Something In The Water (Does Not Compute)
December 31, 2023 3:14 AM Subscribe
The Internet Is About to Get Weird Again // Anil Dash on how the new year offers many of the promises of an online moment we haven’t seen in a quarter-century [archive]
I'm all for the optimism. There is - and has been for a while - a bit of a movement happening towards smaller communities, be it a subscribtion newsletter or Jason Kottke opening blog comments. I was very online in 2000, mostly at RHMB (radiohead.com/msgboard) and various other more local boards.
posted by fridgebuzz at 4:05 AM on December 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by fridgebuzz at 4:05 AM on December 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
That's a flashback, I lived on the RHMB from the late 90's into 2001 ish. I miss that internet, it was certainly less useful but God was it better.
posted by deadwax at 4:14 AM on December 31, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by deadwax at 4:14 AM on December 31, 2023 [7 favorites]
From the article: "We are about to see the biggest reshuffling of power on the internet in 25 years, in a way that most of the internet’s current users have never seen before."
Does any of you fellow Mefites see anything resembling this? I found the article full of hype and short on specifics.
posted by Termite at 4:21 AM on December 31, 2023 [15 favorites]
Does any of you fellow Mefites see anything resembling this? I found the article full of hype and short on specifics.
posted by Termite at 4:21 AM on December 31, 2023 [15 favorites]
He got me in the first paragraph, gotta admit.
posted by clawsoon at 4:23 AM on December 31, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 4:23 AM on December 31, 2023 [5 favorites]
Does any of you fellow Mefites see anything resembling this?
Yes, in that I'm reaching the turning point where Google search has got bad enough that it's no longer necessary for it to be my default. It's not that the alternatives are much better, but they're also no longer much worse.
I'm seeing a lot of people who are definitely at their breaking point with streaming services and looking to go back to alternative methods of getting video. I'm also seeing general (and well earned) dissatisfaction with Amazon as a retailer, which means people are going back to using other services.
So yes, I do see the turning points.
posted by ambrosen at 4:29 AM on December 31, 2023 [41 favorites]
Yes, in that I'm reaching the turning point where Google search has got bad enough that it's no longer necessary for it to be my default. It's not that the alternatives are much better, but they're also no longer much worse.
I'm seeing a lot of people who are definitely at their breaking point with streaming services and looking to go back to alternative methods of getting video. I'm also seeing general (and well earned) dissatisfaction with Amazon as a retailer, which means people are going back to using other services.
So yes, I do see the turning points.
posted by ambrosen at 4:29 AM on December 31, 2023 [41 favorites]
As I was reading, I found myself wondering how he heard about/got excited about the individuals he mentions. Did they all give him elevator pitches at Burning Man and then he threw a few million in investment at them? Did he stumble on them in a Geocities webring and think they're cool? Heard about them from a hipster friend-of-a-friend who goes to underground New York art parties?
posted by clawsoon at 4:34 AM on December 31, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 4:34 AM on December 31, 2023 [11 favorites]
Here's a question I feel it's worth asking: why did the internet stop being weird in the first place?
There are two answers I come up with. (Do you care what I, a nobody in semi-rural Georgia who has never had a real job and doesn't have the ear of any venture capitalists, thinks? Well I paid my five bucks like everyone else here....)
First, the internet never stopped being weird, but it became a lot harder to find the fun and independent parts, and as they languished for want of viewers, they withered. Social media sucks as a means of finding things that aren't on social media, as outside links are actively deprioritized, unless they're ads that is. Google's slow decay is another part of it, but even if it worked well, Google mostly worked for showing you things you knew you wanted, not much for things you didn't know were out there. The big tech companies' answer for that was machine-learning algorithms, and as we've seen, those are not great at it at best, and brought to the service of malign entities at worst.
Second, let's be honest, the weird and fun internet came about because the people who were the biggest part of it were smart and individualistic. Once "the internet" came to be about social media, excepting some cases like Weird Twitter and Black Twitter, those voices soon became drowned out by the same ones that had always been the most audible: the self-serving (especially corporations), and the ill-informed (our collective racist relatives).
If one accepts these statements (I won't presume to say you do), then question is: what is different now, how do we help the weird and fun internet to thrive, and how do we stop something like the Facebook Era from happening again, if it's really truly over to begin with?
posted by JHarris at 5:09 AM on December 31, 2023 [50 favorites]
There are two answers I come up with. (Do you care what I, a nobody in semi-rural Georgia who has never had a real job and doesn't have the ear of any venture capitalists, thinks? Well I paid my five bucks like everyone else here....)
First, the internet never stopped being weird, but it became a lot harder to find the fun and independent parts, and as they languished for want of viewers, they withered. Social media sucks as a means of finding things that aren't on social media, as outside links are actively deprioritized, unless they're ads that is. Google's slow decay is another part of it, but even if it worked well, Google mostly worked for showing you things you knew you wanted, not much for things you didn't know were out there. The big tech companies' answer for that was machine-learning algorithms, and as we've seen, those are not great at it at best, and brought to the service of malign entities at worst.
Second, let's be honest, the weird and fun internet came about because the people who were the biggest part of it were smart and individualistic. Once "the internet" came to be about social media, excepting some cases like Weird Twitter and Black Twitter, those voices soon became drowned out by the same ones that had always been the most audible: the self-serving (especially corporations), and the ill-informed (our collective racist relatives).
If one accepts these statements (I won't presume to say you do), then question is: what is different now, how do we help the weird and fun internet to thrive, and how do we stop something like the Facebook Era from happening again, if it's really truly over to begin with?
posted by JHarris at 5:09 AM on December 31, 2023 [50 favorites]
Google down-ranking personal sites and ones that haven't switched to https (which isn't a no-brainer to implement) had a big negative impact.
posted by rory at 5:42 AM on December 31, 2023 [19 favorites]
posted by rory at 5:42 AM on December 31, 2023 [19 favorites]
TLDR - welcome to metafilter
?
Delighted that you were able to visit - if you have questions, the mods are always there to help.
posted by Barbara Spitzer at 6:03 AM on December 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
?
Delighted that you were able to visit - if you have questions, the mods are always there to help.
posted by Barbara Spitzer at 6:03 AM on December 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
I sort of get the optimism. I mean, I miss the old, pre-advertising, weird web with all my heart.
Dash’s first example, though — opening iOS to outside app stores and whatnot — isn’t going to bring back any semblance of the old web at all. All that’s going to do is make iOS as much of a security minefield as Android for consumers. I am not looking forward to fielding calls from kids and relatives over their phones suddenly going rogue after they installed some cute kitty sudoku app or something from a website, only to tell them they’ll have to change all their passwords, then wipe the phone clean and start anew. Again.
In an era where consumer privacy and security concerns are at the forefront, this just seems like a backward move. The security of Apple’s so-called walled garden is a feature, not a bug.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:07 AM on December 31, 2023 [13 favorites]
Dash’s first example, though — opening iOS to outside app stores and whatnot — isn’t going to bring back any semblance of the old web at all. All that’s going to do is make iOS as much of a security minefield as Android for consumers. I am not looking forward to fielding calls from kids and relatives over their phones suddenly going rogue after they installed some cute kitty sudoku app or something from a website, only to tell them they’ll have to change all their passwords, then wipe the phone clean and start anew. Again.
In an era where consumer privacy and security concerns are at the forefront, this just seems like a backward move. The security of Apple’s so-called walled garden is a feature, not a bug.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:07 AM on December 31, 2023 [13 favorites]
the internet never stopped being wierd, all the wierdos just decamped to tumblr where they found kindred wierdos. facebook may have ruined families, and twitter may have ruined politics, but tumblr has been an unmitigated blessing and especially now that automattic is going to stop fucking with it so much, it may hold true to the fire for another decade
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:16 AM on December 31, 2023 [12 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:16 AM on December 31, 2023 [12 favorites]
Is this something you'd need an andriod/ios/tablet/phone/laptop/browser to understand?
