3 ms·

To give it a different light: by using an indie web approach (i.e. self host), there is an intrinsic guarantee that a publisher has put at least some effort and

To give it a different light: by using an indie web approach (i.e. self host), there is an intrinsic guarantee that a publisher has put at least some effort and resources to make their materials public. This ensures that the published materials have certain authenticity and inherent amount of quality. Publishing them "the indie way" functions as a kind of proof of work: not a guarantee of excellence, but evidence that something meaningful was at stake in producing and sharing it. By contrast, the corporate web has driven the cost of publishing effectively to 0. This single fact opens the floodgates to noise, spam, and irrelevance at an unprecedented scale. The core problem is that the average consumer cannot easily distinguish between these two fundamentally different universes. Loud, low-effort content often masquerades as significance, while quiet, honest, and carefully produced work is overlooked. As a result, authenticity is drowned out by volume, and signal is mistaken for noise. To sum it up: this is not so much a problem of the internet as a lack of discernment among its users.

CGamesPlay 10mo ago
> To sum it up: this is not so much a problem of the internet as a lack of discernment among its users. This is very true. I've found that there's more good content than there ever was before, but that there's also much more bad content, too, so the good is harder to find. RSS helps me, curated newsletters help me. What else helps build this discernment?
- nicbou 10mo ago
  Hacker News, plus a few specific authors who link to others. Human curation is still where it’s at.
- Kovah 10mo ago
  Sorry for the shameless plug, but I built [Cloudhiker](https://cloudhiker.net https://cloudhiker.net) exactly for this: exploring great websites.
  - deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
- cosmicgadget 10mo ago
  Organic links from trusted sources. "I trust Blogger X so I trust links from their blog."
eleventen 10mo ago
IME, this is just about the opposite of true. I recently did a deep dive of an (allegedly) human-curated selection of 40K blogs containing 600K posts. I got the list from Kagi’s Small Web Index [1]. I haven’t published anything about it yet, but the takeaway is that nostalgia for the IndieWeb is largely misplaced. The overwhelming majority of was 2010s era “content marketing” SEO slop. The next largest slice was esoteric nostalgia content. Like, “Look at these antique toys/books/movies/etc!”. You’d be shocked at the volume of this still being written by retirees on Blogger (no shade, it’s good to have a hobby, but goddamn there are a lot of you). The slice of “things an average person might plausibly care to look at” was vanishingly small. There are no spam filters, mods, or ways to report abuse when you run your content mill on your own domain. Like you, I was somewhat surprised by this result. I have to assume this is little more than a marketing ploy by Kagi to turn content producers who want clicks into Kagi customers. That list is not suited for any other purpose I can discern. [1] https://github.com/kagisearch/smallweb https://github.com/kagisearch/smallweb
- econ 10mo ago
  I once spend half a day or so gathering RSS feeds from fortune 500 companies press releases. I expected it to be mostly bullshit but was pleasantly surprised. Apparently if one spends enough millions on doing something there is no room for bullshit in the publication.
  - cosmicgadget 10mo ago
    Pleasantly surprised? I would think that these feeds would consist of product and company announcements and this would be the expected/appropriate content. Did you find something less sterile?
    - econ 10mo ago
      To convince you I would really need to rebuild this thing and show it side by side with blogs and news outlets. To give one example, at the time I gathered f500 feeds my other feed sets (tens of thousands) suffered horribly from echo chamber effect. I had endless headlines announcing that David Bowie died. Something like half of it. I don't find that a particularly interesting topic. I have my own memories of his work and have little need for more. Perhaps you would like to read 20 of those? Surely not thousands? It isn't that it isn't a noteworthy event but it drowns out everything else. Meanwhile Walmart is talking about donating returned Lego to charities. Exon is talking about a giant ammonia deal to make carbon neutral hydrogen and GM talks about their next generation software platform to help bring long term continuous innovation to customers through over-the-air updates. They apparently have tons of diagnostic data and are looking to make it more practical complete with remote tuning for old clunkers. This to me is quite a lot more interesting than say cbnc talking about war with iran, if bitcoin will survive and that Tesla stock is down???? I really needed more articles about those topics? I thought I already got a million of those. No way in hell I will open those links.
FarmerPotato 10mo ago
Thank you. We should each try to be authentic, pay the cost, and hope that is what gets us recognized by an audience we value. Historical parallel: the advent of newspapers showed the same catastrophe.
andai 10mo ago
Yeah, until I hook up Claude to my NeoCities ;)
Yokohiii 10mo ago
This comment is an excellent example of low quality content. It's all wrong and hallucinated to point out a conflict between things that do not exist. An AI can generate this crap, but only if you ask it the wrong way. Maybe publishing on HN should have a cost.

