HN Gopher Feed (2017-11-02) - page 1 of 10 ___________________________________________________________________
Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web
670 points by livatlantis
https://www.neustadt.fr/essays/against-a-user-hostile-web/___________________________________________________________________
dmitriid - 7 hours ago
This article nicely complements anither one: https://staltz.com
/the-web-began-dying-in-2014-heres-how.htm...
starshadowx2 - 5 hours ago
"A website on Doom level design on Geocities from 1999, accessed
October 31, 20017 via Archive.org"Glad to know Archive.org will
still be around in 20017.
jstewartmobile - 5 hours ago
Brewster Kahle is my hero!
syphilis2 - 1 hours ago
I would love to use a search engine that allowed filtering results
by categories such as: personal, unincorporated, forum, news,
contains ads, page size, blog, video, slideshow, contains
javascript. Search is so cluttered, it's difficult to find small
pages with excellent content.I mention this because it's what
obstructs my access to the Web I enjoyed so much before. I don't
like reading news from whatever bloated sites news.google links me
to, I don't like being redirected 3 times just to read a recipe, or
getting movie recommendations in aggregate rather than from a
single reviewer that I trust. But search engines lead users to
these undesired things, and companies compete to get top search
results, and the best way I find good websites is ironically
offline.
jstewartmobile - 5 hours ago
Talk about silver linings! Trump's victory certainly made the
facebook/twitter/instagram liberals see what an obscenity this has
all become.Of course if the dems make a comeback in the midterms,
watch them all go into full-blown social-media relapse.
sctb - 4 hours ago
Please don't post this kind of partisan flamebait on Hacker News.
We're here to try for
better.https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
jstewartmobile - 4 hours ago
my bad
throwaway2016a - 7 hours ago
As a technical person I agree with a lot of this article. We were
moving towards a data centric web for a while but now we're moving
towards one where form is more important than function.But with
that said, I would have liked to have seen an article about
accessibility have more talk about how the web is not only less
accessible now for regular users but also even less accessible than
it was before for people with disabilities such as blindness, color
blindness, and even hearing loss.
kbuchanan - 7 hours ago
> Today, we are so far from that initial vision of linking
documents to share knowledge that it's hard to simply browse the
web for information without constantly being asked to buy
something, like something, follow someone, share the page on
Facebook or sign up to some newsletter.I'm a non-user of all things
social media. My Twitter account is purely nominal (for pinging
company support), and I don't have a Facebook account. As a
business owner, my peers think it's bizarre that I don't have a
LinkedIn account. The problems this author talks about are chains
of our own making. Yes, corporations exploit us, but they exploit
human frailties. This problem will not go away, and more "open
tech" will not solve it.
alexandercrohde - 6 hours ago
It's not unsolvable though. HN is an example of a technology that
shapes the rules of the forum in such a way that a top spot
cannot be purchased.Forum design is the new frontier.
gruez - 5 hours ago
>that a top spot cannot be purchased.you can buy hn upvotes,
which is the same as buying a top spot.
hasenj - 6 hours ago
I think the problem is one of economics.The SV culture made it
valuable for startups to amass a large amount of users.Where as
before this bubble started, it was more profitable for development
shops to build (and sell) software that anyone can use to host
their own site/forum/whatever.This might not be the entire
solution, but I think it would be a step in the right direction:We
need more products that are developed for people to deploy on their
own private servers. They have to have some very compelling points
that I think are still lacking in many existing solution:- They
have to be really really fast. Nothing in "python" or "nodejs" or
whatever.- They have to be really really easy to deploy. No
requiring a separate database server such as mysql. Just use
SQLite. Also, no copying over of tons of files. Just a single
executable. All other data should live in the database (sqlite
file). Maybe have two database files: one for user generated
content, and one for bundling application resources (images, etc).
I'm not exactly sure what's the best setup, but something along
those lines.- They have to be profitable for people who develop
them.This is more of a cultural issue.I love open source, but
requiring all software to be "free" means that it's much more
profitable to create a product for yourself only and try to lure as
many users as possible, just like facebook.To this end, I think
something like the physical source initiative makes a lot of sense:
if you buy the software, you have the right to make changes to it.
But you don't have the right to also copy it and distribute it.
wickawic - 6 hours ago
sidebar: lots of easy to enjoy things are implemented in 'slow'
interpreted languages. This site, for one.
hasenj - 6 hours ago
Which I think is a big mistake, because even if it ends up
being used in a low traffic site, it ends up complicating the
installation process. Where as a compiled language not only
would run fast but also have a very simple setup: just copy
over the exe and run it. Nothing to configure. No dependencies
to install.
digi_owl - 3 hours ago
Echo this.If there is ever something that looks nice and
shiny but will invariably cause me grief in getting working,
it is written in some interpreted language (Python seems to
be a particularly good at messing with me) that want
everything to be in some very peculiar way.And this trend of
every new language coming with its own package manager is
troubling me, as it means that developers will be even more
lax about documenting their dependencies...
noobiemcfoob - 6 hours ago
Many applications I've used that come as an exe are hardly
that easy to install and configure. Inevitably, something
breaks because of my machine's particular configuration. On
the development side, building to that magical executable is
an even bigger nightmare.Most packages in python or nodejs?
Install and run through package managers just fine.
hasenj - 5 hours ago
The more you depend on things to be right in the target
environment, the more chances you have of breaking
things.Having a statically linked binary will not always
magically solve this, but it's a great step in that
direction.The other step is not relying on any external
servers or services, e.g. postgresql, redis, etc.The rest
just boils down to programmer discipline. Never introduce
something that can potentially cause a headache to the end
user.If you're building on an interpreted language, you
can't really do that. You will always at least require the
user to have a specific version of
python/node/whatever.This can get complicated if the user
has a different version, so now you have to introduce a
virtualization layer that can manage several different
versions of the environment. These tools are always
annoying to use.Not to mention that some packages could
have native dependencies (e.g. a python library having a
dependency on a c library) and this is almost always a
source of headaches.
sillysaurus3 - 4 hours ago
I mean, have you tried running arc? You can fire up arc
3.1 via racket and it runs fine.
hasenj - 4 hours ago
I remember playing with it many years ago when I was
still naive and at the time had bought into PG's
promotion of lisp.
jjawssd - 6 hours ago
> Many applications I've used that come as an exe are
hardly that easy to install and configure.Python and Node
interpreters are EXEs that are NOT easy to install and
configure for 95+% of end-users> Inevitably, something
breaks because of my machine's particular
configuration.Indeed. Like a screwed up $PYTHONPATH> On the
development side, building to that magical executable is an
even bigger nightmare.I do not understand.> Most packages
in python or nodejs? Install and run through package
managers just fine.This implies you are familiar with WHICH
interpreter you are calling and that you know where it is
installed so you can call it.None of this is easy for end-
users.
tomc1985 - 6 hours ago
Only if they provide a statically linked binary, which is
rare -- especially in open source, where such a thing
generally has consequences with your license(s).
jjawssd - 6 hours ago
I think Golang has made significant inroads in this regard.
