We Finally Have Proof That the Internet Is Worse::High-profile lawsuits against Google and Amazon have revealed Silicon Valley’s vise grip on our lives.
Getting hit by a paywall to read this article, maybe made the point better than the article!
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Yeah, and a blatantly establishment-biased source like that should have been linked with an archive site.
Do you usually complain when anything else in life is not completely free?
Either it’s paywalls or horrible ads+tracking. I don’t know why people expect to get everything for free, just because it’s on the internet. Especially something that takes time and effort to make.
PSA: you don’t get to complain about “the media” if you’re not even willing to pay for quality outlets
Yes, I complain about both.
Next stupid question.
Someone complains about one specific thing not being free. You:
I don’t know why people expect to get **everything **for free
Since you’ve started down the road of what people are and are not allowed to do: you are not allowed to participate in discussions if you can’t avoid making shitty logical fallacies in your very first response.
The biggest problem with paying for journalism is that nobody wants to be subscribing to 50 different websites.
If it were easier to pay for multiple news sites at once, I’m sure more people would do it.
That’s my gripe as well. I currently subscribe to 3 or 4 online news outlets, and that’s probably because I work in news. I can’t do more.
Still, there are services like Apple News+ and Pressreader. I wish they would do more, but I guess it’s better than nothing
Or just microcharge articles. I’m willing to pay 50cts for an article. But I dont want to signup for a subscription only to forget about it and pay 30 bucks afterwards.
That’s what I’ve been thinking would be the best way to do that.
Some sort of API that each news outlet implements into their website that bills your account on a per-article basis when you read through it (once you’ve scrolled like 10% of the way down).
As a layman, I would expect the main difficulty would be getting news outlets to be part of it rather than pushing their own subscriptions.
Yeah. Could you do it?
I’d totally love to, but nah. I don’t have the know-how. Seems like an untapped market though.
Normally I’m all about “yes they should be paid” but in this case it’s particularly ironic - modest ads used to be able to support newspapers. Now they need paywalls.
Title of article: internet is worse
QED.
I think the thing that bugs me most is everything is a subscription. Maybe if there was an easy way to do a la carte with reasonable pricing I would be more inclined to pony up for this and that. I’m just sick of attaching a leach to my ass anytime I am curious about something.
This is where something like Monero comes in handy. Since it’s just like cash except in electronic form, you pay one time and there is no potential for them to just come and take money monthly from you. You have to pay manually yourself. It’s a push system instead of a pull system.
“Modest ads” were never a thing: if you were on the internet 10-ish years ago, you’ll remember that pop-up ads were everywhere.
Also, ads were never able to support newspapers, even if they used to be more lucrative. Newspapers were desperate to reach new audiences and they basically started to publish stuff at a loss. That’s why media is in the situation they’re in right now: underfunded and in perpetual search for new ways to monetize so they do not die altogether.
How much does it cost for any random person with a platform to say something?
A journalist is not a “random person”. It’s a profession like any other profession.
A journalist doesn’t just “say something”. A journalist works, like any other worker does.
So, to answer your question, I’d say it costs at least minimum wage.
Well clearly expecting to be paid for doing shit that anyone anywhere does for free is the problem. What’s the point of the journalist?
Wait, what do you think journalists do? Do you think that they wake up, get to their workplace and start typing away about whatever crosses their mind? In that case, I can understand your confusion.
On the other hand, if you know what journalists actually do, I don’t understand what you’re saying. Or perhaps you think that reasearching information on a topic, interviewing people, going to your town hall to see what politicians are up to, go to warzones and report about what’s happening, are tasks that “anyone anywhere does for free”?
Thats never been true. You bought the paper for a small fee, and it still had ads.
Oh wow, you thought that you counter 1 and 1 together while completely missing that this is a complex equation.
Ads and ad revenue are not the same as they used to be, and the economics of the world and technology have changed. So until you understand the complexities of the world, please stop talking out of your ass and using shit like “QED” to sound smarter than you are.
I think you missed their point. They pointed out the irony. Which is valid. They didn’t explore viability of monetization.
