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I've been trying to come to terms with the modern internet just not being for me. It's honestly taken a bit of emotional processing, growing up a very lonely te

by donatj 26d ago

I've been trying to come to terms with the modern internet just not being for me. It's honestly taken a bit of emotional processing, growing up a very lonely teen in the late 90s the internet was a haven and a lifeline. It's where I met a number of my current friends. It was my community. The modern internet and especially social media is just... bizarre. I open Facebook and it's all videos of body horror bullshit because I linger on them because my brain can't help but stare. I open X and it's all engagement bait from major creators I don't give a damn about. I can switch to the Following tab and it's a lot of political opinions I'd just rather not hear about. Bluesky was a decent little community for a minute. I was having old internet fun. And then it just died, I don't know. All the energy left the room. Hacker News and my very curated Reddit are about all I even use the internet for these days, and Reddit is on some absolute mission to make the experience miserable. There was a very popular thread on here the other day basically talking about how these modern algorithms are the product, and how they're actually great and everyone loves them despite denying it... I'm just like is my brain so alien? I actively want and desire these services to be interesting or fun to use and they're just... not. They're boring. There's nothing I want to see, so I don't use them anymore. It's not a leave Meta/X/etc in a huff like some of my more reactionary friends. It's just I don't even think to open them anymore because there's nothing worth my time.

ryandvm 26d ago
We need legislation that requires all platforms to support a mandatory "algorithm opt out". News, social media, shopping, chatbots, everything - they all become far less predatory and addictive if there's no user stats driving the presentation. Sure your online experience would become boring and, horror of horrors, less profitable, but at least you wouldn't have to be googling anti-depressants in between your customized bursts of dopamine.
- beanjuiceII 26d ago
  please no more legislation, especially for 'thing i dont like'
  - canelonesdeverd 26d ago
    Won't somebody think of the struggling megacorporations?
  - mrhottakes 26d ago
    Yeah, looking around at society today it's obvious the main problem is the government trying too hard and passing too much legislation.
    - donatj 26d ago
      I mean I do think regulatory capture is at least in part what's allowed corporations to conquer the web
      - voakbasda 25d ago
        Everything. It is what allows corporations to conquer everything.
        nativeit 22d ago
        Anti-competitive tactics aren’t in play at all?
- card_zero 26d ago
  This was announced three days ago in Australia, the world's ban lab. Or at least the upcoming proposal of draft legislation was announced.
- Gud 25d ago
  You're idea is well intentioned, but this legislation will be used by the well known platforms to burden the heterogeneous web and kill it with legislation. What we need is a 2nd renaissance of small discussion forums. You don't need to use X, Facebook, instagram and the rest of the commercial web. Seek alternative, REAL COMMUNITIES.
  - nativeit 22d ago
    What you’re arguing for is essentially a return to pre-1990s enforcement of antitrust laws. Not new legislation, just the pragmatic application of existing legislation.
pmdr 26d ago
> Bluesky was a decent little community for a minute. I found it interesting before the mass-exodus from Twitter/X. Now it's mostly politics and negativity. Not much different in that regard from X, just at the other end of the political spectrum. X still has, for me at least, most of the relevant accounts.
- swed420 26d ago
  The problem with X is it forces you to hand over personal information to sign up, and even then many have said it leaves them in a "we're having difficulties" loop. It might be a fair trade if this exchange of info helped them eliminate bots, but it sounds like bots on X are more rampant than ever, so no thanks to that.
  - pmdr 25d ago
    > but it sounds like bots on X are more rampant than ever, so no thanks to that. I used to get a lot of spambot followers, but that has ceased entirely in the past year. I would say the bot problem is no longer that relevant at the moment, but rather people posting AI replies are.
    - swed420 25d ago
      For some people it might be hard to tell or may even be non existent in their sphere of it. But if it's blanket rejecting certain signups based on identity, that suggests the company is interested in censorship and echo chambers, which means who knows what other dark patterns and less-detectable bot nets it has behind the scenes. Doesn't seem worth it imo, except maybe for people who want their opinion echoed back to them (as well as other momentum that takes time to dissipate).
- packetlost 26d ago
  Bluesky has gotten considerably more tolerable by... adding an algorithmic feed ("For You"). It's developed by just some guy with the server running in his living room or something. I know people in this thread are down on algorithms, but a non-attention hacking algorithm is super, super nice because it helps cut out crap and show content in the niches I care about.
medstrom 26d ago
I keep thinking of phpBB. I loved posting on phpBB forums back in the day. Checking in every so often to see if anyone had replied to my posts. Often recognizing the same people, but also a healthy flow of new people. Oddly... there was no such thing as push notifications and yet you could reliably count on people to check back. I guess because people were not coming from a feed or Reddit-like aggregator, they'd entered the conversation more intentionally? No, it's probably more that a given thread was one conversation, like a GitHub issue, not a tree of comments with nested branches. Linear forum threads are great like that, posting is like joining a group of people by the vending machine, you're now in the group because you interrupted everyone else when you chimed in with your two cents, but that also means you belong there now. Oh, and even more relevant: upvotes have zero effect on what post gets seen first! So it's not a popularity contest for the most pithy one-liner that gets upvoted to the top. You can write long-form posts and people will see them and engage on a human level. I guess you can boil this down to "the absence of an algorithm": nothing has attempted to optimize what to put in front of their eyeballs, and so they engage with your long-form post. But when we talk about "opting out of algorithms", remember it's not just ML/AI algorithms: even Reddit/HN style upvotes are already an algorithm! It's obviously powerful enough that it has quite an effect. Not sure why modern alternatives to phpBB, like Discourse, feel so impersonal and boring. I rarely feel the urge to check back on a Discourse thread, but that may just be me.
- packetlost 26d ago
  I was very happy to discover someone is building a phpBB-clone in ATProto (the thing that powers BlueSky): https://atmobb.app/ https://atmobb.app/ There's some hope that a small facet of forum culture can come back...
- tdeck 26d ago
  More of a vBulletin man myself, but I get what you mean. There were so many small, autonomous little niche communities and people took their time to learn how each one worked. Forums had their problems but I do think the time before upvotes/down votes was a very different dynamic, where not every judgment felt like it was being transmitted.
swed420 26d ago
Your experience resonates. This gives me a ray of hope, if a bold enough group of people are willing to give it a shot: https://www.noemamag.com/the-last-days-of-social-media/ https://www.noemamag.com/the-last-days-of-social-media/
baggachipz 25d ago
> Reddit is on some absolute mission to make the experience miserable Lemmy/Piefed are a pretty good approximation of the "old" reddit: community of people you remember, geek-centered for the most part, better discussion. It fills the void for me, and there's no algorithm to monetize or incentive for advertising. Well worth the few bucks a month I give my server admin.
nobody9999 25d ago
What's wrong with the Fediverse[0]? Mastodon, Lemmy, Pixelfed, etc? It's (relatively) simple to run your own instance and/or connect to other instances as well. It's still pretty small and has no profit motive. I get that Meta and X leave a really bad taste in your mouth, but that's because they want to use you to make money. Not telling you what to do, just suggesting an alternative. [0] https://fediverse.party/ https://fediverse.party/ Edit: Fixed formatting.
cedws 24d ago
I’m a 2000s kid and feel the same way. The internet was so different even just 10 years ago. I’ve come to the conclusion that smartphones ruined it. They brought the masses online who didn’t care for internet culture. They also gave more access to children, leading to the sanitised environment we have today.
- mbirth 23d ago
  Also: something something every village had their idiot, now they form (online) villages
mbirth 23d ago
Twitter has the “Following” tab that only shows stuff from the accounts you’re following. Facebook has something similar, just a bit more hidden. But IMHO the bigger problem is that people became less social in general. I remember those fearmongering messages doing rounds which made people lock up their profiles and not post anything about their holidays as burglars could use that information to break into their houses. Then there’s this thing where most people try to craft this perfect online presence with only carefully (and often heavily edited) photos and nothing too personal. And in general, people seem to be much less open than “back in the early days”. Say “Hi!” to someone in the wrong mood and you’ll just get insta-blocked. Everybody is just caressing their profile but don’t want to have anything to do with the “social” part of the social network. Well, apart from collecting likes.