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 7:45 AM on December 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 7:45 AM on December 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
Shit, if there’s an article in Rolling Stone about the way the Internet is getting a little less corporate then I am definitely making the right move by preemptively defederating my little Mastodon full of queer dragons from Threads before ActivityPub gets thoroughly Eternal Septembered.
posted by egypturnash at 7:45 AM on December 31, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by egypturnash at 7:45 AM on December 31, 2023 [6 favorites]
how he heard about/got excited about the individuals he mentions
I imagine some of this article is informed by his role running Glitch, a tool for building weird indie things on the Internet. Anil was there at the start of Glitch (when it was a project of Fog Creek Software) and still runs it after Fastly acquired it. I haven't looked at which of the projects or people he mentions use Glitch but it seems like it's all in the same category.
I've known and admired Anil for 20+ years and have always found him an optimist, it's one of his greatest strengths. As he says he's not a pollyanna, he's certainly full of insightful criticism where appropriate. (See VC qanon.) But he's got a wonderful ability to maintain enthusiasm and focus positively on constructive things. I envy his success running Glitch.
Unfortunately for myself, I tend to cynicism. I don't see Google search going downhill as in any way a positive because there's no clear better replacement. I am excited about how LLMs are changing how we retrieve and use information but that is fraught with peril and corporate concentration. (See Dan Luu's recent analysis for a more complex take.) I like Mastodon quite a bit but still hugely miss Twitter and the social relationships I lost when Musk destroyed it. I like Mastodon but it is a small, less effective replacement.
When I look to what's interesting in Weird Internet now I see is mostly TikTok, which both makes me feel old and also uneasy with the concentration. Tumblr's cool but it was just absolutely destroyed in the past 5 years. I'm grateful to Matt Mullenweg for rescuing it but now it seems it's become another public benefit project, like many of Automattic's offerings. I love how his company keeps things like Gravatar or SimpleNote alive, I think it's important work, but it doesn't feel like the leading edge of something exciting and growing.
For me the fun exciting Internet came out of the 1990s when it was still this kooky thing where the early people working in it were a bunch of creative misfits. In 1997 people building websites were doing it because they loved the tech or the media. Once the industry got dominated by folks with MBAs getting into it for the money (mid-late 2000s?) it got a lot less interesting in my experience. Now the most relevant question is "what's the business plan" (specifically "how will you use crypto?" last year or "how will you use AI?" this year). I hope Anil's right there's going to be more space for "how did you do that cool thing?" or "this is really interesting" being the discussion. We need a break from "how will you monetize and stop fascists?".
posted by Nelson at 7:52 AM on December 31, 2023 [13 favorites]
I imagine some of this article is informed by his role running Glitch, a tool for building weird indie things on the Internet. Anil was there at the start of Glitch (when it was a project of Fog Creek Software) and still runs it after Fastly acquired it. I haven't looked at which of the projects or people he mentions use Glitch but it seems like it's all in the same category.
I've known and admired Anil for 20+ years and have always found him an optimist, it's one of his greatest strengths. As he says he's not a pollyanna, he's certainly full of insightful criticism where appropriate. (See VC qanon.) But he's got a wonderful ability to maintain enthusiasm and focus positively on constructive things. I envy his success running Glitch.
Unfortunately for myself, I tend to cynicism. I don't see Google search going downhill as in any way a positive because there's no clear better replacement. I am excited about how LLMs are changing how we retrieve and use information but that is fraught with peril and corporate concentration. (See Dan Luu's recent analysis for a more complex take.) I like Mastodon quite a bit but still hugely miss Twitter and the social relationships I lost when Musk destroyed it. I like Mastodon but it is a small, less effective replacement.
When I look to what's interesting in Weird Internet now I see is mostly TikTok, which both makes me feel old and also uneasy with the concentration. Tumblr's cool but it was just absolutely destroyed in the past 5 years. I'm grateful to Matt Mullenweg for rescuing it but now it seems it's become another public benefit project, like many of Automattic's offerings. I love how his company keeps things like Gravatar or SimpleNote alive, I think it's important work, but it doesn't feel like the leading edge of something exciting and growing.
For me the fun exciting Internet came out of the 1990s when it was still this kooky thing where the early people working in it were a bunch of creative misfits. In 1997 people building websites were doing it because they loved the tech or the media. Once the industry got dominated by folks with MBAs getting into it for the money (mid-late 2000s?) it got a lot less interesting in my experience. Now the most relevant question is "what's the business plan" (specifically "how will you use crypto?" last year or "how will you use AI?" this year). I hope Anil's right there's going to be more space for "how did you do that cool thing?" or "this is really interesting" being the discussion. We need a break from "how will you monetize and stop fascists?".
posted by Nelson at 7:52 AM on December 31, 2023 [13 favorites]
except this time the stakes are higher and more people will suffer
posted by AlbertCalavicci at 8:07 AM on December 31, 2023
posted by AlbertCalavicci at 8:07 AM on December 31, 2023
It was called StumbleUpon, and that's how I explored—and contributed to the exploration of—the Internet for a couple of choice years. It was lovely, and I miss it, even as a way to save links.
(pours out a 40 for SU...)
posted by the sobsister at 8:48 AM on December 31, 2023 [15 favorites]
(pours out a 40 for SU...)
posted by the sobsister at 8:48 AM on December 31, 2023 [15 favorites]
> Unfortunately for myself, I tend to cynicism. I don't see Google search going downhill as in any way a positive because there's no clear better replacement
google going downhill is especially good if there's no clear better replacement, because search is inherently bad. stuff on the Internet should be hard to find and really should require navigating from stuff you already know via webrings, hand-maintained 1993-yahoo style directories, blogrolls and the like.
culture grows in the dark.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 9:18 AM on December 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
google going downhill is especially good if there's no clear better replacement, because search is inherently bad. stuff on the Internet should be hard to find and really should require navigating from stuff you already know via webrings, hand-maintained 1993-yahoo style directories, blogrolls and the like.
culture grows in the dark.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 9:18 AM on December 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
> the internet never stopped being weird, but it became a lot harder to find the fun and independent parts,
I'm surprised nobody here has mentioned Marginalia, a DIY search engine that prioritizes non-commercial/independent/brutalist/old-skool sites. It's got a random search option that is a delight, a less distracting visual refresh of Wikipedia, and some other cool stuff.
posted by technodelic at 9:28 AM on December 31, 2023 [22 favorites]
I'm surprised nobody here has mentioned Marginalia, a DIY search engine that prioritizes non-commercial/independent/brutalist/old-skool sites. It's got a random search option that is a delight, a less distracting visual refresh of Wikipedia, and some other cool stuff.
posted by technodelic at 9:28 AM on December 31, 2023 [22 favorites]
Glad to see discussion about this.
Someone asked if anyone saw compelling details or just hype. Someone else said they admire his optimism.
For me, I don’t find his article optimistic, I find it elitist. The vast majority of internet users *want* Facebook, just not people like you and me. The vast number of internet users *benefit from* the strict rules on the App Store, just not cutting edge weird internet types like you and me.
This article is basically saying “Ugh we got so so much Taylor Swift recently, but Yo La Tengo is finally going to break out.” That won’t happen, and that’s beautiful. People like Taylor Swift. People like TikTok and YouTube and Instagram. Maybe not us hipsters over here on Metafilter, but the vast majority of internet users do.
Which is why they succeeded and the weird things languished.
posted by jragon at 9:30 AM on December 31, 2023 [7 favorites]
Someone asked if anyone saw compelling details or just hype. Someone else said they admire his optimism.
