• @stoly@lemmy.world
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    510 months ago

    I disagree with the idea that the internet is worse than it used to be. Back in the day, you went into a forum and people were MEAN for no particular reason. People do that now over politics more than anything. Before, that’s just how people were.

    • @schizo@forum.uncomfortable.business
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      210 months ago

      Yeah, now you get mean people, a drive-by malware installer, AI generated ads, and 4mb of JS that tries to scrape every detail about you so they can make a profile they can sell to (dis)information brokers.

      Truly, an improvement.

      (People have always sucked, the Internet just lets you interact with more people so…)

    • @Yaztromo@lemmy.world
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      410 months ago

      Depends on what you mean by “back in the day”. So far as I know you could be ~30, and “back in the day” for you is the 2005 era.

      For some of us “back in the day” is more like the early 90’s (and even earlier than that if we want to include other online services, like BBS’s) — and the difference since Eternal September is pretty stark (in both good and bad ways).

    • trainsaresexy
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      210 months ago

      I had one forum I went to and people trolled but they were community members and if it ever got out of hand they were banned. Nowadays people seem much more vicious, the more personal and the more it stings better.

  • FlashMobOfOne
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    3610 months ago

    The Fediverse is as close as I’ve gotten to Internet the way it used to be, and I donate to the instances I use in order to keep it that way. I wish everyone would.

      • trainsaresexy
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        210 months ago

        Wiby is great. I think of it as more of a museum, an incomplete collection of antiques. The fediverse is thriving, it has a pulse.

  • @linearchaos@lemmy.world
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    510 months ago

    Saying the internet was better is a haze of nostalgia, a gross underappreciation of new technologies, and a smattering of truth.

    Over 38% of the stuff I flush down the toilet is gone forever, too, and that’s ok.

    The early Internet was interesting only because it was new and different. Most of the stuff out there was low-quality stuff just for funsies projects. The barrier to entry is still very low. Anyone who wants to put up a website with whatever they’re interested in requires no technical expertise and isn’t even expensive. But you don’t see a lot of that because it’s not new or exciting and few people are going to waste their time on it. On the upside, you can now throw up your own federated content system with relatively little work and have a huge community for very very little. Things are gone chiefly because they weren’t worth saving. Sure, there are exceptions like DPReview, but they even got a reprieve because they were worth keeping.

    Before the advent of filter bubbles, the internet was a creative playground where people explored different ideas, discussed varying perspectives, and collaborated with individuals from “outgroups” – those outside their social circles who may hold opposing views.

    And how did anyone find those varying perspectives? Everything was unindexed, even search engines were crap. Fark, Digg and Slashdot, link aggregators and forums are the same as they’ve always been. Are the majority of those conversations gone? Sure, but you can find another 25,000 of them on Reddit, x, Instagram, and Lemmy, and when those are gone, some other service will replace them.

    If people are moving to algo-driven social media, it’s because they perceive it as advantageous to them. I found the algo ate too much of my time and moved back to diverse and static youtube clients.

  • @TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com
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    10 months ago

    I’m still glad for online ordering, wikipedia, small digital communities, youtube, email, and lots of stuff.

    The rest of it is inevitable. And it requires being able to put down the phone and step away from the keyboard.

    That is what we need to be able to do.

    Move away from the shiny rectangle for a bit for eye contact socializing, too.

  • @john89@lemmy.ca
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    3410 months ago

    I totally agree. Corporate interests and rampant consumerism have ruined the majority of the internet.

    Glad we still have refuges like lemmy though to take solace in. Proportionally we’re a smaller part, but absolutely I’d say we’re about the same or larger than in the 2000s.

      • darkstar
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        410 months ago

        Oh absolutely. I exclusively use Lemmy now for social media, my online experience is absolutely amazing as a result. My love for the internet has returned

  • @fin@sh.itjust.works
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    10 months ago

    Creating a closed network on the Internet where any commercialization and domination are prohibited might help?

    Something like Tor/freenet/I2P, but less shady (I know it’s not meant to be like this), open and accessible to anyone.

    Edit: I remembered about gemini protocol, where you get

    lightweight online space where documents are just documents, in the interests of every reader’s privacy, attention and bandwidth

    Perfect for the new better internet, huh?

    For Android/iOS users, there’s a client called Lagrange on F-droid and Testflight

    • @vu2tum@lemmy.radio
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      510 months ago

      TIL - there is something called Gopher and Gemini. Looks interesting, will read more on it.

      • @frezik@midwest.social
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        10 months ago

        Neither is all that great in practice.