For instance with IPFS and Minio. Very easy to just get
started with minimal fuss.
hasenj - 4 hours ago
I'm not sure what is IPFS or Minio, but as far as I know,
the go compiler always produces statically linked
binaries that have no external dependencies. This is the
default out of the box behaviour.
hasenj - 6 hours ago
The only problematic licenses here are the GNU family of
licenses. This is very unfortunate but there's no way
around it.Luckily there are many many useful libraries
available with very liberal licenses.
tomc1985 - 4 hours ago
While GNU is restrictive it is an important bulwark
against exactly the kind of corporate conquest that more
liberal licenses have seen. Much of Amazon's unfortunate
domination over cloud services couldn't exist without
liberal open-source licenses...
hasenj - 4 hours ago
How so? I think it's quite the opposite. The GPL allows
you to run your code on a server that clients connect to
without you having to give them the code to your
server.This is the only way to profit off of GPL licensed
libraries.
tomc1985 - 2 hours ago
GPLv3 was supposed to patch that hole but isn't really
seeing much use. With regards to hosted services, yes
GPLv2 is quite liberal and prone to abuse
[deleted]
[deleted]
protoster - 4 hours ago
A beautiful little tech-utopia where standards were open and
everyone cooperated for the collective good existed for a few
glorious years. The geeks had their way for a few years, but the
show's over. In my cynical belief there is nothing we can do
practically to reverse the trends. Tragedy of the commons, greed,
masses following the path of least resistance, etc. will assert
themselves just like they do in all other spheres of human society.
gojomo - 1 hours ago
Two missing recommendations:* for those concerned with abusive
ads/trackers, try Brave web browser, the browser most committed to
privacy* for those concerned about central chokepoints, start
experimenting with 'decentralized web' technologies - the 'Beaker
Browser'/DAT ecosystem is doing lots of interesting things; the
blockchain-anchored namespaces, storage, or services promoted by
Blockstack, Filecoin/Protocol-Labs, etc may soon offer compelling
alternatives
mobilemidget - 3 hours ago
"I quit Facebook seven months ago. Despite its undeniable
value"Cant take this seriously right? You treasure the web, yet you
are on facebook.
d--b - 49 minutes ago
Hopefully this kind of backlash makes more people disapprove of bad
practices and look for crap-free websites.Hopefully the internet
follows the organic food movement. Too many people tired of crap
push for a change.
alexandercrohde - 6 hours ago
This is good, but simplistic.Firstly the downfall in the geocities-
web came in many phases:1. Spam Email Phase2. Phishing / Nigerian
phase3. Popup phase4. Autoplaying Flash/ActiveX phase5. Pagerank
phase (forums being ruined until rel=nofollow)Now google,
previously the main gateway to discovery, is pretty much useless
for discovering new non-commercial content.The way this could go
away is only from a market shift; deleting your facebook won't
bring back geocities. The fact is, if I had a geocities page it'd
be undiscoverable due to pagerank, so I have no incentive to
publish unless I have another avenue of attention (resume, Hn
profile).Can a non-commercial search engine ever exist? I suppose
reddit/HN voting is one semi-successful method of content
ranking...
ravenstine - 5 minutes ago
A decentralized p2p search engine exists, though really nobody
uses it.https://yacy.net/en/index.htmlPerhaps a bare bones
donation-supported search engine could exist if it implemented
the same protocol using WebRTC and served a single JavaScript-
powered webpage from S3.
anigbrowl - 1 hours ago
Notice how these all have something in common...
seangrogg - 5 hours ago
I would not call content ranking semi-successful just because it
isn't actively being gamed now - there was a time before Google
served ads.
macawfish - 5 hours ago
We need web browsers with good local & p2p
indexing/search/bookmarking features.Before I ever touch google, I
want my search/address bar to look thoroughly through well
organized, locally bookmarked content indexes.The next stop before
Google is indexes I've subscribed to. My friends, family,
organizations, libraries, businesses, campaigns, wikipedia,
etc.After that, duckduckgo. If I haven't found it by then,
google.This kind of browser feature could make DAT/ipfs hypertext
much more useful.
5ilv3r - 2 hours ago
I had an idea for something like this. I found a fictional device
called a memex on wikipedia, and I figured that it would be very
easy to implement simply searching your browser cache from the
address bar. Obviously the cache will need to be big and
persistent, but man it sure would be useful.
QasimK - 4 hours ago
I?ve found Chrome/Chromium to be absolutely terrible at searching
local history and bookmarks. It often fails to find even the
simplest of pages which I know I?ve been to recently, while
Firefox is capable of digging out pages that are barely in my
memory.It?s one of the things that keep me on Firefox - it?s
simply more usable!(Personally, I?m convinced Google does it
deliberately to gain more user attention time on their search
service.)The idea of having subscribed indexes is interesting! I
often just want to search Wikipedia. The idea of indexes from
friends or family sounds more like ?trusted sources?, or the web
of trust, or even GPG key verification. You?re saying I trust
these sources more because I trust these people more.I think
doing this slightly in the background automatically (vs actively
asking your friend for recommendations, or looking at a bloggers
recommended materials page) could make the internet safer. It
risks creating ?bubbles?, but these should be a lot less
significant than your own personal (Google) search bubble.
macawfish - 1 hours ago
Yes, indeed, there is a strong risk for bubbles. In order to
deter bubbles, there must still be a healthy social fabric and
network applications that promote and incentivize cross-
cultural interaction and knowledge sharing. That's a social,
political, design & technical challenge.Also...I'm imagining
the possibility "encrypted queries" between trusted parties.
You could allow people to send you a search query that is
encrypted in some way such that you couldn't read it, but you
could still run it on your local index and send them back a
result. Storing not only your own well-structured index but
numerous other parties indices as well could be way too
expensive. Instead, it makes sense only to maintain a
relatively small local index for when you're truly offline.
But to allow others to search your index anonymously, perhaps
in exchange for the ability to search theirs anonymously. You
could let trusted parties search your content without actually
revealing their search terms, which may contain sensitive
terms, like "cancer" or "schizophrenia symptoms". Maybe this
could be done in a way that also obscures who actually ran the
query. This sounds like a challenge for zero-knowledge proofs
and some kind of anonymous traffic routing system.In practice,
it'd be like a hybrid of anonymous distributed routing and
anonymous distributed search.
Animats - 4 hours ago
It's all about me, Me, ME!The entire first screen is some guy
blithering about himself. Cory Doctorow says all this,
better.Diaspora would be a good idea if it had any traction. Until
then, we're stuck with Facebook.Google, not so much. Most of
Google's services have quite good alternatives. I don't use any
service that requires a Google account. With Google reading and
censoring what you put in Google Docs, that's probably a bad idea
anyway.
gingerb - 2 hours ago
I totally disagree. It is not the web or www that is hostile but
many websites and services out there.I think no one will go back to
the old web, although I agree it was an epic experience back then.
For me it is totally logical that many people try to find a way to
earn money on the internet, and in this economy there is in
principle nothing wrong with that IMHO.No one forces you to use
Facebook, Google or any of the great services available. But people
seem to forget that in life almost everything comes with a price.
