4 ms·

Yes, but here's the realization I had some time ago: no one cares. The billions of people online don't care. The internet is overwhelmingly accessed from mobile

Yes, but here's the realization I had some time ago: no one cares. The billions of people online don't care. The internet is overwhelmingly accessed from mobile devices and used chiefly for shopping, scrolling through TikTok, watching Netflix, swiping on Tinder, and so on. More importantly, we don't care, not really. We pay lip service to it, but what have we done to foster the open / small web today? Many of us work at companies that aren't moving the needle in the right direction, and in our free time, we seem to be content debating AI-generated think pieces and press releases from AI vendors. As I write this, in the top ten HN stories, I see press releases from Deepmind, Cursor, Tailscale, and Qwen. Even when commercial interests don't dominate and someone's passion project makes it to the top, how often do we offer meaningful encouragement or support? The "old web" is something we like as an abstract idea, but in reality, we don't lift a finger to preserve it. I'm guilty too. When I'm done writing this comment, I'll probably go back to doomscrolling on walled-garden social media for a while.

bruce511 6mo ago
To be honest, I'm not sure I even understand what the term "Open web" is supposed to mean? Does it mean that each individual and company is hosting their stuff on their own physical hardware? Is it OK to use say AWS? Does it mean that Facebook is the Open Web as long as you work at Facebook? But it's not if you don't? Is any site with a login "not the open web"? So if I'm hosting on my own metal, paid for by paying subscribers, then I'm not Open Web? To your point, I think no one cares because the term is so meaningless that it's irrelevant. Actual real people aren't interested in some technical distinction which is completely unrelated to their goals for being on the web in the first place. It seems to me that the whole concept of "Open web" is so poorly defined, and the reasons for caring so obscure, that it pretty much never comes up anyway. Joe Public doesn't care because there's no reason to care, and he doesn't even know it's "a thing".
- echelon 6mo ago
  A world where hyperscalers don't dictate the technology choices of 99.99% of people and totally control distribution. A world where platform taxes and gatekeeping don't stifle innovation or put a ceiling on startups. A world where the balance of power is more evenly distributed. A world where single giant point of failures can't dictate the security posture and privacy of the entire civilization. The brief period of time between 1993 and 2008.
  - jacquesm 6mo ago
    The no monoculture one is the big one for me. And I think 2008 is very generous.
    - bruce511 6mo ago
      I get the concept of this at a principle level. But how does it play out for you? I mean, to what extent do you succumb to the monoculture because while principles are good, you live in the real world? So, like, what phone OS do you use? There's not much choice but did you choose Android over iOS because it's more open? Or did you go the whole way and use PalmOS or Symbian? Do you pick airlines based on what planes they fly? Do you choose Bing over Google? I say this not to judge but rather to highlight the wide gap between principle and reality. We live in a real world, and the world consolidates behind a small number of providers because that has proven to be a beneficial strategy. (And yes, those providers can then abuse us.) But I don't want to choose between 20 political parties, or 10 credit card processors or have to build apps for 15 phone OS's. The sadness of losing the early days of choice and wildness are not limited to the web. Before that we lost the 20 brands of PC (all with custom OS) that we had in the 80s. Every new industry goes through this process, and every generation misses the wild heady days of its youth.
      - jacquesm 6mo ago
        > So, like, what phone OS do you use? Nokia N800. > Do you pick airlines based on what planes they fly? I stopped flying entirely. > Do you choose Bing over Google? Still using Google but working very hard on moving away from it. Yes, I too live in the real world and I'm a really annoying customer for banks, insurance companies and my government by insisting they serve me without bending over and adopting some eco-system that I do not subscribe to. I have a need to interact with my bank, my government, my insurance company and my kids schools and I point blank refuse to be sucked into any of their app driven eco systems. I'll take it to court if that's what it takes.
