The problem isn't the web, the problem is greed is becoming more and more acceptable with every passing year. It's consuming everything.
But really who can blame them? Housing, health, cars, everything is unaffordable. Who can afford to be not greedy? People who would have otherwise lived quiet, content lives are now clamoring to get to the top of the hill just to survive before it all topples over.
Unfortunately, the worst of the greed is being driven by people who can afford anything and only need more money because it's their measurement of their self worth.
It's always amusing to me when I see people who only interact with a tiny percentage of the web saying that it's time to burn everything down and star again. Do these people know other websites exist? I would hope a tech journalist would.
Its the other way around; you might be the one seeing a tiny portion (curated blogs, specialty forums like HN etc). The majority of the internet is SEO garbage, LLM garbage and walled gardens
Dana White is the president of the ufc and he was complaining about some MMA forum one time and said he doesn't listen to the internet - he has twitter on his phone.
The sad thing about his misguided statement is that I think society nurtured an entire generation of twitter journalists.
The web was a moment in time. We are far beyond that moment. Apps, walled gardens, LLM generated content, and ads eroded it away. Unless the youth take to, promote and use, the web I don’t see the situation improving.
I think that's fair. I have a project to rebuild the "web" and have to catch when I get it wrong. We already have multiple webs and I don't believe a better one is that hard to get to.
I'm having trouble envisioning a positive future, maybe the web will rot but if we don't make something better of that corpse someone with bad intentions will.
An we aren't making much to better the web either. We really need new ideas before it's too late and the web just surrenders to be net negative for the people or just boring.
The web is essentially already dead to me. HN and perhaps 3 or 4 other sites are the only place I spend any time any longer. I seem to lean instead on LLMs more and more. And so far, not disappointed.
(Which may say more about how low the bar is these days with our enshittified Web.)
yeah, unfortunately the people writing the articles are not exactly the same people responsible for monetizing the website and probably they are at odds :/
something like a government. It is (exactly) the same problem as the one which leads to physical states forming: a state of nature with simple rules becomes gradually optimized for deception and violence (or whatever the internet equivalents of those are---manipulation, impersonation, hacking, extortion?---and then when it gets bad enough a 'state' is formed to do something about it.
The social and technological infrastructure for a digital 'state' doesn't exist at the moment but there's no reason it couldn't.
Well, one could argue there is a state at present, just, that it is not a very good one. In which case the necessity is the digital equivalent of a 'revolution' against it.
For a specific example it is not hard to imagine a parallel-universe internet which punishes fraudulent behavior by banning actors from all of its territory. Or which imposes transaction costs on things that are presently free (email, etc) to prevent spam. Or which coordinates micropayments in lieu of advertising/manipulation funding. Or which guarantees that the equivalent of domains never change hands, to prevent the problem of domains being taken after they expire and used for nefarious purposes...
Of course this raises all sorts of other concerns (cf how incensed people become by the idea of using real identities, age verification, or any other threats of censorship). But that is the same problem as the question of what makes physical states 'legitimate': how do you build an institution which has enough legitimacy that people buy into it instead of rejecting it? By guaranteeing rights, having good leadership, having good constitutional processes, whatever else... it is 'the' hard problem of civilization, and probably there is no perfect solution, but that doesn't mean you get to get away with not solving it by ignoring it; refusing to face it directly means just defaulting to a particular outcome without getting to even debate the tradeoffs of the choice you have made.
https://archive.is/sNbrl
https://unwall.app/www.wired.com/story/let-the-internet-die/
The problem isn't the web, the problem is greed is becoming more and more acceptable with every passing year. It's consuming everything.
But really who can blame them? Housing, health, cars, everything is unaffordable. Who can afford to be not greedy? People who would have otherwise lived quiet, content lives are now clamoring to get to the top of the hill just to survive before it all topples over.
Unfortunately, the worst of the greed is being driven by people who can afford anything and only need more money because it's their measurement of their self worth.
I think people arent more greedy. the problem is more that people can now do harmful things to a lot of other people who arent their direct peers.
