5 ms·

The Internet in the early 2000s felt a little more special as compared to today, when 99.999 % of content is locked in a handful of walled gardens. I mean sure

The Internet in the early 2000s felt a little more special as compared to today, when 99.999 % of content is locked in a handful of walled gardens. I mean sure everything we had then is still possible but let’s be honest everything about the web is fine tuned to deliver ads to our eyeballs, browsers, operating systems and even protocols are being designed with ad delivery in mind. Even the privacy friendly browsers just exist to serve ads when I think about it. Kind of sad really, but I guess you could be happy as it’s so big now and there’s so much to do. Just makes you wonder what stuff would thrive if ads didn’t exist. As of now every niche thing that gets successful will be invariably pulled into the ad ecosystem as it’s very hard to say no to money. RSS wasn’t in the interest of the big platforms as it’s decentralized and there’s no good way to deliver ads through it, simple as that.

user3939382 2mo ago
> the privacy friendly browsers just exist to serve ads when I think about it Not LibreWolf. I’m also a fan of ungoogled-chromium, those are my two daily browsers.
mathieudombrock 2mo ago
What I don't understand about the "RSS can't support ads" argument is that most of my RSS feeds don't actually let me read the article. Just a headline and a snippet at most. So if I want to actually read the article I'm going to have to load their page.
- dhosek 2mo ago
  I’ve encountered feeds that do this and I tend to not keep those subscriptions long. That said, some feeds often have content that doesn’t present well in my feed reader and I’ll end up clicking to view the web presentation What I miss is that back when Safari had RSS built in was I used to just open all the new articles in tabs from an RSS list in my bookmark bar. This is the experience I really would like to recover, being able to just get a set of tabs that represent new posts at sites that I want to follow. Maybe I’ll vibe code this for myself now that I’ve given in and turned to the dark side with Claude.
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    Doesn't Firefox still have this? It's a special kind of bookmark folder populated by RSS.
    - defrost 2mo ago
      Moz Support says "Firefox's built-in support for web feeds and Live Bookmarks ended in December 2018 with version 64." I checked as I use the Feedbro extension in Firefox and Chrome family browsers for holding and updating a tree of RSS feeds and thought I'd missed a built in FF feature :/
- SanjayMehta 2mo ago
  There are some RSS feeds which let you read even their paywalled content completely, without ads. I'm guessing by accident, not design.
- singpolyma3 2mo ago
  Also you can literally insert ads into the feed content
  - TheFlyingFish 2mo ago
    Feed aggregators (inoreader, feedly) make this difficult, though. One request may end up serving any number of end users, so you can't personalize ads the same way. Good, you might say, and I wouldn't disagree, but Google et al sure would.
- watwut 2mo ago
  Google dont care about ads on their page. They care about ads on google pages.
- jjav 2mo ago
  > So if I want to actually read the article I'm going to have to load their page. Right here, that's how HN RSS feed works. I only follow HN through the RSS feed. But it only gives the title and links to content and comments. But for HN use case, that's ok IMO. Based on title I can decide if the comments might be worth it and follow the link.
drnick1 2mo ago
> everything about the web is fine tuned to deliver ads to our eyeballs, browsers, operating systems and even protocols are being designed with ad delivery in mind. I use Firefox with uBlock Origin on Linux, and haven't seen an ad in years. It's not like ads weren't a thing 20 years ago. Pop-up windows were particularly bad. Javascript, in particular, has been constantly abused against the user ever since it was created.
- mschild 2mo ago
  > Firefox with uBlock Origin on Linux Same setup and same experience. I've recently joined another company which only provided chrome with no extensions by default. I know the web is filled with ads but I'm shocked again and again when I get a glimpse into what it's like without an adblocker.
  - cwnyth 2mo ago
    There are dozens of us. Maybe one day people will realize how much better Firefox is now and how nicer the web can be with no ads.
    - anonymousiam 2mo ago
      It's not just a better user experience. It also addresses the security issues. Blocking ads will also prevent malware scripts, unscrupulous information collection, and deceptive virus infection messages. I've got friends who've been infected because they believed the popup that told them their computer had a virus, and they needed to click the link to remove it.
      - endless_smash 2mo ago
        Blocking ads is recommended by CISA. It should really be more mainstream. Some demographics are heavy ad blockers, 90%+.
    - piguin 2mo ago
      [dead]
jfengel 2mo ago
There was also .001% of the content there is now. The Internet of 2000 was microscopic. Now everyone can create content, without any of the friction of hosting it. The vast majority of it is crap, but that was always the case. The main difference between now and 30 years ago is that the Internet is vastly more diverse. It isn't just other CS majors any more. Now everyone gets to wade in the vast crap pool looking for the smidge of things that appeal to them. Meanwhile the CS majors still host their own stuff, because they can, and you find out about it via the same word of mouth.
- inigyou 2mo ago
  The .001% was the top .001% of today's content. The other 99.999% we gained was spam aimed at getting money while providing minimal value and taking minimal effort.
  - UqWBcuFx6NV4r 2mo ago
    can’t wait to hear about how some 9/11 truther blog was the cream of the crop. I’m surprised you can see anything through those rose coloured glasses. the most charitable interpretation is that the internet used to more exclusively cater to your interests specifically, which i’m sure is true. try asking most women about the internet then vs now. there are still scumbags, and one could reasonably argue that they’ve gotten worse, but at least theres more to do now.
    - pwdisswordfishq 2mo ago
      > can’t wait to hear about how some 9/11 truther blog was the cream of the crop Compared to the torrent of AI slop today, it was.
      - inigyou 2mo ago
        This is true.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
emzo 2mo ago
Google felt a little more special. "Don't be evil" and all that. Those were the days.
siren2026 2mo ago
That's exactly why I used to love tech (and working in tech) 20 years ago and why I lost faith in tech completely. We went from a bunch of open protocols and decentralized web to a full closed garden gatekeeped by a couple mega companies. It is a sad state of the world, but the MBAs and BigTech won.
- antod 2mo ago
  yeah, when I first stumbled on to the internet it was all about the protocols and specific implementations didn't matter. Then later IE dominated the web and hurt interoperability, but we fought back through the Phoenix, Firebird, Firefox era anxiously following IE6 slowly losing market share. Only to find that the war had shifted beyond clients and standards support to the sites and the power of their business models. And parallel battles for the old standards based DIY freedom lost to hyperscaler clouds and now AI. All in all compared to that, losing Google Reader seems small, but it was kinda the nexus point at the centre of it all.
  - ethagnawl 2mo ago
    > ... when I first stumbled on to the internet ... StumbleUpon used to be an endlessly entertaining way to find new content on the internet.
bandrami 2mo ago
IDK, I ran an RSS feed that had ads 20 years ago (it was a niche hobby blog and every fifth post was an ad for supplies for that hobby). It made enough to pay for the hosting.
onel 2mo ago
The main reason for that is because most of the interactions back then were based on Open standards: rss, email, etc. If we want to get back to that. We need to start using Open standards for all things: chat - signal, social media - activity pub / at proto, news/blogs - rss, long messages - email A public open standard solves most of the problems of walled gardens
Funes- 2mo ago
Ads have destroyed our culture. Just look at the fundamental change YouTube underwent in 2012 when they made all users eligible for monetization. It turned it into junk/infomercial TV.
- port11 2mo ago
  I don’t disagree with you at all, but it’s not like we didn’t have alternatives. We could’ve just paid for the content, directly subsidising the creators we like.
  - Funes- 2mo ago
    >We could’ve just paid for the content, directly subsidising the creators we like. That wasn't an option. And if it had been, they would've rolled out monetization through ads anyway. If you believe otherwise, there's too much we disagree on to sum it up here.
    - Gander5739 2mo ago
      It wasn't an option because people weren't willing to pay. A bit tautological, I know, but it simply wasn't a viable way to fund content. Think how many people use google versus paying for kagi.
      - queenkjuul 2mo ago
        There was literally no mechanism, there were no YouTube memberships, there was no Patreon. You could maybe donate to a PayPal link as a one time transaction.