For me, I don’t find his article optimistic, I find it elitist. The vast majority of internet users *want* Facebook, just not people like you and me. The vast number of internet users *benefit from* the strict rules on the App Store, just not cutting edge weird internet types like you and me.
This article is basically saying “Ugh we got so so much Taylor Swift recently, but Yo La Tengo is finally going to break out.” That won’t happen, and that’s beautiful. People like Taylor Swift. People like TikTok and YouTube and Instagram. Maybe not us hipsters over here on Metafilter, but the vast majority of internet users do.
Which is why they succeeded and the weird things languished.
posted by jragon at 9:30 AM on December 31, 2023 [7 favorites]
Egypturnash, if you need a domain name for your instance, queertherebedragons.com is available as of this post.
posted by condour75 at 9:55 AM on December 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by condour75 at 9:55 AM on December 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
stuff on the Internet should be hard to find and really should require navigating from stuff you already know via webrings, hand-maintained 1993-yahoo style directories, blogrolls and the like.
If you're wondering why the corporate Internet was able to take over so quickly, this sort of arrogant gatekeeping bullshit is Exhibit A. This idea that it is somehow "better" for people to have to put in unneeded labor in order to engage with and in society comes from a place of deep unexamined privilege where one has the resources to invest in that unneeded labor, and thus where that unneeded labor becomes a gate that excludes people because they don't.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:11 AM on December 31, 2023 [18 favorites]
If you're wondering why the corporate Internet was able to take over so quickly, this sort of arrogant gatekeeping bullshit is Exhibit A. This idea that it is somehow "better" for people to have to put in unneeded labor in order to engage with and in society comes from a place of deep unexamined privilege where one has the resources to invest in that unneeded labor, and thus where that unneeded labor becomes a gate that excludes people because they don't.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:11 AM on December 31, 2023 [18 favorites]
The internet going mainstream made the things that are surfaced mainstream. That is not going to change, you can't put the genie back in the bottle and make it 2000 again. What made 2000 2000 was that nobody knew how to make money on the internet. Now they do. Also the blink tag is never coming back. Opening up the Apple store will be bad for Apple users - in general, app stores need more oversight and credentialing, not less. Even the Nintendo E-Shop has a ton of really, really terrible games on it that I wish weren't there since they just make finding good stuff harder.
There's lots of awesome and weird stuff, you just have to look harder for it, just like with independent music. It will never not take effort to find stuff that isn't the most profitable thing for corporations to put on blast. That's life. We all know the name Mozart because he wrote for royalty. We all know Michelangelo because be worked for the church. What was is what is, what is is what shall be.
Here's a very small list of stuff that I like:
There's lots of awesome and weird stuff, you just have to look harder for it, just like with independent music. It will never not take effort to find stuff that isn't the most profitable thing for corporations to put on blast. That's life. We all know the name Mozart because he wrote for royalty. We all know Michelangelo because be worked for the church. What was is what is, what is is what shall be.
Here's a very small list of stuff that I like:
- Hot Dad
- Hypnospace Outlaw and pretty much anything Jay Tholen puts out
- NeoCities is kind of a tryhard retro space, but it is very cool
the internet never stopped being wierd, all the wierdos just decamped to tumblr where they found kindred wierdos.
Sort of? When I think of the weird and fun internet, though, I don't think of posts on any kind of social media, I think of small and quirky independent sites. I think of things like endless.horse. It's probably silly to take a simple web toy like that as a morning star, but I remember that type of thing, just sprouting on its own, unaffiliated and free from the fertile soil of the World Wide Web, appearing a lot more often.
On the charges of elitism in this thread: guilty, somewhat. But HTML itself was itself intended as an egalitarian medium, one that anyone could learn and write themselves, without requiring other software to get in the way.
It is true that even that is a barrier to some degree, but a lot of people did learn it, resulting in the great personal site boom of the early web. But then Yahoo killed the biggest home for them, Geocities, and while there have been (and still are!) free and low-cost personal homepage sites out there, there hasn't really been a replacement in terms of reach. Angelfire and Tripod are still around, both owned by Lycos (remember them?), and for truly free site hosting there's Neocities. There's also the tildeverse, which is not simple to categorize.
posted by JHarris at 10:33 AM on December 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
Sort of? When I think of the weird and fun internet, though, I don't think of posts on any kind of social media, I think of small and quirky independent sites. I think of things like endless.horse. It's probably silly to take a simple web toy like that as a morning star, but I remember that type of thing, just sprouting on its own, unaffiliated and free from the fertile soil of the World Wide Web, appearing a lot more often.
On the charges of elitism in this thread: guilty, somewhat. But HTML itself was itself intended as an egalitarian medium, one that anyone could learn and write themselves, without requiring other software to get in the way.
It is true that even that is a barrier to some degree, but a lot of people did learn it, resulting in the great personal site boom of the early web. But then Yahoo killed the biggest home for them, Geocities, and while there have been (and still are!) free and low-cost personal homepage sites out there, there hasn't really been a replacement in terms of reach. Angelfire and Tripod are still around, both owned by Lycos (remember them?), and for truly free site hosting there's Neocities. There's also the tildeverse, which is not simple to categorize.
posted by JHarris at 10:33 AM on December 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
Many people like Meta, Amazon, Google, Apple, etc. to the point where they develop parasocial relationships with the brands, carefully cultivated by the messaging those brands put out.
It doesn't mean it's elitist to point out that maybe those people are... being taken advantage of?
posted by tigrrrlily at 10:49 AM on December 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
It doesn't mean it's elitist to point out that maybe those people are... being taken advantage of?
posted by tigrrrlily at 10:49 AM on December 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
I appreciate Dash's optimism, based on his career.
I do wish he'd mentioned blogs. Much derided and now ignored, they continue.
posted by doctornemo at 10:58 AM on December 31, 2023 [11 favorites]
I do wish he'd mentioned blogs. Much derided and now ignored, they continue.
posted by doctornemo at 10:58 AM on December 31, 2023 [11 favorites]
the internet never stopped being wierd, all the wierdos just decamped to tumblr
Cute line, but weirdness is everywhere, once you look.
posted by doctornemo at 10:59 AM on December 31, 2023
Cute line, but weirdness is everywhere, once you look.
posted by doctornemo at 10:59 AM on December 31, 2023
As others have pointed out, if you are reading this in 2023, you could be accused of hipster bullshit. Text? In this economy?
A recent-to-me find: special.fish
A find from last year: the now garden
A find from another decade remains vital: mltshp
.plan and others are still out there keepin' finger alive.
Folks are still doing neat stuff; it's there if you have the energy & resources (and I realize that is a large 'if').
posted by german_bight at 11:00 AM on December 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
A recent-to-me find: special.fish
A find from last year: the now garden
A find from another decade remains vital: mltshp
.plan and others are still out there keepin' finger alive.