And then you fall into that kind of toxic tone…
$10 says even you didn’t pay.
You owe me $10
They’re still tracking the crap out of you even if you pay, so they can fuck right off and die in the gutter.
uBlock Origin only shows Chartbeat and Quantcast as trackers on The Atlantic’s website, so I’m gonna say you’re talking out of your ass.
“They” in this case refers to media sites in general not limited to this specific one. And pretty much everone still track user behavior to do profiling on their paid users.
uBlock Origin only shows Chartbeat and Quantcast as trackers on The Atlantic’s website
Strange, it shows way more than that for me
While it’s understandable that in the current economic systems news outlets have to make money somehow and one way is through paywalls, I think it’s also fair for people to value free access to information. Assuming that news outlets and journalists can still make a living, most people would probably agree that it’s better for everybody if the content can be accessed freely, especially since copying it and transmitting it on the internet is super cheap (particularly for text articles). This isn’t some absurd concept. Libraries are respected and valued institutions precisely because they serve a similar role, and we have the tools to do it on an even larger scale. Of course it might not be practical with how things are structured economically right now (and heck, maybe there isn’t even a better way to do it) but I think it’s fair to recognize that there’s a lot of untapped potential for sharing information, and it’d be nice if we could find a way to do it more equitably :).
The issue isn’t data transmission and hosting, it’s paying someone a living wage to do this work professionally, along with their editors, graphic artists, analysts, and everyone else along the way that writes the news. It’s a bit absurd that people complain about ads and low quality reporting/analysis while simultaneously demanding all journalists work for free. Hell, if you get a library card you’ll probably be able to legitimately access the article right now for free in a way that still pays the journalist.
Are there ads behind the paywalls? Genuine question, we I’ve never paid to find out. If yes, then they can ask fuck right off. You don’t get to have it both ways.
It’s annoying seeing ads in paid products, but having multiple revenue streams is a basic financial strategy that every business employs, so no surprises here
Not surprising, no, but it also ensures that I will never directly financially support that product.
I mean, yes, but they’re minimal. They don’t charge enough for a subscription to fully cover their revenues. Plus serving ads has always been something news outlets have done for revenue.
But hey, if they can just fuck off, I guess we can maintain either ads all over the page or let Sinclair/Newscorp run everything.
Yes, this is what I’m saying. Distribution is essentially free now (not entirely, but it’s absurdly cheap). As long as you can fund the work it’s only a win if more people can have access to it. Of course this falls apart if people can’t make a living doing good journalism. Does this mean paywalls / ads are the only / best solutions? Maybe! But I think it’s fair to dream of other systems which could allow this to function and allow for broader access. Maybe we use libraries as a crutch, maybe some form of universal basic income could allow people to do this work and provide it for free, maybe there could be grants, or donations, or whatever. Of course people need to be able to make a living off of this work, and there’s obviously going to be issues with every way we could approach this… but that doesn’t mean it’s not a shame when people who want to read it can’t access it (or can’t access it at a price they’re willing to pay).
The thing is that economies of scale do not really work with (good) journalism. You’ll never get a ton of clicks on an in-depth, nuanced and well-researched story, because it’s not really “sexy”. That’s why even serious publications need to put out clickbait content, as it essentially funds the actual serious journalistic work. The problem here is that clickbait articles cause a reputational damage to publications.
A paywall makes it possible to avoid all of this, but then you run into the problem that fewer people have access to your content, rendering what you do less impactful.
As a journalist, let me tell you something: the reality is that news is an awful business. It’s hugely useful for public discourse, but it does not make any money. It’s essentially a public service, like roads or public transportation or schools: they are essential parts of society and they don’t work as a business.
Some countries realized that, and they have public-funded or state-funded media, like the BBC (on NPR, in a different way). While this poses huge problems with regards to conflicts of interest and freedom of the press, that’s the only economic model that actually works.
Agreed. I’m friends with a few journalists and even the ones who had a steady job at major outlets were working it like a hustle. There really isn’t a good way to do it that doesn’t involve some level of either corporate or wide-public investment and both of those have an easy chance to get corrupted.