For Facebook and Google you pay with your (more or less private)
data. So? If you think it's not a fair deal, simply don't use it!
But please don't blame the entire web for that.The web as it is now
has soooo much more to offer than the old web that it is hard to
even imagine! A few things I use that were impossible in the 90's,
from the top of my head: listen music on youtube, learn and use
any programming language for free, git, open source, read the
latest news in online newspapers from remote countries, buy
tickets online, airbnb, online banking, broadcast on twitter,
social networks, slack, OS updates, World of Warcraft/games,
crypto currencies, etc.. etc... I'm happy to pay with some of my
privacy to any of the services above, it's up to me to decide
whether the balance is OK.
moises_silva - 11 minutes ago
THIS I'm tired of people equating the web with facebook.
[deleted]
wuliwong - 3 hours ago
I went to the "first web page" and saw this link to "etiquette".htt
p://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Provider/Etiquette.htmlGood pointers
for making websites. :)
[deleted]
sctb - 16 minutes ago
You can always make a substantive point (if there is one) without
the distracting and uncivil snark, and the guidelines ask us
to.https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Auricoma - 3 hours ago
Stop complaining about free stuff.
halayli - 2 hours ago
> Cedexis: a CND/ad-delivery platformCedexis is not an ad-delivery
platform. It's a multi-cdn platform that allows you use multiple
cdns under the hood and picks optimum cdn based on the user's
location.OP loses credibility when making such false accusations
just to make their point.
livatlantis - 1 hours ago
Fair point, that was an error on my part. I've corrected it with
a note of the change right below it. Thanks for pointing it out!
hawski - 37 minutes ago
I started research on making of an alternative search engine. It
would not index sites serving ads and possibly e-commerce. I would
like to also penalize JavaScript use at least as an option. At the
beginning I would use Adblock rulesets like the Easy List - if
there is a match I do not index the site. I named it Abracabra.I
hope that this would remove most crap out there with some minor
collateral damage. Also that the index would be small enough that a
little fish like me could do it without massive cost or
infrastructure.Regarding JavaScript use penalization I have in mind
at least lower ranking. Probably for the first version not
including them at all would be the simplest thing to do. Some later
version could attempt to classify used JavaScript.I would like it
to index information first and not care much about web apps.
Sometimes within the information only site there could be a link to
a webapp. I?m wondering if it would make sense to distribute whole
index via torrent. Then search could be done locally. But for this
too make sense it would have to be in an order of, at most, tens of
gigabytes. The problem would be to make updates as small as
possible and also to not use prohibitive amount of CPU time.I don't
have any monetization in mind as you probably should have guessed
at this point. Probably if it would be frugal enough it could run
from my pocket and hopefully some donations.However I?m almost
totally green in this area. I started a bit with learning how to
index and search with SQLite's FTS5. I don't like dependencies too
much and would like to keep the local version option available. So
probably typical ElasticSearch and other Java apps are probably too
heavy. You can safely ignore technical side of my comment if you
know better. If someone is more capable to do this than me, please
make it instead of me ;)
gruez - 7 hours ago
>If you use Chrome as your main browser, consider switching to
Chromium, the open-source version of the browser. Consider
minimalist browsers like Min (and choose to block all ads, trackers
and scripts) to browser news websites.no love for firefox? or for
that matter, any non webkit browsers?>HERE WeGo for maps (free)i'm
not sure that's any better in terms of privacy
lern_too_spel - 2 hours ago
Also, FastMail isn't any better for privacy, and you have to pay
for it to boot. The article was more or less reasonable until the
nonsensical recommendations at the end.
rrix2 - 1 hours ago
FastMail is much better than google mail because it's not
fueling google's hegemony over the web. That you have to pay
for it means their sustainability is not tied to abusing their
users. If you want privacy in the way you seem to mean privacy
(end-to-end no-trust async messaging) of course anything
speaking SMTP isn't going to be "better for privacy", but those
systems largely are incompatible with how 99% of the web wants
to communicate with you.
Freak_NL - 5 hours ago
>> HERE WeGo for maps (free)> i'm not sure that's any better in
terms of privacyYeah, I would recommend at least checking out
OpenStreetMap and any tools that derive their routing and tiles
from it first. Of course its usability varies by country (and
even by locality!), but that's no different from Google Maps or
Apple Maps.At least with OpenStreetMap I know that my
contributions benefit people in general (due to the free software
licensing) and not mainly (the shareholders of) Google or Apple.
annabellish - 7 hours ago
It always astonishes me how many people who are ostensibly
against the webkit derivative hegemony won't even consider
recommending Firefox. It's certainly a competitive browser, and
personally my favourite, and Mozilla does fantastically important
work balancing out an otherwise entirely corporate, ulterior-
motive laden browser market.
throwaway2016a - 7 hours ago
My experience has been that Firefox was unusably slow on OS X
and Linux for a long time and they lost a lot of users because
of it. Now it is faster but it is difficult to woo people
back.And even if it is faster, there track record shows that
they found doing a release that slows down a large portion of
users was acceptable. Granted I doubt they still have that
attitude, and i think they are more performance based now, but
a lot of us left for Chrome and never looked back.
saiya-jin - 6 hours ago
Firefox is OK these days. As a user I couldn't care less
about Google offering, specifically because of google. That
company is creepy and its core mission is to be even more
creepy.On android, Firefox mobile is by far the best browser,
since it allows (some) extensions, and you definitely need
one - microBlock origin. No effin' way I am going to use
their official browser, web is beyond useless with all the
ads.
wtetzner - 6 hours ago
> and i think they are more performance based now, but a lot
of us left for Chrome and never looked back.And you don't
have the same problem with Chrome? I've found Chrome to be a
terrible resource hog lately, and sometimes I have to kill it
to get my computer back to a usable state. And of course, I
have to dig through all of the Chrome process and try to
figure out which is the one that will take down the rest of
them.
insulanus - 4 hours ago
> dig through all of the Chrome process and try to figure
out which is the one that will take down the rest of themTo
kill: pkill "Chrome"To suspend: pkill -SIGSTOP "Chrome" To
resume: pkill -SIGCONT "Chrome"
wtetzner - 1 hours ago
Thank you!
throwaway2016a - 5 hours ago
> And you don't have the same problem with Chrome? I've
found Chrome to be a terrible resource hog latelyI'm OS X
and I've had some CPU issues lately if I have a lot of tabs
open but overall not nearly as many issues as when I
finally decided to give up Firefox.I actually downloaded
Firefox lately and it seems pretty nice. If Chrome gets
works I may consider it.
leggomylibro - 4 hours ago
I usually have a few hundred tabs open in Firefox without
issue; it seems to do a good job of putting unused/old
tabs to 'sleep' until you come back to them.
intopieces - 3 hours ago
My work doesn't allow the latest version of FireFox, so after
months of crashes and general unbearably slowness on MacOS I
switched to UnGoogled Chromium. I wish I could go back to FF
because I like Mozilla as an org, but it's not in the cards
for my day to day.
