CDN and cybersecurity giant Cloudflare held its Q2 earnings call on Thursday, during which chief financial officer Thomas Seifert gave a concerning prediction about what the web...
I know it’s unrealistic, but what would it take to return to a previous type of Internet that wasn’t so siloed and marketed, and filled with dread Internet?
Probably less nostalgia and more open protocols. Bring back personal websites, RSS, forums and interoperable social networks. Make switching services painless, kill algorithmic engagement as the default and stop treating every click as ad inventory.
I have started going back to forums and RSS feeds when I can find them. Most of the forums though are pretty dead. I have even started using Usenet again for actual text newsgroups.
I am hoping for a bit of a resurgence as more people move away from algorithmic social media but I won’t hold my breathe on that.
Usenet still exists but there isn’t much going on these days. 99.9% of groups are completely dead but there are some that hang on. Even those have low posting numbers but not zero, so I’ll take it.
In a way, the Lemmy layer is sort of doing that. The previous type of Internet is still out there, if you just take the effort to access it / avoid the links in to the marketed sides.
I think we’d have to take money out of the equation. Without the profit, the mass farms, etc would be pointless. There’s still be trolls but it would be so much better.
I know it’s unrealistic, but what would it take to return to a previous type of Internet that wasn’t so siloed and marketed, and filled with dread Internet?
It exists but nobody wants to use it. We’re a minority. Most want to open “the app” and not spend any effort finding things.
Probably less nostalgia and more open protocols. Bring back personal websites, RSS, forums and interoperable social networks. Make switching services painless, kill algorithmic engagement as the default and stop treating every click as ad inventory.
I have started going back to forums and RSS feeds when I can find them. Most of the forums though are pretty dead. I have even started using Usenet again for actual text newsgroups.
I am hoping for a bit of a resurgence as more people move away from algorithmic social media but I won’t hold my breathe on that.
The Usenet still exists? I mean: there are still people!?
Usenet still exists but there isn’t much going on these days. 99.9% of groups are completely dead but there are some that hang on. Even those have low posting numbers but not zero, so I’ll take it.
In a way, the Lemmy layer is sort of doing that. The previous type of Internet is still out there, if you just take the effort to access it / avoid the links in to the marketed sides.
I think we’d have to take money out of the equation. Without the profit, the mass farms, etc would be pointless. There’s still be trolls but it would be so much better.
Most of that money is imaginary. It’s about the potential for an unobserved metric to yield a predicted dividend and subvert an over-hyped trend.
Lemmy compared to reddit is a great example of this