CGamesPlay 10mo ago

> To sum it up: this is not so much a problem of the internet as a lack of discernment among its users. This is very true. I've found that there's more good content than there ever was before, but that there's also much more bad content, too, so the good is harder to find. RSS helps me, curated newsletters help me. What else helps build this discernment?

nicbou 10mo ago
Hacker News, plus a few specific authors who link to others. Human curation is still where it’s at.
Kovah 10mo ago
Sorry for the shameless plug, but I built [Cloudhiker](https://cloudhiker.net https://cloudhiker.net) exactly for this: exploring great websites.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
cosmicgadget 10mo ago
Organic links from trusted sources. "I trust Blogger X so I trust links from their blog."

eleventen 10mo ago

IME, this is just about the opposite of true. I recently did a deep dive of an (allegedly) human-curated selection of 40K blogs containing 600K posts. I got the list from Kagi’s Small Web Index [1]. I haven’t published anything about it yet, but the takeaway is that nostalgia for the IndieWeb is largely misplaced. The overwhelming majority of was 2010s era “content marketing” SEO slop. The next largest slice was esoteric nostalgia content. Like, “Look at these antique toys/books/movies/etc!”. You’d be shocked at the volume of this still being written by retirees on Blogger (no shade, it’s good to have a hobby, but goddamn there are a lot of you). The slice of “things an average person might plausibly care to look at” was vanishingly small. There are no spam filters, mods, or ways to report abuse when you run your content mill on your own domain. Like you, I was somewhat surprised by this result. I have to assume this is little more than a marketing ploy by Kagi to turn content producers who want clicks into Kagi customers. That list is not suited for any other purpose I can discern. [1] https://github.com/kagisearch/smallweb https://github.com/kagisearch/smallweb

econ 10mo ago
I once spend half a day or so gathering RSS feeds from fortune 500 companies press releases. I expected it to be mostly bullshit but was pleasantly surprised. Apparently if one spends enough millions on doing something there is no room for bullshit in the publication.
- cosmicgadget 10mo ago
  Pleasantly surprised? I would think that these feeds would consist of product and company announcements and this would be the expected/appropriate content. Did you find something less sterile?
  - econ 10mo ago
    To convince you I would really need to rebuild this thing and show it side by side with blogs and news outlets. To give one example, at the time I gathered f500 feeds my other feed sets (tens of thousands) suffered horribly from echo chamber effect. I had endless headlines announcing that David Bowie died. Something like half of it. I don't find that a particularly interesting topic. I have my own memories of his work and have little need for more. Perhaps you would like to read 20 of those? Surely not thousands? It isn't that it isn't a noteworthy event but it drowns out everything else. Meanwhile Walmart is talking about donating returned Lego to charities. Exon is talking about a giant ammonia deal to make carbon neutral hydrogen and GM talks about their next generation software platform to help bring long term continuous innovation to customers through over-the-air updates. They apparently have tons of diagnostic data and are looking to make it more practical complete with remote tuning for old clunkers. This to me is quite a lot more interesting than say cbnc talking about war with iran, if bitcoin will survive and that Tesla stock is down???? I really needed more articles about those topics? I thought I already got a million of those. No way in hell I will open those links.

FarmerPotato 10mo ago

Thank you. We should each try to be authentic, pay the cost, and hope that is what gets us recognized by an audience we value. Historical parallel: the advent of newspapers showed the same catastrophe.

andai 10mo ago

Yeah, until I hook up Claude to my NeoCities ;)

Yokohiii 10mo ago

This comment is an excellent example of low quality content. It's all wrong and hallucinated to point out a conflict between things that do not exist. An AI can generate this crap, but only if you ask it the wrong way. Maybe publishing on HN should have a cost.