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The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is.
| THE INTERNET HAS lost its way and taken society with it. Since the mid-2010s, we hear warnings of “dis/misinformation.” We hear about the loss of trust in our institutions and the need to reinvent them for the internet age. In short, we are living in a “crisis moment” — one ironically experienced by many of us while stuck at home.
| [T]he "crisis moment" comes when the intrinsically neither-good-nor-bad algorithm comes to be applied for the resolution of problems, for logistical solutions, and so on in many new domains of human social life, and jumps the fence that contained it as focusing on relatively narrow questions to now structuring our social life together as a whole. That's when the crisis starts....
| [E]verything seems to be geared toward harnessing attention and exploiting attention on the designers' parts, rather than in cultivating attention on the user's part....
You could also ask, however, of social media... are you really conversing? Are you really debating? And I think the answer is, almost always, no. What's happening on social media is rather a simulation of discussion and debate. Or, as I like to put it, Twitter is a debate-themed video game-
| in the same way that, say, Grand Theft Auto is a stolen-car-chase-themed video game
This is a real problem because there's no other game in town. At this point, if you have any lingering hope for the prospects of deliberative democracy, the idea that you need to find a neutral public space to pursue it in, it's just so obvious that the only possible setting is online. I mean, you can go print pamphlets in your basement if you want but that's not going to get your movement very far
| So we only have one choice as a public space, and it's a spurious one. It's one that can't be a public space because its raison d'être is something quite different....
| The internet is run by bots and paid PR people who exist solely for drama. Don't interact with anyone om socials like Twitter, FB
| Ligma g/u/rlballs boomer,
Internet is good and will always be
| This has to be the silliest thing i've ever bothered skimming
| >>849441
Just don't use closed network platforms that only are popular for being popular. They are magnetic to PR people, drama, false information and bots. There are better free and open alternatives.
| The internet still has great potential. As humanity has. Just don't give up.
| kinda unrelated to this post, I feel like up until very recently there wasn't anything fun happening for 6 months or longer. r/place coming back reminded me a lot of just how much I enjoyed the net back in 2016-2018. since then it feels like everything is drying up. all the "communities" for games and music and whatever just go around and around in stupid fucking circles but there's also barely anything new to latch onto. but maybe I'm going in circles complaining about this again.
| I'm starting to suspect that that's been happening because now everything has Content Recommendation Algorithms that naturally separate people into closed groups. like on youtube, "content creators" are grouped really heavily into cliques and you almost never get recommendations from outside of your subsicriptions' cliques. how is anybody supposed to hear about anything new when that's the default sorting systems of all these big sites?
| and that's even before talking about twitter that recommends you your most disagreeable opponents' easiest strawmans to say L + Ratio! to. that's the absolute worst it could be.
| Internet, is just a bunch of sub networks connected to ISP servers connected each others. Basically a star network topology. Amateur Radio could work in theory but is largely regulated and there's still the problem of distance between oceans. At this point, we would need a satellite. Elon Musk could have done the proper change, but I believe it made it only worse, not only for people, but also for scientifics that watch the stars.
| I don't have really a solution, but maybe eventually one day, Internet will be a better place, once we start innovating more and people willing to put real efforts into it instead of doing it for the sake of little groups manipulating us or complaining, every days.
| Shut up. Back in the days it was even easier to manipulate people, because there was only one news source
| And i don't know, what "the Internet" is for you. For me it's having meaningful conversations with meaningful friends. Which is not at all bad for my "attention". It made my life a lot richer. Even if these people are far away, they are always really close.
| Thanks to its economization the internet lost all it's potential of revolutionize human societies fundamentally. In the end everything in the "virtual" realm will be ruled by those with the biggest wallets, just like in the real "offline" world.
| Public internet is trash, obscure textboards like these are best~
| >>850628
Unlike what you believe to be "public" internet, this obscure textboard IS public internet.
| I haven't completely made up my mind about this topic, but I feel like the categorization of content you're talking about is significant. Not only algorithms recommending content, but also things like dividing stuff into thousands of really specific subforums. It really does make a difference, which is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing for all useful properties that comes with sorting (like finding what you're looking for), a curse for all of the reasons mentioned above.
| But I guess it isn't completely new? I mean, RSS has been a thing ever since the dawn of the internet. RSS still provides the same "subscription model" we use today. But it really doesn't feel the same. It doesn't result in the same kind of braindead hive mind that keeps repeating things over and over again.
| >>850751
To identify something technically as "public" or "closed" isn't a matter of agreement by users.