user3939382 2mo ago

> the privacy friendly browsers just exist to serve ads when I think about it Not LibreWolf. I’m also a fan of ungoogled-chromium, those are my two daily browsers.

mathieudombrock 2mo ago

What I don't understand about the "RSS can't support ads" argument is that most of my RSS feeds don't actually let me read the article. Just a headline and a snippet at most. So if I want to actually read the article I'm going to have to load their page.

dhosek 2mo ago
I’ve encountered feeds that do this and I tend to not keep those subscriptions long. That said, some feeds often have content that doesn’t present well in my feed reader and I’ll end up clicking to view the web presentation What I miss is that back when Safari had RSS built in was I used to just open all the new articles in tabs from an RSS list in my bookmark bar. This is the experience I really would like to recover, being able to just get a set of tabs that represent new posts at sites that I want to follow. Maybe I’ll vibe code this for myself now that I’ve given in and turned to the dark side with Claude.
- inigyou 2mo ago
  Doesn't Firefox still have this? It's a special kind of bookmark folder populated by RSS.
  - defrost 2mo ago
    Moz Support says "Firefox's built-in support for web feeds and Live Bookmarks ended in December 2018 with version 64." I checked as I use the Feedbro extension in Firefox and Chrome family browsers for holding and updating a tree of RSS feeds and thought I'd missed a built in FF feature :/
SanjayMehta 2mo ago
There are some RSS feeds which let you read even their paywalled content completely, without ads. I'm guessing by accident, not design.
singpolyma3 2mo ago
Also you can literally insert ads into the feed content
- TheFlyingFish 2mo ago
  Feed aggregators (inoreader, feedly) make this difficult, though. One request may end up serving any number of end users, so you can't personalize ads the same way. Good, you might say, and I wouldn't disagree, but Google et al sure would.
watwut 2mo ago
Google dont care about ads on their page. They care about ads on google pages.
jjav 2mo ago
> So if I want to actually read the article I'm going to have to load their page. Right here, that's how HN RSS feed works. I only follow HN through the RSS feed. But it only gives the title and links to content and comments. But for HN use case, that's ok IMO. Based on title I can decide if the comments might be worth it and follow the link.