[deleted]
justinclift - 3 hours ago
> ... and Mozilla does fantastically important work balancing
out an otherwise entirely corporate, ulterior-motive laden
browser market.Mozilla seems to have become infected with the
same ulterior-motive laden evil though. :(Example happening at
the moment:https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/10/09/mozilla_tes
ts_cliqz...
bobajeff - 6 hours ago
I think trying to fight a browser engine monoculture is a lost
cause. There is no money in building browser engines and it
costs a lot of time and money to create one from scratch.The
only reason Mozilla and Microsoft still use their own engine is
for historical and technical reasons.The fact that we are down
to just three implementations should tell you were things are
headed.
reaperducer - 7 hours ago
Irony: The web page that rails about the web being user hostile is
coded so that Safari's user-friendly reader mode is disabled.
mattnewton - 7 hours ago
To be fair, reader mode is a pile of mostly opaque heuristics and
it can be tricky to opt-in/out.
livatlantis - 7 hours ago
Author here. Is it? It works on my end. Could you tell me which
OS/Safari version you're using? Thanks.
Vinnl - 7 hours ago
In case you're getting unsure: it works fine in Firefox's
reader mode.
falcolas - 6 hours ago
Doesn't work for me either (in Safari; Firefox will pull it up
though). Based on the (old) Stack Overflow answers, it's
probably a combination of the HTML5 header/footer elements, and
"wrapper" div ids pulling the "readability" score
down.https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2999600/how-to-
disable-s...Safari Version 11.0 (13604.1.38.1.6)
d215 - 7 hours ago
Works for me Firefox/iOS 11.0
caryhartline - 7 hours ago
Even on the latest Safari it doesn't work: 10.13.1 (17B48) with
macOS: 10.13.1 (17B48)Nothing about that page seems like it
would stop Reader so I filed a Radar about it.
dictum - 5 hours ago
Reader readies Radar regarding Reader regression.(Please
don't continue this. I just had to get it out of my system.)
porsupah - 5 hours ago
Works for me with Safari Technology Preview 43 (Safari 11.1,
WebKit 13605.1.12), High Sierra 10.13.2b1 (17C60c).
graeme - 7 hours ago
Didn?t work for me either. Ios 11.1.
livatlantis - 6 hours ago
Ok thanks for the replies. I'll go troubleshooting!
dictum - 5 hours ago
Working on Safari 11.0.1 / macOS 10.12.6. Maybe
10.13-specific?
QasimK - 4 hours ago
Works for me on iOS Safari 11.0.3
deftturtle - 1 hours ago
Yelp is extremely hostile to web users on mobile and shoves their
app at you, actively blocking mobile functionality. You have to
spoof user agent or request desktop site to use their service. So
after realizing how hostile they are, I stopped using their
service. Wasn't aware of their shady business practices in the
past, and I think they've improved somewhat? My main issue with
them today is their subverting of mobile web usage.Similarly,
Square Cash hides their login page on the mobile cash.me site. You
have to request the desktop site and actually go to cash.me/login
to have any chance of using their mobile site. It's fucking crazy.
0x00000000 - 36 minutes ago
Twitter and reddit drive me up the fucking wall. Twitter removed
most functionality if you aren't logged in and hits you with a
popup about once every 0.1 seconds as you scroll but gives up
when you close it about 6 times. The mobile reddit site is just
straight broken. Images disappear if you click in the wrong
place, video doesn't work, can't change search options, posts act
like they fail resulting in duplicate comments. Yet they have the
audacity to push their shitty app down your throat every other
page which is just a webview of the mobile site with the same
problems.These companies will do anything to inflate their user
count and get more access to more data to sell. Instagram is
particularly egregious about inflating user count. You can make
an account without even verifying your email, but you can't log
in again or even delete your account without linking a valid
phone number. There is probably a 7 figure number of abandoned
accounts like that.
freeflight - 20 minutes ago
Add Pinterest to that list of super annoying services who won't
let you even look at anything without signing up/linking
up/whatever else they could extort from you before letting you
look at a simple picture.
jccalhoun - 6 hours ago
I use ublock origin and privacy badger not because I am worried
about privacy but because the internet is basically unusable
without it.Because of this, I don't see many ads. But I have been
an amazon customer since 1999 (according to what they say on their
website when I'm logged in.) Looking at what they recommend for me,
this personalization stuff is crap.In music, Amazon recommends
bands I never listen to like Montrose, Metallica, and the Doors
(and to be fair, some people I've never heard of so I guess it is
possible that I would be interested in them. Greta Van Fleet?
William Patrick Corgan?)In books, I do like scifi but they
recommend a bunch of books with spaceships shooting each other on
the cover - not what I have ever been interested in.In the "humor
and entertainment" section of books they do list some books that I
would be interested in but, strangely, none of them are "humor" but
are all academic books about videogames (which I am interested in).
Even here the recommendation engine is very unsophisticated because
in between academic books on videogames there are books on the art
of Zelda and other coffee table books that I am not interested
in.And the first book in their recommended children's book section
is 1984. (and I don't have any kids any way).If this is the best
they can do with 18 years of tracking my purchases then I am not
worried.
tomjen3 - 3 hours ago
I block far less than you do, but all recommendation engines
appear to be crab: I brought a few books on Amazon that could be
purchased by middle-aged women and now most of the books I get
recommended are romance novels with a vampire, time travel or
magic theme - meanwhile what I actually buy is mainly SciFi and a
bunch of books about NK.Come to think of it the recommended
movies on Netflix is also crazy, but they may be screwing it
towards their own selection.But lets be honest even when I tell
Facebook what my interests are, it can't give useful ads - and
even mighty google assumed I was interested in Palaeontology at
one point.
bambax - 4 hours ago
It's really amazing how bad those personnalisation engines are;
AI seems pretty stupid for now.But as I was making the exact same
point a few days ago here on HN, someone responded to say that
maybe it was on purpose, that if recommendations were too good
they would creep us out.Don't know what to think of it but I
found the objection interesting...
black_puppydog - 4 hours ago
another point is that you (the recommender, and, incidentally,
also the user) are happy if there is at least one novel and
interesting item in the recommendations. This might apply less
to music (list) recommendations, but in general that's how I
(as a customer) also approach lists of recommendations.
komali2 - 4 hours ago
To be fair, you sound like one of the harder people to track
accurately.However, I as well have been "disappointed" by the
ability of websites to judge my interests. After reading about
cases such as Target, who have "spooky" ability to gauge
interest, I was expecting better.So I searched for a very
specific motorcycle jacket with very specific features and now my
page is inundated with every clothing item that has the tag
"motorcycle_jacket?" That's.... it? The same result I'd get for
hitting google with "site:amazon.com 'motorcycle jacket'" ?
edgarvaldes - 2 hours ago
>To be fair, you sound like one of the harder people to track
accurately.But Amazon, in this case, doesn't need to track
other surfing habits, just his purchase history. That history
is not affected by privacy addons.