Yep. All major US digital news outlets (with the notable exception of the NYT) are either owned by rich people (WaPo, The Atlantic), publicly funded or in perpetual crisis (Buzzfeed News has closed, Vice has closed, etc).
Yeah, I think publicly funded news is an important model to consider because in many ways it seems like the only good way to do it… but obviously people have concerns about conflicts of interest, which is fair, but you’re going to have them no matter what, so maybe we need a mix of differently funded news sources… or maybe we just need other systems in place that decrease the conflict of interest and make it unlikely for the public funding to be manipulated in order to control the news or whatever. This is one reason that some system of universal basic income seems like an appealing solution to me. If everybody is just guaranteed a livable wage, then it’s not really a source of income that could be altered just to manipulate journalists (ideally anyway). Though, obviously there’s potentially problems with that too, and journalists may have additional expenses which would not be covered, so it could limit what they can actually do.
Publicly funded media is also under constant attack by populist parties (NPR, the BBC, the Italian broadcasting company, the Swiss one, etc). They are being accused of being leftist, irrelevant, too big, or too expensive. Which are all excuses to destroy them and to be able to free up the market for huge private conglomerates that have an agenda
Are you always an arrogant anus or are you just having a bad day?
Just having a bad day, lol. I did come off a bit too strong, I admit it. Truth is, I am a journalist and it pisses me off that people constantly expect me to work for free.
Hey, it happens to the best of us! Fwiw I don’t think anyone worth listening to would expect you to work for free. Journalism is vital and the people actually producing articles should be paid way more. I’m in the medical field and if journalism operates anything like us I’m sure there’s plenty of cash coming in but it’s all concentrated at the top. The people doing the work get stiffed and you’re held hostage by your desire to positively contribute to society. It sucks. And that’s why I’m an anarchist now lol
Hey, thank you for you empathy. Journalism kinda works like that, except there is not really a lot of money coming in, lol. But money being concentrated at the top is definitely a constant in our field, too.
Working as a journalist has radicalized me too, lol. I do think that journalism, health, public transportation and other public utilities should just be non-for-profit sectors. They do not make sense as businesses and they are just too important to society to leave them to the free market
Anytime! It’s rough out there and public servants of all strokes feel a lot of the heat*, unfortunately. It’s insane how much of the public sector has been privatized. I know journalism is kind of in a grey area as far as that’s concerned but we’ve been ignoring that for far too long. I’d go so far as to say all vital infrastructure or services should be a part of the Commons, left for communities to manage for their residents, with significant legal protections against privatization, nepotism, and profit. These are all things we need to live and be active in our community/state/country and should be treated like the resources they are instead of commodities to be bought and sold
You don’t seem to understand what the Internet is. Sorry for your lack of vision.
Is it a lack of vision to know that everything has a cost, even on the internet? Do people genuinely think that basic economics don’t apply to digital products?
What it costs for me to connect my phone to my best friend’s server to stream movies is that we both pay our ISP and for electricity. He wants to share and I wanna join. The streets are paid for. Where the fuck does a publisher need to come in?
Websites shouldn’t exist to be in between and charge for it. If you put something out there online and you charge for it, it’s because you think that you being paid at scale matters more than how far your message could reach without the weight is transactions being involved. You cause cost. Value is only value when it’s unburdened.
Money makes it all worse. How does anyone enjoy a videogame full of dollar signs and time limits? How does it matter that we have thousands of things created when you expect the information to bear a cost higher than just the transmission needs?
You want a world of meritocracy where people are propped up for their exclusive access. I want a world where everyone has everything at their disposal so they can shine on their own.
You’re either a bot or a very confused person, because half your sentences do not even make sense. You connecting with your friend over the internet does not have anything to do with people working and putting the result of their work on the internet, like journalists do.
You say that “money makes it all worse” and in an ideal world I could agree with you. But I don’t know if you’ve noticed that in THIS world people need money to live. The internet makes it possible to publish and exchange information at a near-zero cost, but the cost of creating that information remain, be it art, music, photography, videogames, programming, or journalism. That’s where publishers need to come in.