Folks are still doing neat stuff; it's there if you have the energy & resources (and I realize that is a large 'if').
posted by german_bight at 11:00 AM on December 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
> If you're wondering why the corporate Internet was able to take over so quickly, this sort of arrogant gatekeeping bullshit is Exhibit A. This idea that it is somehow "better" for people to have to put in unneeded labor in order to engage with and in society comes from a place of deep unexamined privilege where one has the resources to invest in that unneeded labor, and thus where that unneeded labor becomes a gate that excludes people because they don't.
nooooope. here's the deal: the existence of search doesn't just provide methodologies for surfacing sites, it likewise shapes the sorts of sites that are developed going forward. the type of Internet that's viable in an environment with search engines is different from and worse than the type of Internet where traversing from place to place requires entering a community.
i'm going to straight up copy-paste something from my blog:
an unsearchable Internet, on the other hand, is a tangled network with a large number of potential entry points. becoming findable requires maintaining maintaining strong connections across entire communities. this means that there's no potentially seizeable high ground for anyone to seize.
unsearchable Internet doesn't always give you what you want, but often it'll give you what you need. search engine Internet gives you what the search engine wants, even if it's neither what you want nor need.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 11:14 AM on December 31, 2023 [12 favorites]
nooooope. here's the deal: the existence of search doesn't just provide methodologies for surfacing sites, it likewise shapes the sorts of sites that are developed going forward. the type of Internet that's viable in an environment with search engines is different from and worse than the type of Internet where traversing from place to place requires entering a community.
i'm going to straight up copy-paste something from my blog:
you know how you can go on wikipedia looking up stuff on non-newtonian fluids and three hours later you’ve read about topics ranging from exotic methods of launching objects to orbit to the late bronze age collapse and the accompanying mystery of the sea peoples? the whole-ass Internet was like that in the 1990s, the whole thing, you could start on a friend’s self-hosted flat-html link collection page and follow a link to another link to another link and a few hours later you’ve read things ranging from a site run by a neurodivergent avante la lettre kid in chicago obsessed with documenting which models of smoke alarms are used in nearby buildings to some boeing engineer talking about strategies that an individual driver can use to clear traffic jams on i-5 to public diaries of researchers at arecibo, having crossed dozen of pages on dozens of hosting services in dozens of countries.an internet with search is a set of spokes arranged around a few central points, which means that becoming findable requires doing whatever you need to maintain a strong connection to those central point, and moreover means that there are a very small number of entry points (i.e. the central hubs), and moreover arrogates outsized power to whoever decides how and when that central hub surfaces the spokes hanging off of it.
an unsearchable Internet, on the other hand, is a tangled network with a large number of potential entry points. becoming findable requires maintaining maintaining strong connections across entire communities. this means that there's no potentially seizeable high ground for anyone to seize.
unsearchable Internet doesn't always give you what you want, but often it'll give you what you need. search engine Internet gives you what the search engine wants, even if it's neither what you want nor need.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 11:14 AM on December 31, 2023 [12 favorites]
unsearchable Internet doesn't always give you what you want, but often it'll give you what you need
I mean one of the things I need is the website for my bank or the one to pay utility bills and I'd like to be able to search for those.
posted by an octopus IRL at 11:18 AM on December 31, 2023 [6 favorites]
I mean one of the things I need is the website for my bank or the one to pay utility bills and I'd like to be able to search for those.
posted by an octopus IRL at 11:18 AM on December 31, 2023 [6 favorites]
you already know what those are. and if you get a new bank, likely they provide you with the url of their site. my utility bills come with the url of the power company on them. you do not need search to find the sites you already know the url for.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 11:20 AM on December 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 11:20 AM on December 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
another big advantage of an opaque Internet is that it makes virality less damaging; instead of big fads becoming the one thing that everyone's talking about for two weeks, ideas gradually trickle through the various scattered networks, giving communities more of a choice about whether or not they want to / have to engage with whatever's currently viral.
and now that i'm thinking about it: holy shit you do not want to find your bank website via google. note the plague of scammers manipulating themselves to the top of google results for airlines in order to do identity theft to people who click the top link in the google search results and then call the phone number on the linked page thinking it is the actual airline they're trying to contact. likewise note the scam where people put up fake sites for restaurants and pretend to be those restaurants.
search? bad.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 11:26 AM on December 31, 2023 [2 favorites]
and now that i'm thinking about it: holy shit you do not want to find your bank website via google. note the plague of scammers manipulating themselves to the top of google results for airlines in order to do identity theft to people who click the top link in the google search results and then call the phone number on the linked page thinking it is the actual airline they're trying to contact. likewise note the scam where people put up fake sites for restaurants and pretend to be those restaurants.
search? bad.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 11:26 AM on December 31, 2023 [2 favorites]
bombastic lowercase pronouncements, as an octopus IRL indicates, some form of search is useful and necessary. Without it, a lot of things are just not findable, no matter how much sifting through community sites you do.
I think there's a middle ground that could be reached, with search, or maybe even classic Yahoo-style directories, for finding a surface level of things, and maybe some deeper exploration from there, although I also see, as websites churn and vanish there is a great danger of key nodes for exploration disappearing, and making things they linked to harder/impossible to find without strong search.
I am left wondering if Google might be a victim of its own success, in ways other than its tragic vulnerability to SEO? Classic PageRank Google worked by finding things due to links pointing to it, but as Google became the main way things could be found, those links, the things its ranking algorithm relied upon to work, became fewer in number.
posted by JHarris at 11:28 AM on December 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
I think there's a middle ground that could be reached, with search, or maybe even classic Yahoo-style directories, for finding a surface level of things, and maybe some deeper exploration from there, although I also see, as websites churn and vanish there is a great danger of key nodes for exploration disappearing, and making things they linked to harder/impossible to find without strong search.
I am left wondering if Google might be a victim of its own success, in ways other than its tragic vulnerability to SEO? Classic PageRank Google worked by finding things due to links pointing to it, but as Google became the main way things could be found, those links, the things its ranking algorithm relied upon to work, became fewer in number.
posted by JHarris at 11:28 AM on December 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
I could be wrong but I think there are a lot of people, certainly including me, who search routinely for stuff like this even if you think we should know the URL for all of them, including, to take a recent personal example, the page where you look up Maryland court cases. It would have been a pain to try to find that on my own and it's not something I have memorized or bookmarked or written down. There are a lot of examples like that and I don't always have easy access to the URL for all of them.
posted by an octopus IRL at 11:31 AM on December 31, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by an octopus IRL at 11:31 AM on December 31, 2023 [8 favorites]
yes, hand-maintained directories are good. it's very hard for them to become central hubs in quite the same way that search engines can. they're less like search engines and more like aggregated blogrolls.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 11:31 AM on December 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 11:31 AM on December 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
I worked at Twitter for four years from 2014-2018 and it was really enlightening.
The die-hard, old-school types like me that worked there were rabidly anti-algorithm, anti-share your address book with the app so you can invite your friends, anti-growth hack, etc.
But we could plainly see in the numbers (if you cared to admit it) that people *want* the best content up top. They *want* their friends there. They *want* to see what everyone is talking about. They *hate* pruning who they followed. Our data showed it took about 2-3 years to become a healthy user (the metric for that was if you — spoiler alert — actually used the site) and the churn rates were basically 99%.
On Metafilter, we are literally the 1%. As in, I could show you charts and graphs of an actual 1% of people arguing loudly for the things that the 99% simply did not want. And if you’re on Metafilter, many of your friends are in the 1% and the other 99% likely puzzles you.
I did a presentation once at Twitter about the evolution of the “Explore” experience. After researching it and comparing it to other social networking experiences, I started to think that automatically serving content you consider great from a massive algorithm is basically like a society discovering electricity. You can live without it if you want. But most people want life to be easier rather than harder. And for them it’s not a political statement or something they feel guilty about. Easier is better a lot of the time, especially if life is pretty dang hard for you already.
Over here we’re Thoreau rhapsodising about the elegance of a quiet existence. In the real world, people kinda like what the giant companies have provided them. They’re not happy about everything, but they like TikTok more than Mastodon. And is that really so hard to understand?
posted by jragon at 11:40 AM on December 31, 2023 [26 favorites]
The die-hard, old-school types like me that worked there were rabidly anti-algorithm, anti-share your address book with the app so you can invite your friends, anti-growth hack, etc.
But we could plainly see in the numbers (if you cared to admit it) that people *want* the best content up top. They *want* their friends there. They *want* to see what everyone is talking about. They *hate* pruning who they followed. Our data showed it took about 2-3 years to become a healthy user (the metric for that was if you — spoiler alert — actually used the site) and the churn rates were basically 99%.