Public: everyone with a generic device with internet connection has unrestricted access.
Private: restricted access only for registered users, locking them in into a closed network owned by one service provider with potentially exclusive client software or even device.
| Possibly unrelated, I haven't been in the online sphere for long, let's say since 2014-2016. Enjoying things like youtube and facebook. After my interest for computers exploded I've been on the lookout for interesting online-spaces detached from these social-media-econglomerates. Hearing all the buzz about pre-2011 internet has sparked this interest in me even more, including the popularity of blogging . But I can't find them. Most of them are dead forums, and so I keep looking.
| >>851065
Todays internets misery already starded pre-2011. It already started end of 90s, when they decided to bloat html/http with "interactive" code.
| Author sniffs farts, but he has a point about the monetization of the internet.
Corpos vying for info on every step we take, algorithms designed to get us to infight over petty nothings; it all comes from letting them keep pricetags on our eyeballs. The advertisement industry is nothing short of revolting.
>>851065
Neocities?
| >>851859 been a while, but I liked whatever that board was about transportation. I only ever see threads about trains though, maybe one or two on buses.
| >>851850
the point of this shit is to discuss whatever topic you want and find new perspectives and ideas, the best way is being exposed to the highest number of people and 4chan is the biggest one by far. all the other boards, endchan, nano, lain, whisper etc are just either bad clones or reddit with extra steps.
>4chan is cancer
why? someone said mean words to you? or did you just read that on twitter?
| 4chan is cancer. when it isn't it's just a bunch of randos hanging. what do I have to gain from those? I only went there for the cancerous threads.
| >>852300
yes, this is not 4chan, it is a 4chan clone with the same recycled memes and maybe 1/10000 of the userbase
| >>852176
>why? someone said mean words to you? or did you just read that on twitter?
It means that you're under the age of 20, while anon is probably in their thirties or older. :^)
| >>852304
>clone of 4chan
Ah yes, because 4chan was first board ever and the only existing :^)
imagine BBSes
| For people looking for conversation about hobbies or certain topics, 4chan's usually a bad place to have it.
You'll look for music of a certain genre then someone slams down some NSBM in your face and calls you a slur (likely one you've never heard of, and invented in 2015 on the site) eleven times over.
Wading through the shit is worth it sometime). Participating in the idiocy is fun too sometimes.
But I go on the internet to chill, and it's not a calm place on there.
| Also, in relation to what OP put out.
Yes, this shit worries me too. Makes me especially worried for the next generation of terminally online nerds, who might end up relying on these problematic platforms without realizing the degree of control that they have on expression of thought and even their social connections (who they talk to, and who they can hang out with online).
| If anyone wants to visit another pre2011 internet, there is https://floofey.dog/
| By itself, the internet is a wholly positive addition to society that opens avenues for sharing and communicating. So much good comes from the internet.
Popular Social Media, Advertising, and Corporate Interests ruin the internet. If the internet goes the way of the Metaverse and that sort of centralization, it'll only get worse and worse. Hopefully, we stray from that and keep the good parts.
| >>853083
I agree. All that stuff is ruining idea of the Internet - being decentralized.
I can't look at old websites (made in 1995-2008) without getting nostalgic. When the Internet "belonged" to everyone equally and hadn't any focus point, like today's social media.
This thread is permanently archived
| Justin E. H. Smith, a professor of the history and philosophy of science define internet as "the part that we are glued to for most hours of our waking lives" which in its current usage "hinders the exercise of attention, which, indeed, I try to argue is crucial to a thriving human life."
Interview with the professor:
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-internet-is-not-what-you-think-it-is-a-history-a-philosophy-a-warning/