We have made mistakes.
We wanted it all to be free. It was free. I remember the early days of the internet, the webforums, the IRC, it was mostly sites run by enthusiasts. A few companies showing their products to would-be customers. It was awesome and it was all free.
And then it got popular, it got mainstream. Running servers got expensive and the webmasters were looking for funding. And we resisted paywalls. The internet is free, that's how it's supposed to work!
They turned to advertising. That's fair, a few banners, no big deal, we can live with that. It worked for television! And for a while that was OK.
Where did it all go sideways? Well, it was much too much effort to negotiate advertisement deals between websites and advertisers one website at a time, so the advertisement networks were born. Sign up for funding, embed a small script and you're done. Advertisers can book ad space with the network and their banner appears on thousands of websites. Then they figured out they can monitor individual user's interests, and show them more "relevant" ads, and make more money for more effective ad campaigns.
And now we have no privacy online. Which caused regulators like the EU to step in and try to limit user data harvesting. With mixed results as we all know. For one it doesn't seem to get enforced enough so a lot of companies just get away with. But also the consent banners are just clumsy and annoying.
And now we're swamped with ads, and sponsored content written by AI, because capitalism's gonna capitalism and squeeze as much profit as they can, until an equilibrium is reached between maximum revenue and user tolerance for BS. Look up "enshittification"
I wonder how the web would look like if we had not resisted paid content back then. There were attempts to do things differently. flattr was one thing for a while. Patreon, ko-fi and others are awesome for small creators. Gives them independence and freedom to do their thing and not depend on big platforms or corporations. The fediverse and open source are awesome.
There's still a lot of great stuff out there for those of us who know where to look. But large parts of the internet are atrocious.
Running servers got expensive
No it didn't. Running a server today is dirt cheap compared to the bad old days. So is registering a domain. Getting a TLS certificate doesn't cost anything at all.
However, there are a lot more people here now. It used to be you could feasibly run a moderately popular website off a single server and it'd be fine. Now, with billions of people on the Internet, you need an army of servers distributed around the world if your site gets even remotely popular.
But also the consent banners are just clumsy and annoying.
That's a feature, not a bug. Consent banners were manufactured as a way to turn public opinion against GDPR and generate political pressure to repeal it. “Look at how those Europeans ruined the web!” GDPR was supposed to pressure these unscrupulous advertisers into giving up their spooky tracking, but they did this instead. And it's working—most people blame GDPR for ruining the web, not the sleazeballs who actually ruined it.
Sure, servers are cheaper now. Domains are cheap now. TLS certs are free now. But that happened after the advertising business model became dominant.
For a while, server power was barely keeping up with the rise in demand, and you couldn't just add another cloud server or bump up the RAM allocation on the one you have, you had to physically install new hardware. That took a larger chunk of money than adding $5 to your hosting plan, and time to set up the hardware.
By the time the tech stack got significantly cheaper (between faster hardware and virtualization, not to mention Let's Encrypt), advertising was already entrenched and starting to coalesce around a handful of big networks.
honestly heartbreaking in a lot of ways to see the current turn of events and how the web is today.
but what could we have done to prevent it? im not sure paywalls would've been feasible, i feel like most people would refuse to pay or just avoid your website all together. maybe a paywall network of websites of some kind could've worked? but its really hard to say.
i don't even have a problem with ads on sites to an extent, as long as they aren't overly obnoxious and don't spy on you and track your every move. that shouldn't be too much to ask, right? but alas, i guess it is in 2023. 🤷♀️
just such a sad state of things. the web is currently unusable without a content blocker or protection of some kind, which is insane to think about. this all really only scratches the surface too of the modern web's issues. in general a lot of the individuality and freedom of the internet is just... gone. all completely corporate and shall now, so much seo spam and clickbait and other garbage, just for the most clicks or revenue possible. there's little quality left for sure.
feels like we lost the internet in a lot of ways. i wonder what the solution is, if there even is one. i guess we just can't give up fighting.
@Skimmer5728 I think what we're doing right here in the fediverse is a good solution. We're just building a parallel infrastructure to their dumb web3.0 garbage. Those who want a better Internet can come over here and those who want to stick with garbage can stick with it.