On Metafilter, we are literally the 1%. As in, I could show you charts and graphs of an actual 1% of people arguing loudly for the things that the 99% simply did not want. And if you’re on Metafilter, many of your friends are in the 1% and the other 99% likely puzzles you.
I did a presentation once at Twitter about the evolution of the “Explore” experience. After researching it and comparing it to other social networking experiences, I started to think that automatically serving content you consider great from a massive algorithm is basically like a society discovering electricity. You can live without it if you want. But most people want life to be easier rather than harder. And for them it’s not a political statement or something they feel guilty about. Easier is better a lot of the time, especially if life is pretty dang hard for you already.
Over here we’re Thoreau rhapsodising about the elegance of a quiet existence. In the real world, people kinda like what the giant companies have provided them. They’re not happy about everything, but they like TikTok more than Mastodon. And is that really so hard to understand?
posted by jragon at 11:40 AM on December 31, 2023 [26 favorites]
here's the deal: the existence of search doesn't just provide methodologies for surfacing sites, it likewise shapes the sorts of sites that are developed going forward.
Just as any structure does - including the one you're proposing. That's the core of your underlying argument - that the internet should be predisposed to a structure that is built around discovery requiring significant labor on the part of users, which in turn will select for what sites - and what users - remain.
the type of Internet that's viable in an environment with search engines is different from and worse than the type of Internet where traversing from place to place requires entering a community.
Worse for who, exactly? This is the question you've been dodging by asserting that search is somehow making the internet "worse" without addressing that your proposed system has its own flaws, most notably who it would exclude in the process of making proof of work a core part of participation. I find it telling that you bring up Wikipedia as your example of the sort of community you want to see as we have had several discussions about how the platform excludes many different people and their voices - and how that shapes Wikipedia's voice and content.
Which in turn belies your argument about "central points" - because the reality is that those "central points" exist in your system as well - you just call them something different. And they're always going to exist because it turns out that people wind up relying on the judgement of others when they don't have the time or energy to do the work themselves. Trying to pretend that they're somehow "different" because you call your version something else is just deluding yourself about the dynamics in play.
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:12 PM on December 31, 2023 [6 favorites]
Just as any structure does - including the one you're proposing. That's the core of your underlying argument - that the internet should be predisposed to a structure that is built around discovery requiring significant labor on the part of users, which in turn will select for what sites - and what users - remain.
the type of Internet that's viable in an environment with search engines is different from and worse than the type of Internet where traversing from place to place requires entering a community.
Worse for who, exactly? This is the question you've been dodging by asserting that search is somehow making the internet "worse" without addressing that your proposed system has its own flaws, most notably who it would exclude in the process of making proof of work a core part of participation. I find it telling that you bring up Wikipedia as your example of the sort of community you want to see as we have had several discussions about how the platform excludes many different people and their voices - and how that shapes Wikipedia's voice and content.
Which in turn belies your argument about "central points" - because the reality is that those "central points" exist in your system as well - you just call them something different. And they're always going to exist because it turns out that people wind up relying on the judgement of others when they don't have the time or energy to do the work themselves. Trying to pretend that they're somehow "different" because you call your version something else is just deluding yourself about the dynamics in play.
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:12 PM on December 31, 2023 [6 favorites]
Very much echoing what jragon noted a few comments above - the majority of the MeFi crowd might not like That Kind Of Stuff, but it is the reality of where we have been for years. I'm a looong-time blogger and periodically mourn the Good Old Days, but...they are OLD days. I appreciate Dash's optimism, but don't quite share it.
posted by davidmsc at 1:00 PM on December 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by davidmsc at 1:00 PM on December 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
... stuff on the Internet should...
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 11:18 AM on December 31
an unsearchable Internet, on the other hand, ...
unsearchable Internet doesn't...
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 1:14 PM on December 31
of an opaque Internet
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 1:26 PM on December 31
What the hell is this?
posted by Reverend John at 1:17 PM on December 31, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 11:18 AM on December 31
an unsearchable Internet, on the other hand, ...
unsearchable Internet doesn't...
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 1:14 PM on December 31
of an opaque Internet
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 1:26 PM on December 31
What the hell is this?
posted by Reverend John at 1:17 PM on December 31, 2023 [7 favorites]
The "searchable" Internet can coexist along side the "non-searchable" just fine and by your metric the only people worse off are those using the searchable section. And in fact it does. Invite only spaces abound many which present nothing to search engines. Or stuff is being created on platforms like Discord. Or people put stuff out there that never gets seen by essentially anyone. I mean the only people to visit my photography blog are family members and that's just fine. Google's enshittification of search is even making the searchable Internet non-searchable. Google routinely can't find content even when I give it a domain(this one) and a specific string (say my user ID and a couple key words from my comment).
And now that llms are being used to flood the zone with unthinking hashes I can't see that getting any better short of actual thinking AI.
posted by Mitheral at 1:23 PM on December 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
And now that llms are being used to flood the zone with unthinking hashes I can't see that getting any better short of actual thinking AI.
posted by Mitheral at 1:23 PM on December 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
What the hell is this?
Sometimes "bombastic" and "lowercase" are at odds, and then you have to choose.
posted by aws17576 at 1:40 PM on December 31, 2023 [8 favorites]
Sometimes "bombastic" and "lowercase" are at odds, and then you have to choose.
posted by aws17576 at 1:40 PM on December 31, 2023 [8 favorites]
I think we're discovering the limits of what the internet is capable of.
Do you remember the Metafilter Megathreads? From like 2015 to 2019, they were this site's way of dealing with the political chaos of the time. They were an invaluable source of information for thousands of people and they were extraordinarily popular.
And they had to end. The moderation of the threads became too onerous for the site's staff to keep up with.
That really defined the paradox at the heart of the current incarnation of the internet for me. Good moderation is absolutely essential to having excellent content. But good moderation is expensive, time-consuming, and will ultimately be swamped if the content becomes popular. There simply isn't enough good moderation out there to deal with the tsunami of bad content.
The nature of things changes as they scale up, and sometimes things just don't work at the new scale altogether. The internet is showing signs that, as a communications medium for eight billion people, it has some serious drawbacks. But then again, no-one has ever developed a communications network for eight billion sentient beings before, so there are bound to be some bugs.
posted by MrVisible at 1:48 PM on December 31, 2023 [11 favorites]
Do you remember the Metafilter Megathreads? From like 2015 to 2019, they were this site's way of dealing with the political chaos of the time. They were an invaluable source of information for thousands of people and they were extraordinarily popular.
And they had to end. The moderation of the threads became too onerous for the site's staff to keep up with.
That really defined the paradox at the heart of the current incarnation of the internet for me. Good moderation is absolutely essential to having excellent content. But good moderation is expensive, time-consuming, and will ultimately be swamped if the content becomes popular. There simply isn't enough good moderation out there to deal with the tsunami of bad content.
The nature of things changes as they scale up, and sometimes things just don't work at the new scale altogether. The internet is showing signs that, as a communications medium for eight billion people, it has some serious drawbacks. But then again, no-one has ever developed a communications network for eight billion sentient beings before, so there are bound to be some bugs.
posted by MrVisible at 1:48 PM on December 31, 2023 [11 favorites]
It just kills me that Rolling Stone gave Anil Dash the epitaph of "won a Webby". That's the award program where you pay to be considered for recognition. It's the fucking Whos Who of the Internet.
I suspect Anil's Lifetime Achievement Webby is actually not quite so awful, possibly a sincere award. OTOH it was given to him in recognition of his early work in what became NFTs. Anil and Kevin McCoy's early work on this crypto stuff was interesting, IMHO. But the NFT trend that the Webbys were trying to draft off last year has been absolutely the worst, most cynical example of tech being used as grift. The interesting cool Internet part of it was just the cover for the fraud.