        bruce511 6mo ago
- cosmicgadget 6mo ago
  > Is any site with a login "not the open web"? This one. The open web is freely accessible to anyone on the internet. > So if I'm hosting on my own metal, paid for by paying subscribers, then I'm not Open Web? Yes. It's not necessarily bad, it's just not open.
  - bruce511 6mo ago
    Thanks for the feedback. So hosting on say Wix is still Open Web? I suppose, is the converse free? Is a site that allows access without a login Open Web? Like say YouTube?
    - cosmicgadget 6mo ago
      I know indie web camp has a thing against hosting services and probably the small web people would also say blogspot and wordpress and wix are too corpo. So imho drawing the distinction at not requiring payment/login works as an open web definition. And if self-hosting is a requirement for some people, there are other terms to use. Youtube, Substack, Medium and the like are open-ish. They're far more of a heavyweight platform than a web host or publishing tool. They could become walled with the flip of a switch. And they can be ad-walled which is testing the limits of openness.
      - JKCalhoun 6mo ago
        If I go to Wix, Substack, Medium and I'm tracked with cookies, sent analytics to Google, a popup begging to allow notifications, a subscription—not "open".
kunai 6mo ago
The reason why no one cares is because most well-adjusted adults have never interacted with the web or its many tendrils as much as the patrons of this website (and others like it) have.
pdonis 6mo ago
> When I'm done writing this comment, I'll probably go back to doomscrolling on walled-garden social media for a while. I won't. I don't do social media. I have a Facebook account but I never use it. I don't even have a Twitter account. I don't use TikTok or any other such apps. If I'm using my smartphone and it's not for a call, texting, or an essential app like my bank's, it means I'm reading an e-book on it. (It's true that I get most of my ebooks from walled gardens--Google and Amazon. Unfortunately the vast majority of freely available ebooks are simply unreadable because of crappy formatting. But it's still not social media.) But I'm an extreme outlier. I wish I weren't, and to be honest I'm not sure I understand exactly why I am. But that's how it appears to be.
- alephnerd 6mo ago
  > I don't do social media You do realize Hacker News is social media right? And that too owned and operated by YCombinator. And unscrupulous data crawlers have been mining HN's datasets for years. Heck, there's a fairly robust live HN dataset on Hugging Face right now [0]. OP is right. [0] - https://huggingface.co/datasets/open-index/hacker-news https://huggingface.co/datasets/open-index/hacker-news
  - gausswho 6mo ago
    How many times must we trundle underfoot this lazy canard that HN is social media. A link aggregator with comments is not what anyone thinks of for that term.
    - dyauspitr 6mo ago
      I mean, there is discussion and a sense of community here. I’m not sure what exactly defines social media, but this is more than just a link aggregator.
      - Jensson 6mo ago
        Old forums weren't called social media. I think for it to be social media it has to be about your social graph, here on HN I almost never read peoples names and I don't really connect with people so it isn't social media, its just media with comments. If I could subscribe to peoples feeds and such then it would be social media, but HN doesn't have that feature.
cosmicgadget 6mo ago
> what have we done to foster the open / small web today? Personally, I did a bunch of labeling of my indieweb index. Hopefully a fair chunk of HN users read a blog or two but its understandable if the news has stolen a lot of attention. That's all it takes. Nobody has to quit their day job or create an open Tiktok alternative, the old web just needs patrons (with clicks, comments, or hrefs). If you prefer the walled gardens, there is nothing wrong with that. But there are a lot of open web contributors out there.

