[HN Gopher] The Other Internet
___________________________________________________________________
The Other Internet
Author : ZacnyLos
Score : 112 points
Date : 2022-09-30 21:59 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.robinrendle.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.robinrendle.com)
| openfuture wrote:
| I think it's interesting he had this take from young. As I've
| grown up I've seen the internet change from whatever it was to
| whatever it is and the delta is definitely very grift-y. However
| I don't think it is fair to say it was always this way and I am
| glad that he realized that the web will be whatever we want it to
| be. Same with the earth.
| asdff wrote:
| All these "golden days" internet articles forgot about how
| predatory the environment was back then with how many websites
| were serving viruses or popups that would open faster than you
| can close them. It felt like a minefield. There were good spots
| of refuge of course but they were almost an if you know you
| know situation, some websites I would learn about through word
| of mouth in real life alone. For mainstream non techie folks,
| the internet was legitimately risky. You'd think you were
| installing the yahoo toolbar and it would just be malware. "It
| got a bunch of viruses and got slow" was a common reason to
| abandon ship and just buy a new PC.
| systems_glitch wrote:
| Probably depends a lot on age.
| draw_down wrote:
| didgetmaster wrote:
| Just like huge public libraries or our 200 channel, 24/7
| television systems; there are some real 'gems' out there on the
| Internet but they are drowned out by the 95%+ of worthless
| drivel. The task is finding meaningful content in a world of
| mostly pablum, scams, and other harmful content.
|
| With hundreds of millions of websites, you absolutely need search
| capabilities like Google (at least how it was in its early days)
| in order to find relevant information. The problem of course, is
| that the search sites are run by algorithms that attempt to
| direct your search based on criteria that is often the opposite
| of what you desire.
|
| It is definitely a 'Centralized vs Decentralized' situation. The
| Internet was originally designed to be a decentralized structure
| where every site was a pure 'peer-to-peer' connection where it
| was so easy to jump from place to place without being re-routed
| to the central players. Now all the big sites like Facebook are
| designed to be walled-gardens that want to control everything you
| see.
| xwdv wrote:
| Although we have more websites now than ever it feels like the
| internet of today is much smaller, since people are
| increasingly funneled into the same popular websites that
| control most of the market share. I used to visit new websites
| daily in the old days, now I just loop between a few big
| destinations.
|
| I don't think most people even know how to search for websites
| anymore that are not blessed by algorithms. Manual search
| skills have atrophied. The concept of websites having a
| dedicated section of links to similar sites of interest is
| extinct, perhaps even penalized by big search engines. Only a
| small subset of users still share hidden gems amongst
| themselves, speaking in hushed tones. Purveyors of the old web.
| jfengel wrote:
| I do not get the fondness for "the old web".
|
| There was a ton of crap. There are many, many more tons of
| crap today. Tik Tok will practically mainline it into your
| veins. Instagram and other social media sites exist for any
| other media types you might want. You don't need to search
| for it; the feeds will hand it to you. But I don't think of
| that as any worse than "link rings".
|
| The big aggregators may be those "same popular web sites" but
| the content is provided by the users, same as on any
| geocities site. They've just abstracted out the content
| management parts, so that the creators of that random crap
| can create random crap.
|
| I hear this a lot on Hacker News, and I can't help but wonder
| how much of it is "I loved the days when everybody on the
| Internet had to create their own web site, so their tastes
| were similar to mine because I'm also the sort of person with
| the skills and interest in creating my own web site." And if
| so, I understand why people on Hacker News might find that
| appealing, though I personally appreciate the greater breadth
| of available content now.
| sh4un wrote:
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| This resonates for me:
|
| > Whenever I tell civilians that I'm a web designer I get the
| sense that they place me in that other category
|
| It's hurtful when institutions, ideals and identities that you've
| aligned yourself with turn rotten, and sully you by implication.
| I went through a patch of never telling anyone I once worked at
| BBC, even though it's a great institution and I loved my work and
| colleagues there, because who would leave you alone with their
| kids!? Recently I've stopped saying I'm a "computer"
| scientist/techie except to other techies. Random strangers at
| parties just assume you're up to something nefarious. A writer
| maybe, who happens to be a computer guy. I get most warmth and
| connection from identifying as a "hacker". Most people then
| immediately raise the ethical question of whose "side" I am on.
| The good guys, _of course_. I feel for web designers, because I
| don 't see much good left about the modern "web" to stand up for.
| amelius wrote:
| "Programmer" is the new "banker".
