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The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

(cheapskatesguide.org)
622 points ColinWright | 5 comments | 25 Jan 22 22:24 UTC | HN request time: 1.024s | source
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kstrauser ◴[25 Jan 22 22:58 UTC] No.30079330[source]▶
I sure hope that's right. It was the best feeling in the world to stand up an Apache server on my Amiga, and later my little FreeBSD server, and see my friends viewing the website I was hosting on my dialup connection. It wasn't pretty, it wasn't elegant, and it certainly wasn't fast, but it was mine. I made that. From installing the server to writing the HTML, I owned that service from end to end and had completely freedom to do whatever I wanted with it.

That's what I want the Internet to look like for my younger family and friends. It'll probably never happen exactly this way, but I can picture someone running an IPv6-only service on their phone to impress their friends. I know what their smile would look like because that was once my smile, too.

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wolpoli ◴[25 Jan 22 23:51 UTC] No.30079823[source]▶
The barrier of entry was actually lower than that. We didn't need to stand up an Apache server. We could just sign up for a Geocities/Xoom/Tripod account and upload HTML or use the built in site editor to create content.

Somewhere along the way, people stopped building well organized sites and started producing chronologically organized writings and content. These chronologically organized articles and content have dominated web content and social media ever since.

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PragmaticPulp ◴[26 Jan 22 01:14 UTC] No.30080410[source]▶
> The barrier of entry was actually lower than that. We didn't need to stand up an Apache server. We could just sign up for a Geocities/Xoom/Tripod account and upload HTML or use the built in site editor to create content.

Reading this thread feels like everyone is anchored to whatever methods were popular at the time they entered the internet as being the peak. The BBS people think it was all downhill after BBS declined. The self-hosting people think it was all downhill after sites like Geocities/Tripod/Xoom became popular. The Geocities people think it was all downhill after blogging platforms became popular. The blogging people think it was all downhill when social media became popular.

I think there's a heavy dose of nostalgia coloring the opinions in this thread. What people really yearn for isn't Geocities or Usenet or whatever. It's the feeling of excitement that came from first getting immersed in the internet when it was all new to you.

> Somewhere along the way, people stopped building well organized sites and started producing chronologically organized writings and content. These chronologically organized articles and content have dominated web content and social media ever since.

I don't see the problem with chronological ordering. Most of those platforms and sites make it easy to search for related posts. Worst case, the author can just drop some hyperlinks into the posts to tie them together.

Curated and organized websites tend to fall out relevancy and decay very rapidly. Might as well just let people post as they see fit and then we can find it by searching.

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1. myself248 ◴[26 Jan 22 01:37 UTC] No.30080571[source]▶
Nah, I'm a BBS person and I think it's been all downhill since social media.

(Specifically, Livejournal was the tipping-point between blogging platforms and social media, Myspace was unquestionably downward, Facebook is the antichrist pure and simple.)

I have no problem with chronological or hierarchical content. Whatever the author wants to put out, is their prerogative.

What I have a problem with is walled gardens, stalking-as-a-business-model, and arbitrary automated deplatforming with no recourse.

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2. AussieWog93 ◴[26 Jan 22 03:40 UTC] No.30081395[source]▶
I joined in the mid-00s and have to agree.

Big social media and especially recommendation algorithms have ruined much of what made the old Internet fun.

There's no longer the discovery or organic sharing; everything is just shoved down your throat by a soulless algorithm.

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3. hypertele-Xii ◴[26 Jan 22 09:29 UTC] No.30083469[source]▶
Ban algorithmic recommendation. It's the only way people actually start organizing and curating content. You know, like libraries do.
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4. naasking ◴[26 Jan 22 12:39 UTC] No.30084773{3}[source]▶
Interesting thought I hadn't considered before. Without algorithms, all aggregated content was curated by humans. With the advent of algorithms, a lot of this has probably stopped because humans just can't keep up.

Sometimes that's a good and useful thing, like with search engines. Clearly not always though.

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5. Mezzie ◴[26 Jan 22 16:01 UTC] No.30087098{4}[source]▶
I was one of those humans, and it's more that the algorithms were initially designed under the assumption that we would keep doing that work for free, forever, but once the communities we were doing it for were destroyed, why bother?

Also there was a lot of pushback and poo-pooing the human element; lots of well-regarded (at the time) people saying that there was no future in human-curated content, and I know that I (as a young person) believed them. Look at the cool stuff they were making; they have to be right! They're smart adults, they would know, right?

It just stopped being fun to curate.