4 ms·

This framing sets up variables incorrectly. People have only a limited amount of time, energy, and hence capacity to process information in a day. People used

This framing sets up variables incorrectly. People have only a limited amount of time, energy, and hence capacity to process information in a day. People used to go and are still going to facebook, because Facebook makes some part of that equation easier. There’s many knock on effects, but the issue that is the biggest factor which will prevent people from following.

iamnothere 3mo ago
“People” != Internet people. “People” at large were not part of the early Internet. They came much later and turned it into a shopping mall/surveillance hub. I would love to return to a smaller Internet without the masses. We did just fine.
- fluoridation 3mo ago
  >I would love to return to a smaller Internet without the masses. Really? I would consider myself an "Internet person" in the sense you're saying. I spend most of my time, if not on old-school forums, certainly on discussion forums like this one and imageboards. I don't find that the existence of those other platforms affects me much, besides allowing me to use them when I'm the mood to do so, and if they went away I would neither mourn it nor cheer it.
  - iamnothere 3mo ago
    The early Internet had many more small personal and hobby sites, and it was easier to find them. Some are still there, but they get drowned out in the noise. If the commercial noise were gone, in some hypothetical new web, personal sites would be all that remains. The Gemini protocol space is somewhat like this now, it’s very cozy. (But I’d prefer a Gemini-like web with guaranteed privacy and anonymity.)
    - TFNA 3mo ago
      I am a former blogger, people have regarded me as a entertaining writer with a knack for words, and yet I have zero interest in going back to writing things on the internet. The world has changed in key ways. Firstly, the vast majority of people interested in topics and hobbies I’d like to write about no longer read longform text: the general public, and even many nerdier people, now prefer short videos, podcasts, or Instagram image posts. Younger people are unlikely to visit any third-party website at all outside of social-media walled gardens or phone apps. So, one simply cannot build much of an audience any more, except for bots. Secondly, those bots can scrape the content that authentic human beings produce, then pass it through an LLM to rewrite, and repost it on a site laden with advertisements in order to generate profit. This is happening a lot now.
      - iamnothere 3mo ago
        Have you looked into Gemini (the protocol)? Lots of people are expressing themselves there through text alone. And there’s a great culture of response-by-email that’s very reminiscent of the early (pre-blog) web. Regardless, not all writers will write forever, not all writers have previously considered themselves as such. It’s good to reinvent yourself. As for AI, the fear of bot scraping is something people are going to have to move past. AI training is ingesting almost all art regardless of medium. What are you going to do, abandon art to become an accountant? I suppose there is always live performance art. Cat’s out of the bag for everything else, though. Slop is slop, and it’s going to be around until we can’t make enough energy to churn it out anymore.
        TFNA 3mo ago
        In the heyday of blogging, it was pretty common when interacting IRL with someone interested in a particular hobby or interest, to hear that they followed certain blogs that served as a locus for the community. I have never heard anyone IRL bring up Gemini the protocol. Not even once. So, again, someone posting on Gemini will probably find almost no audience compared to the old blogosphere.
        iamnothere 3mo ago
  - anthk 3mo ago
    The early internet predates imageboards. You found GB/SNES/MD emulators in personal pages. JS was almost not used, active X crap was everywhere. Installing GNU/Linux was really difficult, but you could set it all offline. Getting a multi-CD or DVD release was a bargain instead of downloading everything. *BSD where for corporations or universities with ISDN/broadband and tons of time to build ports, because OpenBSD CD's were copyrighted. You could get a floppy and netinstall, better if you had a fast connection. Fora were far more ubiquituous and streaming as they said was so-so. Even 480p was something like "HD" for its day, at least for streamed video for 1024x768 resolutions. The rest was a blocky mess with low bitrate DivX videos. You know what DivX/XVid is right? The 2000's were more like bridge era as tons of people still pirated tons of good 90's series such as Northern Exposure and The X Files among blockbusters. Lots of people escaped to the internet to get what they coudln't IRL. Movies, scifi-books, GNU/Linux and indie games, manganimes, a truckload of them. After that you just got the corporate internet with streaming platforms offering even worse products than the ones we got in the 90's and not to mention the shitty cinema and subpar from the mid 2000's anywhere modulo HL2 and a few exceptions. You have bug ridden games with DLC's, bot infected propaganda sites like X and walled gardens as Discord and the like.
smalltorch 3mo ago
>This framing sets up variables incorrectly. What are the variables that would cause a shift a to more sovereign and secure populace in your mind? For me, the variable/impetus was knowledge it was even possible to easily set up your own space. The realization that 'Oh, we can connect without the middle man' Between the original Internet and the beginnings of the 'new' centralized internet built on top of it, a entire generation was not aware (and still largely is not) that you can easily create your own networks.
- intended 3mo ago
  I took some time to approach this. I think there are no ways to set this up at scale. The populace has too many things to do, for a singular set of behaviors to prevail. Unless those behaviors were critical to survival (and even then it wont be universal coverage.)