The comment was getting long and I didn't want to get into socioeconomic side effects, mobile, or other factors.
It's not all bleak. The internet is still built on a foundation of free and open technology. HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (aka ECMAScript), TCP/IP and DNS …
The best thing we can do is teach those things. Keep them accessible to as many people as possible and make sure they don't become forgotten arcane voodoo knowledge. Anyone can set up a website and share it with others. We don't have to depend on big social networks.
The biggest challenge is how do you get people to be curious about this stuff? Back in the day, we had to learn, we had to look under the hood, because half the time stuff just didn't work and we needed to figure out how to fix it. But today everything is hidden behind a shiny UI and most things just work. There's no need to look under the hood (if you even still can, and it's not some encrypted blob or compiled binary webASM nonsense).
There was the original idea of microtransactions, where you could buy some credit, say $10, and every time you read an article, the author would get fraction of a cent. Or you'd need to manually approve it, such as with a like.
Of course companies saw a good idea and ran it into the ground, so now microtransactions mean something very different, and in their stead there are subscriptions for everything.
but what could we have done to prevent it? im not sure paywalls would’ve been feasible, i feel like most people would refuse to pay or just avoid your website all together. maybe a paywall network of websites of some kind could’ve worked? but its really hard to say.
So people don't want advertisements but they also don't want to pay for a bajillion subscriptions. I think the solution is socialization of the Internet. Governments should simply guarantee funding and make up the cost in taxes.
I feel like that's where online payment systems really let us down. If there was an easy universal way to pay a few cents to view content and it wasn't a privacy and fee nightmare, I'm sure people would have no problem doing that. Digicash systems come to mind, I hope they could make a comeback one day.
But I also fear a lot of the damage could've been done already, kids who grow up with the internet now will probably only remember big tech platforms and may not be very eager to try out something more complicated.
I like your suggestion with easily payable small amounts. Because the way payment currently works is just not scale-able on an individual level. Sure, $20 per month for a technical news site would be worth it ... if that was the only news site you are consuming. But it isn't. I consume multiple tech news, local news, etc. I can't get back my full worth of spent money per site, because my time is split between multiple sites; and my time is finite.
I also can't just say "well, this month I consume only site A, next only site B, etc.", because that defeats how "news" work. In the end I skim headlines (or even sometimes content) and THEN it shows what is actually of interest and where I stay longer/dig deeper/actually read full.
In a perfect world we probably could have a "tip jar" at the end of every article that people throw in digital cash when the article was worth it. Unfortunately too many people would abuse it and simply not pay at all, so authors will have to ask for payment upfront ... but then I pay for something which I don't even know will be good. Maybe after seeing the full article (not yet reading it in detail) I realize it's not the kind of content I hoped for.
That thing was indeed easier with print media. You go to the store, flick through the magazine/paper and if you like it you pay for it and go read it.
Great comment. I made a community called !oldweb today to share and discuss old style websites and sites that aren't just the top social media sites. So things like quirky personal websites, webrings, website lists made by others etc.
I'm new to lemmy. Do you know a way to link to a community that works everywhere? I see only „!oldweb“ as text without a link in your post an don’t know on which instance it runs. Probably [email protected]? Or what is the correct way to link to a community?
It reminds me when Jaron Lanier said in today's world, anytime two people come together on the Internet, that arrangement is financed by a third party, that believes he can manipulate the first two. I really miss the good old days when the Internet was still a dirt road you could meet fellow travelers on, and have fun exploring it.
It was free, as long as we paid for every minute of phone line use.
The first big problem was malware in ads (and web in general). This has caused people to install adblocks on their parents' and friends' devices.
Then there were the annoying ads: autoplaying videos, popups and other shit. This has caused a lot of normies to install adblockers themselves.
Then the privacy concerns, where even basic users notice that they look at a product on one store and now the recommendations follow them everywhere.
But the marketing companies keep pushing, and the OS providers like Google, MS and Apple keep restricting what you can install on your machine, this is a full-on war between users and the big tech.
Nobody was complaining about small banner ads. But they just have to keep pushing and break things. It's like with banks, or mythological creatures - insatiable.
