We Finally Have Proof That the Internet Is Worse
We Finally Have Proof That the Internet Is Worse
We Finally Have Proof That the Internet Is Worse::High-profile lawsuits against Google and Amazon have revealed Silicon Valley’s vise grip on our lives.
it's so sad. this is going to sound pathetic, but -- i remember in high school browsing reddit and twitter and 4chan and almost getting a buzz off of it, the interactions felt so cutting-edge, funny and fresh and perfectly transient, it felt like i had a voice for the first time, able to post and have people like what i posted.
and now we're kinda just...going thru the motions and everything is worse and companies are just blindly nuking things we used to hold sacred
I hear you. When I was a teen, Internet was:
A handful of focused websites or your buddies geocities / angelfire site.
Chatting in crazy chat rooms on IRC, and having your close friends on ICQ.
Using a dial up modem to play doom, Warcraft 2, red alert, duke nukem, quake, StarCraft, total annihilation.. etc.
Those were fun times. Felt like the bleeding edge of tech.. hiding out and having fun in places people haven't even heard of.
Once upon a time, I had a 6-digit ICQ number.
I discovered IRC in the 2020s already (I am Gen Z so wasn't even online before mid-2010s), and from what I've seen in the descriptions of the "old internet", looks like some servers I am in preserved the spirit) Some people in the rooms also have their own cozy websites, including me)
CompuServe email addresses
I know there is truth in that the internet I worse.
But I do wonder how much of our feeling that is worse is more based on the glamor of youth and nostalgia.
I think there’s some of this, but I do honestly believe the internet has fundamentally changed and the makeup of it is a lot different. This isn’t all bad, but there’s a lot of things that we’ve lost now that the internet has become more centralized and corporate in general. At least proportionally I think there’s far fewer passion project websites and a lot of people gather on big websites instead, and there’s fewer communities that are strictly about a niche topic. In some sense this is good because things are generally more accessible to the average person, but I feel like the niche weirdos have been drowned out a bit in the eternal September, and there’s something a little sad about that too!
Part of that might be you though. Things that gave us thrills in our youth become bland when you get older. I could say the same thing about ICQ and AIM vs reddit, twitter, etc.
MSN Messenger man, what a great software. Also Winamp.
Imagine needing proof of something so basic that you could see it just being being online over the past decade, if not decade and a half.
Not everyone is old enough to know the difference. Imagine being 20. What frame of reference do you have?
This is true. Processing things at that age isn't as cogent as an adult. There is a lot of noise that has to be worked out in your 20s from everything you learned as a child.
Sometimes people think they know the obvious answer and they turn out to be wrong. It's good to have clear evidence of what is going on.
In recent years, it’s been harder to love the internet, a miracle of connectivity that feels ever more bloated, stagnant, commercialized, and junkified. We are just now starting to understand the specifics of this transformation—the true influence of Silicon Valley’s vise grip on our lives. It turns out that the slow rot we might feel isn’t just in our heads, after all.
☹️
Archive.today link for those hit by the paywall: https://archive.ph/G2Dc7
Its much more than "the internet is worse". Everything technology is worse, can't have nice things.
I have a microwave/air fryer/convection combo that I can't use unless I install a phone app. It came with the apartment. It has only a few "buttons" on its face. The UI is almost completely non-intuitive, but the app makes it easy. Every time I bake bread I fight the urge to blow my brains out as I navigate to the app. I have become that which I mocked.
I yearn for the days when my toaster just made toast.
There's a line that needs to be drawn between things that benefit from IoT and things that should've remained dumb
I can't believe this is true. Show pictures and link to the vendor. I wanna see this for myself.
Use an old phone with no user accounts in it.
God, what garbage.
It turns outcapitalism is great for maximising profits, but terrible for consumers, and demanding open-source products is the only way out of this hell-hole
Here's the proof: vaguely motions in the general direction of everything
This is the Internet. We don't need proof.
…but also paywalls it
Maybe it's time to regulate the fuck out of the internet.
The thing is, who is going to regulate a transnational, abstract and ethereal space?
