SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
I go back on the 'net to the days of Mosaic, and earlier on Usenet and BBSs. I'm feeling pretty nostalgic, but also saddened. Between the crooks, the government, and fun loving pranksters it seems that there is no corner of the 'net that can be considered truly secure. I now routinely assume that nothing I do is safe.
I remember when the 'net was 90% thoughtful discussion, it was about web pages, pure HTML, and the content that they served up.
Now it seems as if no forum is safe from endless idiotic, threatening, and increasingly offensive trolls and bullies. Many good smart people just refuse to participate. In its early days the whole idea behind the 'net was the free sharing of information. Now you find things behind paywalls, registration pages, or removed after threats from lawyers.
Each week seems to bring another attempt by government or business to regulate the 'net, both what you can put on-line, and what you can look at. Add to that the many geographic blocks and other restrictions that keep out some of the people, some of the time. We rely on multiple layers of flash and java and other technology, each requiring some special software to make it work on your computer. Inevitably stuff breaks.
It was only a decade or so back that the very idea of marketing on the 'net was considered ridiculous. Now we're buried alive with ads, pop-ups, and stupid YouTube ads in front of every video - unless you want to pay them to remove them.
Increasingly using the 'net feels like more of a chore than a pleasure, and I can't see it improving. Is the Internet broken beyond repair?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Monday May 18 2015, @01:27PM
Maybe you forgot to take off the rose-colored glasses before you fell asleep last night, or maybe you have a case of the Mondays, but the BBSes were exactly the same thing then as blogs and everything else are now. There were epic flame wars before they were called such. There were rampant trolls; my roommate was one who would play hookey in the campus computer cluster to troll MUDs (Multie-User Dungeons, as they were called then). People had endless banal conversations. They over-shared. The same damn debate over freedom vs. security that has been ratcheted up several notches now, existed then. And the "pure" HTML either made your eyes roll out of your head, because they were straight copy-and-pastes from WordPerfect documents that prattled on forever, or it made your eyes bleed and caused you to suffer seizures because of the flashing neon colors, animated gifs, and blaring sound clips.
The content you're talking about was not online because the publishers were mortally afraid of losing their control over it. People who put it online on Usenet were sued and prosecuted. Warez were a big thing back then, as they are now, and they were regularly nabbed in FBI stings.
Oh no, it was there. Remember the afore-mentioned flashing neon, animated gifs, and blaring sounds clips? Yup, advertising. And pop-ups existed back then--they go way back. But. You. Could. Not. Fucking. Kill. Them. Advertising will always exist, though it's form and methods will change; at the moment it's morphing from the straightforward, "Now a word from our sponsors!" form to the "I'm a Shill for Brand X and Will Deny It" form. And spam was always there, and then even was quite common over fax (when you were paying a dollar per page for everything somebody sent you).
You are right that something is broken, but it's not the Internet. Or, rather, the Internet is broken but it is broken because something deeper is broken. Economics, Society, and Freedom are broken. The same interests (shady, despicable people) are responsible for breaking all three, and we talk about that every day, several times a day, on SN. But leaving off that recurring discourse for now, what do we do about the Internet?
Many, far smarter people than I will hopefully add more, better suggestions than mine, but notionally:
1. We need a totally decentralized physical structure that cannot be shut down by any government or corporation or gatekeeper.
2. We need what amounts to the best possible iteration of SN's (inherited from Slashdot, and since improved) moderation system, universally applied, to reward positive contributions to the discourse, and penalize trolls (insert the traditional, recurring debate about said moderation system here), universally applied.
3. We need to hoist the NSA, CIA, DEA, and the entirety of government and corporations that are violating our rights, spying on us, and abusing their access to information on their own petard. Every single last bureaucrat and CEO must every day wake up feeling the pointy ends of those sticks.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by hubie on Monday May 18 2015, @02:00PM
Indeed. Remember the ubiquitous "YHBT HAND"?
(Score: 4, Informative) by sudo rm -rf on Monday May 18 2015, @02:31PM
I didn't know that, but a quick research gave me this page [catb.org] with a definition, added bonus: it is pure html.
(Score: 2) by hubie on Monday May 18 2015, @03:16PM
The really good trolls could get someone so worked up in a lather that they fire off a 500 word emotional argument, whereby someone else who recognizes the trolling in process would reply with that simple message to let them know they've been had. A bad troll is a bad troll and is imminently obvious what they're doing. A very good troll is subtle and works his victim in a manner that they don't realize what's happening until it is too late. We all know we're too smart to be trolled, but we all have our hot button issues, so to get that message was akin to suddenly finding you have egg on your face.
To be a regular contributor to newsgroups, you had to have thick skin and be able to give as well as you took. If you could go back through those early comp.* and other newsgroups, you'll see a lot of big names you might recognize, and you'll see the boisterous tit-for-tat exchanges. The difference it seems today is that so many people seem to have very thin skin.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2015, @05:37PM
> The difference it seems today is that so many people seem to have very thin skin.
I'd say it is the other way around. Too many people with thick skins and nothing else of value to contribute.
For better or for worse, people will put up with assholery if it is backed up with something valuable.
But assholes who are just assholes to be assholes? Nobody has patience for that shit.
(Score: 2) by snick on Monday May 18 2015, @02:11PM
This.
I was going to write much the same. Thanks for saving me the trouble. Anyone who thinks that there was ever a time when "the 'net was 90% thoughtful discussion" obviously wasn't there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2015, @07:55PM
It was somewhere between '92 and '94, when I emailed researcher (who I did not know) at Lawrence Livermore national lab, and got help building a home wind turbine. That shit could never happen today.
It was a different place. There was etiquette. People were helpful with strangers.
And, yes, I was there. Things went to hell in the mid-90s.
I imagine if ad blocking becomes ubiquitous, the commercial Internet will fail, and we may end up there again.
(Score: 2) by jimshatt on Monday May 18 2015, @09:52PM
Have you tried? There are still nice people on the web. I'm pretty sure that if you personally e-mail a researcher relevant questions, you'll get an answer. Very often, at least.
(Score: 5, Funny) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday May 18 2015, @02:24PM
> We need to hoist the NSA, CIA, DEA, and the entirety of government and corporations that are violating our rights, spying on us, and abusing their access to information on their own petard.
Personally I'm not fussy whose petard you use, so long as it's good and hoisty.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2015, @04:15PM
There were trolls, but every newsreader had kill files or score files which would get the regular trolls out of your view quickly and permanently.