I use uBlock Origin in Firefox, with all the boxes ticked. It's not only adds it blocks also plentiful of trackers. Just to make my visits on today's web usable. As a result, my laptops / smartphone resources are saved up, more battery time or cooler device as example.
Personally I like ads, totally ok for it - if informative, sharing some kind of relevant value with greater good. Companies should let the product or service itself advertise, not throw these on people constantly.
This is why I whitelist duckduckgo in firefox in my ublock extension. I will gladly look at the relevant ads at the top of the list, knowing they are just that. I glance at them, most of the time it's a sales pitch, I go "not interested" and just move down the page to the results. 100% fine with that.
If the content was paid, a lot of countries would simply be excluded from the internet.
Unfortunately, for most sites, using ads in the only viable alternative. I think we are so fast to reject ads, instead of finding ways to make non invasive ones. A balanced use of ads could make the web free and readable.
There are balanced ways to use ads, and a few places use them... but most soon get onto the "maximize income" bandwagon, and turn their site or app into an ad infected cesspool. They don't get penalized for that, all to the contrary, while advertisers see their ad conversion go down from sites over-infected with ads, so they don't want to offer deals good enough for those who only show a reasonable amount to survive.
Nice write up
I always forget how many intrusive ads are on the internet. One time I shared a link to one of my family members and they almost got a virus because of a pop-up ad. The web is actually unusable without uBlock Origin.
I shared a link from a movie streaming site not knowing that without uBlock Origin the page was covered in nearly pornographic mobile game ads.
this is the #1 reason, #2 being the initial reason I started using adblockers in 2010, ads with audio
uBlock is terrible, use brave browser. I cant even use the internet with ublock or adblock plugins, the amount that leaks through is annoying AF.
"Let us demonstrate"
"Allow me to demonstrate! No hesitation!"
This is what writers call "show don't tell"
Oh the irony.
This is heavy metal irony.
Firefox + uBlock Origin + Reader View
This, if it doesn't work I just go to another website
I have an extension in Firefox (well, Librewolf but same difference) called Tranquility Reader that's good for this too. Just strips articles down to plain text and relevant images, and you can save the article as a PDF for later too.
Reader view is pretty good at decluttering the web and uses less power on laptop and phone as well.
hey how to upload pic on comments section?
Click the image icon. Use it wisely though as lemmy.ml servers are already under load with all the new users.
Alternatively upload the Image to an extern Imagesharer/host, vgy.me works fine, and insert the url with Markdown
@Rod_Orm @Elbullazul, in Lemmy with the Image icon, or inserting an imageUrl with Markdown, in Mastodon uploading an image or video with the paperclip icon.
I made a blogpost about that, and I promise you'll see no ads, no cookies, no JavaScript, just the blogpost.
Excellent post, and I love your sites minimal, old school design. I finally found the right corner of the internet where people actually think about this kind of thing! It's so frustrating how over the years search engine results just give you bloated, pointless articles that exist only to rank high in SEO and get ad revenue.
I too have been using the site:reddit.com method, but it sucks to essentially only have one for-profit website as the one I use to research things.
Thanks! Stay tuned because I'll probably add some kind of webring to the blog soon
I'm gonna send you a reply to your article some time later. I am too tired right now.
My short review is that you want to separate the backend from the frontend. Backend processes your request and emits a JSON response. Frontend, be it CLI, web client or a smartphone app, just sends your request and shows the response in a human-friendly way. I did it in a similar fashion for my project.
I just looked up into my search history and saw I am either:
- not confident with the website address I remember;
- looking for an API documentation;
- looking for some real-world projects (when choosing one of several frameworks/ways of doing things);
- confused AF and needy for hints (especially for large problems or life/long-term choices);
- looking for images/visual ideas;
- looking for what my old friends do now (am I a boomer?).
Well, for the last two I cannot think of any solution. Problem (2) can be substituted with in-reference search (cppreference.com, lib.rs, docs.rs, developer.mozilla.org). However, sometimes I want to be sure that I am using the real link to the real thing, not the scam one. For example, I sometimes want to get access to the official latest GLSL specification, or sometimes overhyped people tend to name things by their marketing brands. Like, I ask 'What is X?' (WhatsApp, for instance) and I get a response 'X is .. just X, it's really good' and when I need to find what is X, I usually search on Wikipedia, because on the web search I would only see the promotions of X.