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| An anecdote that I often tell as a joke, but is true: When I
| lived in San Francisco I worked in IT for a bank. I quickly
| learned that when people asked me what I did, it was safer to
| say "I'm in banking" than "I work in IT." This was even true
| not long after the Wells Fargo scandal, and in SF people
| would probably be most likely to assume I worked for them!
|
| Say what you will about the banks, at least they're the evil
| people know, I guess.
| cyberbanjo wrote:
| I think that if I had written the book in the past decade,
| perhaps Bateman would have been working in Silicon Valley,
| living in Cupertino with excursions into San Francisco or
| down to Big Sur to the Post Ranch Inn and palling around with
| Zuckerberg and dining at the French Laundry, or lunching with
| Reed Hastings at Manresa in Los Gatos, wearing a Yeezy hoodie
| and teasing girls on Tinder. -- Bret Easton Ellis (2016)
|
| https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-
| culture/a...
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Nice. There's some other tasty nuggets in that piece;
|
| "...disgusted with the values then and what it meant to be
| a man - a successful man - but where else was I going to
| go? ... The rage I felt over what was being extolled as
| success."
|
| Tones of Palahniuk maybe. Inside every Linus Torvalds or
| Richard Stallman is a painfully socialised, sublimated
| Zuckerberg that could burst out in moment of weakness.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| :s/b/w/
| xmonkee wrote:
| I left banking to become a programmer because it was so
| smutty. FML my life.
| duxup wrote:
| Things I don't tell people, unless they ask specifics and I'm
| comfortable with them.
|
| 1. I'm a web dev (I say programmer unless they ask specifics).
|
| 2. I went to a bootcamp.
|
| 3. My age.
|
| Even technical folks, other programmers, make too many
| assumptions.
|
| Even other web devs who work at company X and can't imagine
| doing anything outside their processes are a pain to talk to.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> 3. My age._
|
| Can't hide that. I have noticeably gray hair, and a few sags
| and bags. I look my age.
|
| That brings on a _huge_ prejudice, from my fellow travelers
| in tech. Despite being very respectful of women, people of
| color, gender identification, etc., they have _absolutely no
| hesitation_ in calling me "OK boomer," and assuming that I
| don't have any idea of what I'm doing, in today's tech scene.
|
| It used to absolutely _infuriate_ me, but I 've learned to
| accept it, as I am no longer looking for work, and have come
| to realize that I'm just not wanted. I won't go, where I'm
| not wanted. I stopped attending meetups, because I was
| getting tired of the "circle of avoidance," and people (even
| other "boomers") avoiding eye contact, etc.
|
| Just for the record, I work harder, these days, than I ever
| did, and I learn something new every day.
|
| Otherwise, I have _plenty_ of hooks for others to sneer at,
| and I 've had them all my career (I started as a self-taught
| EE, and have been self-taught for over 30 years, in software
| -that is "even worse" than a bootcamp; I'm also very open,
| friendly, and non-competitive, which elicits contempt).
|
| Also, for the record, I believe in Integrity, Honor, Honesty,
| Kindness, and Open-mindedness, which also elicits contempt.
| People think Honorable folks are stupid and naive.
| duxup wrote:
| Yeah I used to be able to hide it and just now, can't. Hair
| showing too :(
| noobermin wrote:
| I happened to read this cat's article on shadows[0]. Fantastic
| stuff, he seems like a real interesting fellow.
|
| [0] https://www.robinrendle.com/essays/in-praise-of-shadows/
| moolcool wrote:
| The video referenced by this article is fantastic, well worth the
| watch.