by donatj 26d ago

ryandvm 26d ago

We need legislation that requires all platforms to support a mandatory "algorithm opt out". News, social media, shopping, chatbots, everything - they all become far less predatory and addictive if there's no user stats driving the presentation. Sure your online experience would become boring and, horror of horrors, less profitable, but at least you wouldn't have to be googling anti-depressants in between your customized bursts of dopamine.

beanjuiceII 26d ago
please no more legislation, especially for 'thing i dont like'
- canelonesdeverd 26d ago
  Won't somebody think of the struggling megacorporations?
- mrhottakes 26d ago
  Yeah, looking around at society today it's obvious the main problem is the government trying too hard and passing too much legislation.
  - donatj 26d ago
    I mean I do think regulatory capture is at least in part what's allowed corporations to conquer the web
    - voakbasda 25d ago
      Everything. It is what allows corporations to conquer everything.
      - nativeit 22d ago
        Anti-competitive tactics aren’t in play at all?
card_zero 26d ago
This was announced three days ago in Australia, the world's ban lab. Or at least the upcoming proposal of draft legislation was announced.
Gud 25d ago
You're idea is well intentioned, but this legislation will be used by the well known platforms to burden the heterogeneous web and kill it with legislation. What we need is a 2nd renaissance of small discussion forums. You don't need to use X, Facebook, instagram and the rest of the commercial web. Seek alternative, REAL COMMUNITIES.
- nativeit 22d ago
  What you’re arguing for is essentially a return to pre-1990s enforcement of antitrust laws. Not new legislation, just the pragmatic application of existing legislation.

pmdr 26d ago

> Bluesky was a decent little community for a minute. I found it interesting before the mass-exodus from Twitter/X. Now it's mostly politics and negativity. Not much different in that regard from X, just at the other end of the political spectrum. X still has, for me at least, most of the relevant accounts.