(I'm out, wait for chapter 2)
Great Post, really inspiring. But I'm mesmerised by the design. How did you achieve this? Is it a template or did you built it from scratch? I'm returning to blog after leaving ten years ago and this is exactly the kind of look I was looking for. Congratulations.
The site is open source. Basically just a patchwork of different things I liked in other sites.
Sass styles are in assets/sass/ and templates are in layouts/, in case you're not familiar with Hugo.
The main layout is a flex container which has a single child. Above the flex container is the centered nav. Then for the headings I just added borders on each side but the bottom.
Interesting read and I love the minimalism and design of the site
Comes to show how less is more. You got a beautiful website in there buddy.
flattr was on the right track, but didn't know how to do it right. Reddit, discord, and free-to-play games figured it out: let people pay for visuals, status, and exclusivity.
visuals = skins, themes, sets, icons, merch - make it flashy and people will buy it
status = "biggest contributor", "biggest tipper", "most active poster", "I paid for this icon saying I'm better than all of you"
exclusivity = one time access pass to a face to face interview with the devs, limited community access, access to pre-lease of some feature, ...
None of it has to be actually functional. It just has to make people feel better (than others) and you can make bank without ads.
The easy route to Exclusivity is Manufactured FOMO (fear of missing out).
Visuals that give people a sense of "I'm better than you" are a huge potential moneymaker even if they do nothing functionally. We will see if we need these, but honestly even these changes start to alter the landscape of the community in I view to be negative ways.
I miss the old internet
Lemmy feels like the old internet IMO and I'm really enjoying it so far! :)
Agreed!
if you're really missing it, there's a new sub called [email protected] that is trying to compile websites that have the vintage feel to them.
That link didn’t work for me, so I’m trying this: [email protected]
Road to hell being paved with good intentions and all, I guess. The reason sites all have the cookie permission dialog now is because of the GDPR, which has the right idea on data privacy, but the implementation wound up being so terrible that it winds up doing this. Prior to that dialog, they'd just store/read the cookies without permission (though lots of people would proactively sandbox browsers to make it a non-issue). I honestly can't decide which is worse, at this point.
I like the ones that show the prompt for "we've detected an ad-blocker" with the option you can click for "continue without disabling and not supporting us". Guilt trips work in human to human interactions, but not for random Internet prompts.
Of course I'd prefer the web simply not using cookies on every single site I visit (therefore not needing the prompt), but that's not going to happen. Sites have to monetize somehow to stay alive.
The reason sites all have the cookie permission dialog now is because of the GDPR, which has the right idea on data privacy, but the implementation wound up being so terrible that it winds up doing this.
GDPR is not at fault here though, since it does not require asking for consent if the processed data is necessary for the purpose of the provided service. For example, a web shop usually wouldn't have to ask for permission to store items in the shopping part because that is a necessary part of the online shopping process. In that sense, requiring the consent dialog for all unnecessary purposes is better as you can at least see who's trying to screw you over. Don't kill the messenger here.
I think it's also important to remember that websites can only get away with these annoyances because it a) is easily automatable and b) has been the default mode of operation for decades. If restaurant waiters today started asking guests if they could sell info on what and when you ate, who you were with, and what you looked like, everyone would be creeped out. Before GDPR, it was pretty much normalized to do the same thing on the internet without even asking for consent.
Right; that's actually what I was trying to say, just phrased differently. The majority of sites that prompt for cookie selection do so because they use the cookies for ad targeting, not for critical function of the actual site. They need to do that because it's the only way for them to monetize, in most cases: by selling targeted advertisements.
Prior to the GDPR, this would just happen without the enduser's consent. Now it's prompted on every site, which is an annoyance. From an enduser's perspective, it's destroying the web. From the host's perspective, using those cookies is the only thing keeping their lights on and creators paid (unless they've somehow managed to actually implement a successful subscription model, which is rare; so they often do both, like Wired here).