iamnothere 3mo ago

“People” != Internet people. “People” at large were not part of the early Internet. They came much later and turned it into a shopping mall/surveillance hub. I would love to return to a smaller Internet without the masses. We did just fine.

fluoridation 3mo ago
>I would love to return to a smaller Internet without the masses. Really? I would consider myself an "Internet person" in the sense you're saying. I spend most of my time, if not on old-school forums, certainly on discussion forums like this one and imageboards. I don't find that the existence of those other platforms affects me much, besides allowing me to use them when I'm the mood to do so, and if they went away I would neither mourn it nor cheer it.
- iamnothere 3mo ago
  The early Internet had many more small personal and hobby sites, and it was easier to find them. Some are still there, but they get drowned out in the noise. If the commercial noise were gone, in some hypothetical new web, personal sites would be all that remains. The Gemini protocol space is somewhat like this now, it’s very cozy. (But I’d prefer a Gemini-like web with guaranteed privacy and anonymity.)
  - TFNA 3mo ago
    I am a former blogger, people have regarded me as a entertaining writer with a knack for words, and yet I have zero interest in going back to writing things on the internet. The world has changed in key ways. Firstly, the vast majority of people interested in topics and hobbies I’d like to write about no longer read longform text: the general public, and even many nerdier people, now prefer short videos, podcasts, or Instagram image posts. Younger people are unlikely to visit any third-party website at all outside of social-media walled gardens or phone apps. So, one simply cannot build much of an audience any more, except for bots. Secondly, those bots can scrape the content that authentic human beings produce, then pass it through an LLM to rewrite, and repost it on a site laden with advertisements in order to generate profit. This is happening a lot now.
    - iamnothere 3mo ago
      Have you looked into Gemini (the protocol)? Lots of people are expressing themselves there through text alone. And there’s a great culture of response-by-email that’s very reminiscent of the early (pre-blog) web. Regardless, not all writers will write forever, not all writers have previously considered themselves as such. It’s good to reinvent yourself. As for AI, the fear of bot scraping is something people are going to have to move past. AI training is ingesting almost all art regardless of medium. What are you going to do, abandon art to become an accountant? I suppose there is always live performance art. Cat’s out of the bag for everything else, though. Slop is slop, and it’s going to be around until we can’t make enough energy to churn it out anymore.
      - TFNA 3mo ago
        In the heyday of blogging, it was pretty common when interacting IRL with someone interested in a particular hobby or interest, to hear that they followed certain blogs that served as a locus for the community. I have never heard anyone IRL bring up Gemini the protocol. Not even once. So, again, someone posting on Gemini will probably find almost no audience compared to the old blogosphere.
        iamnothere 3mo ago
- anthk 3mo ago
  The early internet predates imageboards. You found GB/SNES/MD emulators in personal pages. JS was almost not used, active X crap was everywhere. Installing GNU/Linux was really difficult, but you could set it all offline. Getting a multi-CD or DVD release was a bargain instead of downloading everything. *BSD where for corporations or universities with ISDN/broadband and tons of time to build ports, because OpenBSD CD's were copyrighted. You could get a floppy and netinstall, better if you had a fast connection. Fora were far more ubiquituous and streaming as they said was so-so. Even 480p was something like "HD" for its day, at least for streamed video for 1024x768 resolutions. The rest was a blocky mess with low bitrate DivX videos. You know what DivX/XVid is right? The 2000's were more like bridge era as tons of people still pirated tons of good 90's series such as Northern Exposure and The X Files among blockbusters. Lots of people escaped to the internet to get what they coudln't IRL. Movies, scifi-books, GNU/Linux and indie games, manganimes, a truckload of them. After that you just got the corporate internet with streaming platforms offering even worse products than the ones we got in the 90's and not to mention the shitty cinema and subpar from the mid 2000's anywhere modulo HL2 and a few exceptions. You have bug ridden games with DLC's, bot infected propaganda sites like X and walled gardens as Discord and the like.

smalltorch 3mo ago

>This framing sets up variables incorrectly. What are the variables that would cause a shift a to more sovereign and secure populace in your mind? For me, the variable/impetus was knowledge it was even possible to easily set up your own space. The realization that 'Oh, we can connect without the middle man' Between the original Internet and the beginnings of the 'new' centralized internet built on top of it, a entire generation was not aware (and still largely is not) that you can easily create your own networks.

intended 3mo ago
I took some time to approach this. I think there are no ways to set this up at scale. The populace has too many things to do, for a singular set of behaviors to prevail. Unless those behaviors were critical to survival (and even then it wont be universal coverage.)