        Gopher has many problems as a protocol. The original versions of HTTP had much the same problems, such as closing the connection at the end of a transfer rather than having a length header or a signal that the connection is actually done. HTTP went on to fix most of those problems, but Gopher never got the chance. Gopher+ started fixing it up, but it was a victim of bad timing. The Mosaic browser was released shortly after Gopher+ and everyone started switching over. To my knowledge, nobody has ever implemented Gopher+ on either a client or server. Not even after over 20 years of a “revival” movement.

        Gemini intentionally limits things, such as not having inline images. This is supposed to be done to keep out methods that have been historically used to track users, but things don’t work that way. I can just as easily send my logs to a data broker without using a pixel tracker if that’s what I want to do.

        In the end, you can just use HTTP with a static web page, zero cookies, and no JavaScript. That’s what I ended up doing for my old blog (after offering a Gemini version for a while), including converting a bunch of YouTube <iframe> tags to linked screenshots so you don’t even get YouTube cookies.

        • @schizo@forum.uncomfortable.business
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          10 months ago

          That’s been my take on the whole ‘use gopher/gemini!’ bandwagon. Nice idea, but the solution to the problem leads to more problems that need solutions, and we’ve come up with solutions to those, but on other protocols.

          And I mean, if I stab someone in the face with a screwdriver, the misuse of the screwdriver isn’t in some way specific to the screwdriver and thus nobody should use screwdrivers.

          Same thing with all the nonsense a modern website does: HTTP is fine, it’s just being used by shitheads. You could make a prviacy-respecting website that’s not tracking you or engaging in any sort of shifty bullshit, but someone at some point decided that was the only way to make money on the Internet, and here we are.

  • @helenslunch@feddit.nl
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    10 months ago

    2 ways to go back:

    1. Corporations become less greedy.

    2. Consumers and businesses stop tolerating abuse and consider other options that will temporarily inconvenience them.

    Neither one seems likely. If it were we simply wouldn’t be here in the first place.

      • @helenslunch@feddit.nl
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        10 months ago

        That’s great but it takes more than 1, or even 1M people. It has to be enough people that anti-consumer shitfuckery is no longer profitable.

        • @azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
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          110 months ago

          You are conflating Consumers with Citizens, a classic pitfall of modern neoliberal democracies.

          Just because people willingly Consume a Product does not mean they think The Product is good or even that it should exist at all. Neoliberalism is unable to acknowledge that, because Everything is a Market and the Market is Infallible.

          In reality, the game theory is such that individuals may not have the means to get out of the local minimum they found themselves stuck in. Prisoner’s dilemma and all that. That’s what representative democracy is supposed to solve, when it isn’t captured by ideology and corporate interests.

          • @helenslunch@feddit.nl
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            10 months ago

            You are conflating Consumers with Citizens

            I’m actually not, and my word choice was intentional. If you’re not consuming these goods then you hold no leverage, and probably don’t care.

        • @Drusenija@lemmy.world
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          310 months ago

          I’d argue there’s enough difference there to flag them separately. The original number two is more about personal responsibility; choose a different retailer, go to a different place, etc. Voting with your wallet so to speak.

          Government regulation, while it’s still about people pushing back against companies, with the state of most western governments at the moment you can’t assume they will automatically have the public’s back. So there’s a tie in to the personal responsibility aspect by electing representatives who represent your interests, but given that’s not always feasible (either because not enough people share that view to get someone elected or because there isn’t a suitable candidate available to support) I would argue it’s distinct enough to warrant its own category.

          Regulations and anti trust laws would both fall under a government intervention category though I think.

    • @chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
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      1310 months ago

      It isn’t just corporations that have ruined everything, it’s spammers and scammers and cybercriminals too. Searching any topic these days is a crapshoot, with a high likelihood of falling into a spammer’s tarpit.

      To me it feels like the internet is evolving into a virtual Dark Forest. We float around in these little bubbles of sanity, hiding amid a yawning expanse of seething chaos.

      • trainsaresexy
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        110 months ago

        As long as people need money other people will try to find opportunities to make it, not everyone has the same moral boundaries.

        People have talked about this for a long time it doesn’t seem like there is an idea driven way out. This is the road.

    • @MajorHavoc@programming.dev
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      410 months ago

      History tells us there’s also a release valve of a swift brick to the side of the head, one brick per billionaire.

      It sounds messier than paying taxes, to me. But I’m not a billionaire, so I can’t say I understand their motives.