Chaebixi - 3 hours ago
The impression that I got was that Target thing wasn't some
spooky self-learning AI product recommender, but rather they
had the data to write some special-purpose analytics to detect
a specific but common purchasing pattern. Your motorcycle
jacket example isn't the kind of thing that would get that kind
of special attention.
komali2 - 2 hours ago
Really? Because I would expect Amazon to be like "oh fuck,
this dude bought a motorcycle! Inundaaaaate!" and start
seeing a bunch of ads for Senas, helmets, gloves, etc.
bluGill - 2 hours ago
Unless you buy your motorcycle from amazon as well they
don't know to send you that.Target was able to get the
spooky results because there is in fact a real correlation:
girls who switch from scented products (soaps) to unscented
are very likely to buy a maternity clothing in a couple
months, and a few months latter baby products. Note that
this all starts because then girl was buying scented
products at target to begin with, and so the change in
habit was the important part.
leeoniya - 28 minutes ago
> William Patrick Corgan?Billy Corgan was the lead singer of
Smashing Pumpkins. also has a lot of solo stuff.seeing the full
names rather than stage names of artists can be weird.
wutbrodo - 3 hours ago
> In books, I do like scifi but they recommend a bunch of books
with spaceships shooting each other on the cover - not what I
have ever been interested in.You're making a huge mistake by
judging a book by its cover in this case. The copy of the
Foundation series that I had as a kid was very space opera
looking too, and I've seen gaudy covers on everything from Dune
to Kim Stanley Robinson. For Sci fi in particular, publishers
have an incentive to trick a large chunk of the audience into
thinking that its Star Wars-y, and there's not much incentive in
signaling the things that you or I would get out these books.
gknoy - 2 hours ago
I second this. Heck, the Ancillary series has paintings of
spaceships as their covers, and they're some of my favorite
scifi books in recent memory.
duxup - 5 hours ago
I remember when even some corporate web sites often had a misc site
somewhere with something about who built the site, even a picture
of the server, a cat.... it was personal. It was very human.
yosito - 4 hours ago
> You become a manipulable data point at the mercy of big
corporations who sell their ability to manipulate you based on the
data you volunteer.This might be the best summary of "why the world
is fucked" that I've seen.
pmoriarty - 7 hours ago
"For many of us in the early 2000s, the web was magical. You
connected a phone line to your computer, let it make a funny noise
and suddenly you had access to a seemingly-unending repository of
thoughts and ideas from people around the world."It might not seem
like much now, but what that noise represented was the stuff of
science fiction at the time: near-instantaneous communication at a
planetary scale. It was a big deal."I kind of yearn for the pre-web
days... when the primary means of communication was mailing lists
and newsgroups, without any commercial interest.The creation of the
web was when it all started to go wrong. Corporations started to
flock to it like flies and tried their best to turn it in to an ad-
laden, spyware-laden, dumbed-down, one-way broadcasting medium not
too far from television.
pingiun - 6 hours ago
Luckily mailing lists and newsgroups still exist, some newsgroups
are even still active. (Mailings lists too of course, but they
are generally created for a specific purpose)
pmoriarty - 6 hours ago
They exist, as do mechanical typewriters and bulletin board
systems, but most people don't use them. The web "won" long
ago, and newsgroups and mailing lists are now mostly a
historical curiosity.
AstralStorm - 6 hours ago
Also forums for special interests. (Outgrowth of a bulletin
board.) Some do not even abuse their data and users.
anigbrowl - 1 hours ago
I disagree slightly:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Canter_and_Martha_Sie...I
still remember the day that these assholes showed up and ruined a
wonderful thing, and as you can see I'm not really over it.Where
things went wrong on the web, imho, was when business started
leaning on people to put graphic corporate branding front and
center, encouraging the abuse of things like tables and so on to
create something that looked more like a magazine advert. Now,
you could argue that such commercial pressures were got people to
throw money at the WWW int he first place and rove technological
development, and you'd have a point - the early web was pretty
dull to look at. I wrote a book on how to use it for consumers
around 1994 and every so often I take it off the shelf for a
giggle at how primitive it looks in the screenshots. But at that
time it was much better curated and the browsing experience was
much more rewarding in many respects, although I'm obviously
influenced by some nostalgia for a simpler era.I really hoped to
see the semantic web recapture some of the user-centric benefits
of the early web, but development on that front seems slooooooow,
and my ideas about a graph centric virtual space seem too sci-fi
for me to even get meaningful answers from people I've asked.
shangxiao - 6 hours ago
I love the fact that IRC is still alive and kicking. The #django
channel on freenode is still pretty active as opposed other
communities that flock to slack or gitter.
pmoriarty - 6 hours ago
Technical chat on IRC is still alive and well on Freenode, but
non-technical chat has mostly moved on from IRC to other media.
digi_owl - 3 hours ago
Indeed.I still recall watching this change firsthand.When i
got my first modem, i was informed of a regional IRC channel
on one of the big networks. And from that day onwards i would
have my client set to connect to that channel, and fire it up
alongside the email client right after the handshake
completed.But at one point the channel died, and the cause of
death was twofold.one part was the creation first generation
social media services, and their web based chat rooms.Another
part, and perhaps a bigger part, was that Microsoft made a
strong push of MSN Messenger with Windows XP.This resulted in
a more clique style communications form online, as you had to
know people and get their account info before being able to
contact them. With IRC you joined the channel and that was
it.
psyc - 6 hours ago
Indeed, the Web became a juggernaut bandwagon, and got all the
attention. Not for nothing. But I always felt the potential of
the Internet was neglected as a result. There are other apps,
notably MMOs, BitTorrent, blockchain and other P2P things.I
sincerely hope that the ?re-decentralization? movement is able to
attract hackers and gain steam.
pfraze - 3 hours ago
I gave a talk about a P2P Web at PDX node just a bit
agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ep0ZIe6i10
eterm - 3 hours ago
That requires net neutrality. In general I think there's a
danger that ISPs become "Web service providers" and refuse
anything which isn't HTTP from rDNS-able addresses.Of course
people will just end up recreating TCP over HTTPS to get around
these sorts of things, but I don't think we're headed toward a
decentralised and opinionated (i.e. not heavily filtered based
on traffic analysis) network.
amorphid - 6 hours ago
I never got into the pre-web stuff, so I don't know exactly what
the differences are. Don't those things still exist? Isn't the
comment section of this HN post a form of async, text-only
communication?
DanBC - 6 hours ago
One difference is that HN is hosted on a server under the
control of YC.If YC ever decide to destroy HN they can.With an
HN Usenet newsgroup it'd be distributed across all the servers
that carry that group. You could download software and host it
yourself.
Santosh83 - 6 hours ago
Usenet and mailing lists are distributed. Web forums (like HN)
are not. You can setup your own NNTP or mail server if you
wanted, but there's only one place to post HN comments & that's
right here, subject to all the pros & cons that entails.
pmoriarty - 6 hours ago
It's still centralized, and owned and run by a commercial
entity that uses it to further their own interests, with a
record of its users' interests and opinions.The capabilities
and features of web forums are also really dumbed-down and
limited compared to what you could get with the mail clients
and news clients of even 20 or 30 years ago.
ntoe845noe - 5 hours ago
Yeah, I'm really surprised that most web forum software
doesn't even let you sort comments by author, date, subject
(which most comments don't have), etc. There were all sorts
of useful things that usenet provided. (Not the least of
which is kill files for ignoring trolls.)
anigbrowl - 1 hours ago
I think this is deliberate. Have you noticed how google
makes it...very very difficult to get results of things in
date order? When I've asked people who work there why
(often in relation to things where the date information is
well-structured, like legal opinions or scientific papers)
they always respond with some vague and very obvious
bullshit.Long story short, a lot of the large internet
companies withhold or obscure functionality that users
really want in order to keep them engaged and sell more
ads. We have the technology to do a lot better than we are
doing, but capital prefers to manufacture scarcity in the
guise of abundance.
