The internet is worse than it used to be. How did we get here, and can we go back? : technology

[–] [email protected] 47 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (4 children)

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

load more comments (4 replies)

[–] [email protected] 77 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

Libraries should evolve to play a larger role in the internet, theyve been trying to reinvent themselves and i think this best aligns with their spiritual purpose. Some ideas:

Caretakers of digital archives.

Caretakers of relevant open source projects.

Could I get a free domain with my library card?

Could I get free api access to mapping or other localized data?

Should libraries host local fediverse instances for civic users? (think police, firefighter alert, other community related feeds)

load more comments (3 replies)

[–] [email protected] 21 points 4 months ago (8 children)

The genie is already out of the bottle BUT, one solution would be to raise the barrier to entry again.

Return the internet to the pre-"smart" phone era, in which a minimum bar of effort and knowledge needed to be present in order to connect and participate on the web.

In 2008~2010, the flood gates opened for all the normies to stampede in and everything has been downhill since then.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago

We're in Eternal September now. Have been for a few decades.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

Return the internet to the pre-"smart" phone era, in which a minimum bar of effort and knowledge needed to be present in order to connect and participate on the web.

Yeah. I think that's happening now. The public will discover the Fediverse, but I'm not sure if they'll be welcomed into every community here.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

How about BBSs? If you want to spam at 1200 baud, you had better be dedicated.

load more comments (1 replies)

load more comments (5 replies)

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago

Quality through obfuscation... make it harder to use. If the dimwits can't figure out how to use it...

[–] [email protected] 21 points 4 months ago (1 children)

How did we get here

Money!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago

can we go back?

No!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Betteridge's law of headlines. Any headline that ends with a question the answer is always no.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (9 children)

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.)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Not really needed with dynamic DNS able to point back to a web server on your own network.

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Yeah you can host your own blog on the fediverse. I've started similar attempts, in fact, such as [email protected] . I intend to expand it, but it takes time getting used to this type of personal web space.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago

Woof. I forgot that used to be a thing. I’m pretty sure I had a phonebook those days.

load more comments (5 replies)

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago

Archive the entire thing and start over.

[+] [email protected] 118 points 4 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (7 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 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.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

im doing 2 actually.

[–] [email protected] 73 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

A few of us still remembers option 3) Regulation And also 4) Properly working anti-trust laws.

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)

needs enshitfication vaccination, if we can make it

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

So far we’re doing a great job at keeping profits out of the equation. Let’s see if it lasts.

[–] [email protected] 162 points 4 months ago (16 children)

How can we go back? We're already on the way back. It's called the Fediverse.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (9 children)

No. The fediverse is just more of the same mindless gargling and regurgitation of mainstream media excrement that the internet has become, but federated.

It lacks the creativity, originality, experimentation, wonder, sheer life of the old internet.

It's just as dead, enshittified, and riddled with misinformation bots as everything else.

load more comments (9 replies)

[–] [email protected] 27 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Ehhhh, the OG internet connected better because all nodes were well connected. The Fediverse is a series of single servers that can't even sync all data across themselves. It's cute, but it's post-it notes on strings atm

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It's not unless you are operating your own instance.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Or at the least, avoid the major instances and use smaller instances from individuals.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 4 months ago (4 children)

I help pay for my instance to operate, and it's a cost I'm happy to help shoulder.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 months ago

Us instance admins appreciate it I promise

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

Same, its on my best pi. 🥧

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yep we have different lemmy/mastodon/etc.... instances talking with one another. Anyone can set up something like activityhub. Its a fun place in my opinion!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Btw how do we stand on just blatantly copying and reposting material from reddit? I missed the announcement talking about that.

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] [email protected] -3 points 4 months ago (2 children)

We would be better than ever, if not for the normification.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Is this some kind of attack on certain minority groups or am I over thinking this comment? I googled what normification meant and the results gave me some bad vibes regarding this comments direction.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

It's not an attack on certain minority groups unless you consider "normal average person" a minority group.

It's just a little bit of the old nerd superiority complex leaking out with a new word attached to it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (3 children)

what exactly does that mean?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (9 children)

It's what happened to the internet. Devices were dumbed down to make the internet accessible for everyone. Now the "normies" are also on the internet, whereas in the past they'd belittle you for spending time on the computer.

In time, the Fediverse will also be easily accessible. And where there are normies, you'll find corporate enshittification.

Edit: thanks for the downvotes because I explained the word "normification". You're overthinking this. It's a term that has been around since before Reddit became popular. It's a term that stems from 4chan. I don't like the term, I just explained it. And yes, the corpos are to blame but they couldn't do the things they do without a certain user base. And that's not your typical tech savvy user base. How is that so difficult to understand?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (2 children)

normies

Honestly some normies would help us talk about something different than US politics, linux and being trans femboys. Honestly, we'd have some diversity in content. I'd like that.

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

With community visibility, there is plenty of room to form these communities that regular people can’t access for those who want that.

I can imagine an instance with a whole collection of insider communities. In fact, it’s already happened.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 months ago (2 children)

I'm not sure that categorizing people as "normies" is a great idea. nor is it a way to entice new people and voices to join and learn how to use the fediverse so that it can become a more reliable place.

i think blaming enshittification on "normies" is a lot easier than holding greedy corporations accountable for directly making everything worse. it's surely easier, but the real issue remains unchecked.

if anything, it's a good thing that more people are learning how much better the fediverse is. it helps the fediverse get stronger, not weaker.

"us" vs "them" is not a mindset that will produce anything except cesspools of toxicity. at least imho.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

blaming enshittification on “normies”

What's really annoying is it's straight out of the corpo playbook.

"We're not responsible for ______, you are because you didn't do enough ________".

The most blatant is "global warming" and "ate too much meat/didn't recycle enough/made poor choices with your car" and so on.

It'd be nice if people would stop trying to blame the worst offenses being perpetuated on people by billionaires and their pet corporations on personal choices, because it's hot liquid bullshit.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (7 children)

I didn't coin the term and I too believe it's a huge generalization. However, "simpler" people are more susceptible to ads. The "normies" in question are the ones that don't use adblockers, they believe ads are normal and they believe ads don't affect them. Corporations capitalize on that. Better tech education would definitely help take some power away from corporations.

Edit: even now you'll find people that use Lemmy apps that have ads. The bigger the user base, the more greedy companies will find ways of exploiting the Fediverse.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

Better tech education would definitely help take some power away from corporations

If you truly believe that, then vilifying more "simple" and less tech-savvy individuals is not the way to do it. Don't be angry that they click on ads. Be angry that they've been poisoned to think that behavior is normal on the internet.

Education is absolutely possible for those new to things like the fediverse. But education doesn't work when you use those labels for people. It widens the gap, it doesn't close it.

Technology

Our Rules

Approved Bots