It's an awfully ironic epitaph for the content of the article.
posted by Nelson at 2:38 PM on December 31, 2023 [6 favorites]
I suspect Anil's Lifetime Achievement Webby is actually not quite so awful, possibly a sincere award. OTOH it was given to him in recognition of his early work in what became NFTs. Anil and Kevin McCoy's early work on this crypto stuff was interesting, IMHO. But the NFT trend that the Webbys were trying to draft off last year has been absolutely the worst, most cynical example of tech being used as grift. The interesting cool Internet part of it was just the cover for the fraud.
It's an awfully ironic epitaph for the content of the article.
posted by Nelson at 2:38 PM on December 31, 2023 [6 favorites]
Does anyone else miss hell.com?
posted by ryoshu at 3:17 PM on December 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by ryoshu at 3:17 PM on December 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
I had a look at sites that had won Webbys about a year ago. First, as far as I can tell, if old Webby award records are visible on the Webbys site, they're not visible to the public, I had to get the lists from Wikipedia. Second, they probably don't make those lists visible because a ton of old Webby award-winning sites are dead. A shocking proportion.
Search is far too valuable to too many people for too many reasons to do without it entirely, I think, although I appreciate bombastic lowercase pronouncements' perspective. I also appreciate jragon's views, although I also dispute their observations. If you want to be Old Twitter they make sense, but in fact Mastodon seems to be picking up steam, despite being somewhat clunkier than Twitter, and rejecting some of those claims.
It might be a case where there is no other clear alternative yet, or that with multiple viable alternatives people can do where they want. But I'd also caution jragon. I'm reminded of an observation made by someone who had had access to highly classified government information (but that I can't find at the moment, see above on Google's degradation), and observed that having access to privileged information often has the effect of causing one to prioritize it, to the detriment of other evidence. With the confidence it gives one in their private sources, it can also make one unteachable.
And this isn't the first time I've heard former Twitter staffers talking confidently about "what people want" from their private research. Undoubtedly it's what some people want, but people are flexible, what people want changes, and some of those aims can be met by having multiple social media sites with different aims... which, in any case, seems to be how it's shaking out.
posted by JHarris at 3:30 PM on December 31, 2023 [7 favorites]
Search is far too valuable to too many people for too many reasons to do without it entirely, I think, although I appreciate bombastic lowercase pronouncements' perspective. I also appreciate jragon's views, although I also dispute their observations. If you want to be Old Twitter they make sense, but in fact Mastodon seems to be picking up steam, despite being somewhat clunkier than Twitter, and rejecting some of those claims.
It might be a case where there is no other clear alternative yet, or that with multiple viable alternatives people can do where they want. But I'd also caution jragon. I'm reminded of an observation made by someone who had had access to highly classified government information (but that I can't find at the moment, see above on Google's degradation), and observed that having access to privileged information often has the effect of causing one to prioritize it, to the detriment of other evidence. With the confidence it gives one in their private sources, it can also make one unteachable.
And this isn't the first time I've heard former Twitter staffers talking confidently about "what people want" from their private research. Undoubtedly it's what some people want, but people are flexible, what people want changes, and some of those aims can be met by having multiple social media sites with different aims... which, in any case, seems to be how it's shaking out.
posted by JHarris at 3:30 PM on December 31, 2023 [7 favorites]
From the article: This could be good news, increasing consumer choice and possibly enabling different business models — how about mobile games that aren’t constantly pestering gamers for in-app purchases?
Does he not understand that they want their own app stores and payment processors to bug you even more in app and collect more money from you? Right now Apple is the one holding them back and they’re suing and wooing regulators to make Apple stop. Even a cursory glance and who the parties are in this fight shows what’s going to go down if Apple is forced to open up.
posted by jmauro at 4:54 PM on December 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
Does he not understand that they want their own app stores and payment processors to bug you even more in app and collect more money from you? Right now Apple is the one holding them back and they’re suing and wooing regulators to make Apple stop. Even a cursory glance and who the parties are in this fight shows what’s going to go down if Apple is forced to open up.
posted by jmauro at 4:54 PM on December 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
condour75 > if you need a domain name for your instance, queertherebedragons.com is available as of this post.
That's not too bad! But it's dragon.style since 2017. The 'dragon' part is more of the main point than the 'queer' part. :)
posted by egypturnash at 5:32 PM on December 31, 2023
That's not too bad! But it's dragon.style since 2017. The 'dragon' part is more of the main point than the 'queer' part. :)
posted by egypturnash at 5:32 PM on December 31, 2023
But we could plainly see in the numbers (if you cared to admit it) that people *want* the best content up top.
Which numbers, exactly? I think it’s a fair assumption that most people do not in fact want an opaque, unsearchable Internet - that’s just some MeFi smart aleck doing his shtick - but your formulation here also feels a bit self-serving (and/or subject to Goodhart’s law).
posted by atoxyl at 5:39 PM on December 31, 2023
Which numbers, exactly? I think it’s a fair assumption that most people do not in fact want an opaque, unsearchable Internet - that’s just some MeFi smart aleck doing his shtick - but your formulation here also feels a bit self-serving (and/or subject to Goodhart’s law).
posted by atoxyl at 5:39 PM on December 31, 2023
I'm surprised nobody here has mentioned Marginalia, a DIY search engine that prioritizes non-commercial/independent/brutalist/old-skool sites.
Marginalia is useful, but is too limited in scope for many purposes. I think the future might be multiple search engines each with a different specialty? One for blogs, one for community-based answers like Stack Overflow and (ugh) Reddit, one for social media, one for wikis, one for general accurate information (Wikipedia and other online encyclopedias) and one for shopping and products, which probably will end up better funded than all the others put together.
posted by JHarris at 6:01 PM on December 31, 2023 [2 favorites]
Marginalia is useful, but is too limited in scope for many purposes. I think the future might be multiple search engines each with a different specialty? One for blogs, one for community-based answers like Stack Overflow and (ugh) Reddit, one for social media, one for wikis, one for general accurate information (Wikipedia and other online encyclopedias) and one for shopping and products, which probably will end up better funded than all the others put together.
posted by JHarris at 6:01 PM on December 31, 2023 [2 favorites]
I think it's ultimately a mistake to draw conclusions about "what people want" from studies of the users of Twitter, or of any other single platform. If the users are using the platform voluntarily, you've got a pretty strong built-in sample bias problem. All you wind up proving is that the platform is primarily used by the sort of people who want what the platform provides.
posted by baf at 6:11 PM on December 31, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by baf at 6:11 PM on December 31, 2023 [10 favorites]
And regarding jragon's comments... honestly in the past year and a half or so, the fediverse has been getting big enough that people keep coming in, looking around at the general anarchy, and saying "I spent several years doing [this thing] at a Large, For-Profit Social Media Corporation, and I think you should listen to my advice on how to handle it".
And on the one hand there is a certain element of all of us small-site admins reinventing the wheel in terms of policies and whatnot, but on the other hand? No. Just fucking no. Have you looked at the Large For-Profit Social Media Corp you worked at? All of your advice is irrevocably tainted by the fact that your paycheck relied on addicting all the rubes to your machine-curated feed of whatever "content" would best keep people scrolling without ever seeing an outbound link, thus increase the value of the ads you could sell against their attention. Your paycheck relied on spending the bare minimum on screening and curating users; your paycheck relied on both rapidly catching spammers and on letting the spammers constantly join so you could report a constant rise in the number of users on the site. Your paycheck relied on capturing our attention by getting all our friends to post on your site, then slowly showing less and less of their posts in favor of stuff your machine thinks we'll get addicted to.