DerfNet - 6 hours ago
Could you expand on that second line a bit? I'm curious what
features we're currently missing out on compared to decades
past.
pmoriarty - 5 hours ago
From a recent thread on "Why kernel development still uses
email": [1]"This is one of the things that web-based forums
have yet to get right. Email (and NNTP news) clients from
20 or 30 years ago are far superior in this respect,
because they can intelligently deal with threading and
folding. These features alone makes large conversations
much easier to deal with than on web-forums.To add to that,
email (and NNTP news) clients even from 20 or 30 years ago
have other powerful features that web forums have yet to
catch up on:- kill files[2] (which you can use to filter
out unwanted articles/mails based on content or metadata
such as subject, user, etc)- scoring- user-configurable
anti-spam filtering or other "intelligent" filtering (such
as bayesian filtering not just for spam/ham, but for
interesting/unintersting content)- tagging not just on a
site-wide level but at the client level so each user can
tag messages/articles the way they make sense to them-
other advanced filtering and scripting based on any of the
aboveWeb-based forums are just incredibly primitive
compared to this many-decade-old technology."[1] -
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15373179[2] -
https://wikivisually.com/wiki/Kill_file
CaptSpify - 4 hours ago
the tl;dr is: The user controls the content, not the
site.One of the things we keep forgetting as we move
forward is that client-control > server-control.
ptero - 5 hours ago
I cannot agree more. When one is used to thread and
folding for email or usenet, the user experience of web
mail/forum seems woefully inadequate.When I first saw
that gmail starts a new thread when you change a subject
I did not believe it at first; I thought I have made a
mistake in replying. Text-based clients of old (tin,
pine, etc.) still outperform current monstrosities by a
wide margin.
krapp - 41 minutes ago
That's not an inherent limitation of the web or web
forums, though - I've seen those features implemented in
a lot of them.And of course, there's nothing stopping
anyone from building a web forum and offering an endpoint
for third party clients, they just don't, mostly because
web forums themselves have more or less been superseded
by Facebook, Twitter and Youtube, and no one seems to
care about them anymore.The only pre-web feature that web
forums can't really implement is decentralization.
zeveb - 5 hours ago
NNTP was often hosted locally to the machine that you were
reading on, so browsing it is incredibly fast, so much
faster than using a website that it's not funny.Plus, the
clients had things like killfiles, so that one could ignore
a troll or a subject (or even fancier stuff, like scoring:
maybe a user tends to have worthless comments, but what he
says about one subject is really worthwhile).
[deleted]
amelius - 4 hours ago
That web still exists more or less.If you want to use the web in
that way, just remove YouTube, Facebook, etc. from your DNS.
vvanders - 5 hours ago
Ironically the closest thing I've found to the hey-day of the
internet(~'99) for me is Ham Radio.It's hard to explain but it's
got the same feel of people who tinker and enjoy technology for
the hell of it. With HF you get communication all over the
globe.It's also explicitly non-commercial so it's stayed
relatively undeveloped. Granted you'll never see the exponential
of communication that the internet unleashed due to limited
spectrum but that might be in some ways a blessing.
ThinkingGuy - 2 hours ago
I generally agree, but while there's still a strong DIY spirit
in the ham radio world, especially in the hardware field, I
often find myself disappointed by many hams' willingness to
surrender control and freedom to proprietary protocols and
software (PACTOR, D-STAR, Winlink, Ham Radio Delux, to name a
few) in exchange for convenience.
vvanders - 2 hours ago
Oh yes, I hate the implementation(love the tech) behind
PACTOR. Of course there's also the really annoying symbol
rate limit regulations as well.Thankfully K1JT via WSJT has
been doing some awesome open source weak signal work. FT8 is
pretty sweet and really exploded recently.
eighthnate - 3 hours ago
The sweetspot was mid 90s to mid 00s. We had the benefit of the
web without the all-encompassing corporate control. It was a more
open and freer place back then. But as the internet got more
popular and with more corporate/government involvement, the
standards were lowered to accommodate the lowest common
denominator.Less free speech, more control, less privacy and more
ads.
agentdrtran - 6 hours ago
ah yes, this week's whiny essay about how the web sucks now. It's
like clockwork at this point.
[deleted]
titzer - 4 hours ago
FTA:"...we have faster connections, better browser standards,
tighter security and new media formats. But it is also different in
the values it espouses. Today, we are so far from that initial
vision of linking documents to share knowledge that it's hard to
simply browse the web for information without constantly being
asked to buy something, like something, follow someone, share the
page on Facebook or sign up to some newsletter. All the while being
tracked and profiled."The author is absolutely right that the
_values_ of the web have changed. IMO this is due to the much more
vast penetration of the web and the bubbles which have been birthed
as a result of attracting very aggressive profit-driven actors.
Rebasing the web's economic model on advertising has fundamentally
changed the conception of users, and the expectation of enormous
profits has steamrolled the egalitarian principles of early web
citizens.I kind of hope that the web will reboot itself in dark
corners, away from the mega actors, away from the tracking and
surveillance, and the torrent of the current web can keep on going
for the masses.
greenscale - 4 hours ago
I think you're right, but one issue is keeping the problems of
the "web of the masses" from spreading to our secluded dark
corners once they pick up traction.
[deleted]
sanbor - 3 hours ago
One important factor of the success of Facebook/YouTube/etc. is
that you have an admin every 10k people. Let's say instead of
Facebook we have million of people hosting their websites. Then
you'd need a lot more admins. A lot more of security issues.