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| I subscribed to Folding Ideas, ever since his NFT video
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g
| [deleted]
| shrewdcomputer wrote:
| I write a fair amount for work, mostly dev related content. The
| idea of 1000 high-quality words a day for a month is
| terrifying.
|
| The bit where he breaks down how these ghost writers actually
| need to write 1000 an hour to make a living shows how absurd
| and broken it all is.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| Posted on website dedicated to raising money for mile-high
| teetering tower of grifts.
| ynbl_ wrote:
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| Sigh, I remember this other internet and I wasn't even a kid any
| more then. I remember half of it going down because of the Morris
| worm. Actually noticing that things had become unresponsive,
| before the news of the worm broke. And that was a big deal, a
| program abusing the wide-open, trusted nature of the internet
| then, and yet, the Morris worm was more part of the culture than
| an attack on it.
|
| I remember staring in disbelief as the same Canter & Siegel spam
| showed up in every single Usenet newsgroup to which I was
| subscribed, and I remember the firestorm of repercussions, little
| realizing at the time that the spam was the new normal, and the
| outrage would over time get lost in the noise.
|
| I remember enthusiastically making my own personal web site, my
| own little contribution to the "old" internet, and how happy I
| was to finally get some hosting that didn't put a banner ad - a
| single static banner ad - at the top of my site.
|
| I remember Facebook being mostly about friends keeping in touch,
| and posting life events and cute pictures of the kids.
|
| The "old" internet went away in stages. Or more correctly, got
| drowned out. It was maybe 1% of the size of the current internet,
| and if you look hard enough it's probably mostly still there...
| just drowned out by 99% that is noise.
| rambambram wrote:
| > to finally get some hosting that didn't put a banner ad - a
| single static banner ad - at the top of my site.
|
| This is something that I really forgot, but now that you
| mention...
| systems_glitch wrote:
| Didn't everyone have a 1px frame at the top to catch that? :P
| rambambram wrote:
| Ooh, smart hack! I just accepted the ads back then, I
| guess.
| mjr00 wrote:
| The independent internet that's driven by passion and a desire to
| build is still out there, it's just getting increasingly hard to
| find.
|
| Search is ultimately the tool that ties the internet together;
| after all, you can't consume content that you can't find in the
| first place. But in the modern, corporation-first internet,
| Google is highly incentivized to _not_ surface independent
| websites, for a variety of reasons:
|
| * Websites run Google ads, so they don't punish sites that run
| tons of ads, as a user-focused search engine might.
|
| * Large, well-known websites are safe to surface to the top.
| Surfacing the "wrong" site for a highly political topic could get
| Google in trouble.[0]
|
| * ... and frankly, most users are looking for these sites anyway.
| There's way more teenagers and non-techies using Google for a
| quick answer on a cell phone than there are people trying to find
| interesting independent blogs.
|
| * For-profit sites are more likely to invest in SEO than a small,
| for-passion website.
|
| All this adds up to an independent internet that's there, but
| mostly hidden.
|
| I honestly think in the too-near future we'll see the independent
| internet relegated to Usenet status. Major websites and other
| businesses (who are willing to pay a fee/have legal contact info)
| can opt-in to be part of an ISP's internet package, and anything
| outside will be inaccessible. The recent KiwiFarms debacle makes
| me think this is coming sooner than we think, as this is a very
| easy way to keep "harmful" content inaccessible.
|
| [0] This is why Google image search is so incredibly useless now;
| there was a media blitz a few years after its release where
| journalists found it would give racist responses with certain
| pictures of Black people. It's safer for Google to just make it
| so general that it's basically worthless.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Small sites can fight against this by bringing back pre-google
| concepts like webrings and affiliated sites. Very few people
| will find your niche site, so it's important to help them find
| other related niche sites.
| thewebcount wrote:
| I've seen webrings brought up repeatedly here on HN. Did
| those ever work well? I always saw them as one of the ever-
| increasing number of grifts mentioned in the article. It
| seemed like when you joined one, it didn't really help
| traffic to your site, but did help redirect the traffic you
| already had coming to your page to other sites in the ring. I
| tried it once and found it didn't increase traffic at all,
| but that's just one data point, so maybe there were some that
| worked as intended?