bruce511 6mo ago

To be honest, I'm not sure I even understand what the term "Open web" is supposed to mean? Does it mean that each individual and company is hosting their stuff on their own physical hardware? Is it OK to use say AWS? Does it mean that Facebook is the Open Web as long as you work at Facebook? But it's not if you don't? Is any site with a login "not the open web"? So if I'm hosting on my own metal, paid for by paying subscribers, then I'm not Open Web? To your point, I think no one cares because the term is so meaningless that it's irrelevant. Actual real people aren't interested in some technical distinction which is completely unrelated to their goals for being on the web in the first place. It seems to me that the whole concept of "Open web" is so poorly defined, and the reasons for caring so obscure, that it pretty much never comes up anyway. Joe Public doesn't care because there's no reason to care, and he doesn't even know it's "a thing".

echelon 6mo ago
A world where hyperscalers don't dictate the technology choices of 99.99% of people and totally control distribution. A world where platform taxes and gatekeeping don't stifle innovation or put a ceiling on startups. A world where the balance of power is more evenly distributed. A world where single giant point of failures can't dictate the security posture and privacy of the entire civilization. The brief period of time between 1993 and 2008.
- jacquesm 6mo ago
  The no monoculture one is the big one for me. And I think 2008 is very generous.
  - bruce511 6mo ago
    I get the concept of this at a principle level. But how does it play out for you? I mean, to what extent do you succumb to the monoculture because while principles are good, you live in the real world? So, like, what phone OS do you use? There's not much choice but did you choose Android over iOS because it's more open? Or did you go the whole way and use PalmOS or Symbian? Do you pick airlines based on what planes they fly? Do you choose Bing over Google? I say this not to judge but rather to highlight the wide gap between principle and reality. We live in a real world, and the world consolidates behind a small number of providers because that has proven to be a beneficial strategy. (And yes, those providers can then abuse us.) But I don't want to choose between 20 political parties, or 10 credit card processors or have to build apps for 15 phone OS's. The sadness of losing the early days of choice and wildness are not limited to the web. Before that we lost the 20 brands of PC (all with custom OS) that we had in the 80s. Every new industry goes through this process, and every generation misses the wild heady days of its youth.
    - jacquesm 6mo ago
      > So, like, what phone OS do you use? Nokia N800. > Do you pick airlines based on what planes they fly? I stopped flying entirely. > Do you choose Bing over Google? Still using Google but working very hard on moving away from it. Yes, I too live in the real world and I'm a really annoying customer for banks, insurance companies and my government by insisting they serve me without bending over and adopting some eco-system that I do not subscribe to. I have a need to interact with my bank, my government, my insurance company and my kids schools and I point blank refuse to be sucked into any of their app driven eco systems. I'll take it to court if that's what it takes.
      - bruce511 6mo ago
cosmicgadget 6mo ago
> Is any site with a login "not the open web"? This one. The open web is freely accessible to anyone on the internet. > So if I'm hosting on my own metal, paid for by paying subscribers, then I'm not Open Web? Yes. It's not necessarily bad, it's just not open.
- bruce511 6mo ago
  Thanks for the feedback. So hosting on say Wix is still Open Web? I suppose, is the converse free? Is a site that allows access without a login Open Web? Like say YouTube?
  - cosmicgadget 6mo ago
    I know indie web camp has a thing against hosting services and probably the small web people would also say blogspot and wordpress and wix are too corpo. So imho drawing the distinction at not requiring payment/login works as an open web definition. And if self-hosting is a requirement for some people, there are other terms to use. Youtube, Substack, Medium and the like are open-ish. They're far more of a heavyweight platform than a web host or publishing tool. They could become walled with the flip of a switch. And they can be ad-walled which is testing the limits of openness.
    - JKCalhoun 6mo ago
      If I go to Wix, Substack, Medium and I'm tracked with cookies, sent analytics to Google, a popup begging to allow notifications, a subscription—not "open".

kunai 6mo ago

The reason why no one cares is because most well-adjusted adults have never interacted with the web or its many tendrils as much as the patrons of this website (and others like it) have.

pdonis 6mo ago

> When I'm done writing this comment, I'll probably go back to doomscrolling on walled-garden social media for a while. I won't. I don't do social media. I have a Facebook account but I never use it. I don't even have a Twitter account. I don't use TikTok or any other such apps. If I'm using my smartphone and it's not for a call, texting, or an essential app like my bank's, it means I'm reading an e-book on it. (It's true that I get most of my ebooks from walled gardens--Google and Amazon. Unfortunately the vast majority of freely available ebooks are simply unreadable because of crappy formatting. But it's still not social media.) But I'm an extreme outlier. I wish I weren't, and to be honest I'm not sure I understand exactly why I am. But that's how it appears to be.

alephnerd 6mo ago
> I don't do social media You do realize Hacker News is social media right? And that too owned and operated by YCombinator. And unscrupulous data crawlers have been mining HN's datasets for years. Heck, there's a fairly robust live HN dataset on Hugging Face right now [0]. OP is right. [0] - https://huggingface.co/datasets/open-index/hacker-news https://huggingface.co/datasets/open-index/hacker-news
- gausswho 6mo ago
  How many times must we trundle underfoot this lazy canard that HN is social media. A link aggregator with comments is not what anyone thinks of for that term.
  - dyauspitr 6mo ago
    I mean, there is discussion and a sense of community here. I’m not sure what exactly defines social media, but this is more than just a link aggregator.
    - Jensson 6mo ago
      Old forums weren't called social media. I think for it to be social media it has to be about your social graph, here on HN I almost never read peoples names and I don't really connect with people so it isn't social media, its just media with comments. If I could subscribe to peoples feeds and such then it would be social media, but HN doesn't have that feature.

cosmicgadget 6mo ago

> what have we done to foster the open / small web today? Personally, I did a bunch of labeling of my indieweb index. Hopefully a fair chunk of HN users read a blog or two but its understandable if the news has stolen a lot of attention. That's all it takes. Nobody has to quit their day job or create an open Tiktok alternative, the old web just needs patrons (with clicks, comments, or hrefs). If you prefer the walled gardens, there is nothing wrong with that. But there are a lot of open web contributors out there.