Facebook makes super easy for people to put content online and also
interact between them. I wish setting up a server and securing a
server to host your content would be as easy as creating a Facebook
account.
jumpkickhit - 3 hours ago
I've been active online since 1994. In my opinion, the start of
the cellphone era (iPhone and up) was when the internet started
it's way downhill.All sorts of people who weren't online suddenly
were there, and businesses took a lot more interest in the lest
tech savvy types who've started to populate the internet.At the
same time, these same mobile users saw they could be anonymous and
had no learned netiquette unlike so many others before them.So
because of this new-user saturation, the internet became no longer
niche and now mainstream, to the detriment of everyone else
online.Yes yes, Eternal September and all that, but were they wrong
about the similar assessment back then?
ataturk - 7 hours ago
The part where the author tries to tie Brexit and the election of
Donald Trump to the user-hostile web is bonkers.People, you have to
understand this: There exists a large number of others out there
who desperately want government reformed, want more localized
control over their lives, and who voted accordingly. It wasn't
some trick pulled on them by corporations or Russians manipulating
social media. I realize that may be hard to understand, but it is
the truth!The rest of the article was well-intentioned, but somehow
just a bit off. We can't go back to 1999 or 1993, but we can limit
the walled gardens and censorship if we want to. But this is
important: It's not the freedom-minded people who want to shut
down free speech or filter and censor, it is the dyed-in-the-wool
Marxist hardliners and the corporatists.
addicted - 2 hours ago
"It wasn't some trick pulled on them by corporations or Russians
manipulating social media. I realize that may be hard to
understand, but it is the truth!"You're right. That 350mn
pounds/week for the NHS is right around the corner.Brexit was
nothing but a huge con.I'll agree with you on Donald Trump. His
terribleness was pretty obvious and open right from the
beginning. Nothing we've seen from him wasn't evident during or
before his campaign.
knowaveragejoe - 3 hours ago
I think you are giving those folks too much credit. Few of the
people who voted for Trump could coherently explain the problems
you have mentioned, how they realistically impact their life, and
how Trump and his ilk would plan to solve them. Instead, inch-
deep reasoning and soundbites prevail, and much of it boils down
to conspiracy theories. They are happy to wield the power of the
state and employ centralized control of things when it suits
their pet issues all the same. Donald Trump represents a net
intrusion of government into our personal lives and businesses.
ZenoArrow - 2 hours ago
> "People, you have to understand this: There exists a large
number of others out there who desperately want government
reformed, want more localized control over their lives, and who
voted accordingly. It wasn't some trick pulled on them by
corporations or Russians manipulating social media. I realize
that may be hard to understand, but it is the truth!"Thank you
for taking time to consider the effects of media spin and not
take everything you read at face value. If more people made the
same effort we'd be a lot better off.
hehheh - 1 hours ago
If media spin can affect people, why couldn't a corporation or
foreign government do the same? I don't understand why the
facts that that a large number of people want government reform
and that corporate and government forces were spending money to
influence the election cannot exist side by side.
tstactplsignore - 2 hours ago
>It wasn't some trick pulled on them by corporations or Russians
manipulating social media. I realize that may be hard to
understand, but it is the truth!Don't we objectively know this is
false? You can dispute the size of the effect, but both Russians
and corporations absolutely ran large targeted misinformation and
propaganda campaigns for the 2016 election, taking advantage of
what you could call the user-hostile web. The intelligence
communities, congress, and big tech companies all agree on this
now... Your distortion may be a bit more qualified than Donald
Trump's daily fabrications, but it still intends to deceive on
what is an objective fact all the same.
freeflight - 34 minutes ago
> It wasn't some trick pulled on them by corporations or Russians
manipulating social media. I realize that may be hard to
understand, but it is the truth!As much as I agree with that
statement I don't think it's necessarily framed like that in the
essay but is rather used as a case in point example with quite
some validity.Social media and the whole "attention economy" have
become quite influential without people even noticing that
influence.This might just be the culmination of a trend we've
been seeing for quite a while already. Afaik Obamas campaign also
was quite big data and social media driven, but when he did it
that was somehow something "positive" to show how "in touch with
the Millenials" he is.
anigbrowl - 1 hours ago
And you think voting for Trump or Brexit will deliver that? XD XD
XDSorry for being so blunt, but you got played. I remember living
in the UK prior to deeper EU integration, and it sucked. Every
country had its own standards for modems and used it as a
protectionist tool to keep 'foreign' technology out or at least
much more expensive. You didn't have real local control, you had
much more centralized control that was not structured in the
interests of the general public. It was a great number for the
politicians: blame anything you don't like on Brussels (even if
it is self-evidently good for consumers), take credit for
anything you can hang a patriotic label on, and centralize as
much as possible so the people in the national government can be
the big fish in the small pond, while pretending to be the heroic
defenders of the pond against foreign sharks.you see the same
thing in the US - conservative politicians rail against 'big
government in Washington DC' while simultaneously passing
legislation that limits the ability of municipalities to govern
themselves, eg by creating public fiberoptic networks or setting
policies that give people more rights than the people in the
state capitol wish.I could also make critiques of liberal
politicians who to some extent do the same thing at the city vs.
the neighborhood level; I don't want to be partisan. But if you
voted for Brexit or Trump because you believed you, the little
person with no political power, would be better off then you have
been fleeced and told that your political enemies are attacking
you with a wind machine.It's not the freedom-minded people who
want to shut down free speechOh yes, those nice freedom-minded
people who also want to engage in ethnic cleansing and have neo-
nazis on speed dial. It's freedom for themselves, not you. See
for yourself: create a few sockpuppets, go to /pol/ or wherever
you like to hang out, and try expressing some polite mild
opinions out of step with the rest of the forum.PS look into how
Cambridge Analytica operates and tell me these people are trying
to maximize your freedom. To them you're just a vote and a voice
to be harvested. You'll probably hear more about this in days to
come as Robert Mercer is frantically re-organizing his financial
holdings.
lrc - 5 hours ago
It is not as if forces hostile to Trump/Brexit were innocent of
buying analytical data. The recent Senate hearings on Russian ad-
buys were strangely incurious about, say, purchases from China.
Were there any? Would they tell us?
dudul - 5 hours ago
> The part where the author tries to tie Brexit and the election
of Donald Trump to the user-hostile web is bonkers.I also thought
it was pretty weak of the author to shoehorn these things in his
essay. All politicians/parties use "big data" for their
campaigns, don't you think the democrats were doing the same
thing? And since he's from France, he conveniently forgot to
mention the Macron campaign last spring.This topic is too
important to point fingers like that.I agree with everything else
in the post though.
dredmorbius - 2 hours ago
Jonathan Albright: "Who Hacked the Election? Ad Tech did.
Through ?Fake News,? Identity Resolution and Hyper-
Personalization"The data I present here suggests that before we
keep pointing fingers at specific countries and tweeting about
companies ?hacking the election,? as well as to solve the scourge
of ?fake news,? it might be good to look inward. By this, I mean
we should start the quest for transparency in politics with a few
firms based in New York City and Silicon
Valley.https://medium.com/tow-center/who-hacked-the-election-
43d401...Albright is an ex-Googler and director of a journalism
centre at Columbia University.
pjc50 - 4 hours ago
Well, it's both: people thought the whole "take back control"
slogan was great, along with the "?350m for the NHS" slogan. It's
just that the slogans are empty and there's no answer to the
question "control of what, and by whom?" Or any other question
related to how this is actually going to work.The problem of
unachievable slogans is hardly a new one but it has got much
worse lately. Injecting more lies into the political process is
not going to improve this.
iamcasen - 4 hours ago
"died-in-the-wool Marxist hardliners and corporatists"You really
trying to equate Marxists and corporatists??? Dude...
guelo - 3 hours ago
Especially when what they really voted for was cutting the
corporatists' taxes and regulations. It is one of the greatest
tricks of modern propaganda that the super-pro-corporate
parties have turned around the hate of corporations onto the,
umm, less-pro-corporate party.
vim_wannabe - 2 hours ago
One party for the corporations, the other for multi-
nationals.