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Web rings are more of a long term community building tool
| than one weird trick to boost traffic. A thriving online
| community does bring organic traffic, but it takes a long
| time to build.
|
| Also really doubtful the people who leave using the webring
| were going to stay around anyway. It's probably better to
| work on building a compelling website than to turn it into
| a maze with no exits.
| jmbwell wrote:
| The relegation is already underway. Google has already decided
| that HTTP-only sites without recent updates don't belong in top
| results. Lots of great work from just a few years ago is
| invisible to most internet users, while "content aggregators"
| and monolithic platforms soak up all the eyeballs.
|
| You have to use something else entirely (like Wiby) to find the
| perfectly usable, valuable work that isn't on a major platform.
| It /may as well/ be Usenet for how available it is.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| eg https://search.marginalia.nu ; ymmv
| AlbertCory wrote:
| This isn't about the internet at all, but about music: Greil
| Marcus, one of the deans of rock criticism, treasures all the
| oddball stuff like this guy is talking about. He calls it "the
| old weird America."
|
| You can still find the old weird Web. You just have to steer left
| when the road sign says "Big Corporate Web, this way ===>"
| pessimizer wrote:
| We rely on Big Corporate Web to provide the signage.
| beauHD wrote:
| > I am on the side of Neopets forums and Geocities and uploading
| mp3s of shitty songs onto your iWeb website. I'm on the side of
| blogging and learning about ARIA roles and finding a small circle
| of nerds
|
| Worth reading 'What is the Small Web?'[0]
|
| It's worth having your own little corner of the Internet that
| isn't social media, but a site you own and maintain with care, a
| labor of love, so to speak. And you have full control over it.
| You can't get 'suspended' for sharing an edgy meme.
|
| [0] https://ar.al/2020/08/07/what-is-the-small-web/
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Also, part of the grift of the modern internet is people
| charging money to run your own site. You can run your own
| Wordpress box, but it'll probably get hacked, because Wordpress
| is a pile of dependencies with a huge attack surface area. So
| you end up paying money to Automattic to run your WP instance
| for you. Meanwhile, if you carefully craft your own website,
| you can just not include obvious things like log4j and be free
| from 99.9% of exploits.
| beauHD wrote:
| Well you could go with a static site and host on Github
| Pages[0], which is free (as of time of writing). You have to
| learn Jekyll[1] though if you're running a blog, which is a
| way to publish without manually editing templates and god
| forbid, writing some HTML.
|
| Then you just buy a domain for 10 years in advance and you're
| set. 10 years is a long time in tech and is plenty of time to
| produce meaningful content that makes a dent.
|
| [0] https://pages.github.com/
|
| [1] https://docs.github.com/en/pages/setting-up-a-github-
| pages-s...
| teucris wrote:
| There will always be a server or router between your box and
| the internet. Whoever owns it can decide to disconnect you any
| time.
| nullc wrote:
| Further down the stack is much more likely to be deemed a
| common carrier. The exact status depends on where you are and
| there is more than one piece of ongoing litigation over it
| (e.g. https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/7987167/american-
| cable-... ).
|
| But _traditionally_ your statement is why common carrier
| status has existed.
|
| Even without the stronger protection of common carrier laws
| providers further down the stack are much less likely to take
| action against you. The difference in probabilities matters
| even though when it isn't as strong as clear protection under
| the law.
| rrdharan wrote:
| You definitely can still get suspended, no matter where you are
| or how you're hosting, depending on how edgy you are and how
| much attention it gets.
| beauHD wrote:
| > depending on how edgy you are
|
| I was talking about Facebook's dreaded 'Community Standards'
| here, to be specific. I've had content censored that I
| acquired from Facebook itself, and the original post where I
| got it from wasn't taken down from Facebook. Such hypocrisy.
|
| I've done this enough times that Facebook threatened to
| permaban me from their platform. So I run my little corner of
| the net where I can post what I want (within reason). By
| 'Edgy meme' I mean something that a behemoth like Facebook
| deems censorable.