drnick1 2mo ago

> everything about the web is fine tuned to deliver ads to our eyeballs, browsers, operating systems and even protocols are being designed with ad delivery in mind. I use Firefox with uBlock Origin on Linux, and haven't seen an ad in years. It's not like ads weren't a thing 20 years ago. Pop-up windows were particularly bad. Javascript, in particular, has been constantly abused against the user ever since it was created.

mschild 2mo ago
> Firefox with uBlock Origin on Linux Same setup and same experience. I've recently joined another company which only provided chrome with no extensions by default. I know the web is filled with ads but I'm shocked again and again when I get a glimpse into what it's like without an adblocker.
- cwnyth 2mo ago
  There are dozens of us. Maybe one day people will realize how much better Firefox is now and how nicer the web can be with no ads.
  - anonymousiam 2mo ago
    It's not just a better user experience. It also addresses the security issues. Blocking ads will also prevent malware scripts, unscrupulous information collection, and deceptive virus infection messages. I've got friends who've been infected because they believed the popup that told them their computer had a virus, and they needed to click the link to remove it.
    - endless_smash 2mo ago
      Blocking ads is recommended by CISA. It should really be more mainstream. Some demographics are heavy ad blockers, 90%+.
  - piguin 2mo ago
    [dead]

jfengel 2mo ago

There was also .001% of the content there is now. The Internet of 2000 was microscopic. Now everyone can create content, without any of the friction of hosting it. The vast majority of it is crap, but that was always the case. The main difference between now and 30 years ago is that the Internet is vastly more diverse. It isn't just other CS majors any more. Now everyone gets to wade in the vast crap pool looking for the smidge of things that appeal to them. Meanwhile the CS majors still host their own stuff, because they can, and you find out about it via the same word of mouth.

inigyou 2mo ago
The .001% was the top .001% of today's content. The other 99.999% we gained was spam aimed at getting money while providing minimal value and taking minimal effort.
- UqWBcuFx6NV4r 2mo ago
  can’t wait to hear about how some 9/11 truther blog was the cream of the crop. I’m surprised you can see anything through those rose coloured glasses. the most charitable interpretation is that the internet used to more exclusively cater to your interests specifically, which i’m sure is true. try asking most women about the internet then vs now. there are still scumbags, and one could reasonably argue that they’ve gotten worse, but at least theres more to do now.
  - pwdisswordfishq 2mo ago
    > can’t wait to hear about how some 9/11 truther blog was the cream of the crop Compared to the torrent of AI slop today, it was.
    - inigyou 2mo ago
      This is true.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

emzo 2mo ago

Google felt a little more special. "Don't be evil" and all that. Those were the days.

siren2026 2mo ago

That's exactly why I used to love tech (and working in tech) 20 years ago and why I lost faith in tech completely. We went from a bunch of open protocols and decentralized web to a full closed garden gatekeeped by a couple mega companies. It is a sad state of the world, but the MBAs and BigTech won.

antod 2mo ago
yeah, when I first stumbled on to the internet it was all about the protocols and specific implementations didn't matter. Then later IE dominated the web and hurt interoperability, but we fought back through the Phoenix, Firebird, Firefox era anxiously following IE6 slowly losing market share. Only to find that the war had shifted beyond clients and standards support to the sites and the power of their business models. And parallel battles for the old standards based DIY freedom lost to hyperscaler clouds and now AI. All in all compared to that, losing Google Reader seems small, but it was kinda the nexus point at the centre of it all.
- ethagnawl 2mo ago
  > ... when I first stumbled on to the internet ... StumbleUpon used to be an endlessly entertaining way to find new content on the internet.

bandrami 2mo ago

IDK, I ran an RSS feed that had ads 20 years ago (it was a niche hobby blog and every fifth post was an ad for supplies for that hobby). It made enough to pay for the hosting.

onel 2mo ago

The main reason for that is because most of the interactions back then were based on Open standards: rss, email, etc. If we want to get back to that. We need to start using Open standards for all things: chat - signal, social media - activity pub / at proto, news/blogs - rss, long messages - email A public open standard solves most of the problems of walled gardens

Funes- 2mo ago

Ads have destroyed our culture. Just look at the fundamental change YouTube underwent in 2012 when they made all users eligible for monetization. It turned it into junk/infomercial TV.

port11 2mo ago
I don’t disagree with you at all, but it’s not like we didn’t have alternatives. We could’ve just paid for the content, directly subsidising the creators we like.
- Funes- 2mo ago
  >We could’ve just paid for the content, directly subsidising the creators we like. That wasn't an option. And if it had been, they would've rolled out monetization through ads anyway. If you believe otherwise, there's too much we disagree on to sum it up here.
  - Gander5739 2mo ago
    It wasn't an option because people weren't willing to pay. A bit tautological, I know, but it simply wasn't a viable way to fund content. Think how many people use google versus paying for kagi.
    - queenkjuul 2mo ago
      There was literally no mechanism, there were no YouTube memberships, there was no Patreon. You could maybe donate to a PayPal link as a one time transaction.