - a global index could then faithfully use the values to better align search results. Unlike other SEO ideas, the tags were part of centralised service and very small token amount paid to validate each page. Also one of the things I considered important was after a given amount of time, each content page would be migrated from dynamic to static values for long term preservation - deletion was only something done as a last resort and special circumstances and thus aimed to see off content farms that would post, aim for attention and then are done with old stuff after a couple of months. (But times have changed, it's been a long period since running into a content farm.) It was actually not even part way planned, realised it was better as a separate area to the regular web and ... at some point I realised that most people would not like having to take extra steps and ... competition for a good search engine is very low, the money is in providing a higher ratio of spam to useful links, more clicks equals more money, and web site owners would probably want google or other large well used search engine company to be driving their ad revenue. Presently there may lie an answer with the use of a LLM based search helper area, even if it just has access to google's garbage, can run down the first few hundred or more results grouping said results into useful summaries and returning the handful with links that I would call truly WWW. Eventually it might inspire web designers to code more robustly or stop using external scripts that are too intrusive.. ie. You have searched for x y z ... There are 8 results where the website has expired - ignored There are 329 results where the website admin has not included a if no javascript option - ignored. There are 45 results where the website will not render as the admin has included an element that is specific to certain software - ignored There are 83 results where the website admin has not included anything more relevant than a large about content page - ignored There are 57 results where the website admin has included SEO but the site content is mostly mismatched or is no more functional than a simple banner - ignored There are 112 results where the website admin blocked older browsers as they might break their fragile site - ignored There are 94 results where the website admin has set geolocation - ignored There are 629 results where site's external scripts were found to scrape or aimed to scrape personal information not relevant to the site - ignored Top 23 results: ...

5 points by mcwhittemore 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

simpixelated 2y ago

The YouTube channel Technology Connections recently made a video [1] about this and used the term "Algorithmic Complacency" to encompass how many people would rather be fed content determined by their algo of choice than seek it out. But for those who do want a return to the "Web", I think there are plenty of existing tools for this. RSS feeds allow you to follow independent blogs and websites. BlueSky and Mastadon can be used to curate a list of like minded people who will suggest other cool people or content to check out. YouTube has a Subscriptions tab that is not influenced by the algorithm. That being said, I applaud anyone who wants to make the independent web more accessible and popular. We need alternatives to the infinite scroll fed to us by massive tech companies. [1] https://youtu.be/QEJpZjg8GuA https://youtu.be/QEJpZjg8GuA

mcwhittemore 2y ago
How do you find new RSS feeds today? RSS readers is something I've never really loved. But I also haven't tried them in a while. I should probs go look at some RSS feed readers to try
- JohnFen 2y ago
  You should. An RSS reader has become my primary window into the web these days. It really improves the experience.
mcwhittemore 2y ago
Thinking about why I've tended to avoid RSS, there is a consumption vs exploration divide in my mind that I feel RSS readers lean the wrong way on. That is probs an assumption I should challenge in my own thinking.
- simpixelated 2y ago
  At some point you have to stop exploring and actually consume what you've collected. I think that's one psychological trick of infinite scroll feeds... our minds naturally want to see what's next. Personally, I spend more time searching and saving things to my various lists instead of actually watching or reading what I've saved.

JohnFen 2y ago

> Can we bring it back? Not to destroy the ad-driven aggregators (a lot of people seem to like them), but to build something for the rest of us. I don't think that's really possible, if what you mean is an open web like it used to be. It's too far gone, too many people don't remember or never experienced what it was in its heyday, and I doubt that the attitude that everything must be monetized is going away anytime soon. Now, a "good web" protected behind login walls may be possible, but that's no longer the open web.

mcwhittemore 2y ago
I'm not really convinced its gone. Its small. It was small 20+ years ago too though. I think the problem now is its hard to find the web where before that was all that was.
- JohnFen 2y ago
  Oh, it's not gone, but as you say it's small and getting smaller. About half of my regular haunts (the ones that still exist, anyway) have withdrawn from the public web in the last couple of years and gone behind login walls in order to protect against crawlers. That's why I suspect this is the direction things are going to go.
  - mcwhittemore 2y ago
    Care to share the examples?

mapoulos 2y ago

We've been in a world for 10-15 years where recommendation systems needed tons of data and tons of compute. That drove things towards a) large user bases and b) largely free-to-use, ad-supported models (it was only very expensive to produce audio and video where subscription based models worked, a la Spotify and Netflix). The resurgence of long-form text (Substack) definitely seems to rhyme with the earlier days of blogs and forums. It does seem like people still like to write things and put them on the web. What's interesting is whether the technological paradigm has changed enough to where you could get interesting get discovery without getting mired in the slop of social media.

mcwhittemore 2y ago
There are some interesting players taking another attempt at helping people explore the web by being aggregators - kagi.com for example. And I hope they make cool things. At the same time, I feel like we've walked that path a few times now and it hasn't made too different of an outcome. I wonder if there are laws in averages that mean it will become the same thing no matter intent. Even if that is wrong, I do worry we are stuck trying to make a faster horse.

anenefan 2y ago

I know the feeling well. I spent a few years on and off few days at a time as a distraction from the mid 00's in a design phase of a alternative area that embraced the notion of world wide web, web for all. Even way back then I was fed up with the endless near pointless search results offered up more and more. The idea in its simplest form was a limited tool that would help a website correctly tag each content page, with a value representing 200 or more definable characteristics each page could fall into - a global index could then faithfully use the values to better align search results. Unlike other SEO ideas, the tags were part of centralised service and very small token amount paid to validate each page. Also one of the things I considered important was after a given amount of time, each content page would be migrated from dynamic to static values for long term preservation - deletion was only something done as a last resort and special circumstances and thus aimed to see off content farms that would post, aim for attention and then are done with old stuff after a couple of months. (But times have changed, it's been a long period since running into a content farm.) It was actually not even part way planned, realised it was better as a separate area to the regular web and ... at some point I realised that most people would not like having to take extra steps and ... competition for a good search engine is very low, the money is in providing a higher ratio of spam to useful links, more clicks equals more money, and web site owners would probably want google or other large well used search engine company to be driving their ad revenue. Presently there may lie an answer with the use of a LLM based search helper area, even if it just has access to google's garbage, can run down the first few hundred or more results grouping said results into useful summaries and returning the handful with links that I would call truly WWW. Eventually it might inspire web designers to code more robustly or stop using external scripts that are too intrusive.. ie. You have searched for x y z ... There are 8 results where the website has expired - ignored There are 329 results where the website admin has not included a if no javascript option - ignored. There are 45 results where the website will not render as the admin has included an element that is specific to certain software - ignored There are 83 results where the website admin has not included anything more relevant than a large about content page - ignored There are 57 results where the website admin has included SEO but the site content is mostly mismatched or is no more functional than a simple banner - ignored There are 112 results where the website admin blocked older browsers as they might break their fragile site - ignored There are 94 results where the website admin has set geolocation - ignored There are 629 results where site's external scripts were found to scrape or aimed to scrape personal information not relevant to the site - ignored Top 23 results: ...