P.s: I think you don’t know what the word “meritocracy” means
Lick some more boots
Whose boots would I be licking?
🙄😮💨
Download ublock origin…go to custom filters… paste in filter list…no more paywalls, you don’t pay anything, hooray.
Penis
Wow, I think this is the most down-voted thing I’ve agreed with. Should we get a selfie together?
Yes please :,(
it’s so sad. this is going to sound pathetic, but – i remember in high school browsing reddit and twitter and 4chan and almost getting a buzz off of it, the interactions felt so cutting-edge, funny and fresh and perfectly transient, it felt like i had a voice for the first time, able to post and have people like what i posted.
and now we’re kinda just…going thru the motions and everything is worse and companies are just blindly nuking things we used to hold sacred
I hear you. When I was a teen, Internet was: A handful of focused websites or your buddies geocities / angelfire site.
Chatting in crazy chat rooms on IRC, and having your close friends on ICQ.
Using a dial up modem to play doom, Warcraft 2, red alert, duke nukem, quake, StarCraft, total annihilation… etc.Those were fun times. Felt like the bleeding edge of tech… hiding out and having fun in places people haven’t even heard of.
Once upon a time, I had a 6-digit ICQ number.
That’s some OG shit there! I still remember my number. It was an 8 digit haha
Yeah, I’d give anything to remember the number. I’d make all my friends get accounts, just to flex.
Have a 7-digit one and just found out it still works.
I had one contact left on it called “brokenprincess” and it says she was last seen “a long time ago”.
Creepy shit. Just in time for Halloween.
I discovered IRC in the 2020s already (I am Gen Z so wasn’t even online before mid-2010s), and from what I’ve seen in the descriptions of the “old internet”, looks like some servers I am in preserved the spirit) Some people in the rooms also have their own cozy websites, including me)
Right on, I rejoined IRC during the COVID shutdowns. It’s just nice to be chatting somewhere where a company isn’t flooding me with advertisements and/or harvesting my data (that I can tell at least).
CompuServe email addresses
I know there is truth in that the internet I worse.
But I do wonder how much of our feeling that is worse is more based on the glamor of youth and nostalgia.
I think there’s some of this, but I do honestly believe the internet has fundamentally changed and the makeup of it is a lot different. This isn’t all bad, but there’s a lot of things that we’ve lost now that the internet has become more centralized and corporate in general. At least proportionally I think there’s far fewer passion project websites and a lot of people gather on big websites instead, and there’s fewer communities that are strictly about a niche topic. In some sense this is good because things are generally more accessible to the average person, but I feel like the niche weirdos have been drowned out a bit in the eternal September, and there’s something a little sad about that too!
Thanks. You did nail why I think it’s different and even worse. I wonder what like… cluster of 10 years would you say was your peak internet experience?
I think there are certain aspects of the modern internet that make it a worse place, even for all of the massive benefit and improvement from the early days. I’m mostly going to stick with social media, because initially it was a really interesting thing that quickly turned toxic and tbh I think when historians look back at this period, they’ll probably be able to point to a significant amount of societal damaged caused by it.
Like in the early days of myspace and even Facebook, it was a legit helpful way to connect with friends and catch up with people. Where I think it goes off of the rails is when you get to algorithmic timelines. Facebook in particular I think is very nearly directly responsible for a lot of the political divide we see today because of this. If you poll just about any issue, you’ll find that the US is trends about 70% left/progressive. Most people want universal healthcare, reasonable gun legislation, etc. But on Facebook, which probably has more of a representative sample of Americans than anyone else, you would frequently find that 7-10 out of the top posts were conservative wack jobs. One of the things that drove me to stop using the site entirely around 15-16 was that my friend group of mostly lefties somehow led to half or more of my TL being the small fraction of family or work acquaintances with right wing fringe nonsense takes.
