internet It’s Not Just You – The Internet is Dying - But what would fix it?

[David_NZheretic]

LGM clips : It’s Not Just You – The Internet is Dying

 

Indeed, I miss Google Reader ( 2005 - 2013 ).

It is such a pity that had Google introduced micro payments & subscription options into it's RSS news service it would have both totally dominated & rejuvenated the journalism profession in one fell swoop.

 

From Google Groups Jul 28, 2006 google-labs group

 

[Mark Kaine]

truth is there *is* a lot of "quality content" on youtube for example,  but not many people really care, they rather go with what's "hip" and cringey... so i dunno if your thesis holds much water tbh.

 

in my experience people *want* to be lied to, the harsh, depressing reality only in small doses, please ~

 

that said google itself is outdated and has no future.  but what's the alternative,  what do you suggest? 

[Needfuldoer]

I think 2000 to 2012 was "peak" Internet, but then again those were the years I was terminally online. Sometimes I really miss the way the web was back then. It feels like the brain rot accelerated fast once most discourse was consolidated onto only a few platforms.

 

2 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

truth is there *is* a lot of "quality content" on youtube for example,  but not many people really care, they rather go with what's "hip" and cringey... so i dunno if your thesis holds much water tbh.

 

in my experience people *want* to be lied to, the harsh, depressing reality only in small doses, please ~

Ignoring TikTok and Twitter helps. There's always going to be some stupid trend or another that everybody and their grandmother wants to chase in pursuit of their 15 minutes of fame. 

 

Maybe this is how the Usenet crowd felt after September 1993.

[dkoudijs]

To fix the internet, we would need to have more open services again. More importantly we need the ability to move your own data around to new services easily.

Think about podcasts, they are still going strong and people can move them to what ever platform they want. You only hear "listen to my podcasts, where ever you get your podcasts" Not listen to facebook, as that's were I'm hosting my stuff.

 

I could talk at length about this, but it comes down to people need to own there stuff again, and the people decide what to do with it. Not a corporation.

[starsmine]

I have no idea how to fix the internet. 
My complaint about search the last 5 years has never been ads, its SEO shovelware bullshit. 
Now with AI, sure you can sort the SEO shovelware out....except no those same SEO fake sites will use AI adversarially. 

AI with real encyclopedic knowledge isnt going to be real either with how easy it will be to astroturf/poison the data sets they learn off of.

Remeber your local library does pay for subscriptions to things like Chilton for automotoive service manuals or CR for real testing on consumer products.

Perhaps web 1.0 style search where it was human currated lists of good informative websites is part of the solution. however, niche topics will be screwed over, and the incentives are not there financially now that the novelty of the web is gone (that used to be a core incentive)

[smcoakley]

I am still a firm believer in, and regular user of RSS. My current reader of choice is Inoreader. I don't use many social media sites, and prefer forums like this one.

 

On 1/24/2024 at 2:23 PM, dkoudijs said:

Think about podcasts, they are still going strong and people can move them to what ever platform they want. You only hear "listen to my podcasts, where ever you get your podcasts"

Spotify, Google, and others hate this and they're sure trying hard to eliminate this though. I'm actually pretty concerned about the future of podcasts -- at the current trajectory, RSS-delivered podcasts will be gone in a decade or less, and only a few proprietary walled garden podcast platforms will exist.

[Spindel]

On 1/24/2024 at 5:53 PM, Needfuldoer said:

I think 2000 to 2012 was "peak" Internet, but then again those were the years I was terminally online. Sometimes I really miss the way the web was back then. It feels like the brain rot accelerated fast once most discourse was consolidated onto only a few platforms.

I do not agree with you on that. 

 

Peak internet was from around 1997 to 26 september 2006. From then on it has been on a steady decline. (I got my first home internet connection in about 95-96). 

 

Unlike what you might think, with the end date I gave, what really started the downturn of internet is what is/was called web 2.0, that phrase was introduced in 2004 but didn't really start to get big traction until a few years later. 

[mr moose]

you can't fix it. like every human invention, if it can be used by someone to further their own personal agenda then it will be and the human race be damned.