I'm glad that the GDPR rolled out for dozens of reasons. It's a net positive. It's undeniably also a pain in the ass for web UX, though, because now users need to deal with these crappy dialogs on each new site they visit. Which encourages users to avoid new sites, which also has a bad downstream effect on getting the web back to the glory days of thousands of independent and useful sites versus a small collection of giant corporation sites.
I think a decent solution would be for standardizing these kind of opt-in dialogs into browser settings, somehow, to automatically bypass them based on user profile preferences. That's not a simple effort, obviously, though, and likely wouldn't get site admins to be on board because the majority of users would simply disable cookie usage globally. Or we're just back to the days of niche power users using noscript/ghostery while everybody less savvy continues to have a shitty web experience.
I don't really have a solution to this problem, but I do know we need to get the web in a place where privacy is viable and usability on sites you may only visit once is enjoyable.
I upvoted and chuckled, but please use Imgur or similar links while the entire ecosystem is being hit by the Reddit hug of death :)
With luck; July 1st will be the last Hug of Death reddit ever gives...
I think we have 10-15 years or so left before the internet becomes totally unusable due to ads, paywalls and general bad design all over the place.
The internet is fine, you're just using the wrong parts of it.
Yet I am somewhat optimistic that we can build our own communities that may work beyond this crap.
Not to mention AI bots using large language models spreading advertisements and misinformation.
A time will come where you cannot differentiate between real and generated content, the internet will be flooded with noise, and one can either stay in the illusion we call internet, or go offline and only believe their own physical senses.AI has the potential to be the most powerful propaganda machine the world has ever known. The ability to seamlessly jump into conversations and actively steer them towards the owner's target position en masse is terrifying. Add to that the ability for the AI to swarm dissenters with dozens or even hundreds of sock puppet accounts, creating manufactured consensus is undoubtedly already being done by people on a smaller scale, and definitely being tested by state and corporate actors to use for a variety of targets and subjects.
It's unclear to me how that is different from today where people already pay for content posting by humans. I suppose it might make anonymous user reviews or use testimonials worth even less than they are today, but presumably for shooting the shit it matters not whether you're doing it with a person or AI.
I wonder if we're going to want some sort of ID tied to an account so we can at least talk to communities. And if we'll split more back into smaller communities where we kind of get to know the people or AIs in them vs Twitter etc.
Really? I was thinking we are kind of already there lol.
I suspect our browser extensions will help mitigate this tbf.
I'm honestly afraid of extensions becoming less and less useful as Google and co become hostile to them.
On the other hand, Wired has always been trash. I used to adore starting in elementary school ever since I picked one up at a dentist reception area. Had a subscription all the way up until the end of high school. I loved the articles, the reply to readers at the back of the magazine, but most of all the gadget reviews a la Cool Tools by Kevin Kelly.
In retrospect it is a luxury lifestyle brand magazine with more advertisements than actual interesting content. The books always felt thick, but the damn thing would become a shitty pamphlet if you take out the ads.
Popular Science and Popular Mechanics were the same, but it really got my interested as kid.
Had those too! I was big on magazines until I learned I can get the same information online and get back the massive space I lost in paper.
Perfection
Just accept all, then delete cookies automatically. Setup any browser you use to delete any cookies and write a whitelist for the sites that you gonna need to auto login.
Do I need an addon for this or can this be done in the options of any browser?
Ghostery as a browser plugin has an option to reject all cookies automatically. On Firefox, not sure about Chrome with its upcoming changes.
Brave browser has both an option to reject cookies automatically, and to delete all cookies when you close the browser. Along with a number of other built in privacy options, including built in addblocker that (imo) works better than ublock or adblock plugins.
Anyone remember that episode of Futurama where they go back to the internet? Wouldn't be surprised if the internet starts to look like that.
What was striking about that episode was that they weren't going "back" to the internet [in some bygone era], it was the internet as it stood presently. And because "presently" was 199x, it feels today like the "old web."
@q5VtXnYt <details class="spoiler"><summary>The irony</summary>The irony</details>
I wish they didn't do this. Before when there were no paywalls I did pay for Wired to support them, but nowadays nope.
this belongs to [email protected]
The communists cut many internet cables for some anti-capitalism reason!
🗿
gee I wonder :D