It's always amusing to me when I see people who only interact with a tiny percentage of the web saying that it's time to burn everything down and star again. Do these people know other websites exist? I would hope a tech journalist would.
Its the other way around; you might be the one seeing a tiny portion (curated blogs, specialty forums like HN etc). The majority of the internet is SEO garbage, LLM garbage and walled gardens
Dana White is the president of the ufc and he was complaining about some MMA forum one time and said he doesn't listen to the internet - he has twitter on his phone.
The sad thing about his misguided statement is that I think society nurtured an entire generation of twitter journalists.
The web was a moment in time. We are far beyond that moment. Apps, walled gardens, LLM generated content, and ads eroded it away. Unless the youth take to, promote and use, the web I don’t see the situation improving.
Any piece that starts off by conflating the internet and the web isn’t worth reading.
Not just that, it seems to conflate "the internet" and "social media apps"
I think that's fair. I have a project to rebuild the "web" and have to catch when I get it wrong. We already have multiple webs and I don't believe a better one is that hard to get to.
I'm having trouble envisioning a positive future, maybe the web will rot but if we don't make something better of that corpse someone with bad intentions will.
An we aren't making much to better the web either. We really need new ideas before it's too late and the web just surrenders to be net negative for the people or just boring.
The internet has been a shambling zombie since Eternal September started.
Never give up. Adapt, overcome.
The web is essentially already dead to me. HN and perhaps 3 or 4 other sites are the only place I spend any time any longer. I seem to lean instead on LLMs more and more. And so far, not disappointed.
(Which may say more about how low the bar is these days with our enshittified Web.)
Do you just comment without reading the articles or what? Because if you click the links then you’re obviously reading things from other sites.
Paywalled and ad-ridden article telling me what is wrong with the internet.
This reminds me of "Don't complain about the traffic: YOU are the traffic".
yeah, unfortunately the people writing the articles are not exactly the same people responsible for monetizing the website and probably they are at odds :/
Was just about to post the same thing!
"We're going to start over, and this time we won't make the same mistakes!"
Lol.
We already have Internet2, do we need Internet3?
We need internetminusads.
Don’t let the door hit ya where god split ya!
The stuff this article is talking about is not the Internet. It's more like a good chunk of the web ("web 2.0"), social media, and forums.
I don't entirely disagree. While we're at it lets let played-out Internet culture (memes, etc.) die and lets do something new.
The Internet is wires, routers, switches, and IP.
reminds me of the faux "new internet" pitch from silicon valley. in tone at least.
it's very funny that this is paywalled
Paywalled article.
Also, how do you plan to start over without inviting all the same people problems that existed before?
something like a government. It is (exactly) the same problem as the one which leads to physical states forming: a state of nature with simple rules becomes gradually optimized for deception and violence (or whatever the internet equivalents of those are---manipulation, impersonation, hacking, extortion?---and then when it gets bad enough a 'state' is formed to do something about it.
The social and technological infrastructure for a digital 'state' doesn't exist at the moment but there's no reason it couldn't.
Well, one could argue there is a state at present, just, that it is not a very good one. In which case the necessity is the digital equivalent of a 'revolution' against it.
For a specific example it is not hard to imagine a parallel-universe internet which punishes fraudulent behavior by banning actors from all of its territory. Or which imposes transaction costs on things that are presently free (email, etc) to prevent spam. Or which coordinates micropayments in lieu of advertising/manipulation funding. Or which guarantees that the equivalent of domains never change hands, to prevent the problem of domains being taken after they expire and used for nefarious purposes...
Of course this raises all sorts of other concerns (cf how incensed people become by the idea of using real identities, age verification, or any other threats of censorship). But that is the same problem as the question of what makes physical states 'legitimate': how do you build an institution which has enough legitimacy that people buy into it instead of rejecting it? By guaranteeing rights, having good leadership, having good constitutional processes, whatever else... it is 'the' hard problem of civilization, and probably there is no perfect solution, but that doesn't mean you get to get away with not solving it by ignoring it; refusing to face it directly means just defaulting to a particular outcome without getting to even debate the tradeoffs of the choice you have made.
With Blackjack and Hookers.
Ah, never mind, forget the whole thing.