swed420 26d ago
The problem with X is it forces you to hand over personal information to sign up, and even then many have said it leaves them in a "we're having difficulties" loop. It might be a fair trade if this exchange of info helped them eliminate bots, but it sounds like bots on X are more rampant than ever, so no thanks to that.
- pmdr 25d ago
  > but it sounds like bots on X are more rampant than ever, so no thanks to that. I used to get a lot of spambot followers, but that has ceased entirely in the past year. I would say the bot problem is no longer that relevant at the moment, but rather people posting AI replies are.
  - swed420 25d ago
    For some people it might be hard to tell or may even be non existent in their sphere of it. But if it's blanket rejecting certain signups based on identity, that suggests the company is interested in censorship and echo chambers, which means who knows what other dark patterns and less-detectable bot nets it has behind the scenes. Doesn't seem worth it imo, except maybe for people who want their opinion echoed back to them (as well as other momentum that takes time to dissipate).
packetlost 26d ago
Bluesky has gotten considerably more tolerable by... adding an algorithmic feed ("For You"). It's developed by just some guy with the server running in his living room or something. I know people in this thread are down on algorithms, but a non-attention hacking algorithm is super, super nice because it helps cut out crap and show content in the niches I care about.

medstrom 26d ago

I keep thinking of phpBB. I loved posting on phpBB forums back in the day. Checking in every so often to see if anyone had replied to my posts. Often recognizing the same people, but also a healthy flow of new people. Oddly... there was no such thing as push notifications and yet you could reliably count on people to check back. I guess because people were not coming from a feed or Reddit-like aggregator, they'd entered the conversation more intentionally? No, it's probably more that a given thread was one conversation, like a GitHub issue, not a tree of comments with nested branches. Linear forum threads are great like that, posting is like joining a group of people by the vending machine, you're now in the group because you interrupted everyone else when you chimed in with your two cents, but that also means you belong there now. Oh, and even more relevant: upvotes have zero effect on what post gets seen first! So it's not a popularity contest for the most pithy one-liner that gets upvoted to the top. You can write long-form posts and people will see them and engage on a human level. I guess you can boil this down to "the absence of an algorithm": nothing has attempted to optimize what to put in front of their eyeballs, and so they engage with your long-form post. But when we talk about "opting out of algorithms", remember it's not just ML/AI algorithms: even Reddit/HN style upvotes are already an algorithm! It's obviously powerful enough that it has quite an effect. Not sure why modern alternatives to phpBB, like Discourse, feel so impersonal and boring. I rarely feel the urge to check back on a Discourse thread, but that may just be me.

packetlost 26d ago
I was very happy to discover someone is building a phpBB-clone in ATProto (the thing that powers BlueSky): https://atmobb.app/ https://atmobb.app/ There's some hope that a small facet of forum culture can come back...
tdeck 26d ago
More of a vBulletin man myself, but I get what you mean. There were so many small, autonomous little niche communities and people took their time to learn how each one worked. Forums had their problems but I do think the time before upvotes/down votes was a very different dynamic, where not every judgment felt like it was being transmitted.

swed420 26d ago

Your experience resonates. This gives me a ray of hope, if a bold enough group of people are willing to give it a shot: https://www.noemamag.com/the-last-days-of-social-media/ https://www.noemamag.com/the-last-days-of-social-media/

baggachipz 25d ago

> Reddit is on some absolute mission to make the experience miserable Lemmy/Piefed are a pretty good approximation of the "old" reddit: community of people you remember, geek-centered for the most part, better discussion. It fills the void for me, and there's no algorithm to monetize or incentive for advertising. Well worth the few bucks a month I give my server admin.

nobody9999 25d ago

What's wrong with the Fediverse[0]? Mastodon, Lemmy, Pixelfed, etc? It's (relatively) simple to run your own instance and/or connect to other instances as well. It's still pretty small and has no profit motive. I get that Meta and X leave a really bad taste in your mouth, but that's because they want to use you to make money. Not telling you what to do, just suggesting an alternative. [0] https://fediverse.party/ https://fediverse.party/ Edit: Fixed formatting.

cedws 24d ago

I’m a 2000s kid and feel the same way. The internet was so different even just 10 years ago. I’ve come to the conclusion that smartphones ruined it. They brought the masses online who didn’t care for internet culture. They also gave more access to children, leading to the sanitised environment we have today.

mbirth 23d ago
Also: something something every village had their idiot, now they form (online) villages

mbirth 23d ago

Twitter has the “Following” tab that only shows stuff from the accounts you’re following. Facebook has something similar, just a bit more hidden. But IMHO the bigger problem is that people became less social in general. I remember those fearmongering messages doing rounds which made people lock up their profiles and not post anything about their holidays as burglars could use that information to break into their houses. Then there’s this thing where most people try to craft this perfect online presence with only carefully (and often heavily edited) photos and nothing too personal. And in general, people seem to be much less open than “back in the early days”. Say “Hi!” to someone in the wrong mood and you’ll just get insta-blocked. Everybody is just caressing their profile but don’t want to have anything to do with the “social” part of the social network. Well, apart from collecting likes.