Someone who worked at Twitter talking about what they found users "want" should be listened to with the same skepticism as someone who worked at Phillip Morris talking about what they found smokers want, without disclosing how much time and effort they spent on suppressing studies on just how bad their product was for its users and everyone around them.
posted by egypturnash at 6:12 PM on December 31, 2023 [7 favorites]
And on the one hand there is a certain element of all of us small-site admins reinventing the wheel in terms of policies and whatnot, but on the other hand? No. Just fucking no. Have you looked at the Large For-Profit Social Media Corp you worked at? All of your advice is irrevocably tainted by the fact that your paycheck relied on addicting all the rubes to your machine-curated feed of whatever "content" would best keep people scrolling without ever seeing an outbound link, thus increase the value of the ads you could sell against their attention. Your paycheck relied on spending the bare minimum on screening and curating users; your paycheck relied on both rapidly catching spammers and on letting the spammers constantly join so you could report a constant rise in the number of users on the site. Your paycheck relied on capturing our attention by getting all our friends to post on your site, then slowly showing less and less of their posts in favor of stuff your machine thinks we'll get addicted to.
Someone who worked at Twitter talking about what they found users "want" should be listened to with the same skepticism as someone who worked at Phillip Morris talking about what they found smokers want, without disclosing how much time and effort they spent on suppressing studies on just how bad their product was for its users and everyone around them.
posted by egypturnash at 6:12 PM on December 31, 2023 [7 favorites]
I think that's a bit harsh on jragon, even if I agree generally? They were just offering in the spirit of help and all? I'm glad that we're all moving away (or might be, who can say for the long term) from the Twitter model, but there is some advice to get from those folk. I think it's possible that the big problem with algorithms isn't their mere existence, but the anti-user ends to which they were employed.
And looking at their user page, wow: they signed up before I did!
posted by JHarris at 7:59 PM on December 31, 2023 [2 favorites]
And looking at their user page, wow: they signed up before I did!
posted by JHarris at 7:59 PM on December 31, 2023 [2 favorites]
"the type of Internet that's viable in an environment with search engines is different from and worse than the type of Internet where traversing from place to place requires entering a community."
lol miss me with this I remember when Yahoo index was the best option
an unsearchable Internet, on the other hand, is a tangled network with a large number of potential entry points. becoming findable requires maintaining maintaining strong connections across entire communities. this means that there's no potentially seizeable high ground for anyone to seize.
Gif of the Skids saying "Darkweb"
posted by klangklangston at 9:19 PM on December 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
lol miss me with this I remember when Yahoo index was the best option
an unsearchable Internet, on the other hand, is a tangled network with a large number of potential entry points. becoming findable requires maintaining maintaining strong connections across entire communities. this means that there's no potentially seizeable high ground for anyone to seize.
Gif of the Skids saying "Darkweb"
posted by klangklangston at 9:19 PM on December 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
JHarris, your points are well taken and I appreciate them. It is extremely likely that my access to “the data” makes me think I have it all figured out and that I’ll miss stuff.
Another force is something we called “the pickle jar effect,” where watching someone struggle to open a pickle jar makes you say “let me try,” because surely this person isn’t making any progress. Surely you can do better. (See also: Animal Farm)
posted by jragon at 10:56 PM on December 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
Another force is something we called “the pickle jar effect,” where watching someone struggle to open a pickle jar makes you say “let me try,” because surely this person isn’t making any progress. Surely you can do better. (See also: Animal Farm)
posted by jragon at 10:56 PM on December 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
Does any of you fellow Mefites see anything resembling this?
I feel like there is a growing collective knowledge that Amazon is *terrible* for buying physical products. reddit overflows with hundreds of iterations of memes like:
Grandma: Back in my day, Prime was just $26 for college students...
Granddaughter: Ok grandma, let's get you back in your QZKXSYL recliner.
Amazon is close to 100% Alibaba arbitrage at this point. Search for a thing, and wade into a sea of the same photo of the same item under 100 different nonsense brand names. The familiar, durable, name-brand product you want isn't for sale there. Or, if it is, it's basically a coin toss whether or not you're getting a counterfeit once it's actually delivered - any other retailer would be fined into non-existence for a direct-to-consumer counterfeit goods operation, but because Amazon has More Money Than God the rules don't apply.
A related story... Last year, around December, *nobody* had infant Tylenol in stock. Abso-lutely-fucking-nobody. And my 1 year old daughter was sick, and getting to the end of the single bottle that we had. I did not anticipate a Tylenol shortage. So I drove around, and drove around, every grocery store and pharmacy I could find. No luck. I called my parents (several states away) and asked if they could look on the shelves of stores near them. My mom went to Amazon instead and said "oh look they have plenty, which flavor should I order?" No mom, I'm not putting Amazon's mystery serum into my baby. Please look in a real store. Of course, no luck there either. This has got to be some kind of a data point, and I'm sure I'm not the only parent who made the same call.
So anyway Amazon is now my absolute last resort for physical goods. Literally any other store with a physical presence and an online shop to the front of the line. I don't think I'm alone.
posted by slagheap at 1:44 PM on January 2 [6 favorites]
I feel like there is a growing collective knowledge that Amazon is *terrible* for buying physical products. reddit overflows with hundreds of iterations of memes like:
Grandma: Back in my day, Prime was just $26 for college students...
Granddaughter: Ok grandma, let's get you back in your QZKXSYL recliner.
Amazon is close to 100% Alibaba arbitrage at this point. Search for a thing, and wade into a sea of the same photo of the same item under 100 different nonsense brand names. The familiar, durable, name-brand product you want isn't for sale there. Or, if it is, it's basically a coin toss whether or not you're getting a counterfeit once it's actually delivered - any other retailer would be fined into non-existence for a direct-to-consumer counterfeit goods operation, but because Amazon has More Money Than God the rules don't apply.
A related story... Last year, around December, *nobody* had infant Tylenol in stock. Abso-lutely-fucking-nobody. And my 1 year old daughter was sick, and getting to the end of the single bottle that we had. I did not anticipate a Tylenol shortage. So I drove around, and drove around, every grocery store and pharmacy I could find. No luck. I called my parents (several states away) and asked if they could look on the shelves of stores near them. My mom went to Amazon instead and said "oh look they have plenty, which flavor should I order?" No mom, I'm not putting Amazon's mystery serum into my baby. Please look in a real store. Of course, no luck there either. This has got to be some kind of a data point, and I'm sure I'm not the only parent who made the same call.
So anyway Amazon is now my absolute last resort for physical goods. Literally any other store with a physical presence and an online shop to the front of the line. I don't think I'm alone.
posted by slagheap at 1:44 PM on January 2 [6 favorites]
slagheap: So anyway Amazon is now my absolute last resort for physical goods. Literally any other store with a physical presence and an online shop to the front of the line. I don't think I'm alone.
I'd put Amazon in with the rest of the big sites as a company that succeeded using content that they didn't pay for, and is now turning to shit because they suck out all the money before it reaches the people who are creating the content.
What made Amazon great back in the day was real reviews by real people. What made that great for Amazon was that they didn't have to pay for any of it. And since Amazon was sucking all the money out of the process, the only money left was for people willing to do the scummiest things review-wise to game Amazon's system.
posted by clawsoon at 2:17 PM on January 2 [1 favorite]
I'd put Amazon in with the rest of the big sites as a company that succeeded using content that they didn't pay for, and is now turning to shit because they suck out all the money before it reaches the people who are creating the content.