You can kind of see this happening with reddit in real time right now. In 2010, you stared with the subs you wanted to see, things were democratically upvoted, and there was no algo outside of the users to speak of. Reddit has slowly been moving away from that, often surfacing things that you have no interest in because “engagement.” I have a pretty strong suspicion this was one of the driving factors in killing third party clients - they still mostly presented content the old way without shoving a bunch of crap in your face. Twitter went through the same. People used to complain about twitter being a cesspool, and I never had that because I always used a third party client and just followed people who’s stuff I wanted to see. And if they ventured too far into the sort of lunatic fringe, pruning them was easy and I could continue seeing the type of content I wanted. Now with no third party clients, there is just no way to not see this kind of nonsense on twitter, hence I haven’t for many months now.
Now, this is just not the way most people are going to engage with things on the internet. Like, just look at most people’s phones for fuck’s sake. A zillion notifications and badges for things that no one should care about. It doesn’t occur to most people that you can even avoid this kind of thing.
Anyway, lots of cool things about the modern internet, the type of social media most are using ain’t it though.
Part of that might be you though. Things that gave us thrills in our youth become bland when you get older. I could say the same thing about ICQ and AIM vs reddit, twitter, etc.
MSN Messenger man, what a great software. Also Winamp.
Imagine needing proof of something so basic that you could see it just being being online over the past decade, if not decade and a half.
Not everyone is old enough to know the difference. Imagine being 20. What frame of reference do you have?
This is true. Processing things at that age isn’t as cogent as an adult. There is a lot of noise that has to be worked out in your 20s from everything you learned as a child.
Sometimes people think they know the obvious answer and they turn out to be wrong. It’s good to have clear evidence of what is going on.
In recent years, it’s been harder to love the internet, a miracle of connectivity that feels ever more bloated, stagnant, commercialized, and junkified. We are just now starting to understand the specifics of this transformation—the true influence of Silicon Valley’s vise grip on our lives. It turns out that the slow rot we might feel isn’t just in our heads, after all.
☹️
The Internet is getting more decentralized, with better alternatives for big corporate services
it’s it though?
in our Fediverse bubble yes.
but so many average people just don’t care.
They care, they just don’t know about the alternatives, and most don’t have the time or knowledge to research them, especially with the biggest companies doing their best to mystify technology as a whole, and reduce user experience to a carefully cultivated all inclusive proprietary prison
They care in the sense that they want [Facebook|Youtube|Twitter|Instagram] without the enshittification. When told about alternatives with some promise that aren’t exactly that, they often don’t have the mental energy to explore.
Correct. No one can use something that they don’t know about.
Right now Lemmy is really best for centralized populated instances that have a similar experience to being on Reddit. Federation is a bonus. There are a lot of problems with trying to access content on other instances. Weirdly, the name of the sub is not shown in the URL for posts. Someone might be able to create an alternate web client, but that adds another layer of complexity for people who just want to run the site.
The main problem with federation is that there’s no “site” that people know to go to.
I think they care the other way around. Many people admire big corporations and either work for one or wish they could. Just think about Apple fans as one example. So if you tell them there is Reddit, which is run by a company for profit, and there is Lemmy, which are a bunch of servers run by computer nerds for the joy of it, this will actively draw many to Reddit.
I tried the Fediverse just a few years ago and it was a ghost town. There was no Fediverse bubble because nobody was here
Archive.today link for those hit by the paywall: https://archive.ph/G2Dc7
Even if you aren’t hit by a paywall, use the archive link.
Why?
Clicks, I guess
because big news companies are intrinsically shitty and sensationalized solely for your money and not actual information. you shouldnt vote to keep them around by paying them any money or attention.
It’s a chicken and egg problem. Media on the internet started doing clickbait stuff to get clicks and to be able to survive. I’d argue that you should be paying money to the ones who do an honest effort to do a good job.
Also, you talk about “big news companies” like it’s actually a thing. There are no really big news companies anywhere. Not by market cap, nor by employees, nor by any other metric. There are influential ones, such as the NYT, but none of them are really big if you compare them to any other economic sector. News is not a good business, like any other public utility: it’s essential to society but does not make any money.
i would respond but youre intentionally misconstruing the word big and inserting an argument about clickbait for some reason, or youre stupid. both which I don’t see value in responding meaningfully to
Its much more than “the internet is worse”. Everything technology is worse, can’t have nice things.