Well you could start by regulating the major US companies since those are the root of the issue described here. The internet as an abstract space is perfectly fine because there are enough independent providers for the required services to use or host on the internet. It's the few that abuse.
Google! 😃
I wonder, maybe it's impossible.
have proof that internet is worse
requires subscription to read
There you have it, boys!
I mean I'm on board with the generality, but looking up the original article it looks like was was taken down, stating:
EDITOR’S NOTE 10/6/2023: After careful review of the op-ed, "How Google Alters Search Queries to Get at Your Wallet," and relevant material provided to us following its publication, WIRED editorial leadership has determined that the story does not meet our editorial standards. It has been removed.
Apologies for the disgusting timestamp. I'm quoting.
It could be I'm missing something though since I can't see the whole article. It sounded like the Wired article was the basis for this one by The Atlantic.
The internet isn't worse, it's just the web. The Internet is much better actually:
Worse than what?
Than it was.
Not just nostalgia tinted glasses, it really was better in the earlier years.
Right
It wasn't though. It was slow and didn't really work properly and didn't work on phones. The underlying technology is vastly improved.
What's gone wrong is businesses, but that's got nothing to do with the internet that's just capitalism fulfilling it's inevitable conclusion of charging for everything and letting you own nothing.
There needs to be a law that says that once a customer buys something online (e.g a movie on Netflix or a game on Steam) the company must compensate then if their access to that thing is lost due to licencing changes. They can prevent new people from gaining access to the content but they cannot revoke access to people who have already paid money.
Just don't use amazon or google.
The issue is that a good number of products are only available through Amazon, and a metric ton of services that people depend on are owned by Google.
Just saying "don't use Amazon or Google" is almost tantamount to saying "don't eat food" or "don't drink water".
Should that be the case? No. But right now, it is.
Getting hit by a paywall to read this article, maybe made the point better than the article!
https://archive.ph/20231017195540/https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/10/big-tech-algorithmic-influence-antitrust-litigation/675575/
Yeah, and a blatantly establishment-biased source like that should have been linked with an archive site.
Do you usually complain when anything else in life is not completely free?
Either it's paywalls or horrible ads+tracking. I don't know why people expect to get everything for free, just because it's on the internet. Especially something that takes time and effort to make.
PSA: you don't get to complain about "the media" if you're not even willing to pay for quality outlets
Yes, I complain about both.
Next stupid question.
Someone complains about one specific thing not being free. You:
Since you've started down the road of what people are and are not allowed to do: you are not allowed to participate in discussions if you can't avoid making shitty logical fallacies in your very first response.
The biggest problem with paying for journalism is that nobody wants to be subscribing to 50 different websites.
If it were easier to pay for multiple news sites at once, I'm sure more people would do it.
Normally I'm all about "yes they should be paid" but in this case it's particularly ironic - modest ads used to be able to support newspapers. Now they need paywalls.
Title of article: internet is worse
QED.
$10 says even you didn't pay.
They're still tracking the crap out of you even if you pay, so they can fuck right off and die in the gutter.
While it’s understandable that in the current economic systems news outlets have to make money somehow and one way is through paywalls, I think it’s also fair for people to value free access to information. Assuming that news outlets and journalists can still make a living, most people would probably agree that it’s better for everybody if the content can be accessed freely, especially since copying it and transmitting it on the internet is super cheap (particularly for text articles). This isn’t some absurd concept. Libraries are respected and valued institutions precisely because they serve a similar role, and we have the tools to do it on an even larger scale. Of course it might not be practical with how things are structured economically right now (and heck, maybe there isn’t even a better way to do it) but I think it’s fair to recognize that there’s a lot of untapped potential for sharing information, and it’d be nice if we could find a way to do it more equitably :).
Are you always an arrogant anus or are you just having a bad day?
You don't seem to understand what the Internet is. Sorry for your lack of vision.
Lick some more boots
Penis
🙄😮💨
Download ublock origin...go to custom filters... paste in filter list...no more paywalls, you don't pay anything, hooray.
Wow, I think this is the most down-voted thing I've agreed with. Should we get a selfie together?