What made Amazon great back in the day was real reviews by real people. What made that great for Amazon was that they didn't have to pay for any of it. And since Amazon was sucking all the money out of the process, the only money left was for people willing to do the scummiest things review-wise to game Amazon's system.
posted by clawsoon at 2:17 PM on January 2 [1 favorite]
I made the mistake of googling "pickle jar effect".
posted by tigrrrlily at 2:48 PM on January 2
posted by tigrrrlily at 2:48 PM on January 2
> I'm reminded of an observation made by someone who had had access to highly classified government information (but that I can't find at the moment, see above on Google's degradation), and observed that having access to privileged information often has the effect of causing one to prioritize it, to the detriment of other evidence. With the confidence it gives one in their private sources, it can also make one unteachable.I'm almost certain you're referring to Daniel Ellsberg’s advice to Henry Kissinger (discussed here previously, and more recently).
(I vaguely remembered it, and was able to find it again by searching obama secret on MeFi’s internal search feature. The second result brought me to the content I was looking for.)
posted by Syllepsis at 8:17 PM on January 2 [2 favorites]
Yep, I think that was it. In the past I probably could have found it again with only a little Googling, but it didn't turn up as rapidly this time.
posted by JHarris at 4:43 AM on January 3
posted by JHarris at 4:43 AM on January 3
Does he not understand that they want their own app stores and payment processors to bug you even more in app and collect more money from you?
He does understand that, yes, though I know it is MeFi policy to either treat me as an idiot or a villain of some sort. This is a place that is a relic of the era I’m talking about, so it’s interesting how many people respond to descriptions of the potential of that era as being awful or broken.
It is possible to make efficient, widely usable experiences without having overwhelming centralization in the hands of one trillion-dollar company run by fascists. It is possible to have more consumer choice without things becoming a hellscape for users. It is possible to have good things on the human internet while also having the large, bad, platforms alongside them.
Yes, all this stuff has been here all along. No, it was not flourishing as much as it has started to lately. The shift of large-scale power dynamics on the Internet is an opportunity, for anyone who wants to believe it is so.
posted by anildash at 7:43 AM on January 7 [11 favorites]
He does understand that, yes, though I know it is MeFi policy to either treat me as an idiot or a villain of some sort. This is a place that is a relic of the era I’m talking about, so it’s interesting how many people respond to descriptions of the potential of that era as being awful or broken.
It is possible to make efficient, widely usable experiences without having overwhelming centralization in the hands of one trillion-dollar company run by fascists. It is possible to have more consumer choice without things becoming a hellscape for users. It is possible to have good things on the human internet while also having the large, bad, platforms alongside them.
Yes, all this stuff has been here all along. No, it was not flourishing as much as it has started to lately. The shift of large-scale power dynamics on the Internet is an opportunity, for anyone who wants to believe it is so.
posted by anildash at 7:43 AM on January 7 [11 favorites]
(Wrote a zinger and thought better of it)
posted by jragon at 10:21 AM on January 7 [1 favorite]
posted by jragon at 10:21 AM on January 7 [1 favorite]
He does understand that, yes, though I know it is MeFi policy to either treat me as an idiot or a villain of some sort.
Hee hee, nice to see you're still around! You're stuck with Cory Doctorow in the Vegetable Target Box I guess.
The thing I often try to remind people around here is that Metafilter contains multitudes, and much like the greater internet itself, it's really easy for a small number of people with insistent opinions, and willing to write long comments, to be taken as representing the whole, when lots of people who read MeFi don't even have accounts. So there is a sense that "Metafilter" believes this or that, or is mad at someone, when often that's illusory.
You're right that the power shift is an opportunity, and thanks for writing the subject of the FPP! I don't always agree with you, but I often do, and I do this time!
posted by JHarris at 4:58 PM on January 7 [5 favorites]
Hee hee, nice to see you're still around! You're stuck with Cory Doctorow in the Vegetable Target Box I guess.
The thing I often try to remind people around here is that Metafilter contains multitudes, and much like the greater internet itself, it's really easy for a small number of people with insistent opinions, and willing to write long comments, to be taken as representing the whole, when lots of people who read MeFi don't even have accounts. So there is a sense that "Metafilter" believes this or that, or is mad at someone, when often that's illusory.
You're right that the power shift is an opportunity, and thanks for writing the subject of the FPP! I don't always agree with you, but I often do, and I do this time!
posted by JHarris at 4:58 PM on January 7 [5 favorites]
I want this to be true, I really do. But when so many of the options for building and hosting your own website assume you're a developer with easy server access, it's hard to be as weird as you want.
I miss Early 2000s Teen Girl Internet. But even then, even with our subdomains and 6-month theme changes and blogging before it was blogging, we had social media platforms. Livejournal/Deadjournal/Manicjournal. Kiwibox. Diaryland. Xanga. MySpace. So many avenues for creative expression and they didn't cost you a dime. (Even the subdomains were free - your host was the one bearing the costs of server space rental, but GreyMatter and Movable Type were free and accessible).
I've been looking at Craft CMS lately to consolidate all my web projects into one place (rather than paying $100+/year for multiple Squarespace accounts) and it seems promising, but finding somewhere to rent server space from just so I can install it is a headache. Craft CMS allows multiple sites with one install (yes!) but different platforms say they charge per "app" or it's just one for all but there's some other issue and AAAAAAAA why is this so hard. In that question, someone recommended Kirby, which looked promising except it's $109/year/site and that's already way too much.
(Also good luck if you want your site to look like more than just a block of text after text.)
Tumblr gets the closest with the weirdness & customisation, though there's not really a great way to separate sections of your site asides from tags and individual static pages. (It's more that the front page can get pretty cluttered). But otherwise, so much of "let's make internet weird!" assumes up-to-date coding knowledge.
Also, for all the moderation problems that Twitter/Facebook/et al have, things are way better now in terms of people getting harassed online being believed, compared to 10-20 years ago, when you were just expected to "ignore the trolls".
posted by creatrixtiara at 2:05 AM on January 9
I miss Early 2000s Teen Girl Internet. But even then, even with our subdomains and 6-month theme changes and blogging before it was blogging, we had social media platforms. Livejournal/Deadjournal/Manicjournal. Kiwibox. Diaryland. Xanga. MySpace. So many avenues for creative expression and they didn't cost you a dime. (Even the subdomains were free - your host was the one bearing the costs of server space rental, but GreyMatter and Movable Type were free and accessible).
I've been looking at Craft CMS lately to consolidate all my web projects into one place (rather than paying $100+/year for multiple Squarespace accounts) and it seems promising, but finding somewhere to rent server space from just so I can install it is a headache. Craft CMS allows multiple sites with one install (yes!) but different platforms say they charge per "app" or it's just one for all but there's some other issue and AAAAAAAA why is this so hard. In that question, someone recommended Kirby, which looked promising except it's $109/year/site and that's already way too much.
(Also good luck if you want your site to look like more than just a block of text after text.)
Tumblr gets the closest with the weirdness & customisation, though there's not really a great way to separate sections of your site asides from tags and individual static pages. (It's more that the front page can get pretty cluttered). But otherwise, so much of "let's make internet weird!" assumes up-to-date coding knowledge.
Also, for all the moderation problems that Twitter/Facebook/et al have, things are way better now in terms of people getting harassed online being believed, compared to 10-20 years ago, when you were just expected to "ignore the trolls".
posted by creatrixtiara at 2:05 AM on January 9
There are still free hosts where you can just make a website with HTML. It's not super simple, but it needn't be hard either. If you just serve static pages then a lot of problems just go away. The best of these places is probably Neocities, but I understand that tildes often offer web space.
posted by JHarris at 10:29 AM on January 9
posted by JHarris at 10:29 AM on January 9
In my particular use case, static pages alone won't cut it (at the very least, I'd value some kind of tagging mechanism).
posted by creatrixtiara at 2:11 AM on January 10
posted by creatrixtiara at 2:11 AM on January 10
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