    • @Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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      1310 months ago

      I’ve said before and I’ll say again. I would use the option on amazon for shipping that says “let your employees pee”. I get my package 2-3 days later. Oh well. I don’t give a shit. I’d rather normalize companies treating people like people. And if I get my limited edition pez dispenser 3 days later, so be it.

      Not like it’s an oxygen tank.

    • @SkyNTP@lemmy.ml
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      510 months ago

      1 can be solved with regulation or nationalization. Services online should be public services. Like school, police, roads. You can still have private alternatives too.

  • Hossenfeffer
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    10 months ago

    Back in the days of the wild frontier things were chaotic, anarchic, violent, and unconstrained.

    Then came the churches, then came the schools
    Then came the lawyers, then came the rules
    Then came the trains and the trucks with their loads
    And the dirty old track was the Telegraph Road

    And now we’re all fenced in, regulated, allowed to wander only in approved lanes… oh, wait, sorry, we’re talking about the internet, not real life!

    • @wavebeam@lemmy.world
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      510 months ago

      I really hate to argue in favor of all those scary things, but with those things in the old west came education and improvements to quality of life; better protections for the vulnerable and cures and prevention of disease.

      Same could be said of the internet if we follow the analogy.

      • Hossenfeffer
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        510 months ago

        Kind of my point. We gained ecommerce, streaming services, platforms such as this one, online gaming, mapping services, and others - at the cost of the freedoms for which people are nostalgic. And now we have ads, personalization, tracking, and inevitable enshitification.

      • @endofline@lemmy.ca
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        510 months ago

        Nah, people got changed too. The younger generation is not interested in the technology that much otherwise then usage of it. Also even the older generation lost its interests because of getting older and family

      • @rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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        110 months ago

        No. It’s those who are gaslighting us to think this way.

        Same as the early Soviet years of gaslighting how every revolution has the initial violent period and you have to be strict with the enemies of it. Or similar Soviet gaslighting of the 50s, where everything is to blame - the restoration after the war, the capitalist world, and what not, - for all problems. Or the 60s, where they were expected to wait 20 years more to the utter victory and passenger starships between Earth and Mars. Or the 70s, where the Soviet propaganda pretended that USSR is just a normal country, not a totalitarian one. Or the 80s, where nobody believed anything except democracy which was one thing present in speeches and not in reality, so they believed that USSR only has to become really democratic to suddenly turn into USA, cheap edition.

        It (the Web) is corrupt, oligopolized and unsanitary, because nation-states saw its potential for propaganda and control, crooks saw its potential for scams big enough to bend laws for them, and stupid people saw its potential to confirm their stupid opinions.

  • Sundray
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    10 months ago

    Free hosting, for everyone, without ads.

    Ut-oh.

    (But seriously, while it wasn’t free, having an account with an ISP used to come with 10 MB of personal webspace without ads or anything. That’s something you never really see these days.)

    • @schizo@forum.uncomfortable.business
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      210 months ago

      Alternately, what’d be really neat would be an easy way to mostly completely do a webpage setup for someone using the free hosting options that do exist.

      Like, a tool that makes handling deploying something to Github Pages or Cloudflare Pages or whomever else offers basically free web hosting that isn’t nerdy to the point that you need a 6,000 word document to explain the steps you’d have to take to get a webpage from a HTML editor to being actually hosted.

      Or, IDK, maybe going back for ye old domain.com/~username/ web hosting could be an interesting project to take on, since I’m sure handling file uploads like that should be trivial (lots and loooots of ways to do that.). Just have to not end up going Straight To Jail offering hosting for people, I suppose.

      • @ehxor@lemmy.ca
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        310 months ago

        These days with how tied to your identity email is, using an ISP provided email is like self-imposed vendor lock-in though. A friend who uses an ISP provided email just switched ISPs and it caused havoc - bank logins, power company logins, etc

        • @x00za@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          210 months ago

          The ISP I’m with allows you to keep the email address indefinitely. But I’m sure there are many ISPs who don’t do that.

            • @schizo@forum.uncomfortable.business
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              110 months ago

              It’s such a reasonable a policy I’m finding it hard to believe, unless there’s a clause that they get a kidney, or are allowed to show up and break your ankles, or are taking ownership of your first born child or something.

  • @anticurrent@sh.itjust.works
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    710 months ago

    Corporations and commercial interests taking over the internet is inevitable. the only free corners left are the darknets with tor/i2p. but because the normies can’t bother use that isn’t falshy and trendy, there might not be any other chance to replace this decrepit boring dystopia.