| alexb_ wrote:
| If you live in a country with strong free speech rights such
| as the US, not really.
| hellojesus wrote:
| Domain registrars go so far as to drop clients. See the
| DailyStormer as an example.
|
| You _could_ host via IP only and then control a separate,
| static domain that has your most recent IP. Not sure ISPs
| are allowed to drop customers for edgy chat. I would hope
| they are seen as a utility in that instance.
| alangibson wrote:
| For anything controversial, getting dropped by Cloudflare
| is a bunch larger concern than getting dropped by your
| registrar. You'll be DDOSed offline immediately and
| there's no Cloudflare.ag alternative to turn to. Just
| look at what happened to the scumbags at Kiwi Farms.
| syrrim wrote:
| KF came back eventually. It took a bit of work on their
| part, but then you are unlikely to face as much pressure
| as they did. They even kept their original domain name,
| so any bookmarks or in-bound links work as they did
| before after a month long vacation.
| PubliusMI wrote:
| tomrod wrote:
| Referring to the mention of the gig economy:
|
| The gig economy works well if you rent your capital (e.g AirBnB)
| but has poor ROI if you supply labor (Ubereats, etc.). Do you get
| cash for your time? Sure. But the opportunity costs are large.
|
| I apologize I don't have a clear reference, the research project
| was reported through JPMC Institute[1] but my memory is coming
| from conversations with Fiona Grieg and Chris Wheat who were
| working on this topic at the JPMCI.
|
| [1] https://thebusinessjournal.com/why-the-gig-economy-may-
| not-b...
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > The gig economy works well if you rent your capital (e.g
| AirBnB) but has poor ROI if you supply labor (Ubereats, etc.).
|
| Looks like a large unemployment/underemployment (of people)
| problem.
| jhoelzel wrote:
| I like this but the internet can give you at leas as much as it
| can take from you and a solution to all our problems is the same
| as on the streets: "be the change you want to be"
| Jimajesty wrote:
| I really like the author's sentiment, but for an article
| published in 2022 it seems to not really consider the last twenty
| years or so. Their references to a better, less exploitative
| internet seem to exist in a 2000-bubble. Today, videogames are
| right smack dab in the middle of what he perceives as the big
| grift, and I'm sure books would be too if only publishers had an
| easy to implement model for doing so.
|
| I'd be more interested if the author gave clear examples of where
| this works in today's internet, because saying you are part of
| the Geocities or Neopets forums side of the internet is like the
| old man yelling on his lawn lamenting how much better things were
| when he was young.
| noobermin wrote:
| Just because they uses old examples doesn't invalidate their
| point, although yes, following the rise of Gacha games in Japan
| and Asian markets essentially a lot of games today key in some
| gacha like elements.
| tsm wrote:
| I haven't seen it happen with novels (yet), but I was a little
| outraged to buy a weekly planner that featured mindfulness
| exercises and such to focus on each week...and find it laden
| with advertisements for the author's website, companion videos,
| etc.
|
| I have no interest in using the internet for that; I bought a
| dead tree specifically to avoid my computer for a minute.
| lxe wrote:
| I've dove relatively deep into the world of NFTs in the last few
| months. Not the tech side, but the selling/buying side of it. The
| culture can easily one-up the grift ideology of the "passive
| income" content production world or even the MLM niches.
|
| The constant inundation with scams coupled with a mix of kayfabe
| personalities who claim to believe in something while playing the
| game of trying to hype up stuff for their "marks" is absolutely
| incredible.
| ehnto wrote:
| I've tried to influence eCommerce to have a little bit less grift
| where I have influence. You can absolutely have a solid shopping
| website without the newsletter signups, re-targeting and
| tracking, sneaky cart items and whatnot. Commerce is a core part
| of our society, and it doesn't have to be a grift just because
| it's online.
|
| But it's a tough, tough sell. For a business owner who sees the
| internet as just a tool their business uses, the state of the
| internet isn't their concern. It can even feel a bit like a black
| box to some people, with online customers being about as sentient
| as NPCs in their minds. I once had a client who was sending an
| email list marketing emails -twice a day-. Every time he did it,
| he saw a handful of sales, so he would just do it again, get a
| handful more. How people felt about the emails didn't even cross
| his mind.