I have a microwave/air fryer/convection combo that I can’t use unless I install a phone app. It came with the apartment. It has only a few “buttons” on its face. The UI is almost completely non-intuitive, but the app makes it easy. Every time I bake bread I fight the urge to blow my brains out as I navigate to the app. I have become that which I mocked.
I yearn for the days when my toaster just made toast.
There’s a line that needs to be drawn between things that benefit from IoT and things that should’ve remained dumb
Do you have a smart toaster? What’s it do, write tweets on the toast?
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I can’t believe this is true. Show pictures and link to the vendor. I wanna see this for myself.
So I’ve just had a look out of curiosity and every single result for smart microwave (there’s not that many) has buttons on its face as well.
Use an old phone with no user accounts in it.
God, what garbage.
It turns outcapitalism is great for maximising profits, but terrible for consumers, and demanding open-source products is the only way out of this hell-hole
Here’s the proof: vaguely motions in the general direction of everything
This is the Internet. We don’t need proof.
…but also paywalls it
Maybe it’s time to regulate the fuck out of the internet.
The thing is, who is going to regulate a transnational, abstract and ethereal space?
Well you could start by regulating the major US companies since those are the root of the issue described here. The internet as an abstract space is perfectly fine because there are enough independent providers for the required services to use or host on the internet. It’s the few that abuse.
Google! 😃
I wonder, maybe it’s impossible.
> have proof that internet is worse
> requires subscription to readThere you have it, boys!
I mean I’m on board with the generality, but looking up the original article it looks like was was taken down, stating:
EDITOR’S NOTE 10/6/2023: After careful review of the op-ed, “How Google Alters Search Queries to Get at Your Wallet,” and relevant material provided to us following its publication, WIRED editorial leadership has determined that the story does not meet our editorial standards. It has been removed.
Apologies for the disgusting timestamp. I’m quoting.
It could be I’m missing something though since I can’t see the whole article. It sounded like the Wired article was the basis for this one by The Atlantic.
The internet isn’t worse, it’s just the web. The Internet is much better actually:
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There are more subsea cables with more capacity, the Internet is meshed better these days. Losing any single subsea cable doesn’t have as much of an impact as it used to.
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Additionally you don’t need to cache stuff with reverse proxies in each AS anymore because long distance transmission has gotten way cheaper, and more available.
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The last mile issues are also solved, though for now only in densly populated areas in advanced economies. With fiber connections to individual dwellings you get scaling that’s infinite for practical purposes. This also means you can have a gigabit connection end to end without bloating buffers on DSL or DOCSIS modems.
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Worse than what?
Than it was.
Not just nostalgia tinted glasses, it really was better in the earlier years.
Right
It wasn’t though. It was slow and didn’t really work properly and didn’t work on phones. The underlying technology is vastly improved.
What’s gone wrong is businesses, but that’s got nothing to do with the internet that’s just capitalism fulfilling it’s inevitable conclusion of charging for everything and letting you own nothing.
There needs to be a law that says that once a customer buys something online (e.g a movie on Netflix or a game on Steam) the company must compensate then if their access to that thing is lost due to licencing changes. They can prevent new people from gaining access to the content but they cannot revoke access to people who have already paid money.
It’s soul vs soulless, not clunky vs robust. The modern Internet is arguably much more robust and secure, but the internet of yesteryear was actually pleasant to use, even if it was more prone to random crap going wrong. Each website had a unique look and feel, and things were less predatory. There wasn’t as much of an arms race between companies to control every second of your attention, because they don’t know yet how to harvest data generated by your usage meaningfully.
It worked fine on phones starting in 2010, but even before that it didn’t because devs are lazy. Even today the number of sites that don’t work on iOS is appalling (and iOS represents a massive number of clients, with a single dev target).
Geocities
Geocaches?
Don’t speak with your mouth full
Just don’t use amazon or google.
The issue is that a good number of products are only available through Amazon, and a metric ton of services that people depend on are owned by Google.
Just saying “don’t use Amazon or Google” is almost tantamount to saying “don’t eat food” or “don’t drink water”.
Should that be the case? No. But right now, it is.