| jaclaz wrote:
| If only I could convince web shops (and their web connections)
| that I buy every six months or so a box of batteries (for
| hearing aids) since a few years and that I would actually
| appreciate to receive a sort of periodical reminder for them,
| but that I do not need (hopefully) too soon another TV set and
| washer (that I just bought), it would be a little step in the
| right direction.
| dspillett wrote:
| You'll never convince them of that.
|
| Or if you do it'll just change their tack from "we think you
| might want X, have a look at our X" to "we hear you don't
| want X, but let us tell you about our X and see if we can't
| change your mind".
| thewebcount wrote:
| Oh man, this reminds me of a conversation I had with a
| friend:
|
| Me: How was your weekend?
|
| Her: Really annoying. I want out to the neighborhood bar
| with my girlfriend and this guy kept hitting on me.
|
| Me: Did you tell him that the girl you were with is your
| girlfriend and that you're not interested in guys?
|
| Her: Oh hell no! If I do that, then it becomes a challenge
| for them and they want to prove to me they can convert me
| to being straight.
|
| Me: ...
|
| I mean has this ever worked in the history of humanity?
| ryandrake wrote:
| > I once had a client who was sending an email list marketing
| emails -twice a day-. Every time he did it, he saw a handful of
| sales, so he would just do it again, get a handful more. How
| people felt about the emails didn't even cross his mind.
|
| I [briefly] worked with an entrepreneur like your client. It
| was all about collecting his leads and getting a fraction of
| them to pay. To him, the Internet was nothing but a "channel"
| full of human wallets that you suck money through. He even had
| all these physical euphemisms he used to describe his actions
| against his customers. We'll _hit_ them with a popup and then
| _convert_ them. Our backend will _blast_ them with E-mail
| marketing and _harvest_ some more through our partners. Oh, no!
| Regulation! I guess we need to _consent_ them now so we can
| _blast_ them more and _hit_ them with another newsletter. Same
| "the Internet is full of NPCs to exploit" mindset. I didn't
| last and felt like I needed a week-long bleach shower after
| parting ways.
| didgetmaster wrote:
| It is the same mentality that the robocallers use. Call and
| annoy a million people with your computer program in hopes of
| getting a handful to fall for your overpriced offering
| (assuming of course that the whole product or service isn't
| just a scam).
| asdff wrote:
| It's not a hope though, its a guarantee they will gather
| some easily scammed people with enough coverage. Some
| people are not all there perhaps and fall victim to these
| scams all the time. Those Nigerian prince emails that
| started perhaps 30 years ago wouldn't continue to be sent
| today, if they didn't work for a sliver of the population
| they routinely victimize.
| duxup wrote:
| And in the end... it is their site to be horrible with if they
| want.
|
| That's the internet, that freedom includes a lot of people
| being free to do what they want with their site. It was that
| way in the "good old days" too. Just that then eCommerce and
| other tools were not as available.
|
| Often in other discussions where I hear folks bemoan how "not
| everything has to be an app". I agree, but it's also rando
| company who paid for their site, their app... to be an app.
| They're really not interested in the rando guy's opinion on how
| his site should be devolved who isn't buying from him anyway.
|
| I do what I can to shepherd people I work with away from
| annoying things, but in the end it is their site.
| smm11 wrote:
| 1000 words a day? The former newspaper reporter in me would have
| loved such a cushy gig.
| gwbrooks wrote:
| Right?!?
|
| I'm not watching an hour-long YouTube video if he hook is some
| flavor of "Yep, right there a half step above chattel slavery,
| we have... writing 1,000 words a day."
| atemerev wrote:
| What they are even talking about? Internet has raised me out of
| poverty.
| the-printer wrote:
| The post-COVID lament over the internet in comparison of the
| author's experience with it during their youth is becoming a
| regular thing.
|
| I'm aware that the author is engaged in a project that is sort of
| like an alternative face for the web. It's a nice step forward.
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