[deleted]
j_s - 5 hours ago
Meet HN user megous, his fellow closed-source re-inventing co-
conspirators (click a 'comments' link on the search results, then
'parent'), and potential open-source future fans:?megous(2016Dec):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13226170For each use case that
is not a free browsing I create an electron app, that never
executes any code from the web or uses any external style. It only
uses XHR to fetch html pages/json data/other static stuff and then
transforms that data and uses it in the custom UI designed for the
use case.https://hn.algolia.com/?query=13226170&type=commentAny
references to similar projects (whether closed, commercial, or
open-source) would be appreciated.
magice - 31 minutes ago
This is a thought provoking read. I, too, have been meditating over
this matter a lot.Unfortunately, though, it seems to me that people
generally adopt one of the 3 camps: * Don't care (that is, most
users until their internet slows) * Business of humanity is
business. Anyone disagrees with the previous sentence is
socialist/communist/hippie/devil-spawn. * "GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE
ME DEATH." Ready to leave Google/Facebook/AWS at moment notice.I
mean, it's important to know what bad large firms have brought
forth with the internet. But it's equally important to acknowledge
what they (and commerce in general) have enabled, as well as what
advantages they possess to users in everyday life.To take a simple
example: the article ends with a question: "Do we want the web to
be open, accessible, empowering and collaborative? [...] Or do we
want it to be just another means of endless consumption[...]?"
Look, about 80% of the time, I do want mindless consumption. Maybe
a stupid sitcom on one of the streaming service; maybe some cheesy
pop over YouTube. I need that. And, you know what, the current
arrangement is damned good at deliver that kind of
consumption.Thus, condemning the status quo wholesale is either
useless or extremely risky. Look, the status quo is status quo for
a reason. How did Amazon get so big? Not because they send out
goons to smash windows of local bookstores! They get big because
they provide genuine value (large selection, stellar customer
service, fast shipping, etc.). Google got so big because they are
very very good with organization of information and extremely good
with matching customers and advertisement. Apple got so big because
they produce(d) beautiful products. Facebook got so big because
they connect people together. Uber got so big because they make
taxi-ing so convenient (and cheap). These businesses got there for
good reasons.Except the case where you find way to provide the same
(or at the minimum almost the same) value with free and open
ecosystem, status quo remains. Sure, you can host your own fonts
and pictures and videos, but then they will be served from your
hosts. Have you invested billions of dollars in gateway to be near
your customers? Have you invested many hundreds of engineering-
years to test over as many browsers as you can find? And remember,
you are probably a power user of the internet. How about everyone
else? Does everyone need to learn how to administrate GNU/Linux to
post views of the world?Without providing the same value,
revolutions tend to fall short of their promises. Take American
Revolution. They proclaimed "All Men are created equal," killed a
bunch of people (many innocent), then proceeded to keep slavery
anyway. And that's one of the most successful revolutions. French
Revolution produced an emperor to replace a king. English
Revolutionary failed. Paris Commune failed. Russian and Chinese
Revolutions were followed by famines. And so on.Imagine the
internet without Google, Facebook, and AWS. You know what will
happen next? Somebody else will become Google, Facebook, and AWS.
Look at China: sure, they are independent from Google and Facebook;
and they have Baidu and Weibo. Google, Facebook, Amazon, AWS serve
important needs. You can't not have someone like them.In other
words: all of these protests are useless and/or harmful without
careful consideration of the underlining economics and usage. And I
am not sure if anyone has gotten around to figure out an economic
model for free web yet.
RightMillennial - 7 hours ago
-
Cuuugi - 7 hours ago
If that's NSFW for you, you need a new W
benbenolson - 7 hours ago
I'm going to assume that this is a joke.
[deleted]
ashark - 7 hours ago
The Web was doomed the moment we let Javascript initiate
connections and (less significantly) modify form content.
dec0dedab0de - 7 hours ago
Yes, it really has been downhill since then. I wish js apps just
had their own protocol and port. js://js.server.tld could open
up your js browser and you could use that when it was something
you needed. Then you could just trust browsing around the normal
web, knowing its just documents.
bitshiffed - 6 hours ago
I completely agree. I've seen similar ideas get shot down here
on HN; but I think we need two separate protocols. One for
purely documents, and a second for the universal application
platform.Among other implications, it should be much easier for
regular people to create content, and applications should be
free of the document-focused legacy.
michael_fine - 4 hours ago
If we did that, how would you propose implementing upvoting
in HN without js?
robin_reala - 4 hours ago
Upvoting in HN works without JS already, it just has a page
refresh.
zeveb - 3 hours ago
And it doesn't even need a page refresh; it could use a
204 No Content response. Potentially an yet-cleverer
static browser system could also use 206 Partial Content
to replace a portion of the page.
krapp - 35 minutes ago
But at that point, it's no longer "purely a document,"
it's still an app, just one that runs entirely on the
server instead of partly or mostly in the browser.For the
web to be just documents, you have to go all the way and
remove state entirely. Idempotence all the way down.
5ilv3r - 2 hours ago
I am hoping that http2 crap protocol will attract all the
ecommerce nasties and leave http as the obvious choice for
static documents.
interstitial - 7 hours ago
I'm old enough to remember when our pre-bubble, pre-amazon
"web"team found about javascript via the web monkey website with
it's animated moving arms! Prior, all interaction was via CGI or
SSI. I still remember a web teacher at a university teaching a
side course, telling us never to use javascript, and showed the
NBA site and others. Then a student raised his hand: NBA uses
javascript. And the prof, said, "Oh, I have javascript turned
off, so I didn't know".
[deleted]
Santosh83 - 6 hours ago
Not really. It was doomed the moment it stopped being a place for
mere exchange of information and messages and turned into a
marketplace. It is the profit motive that has given rise,
directly or indirectly, to every good and bad thing about the
modern web. Unfortunately profit motive is completely amoral. And
it isn't going away. So what we need are more restrictions and
regulations. And a paradigm shift back to doing more things more
enjoyably in meat-space.
cgmg - 5 hours ago
> So what we need are more restrictions and regulations.Like
what?
jjawssd - 6 hours ago
> So what we need are more restrictions and regulations.Fully
disagree. You cannot legislate this problem away.
YouAreGreat - 5 hours ago
Advertising tax, privacy law, monopoly breakups.
castis - 5 hours ago
Although I agree with your sentiment, having the government
step in on behalf of the internet with more regulations seems
like a step backwards.
agumonkey - 6 hours ago
it's part of it, but to me the issue is when society started to
reimplement itself on top of www.now we get loads of bad news
websites, shallow overgrown aesthetic trends pushed as social
advances, perpetual ads ..
partycoder - 4 hours ago
I am ashamed of my generation.We took a decentralized web full of
potential, and we are leaving a wasteland of corporate garbage to
our kids. If you used the web in the 90s you know what I am talking
about.
[deleted]
MikeGale - 2 hours ago
I share a lot of Parimal says in this piece.Well worth a read if,
you too, are finding ways to escape from and minimise the impact of
this web-dystopia.His suggestions are well worth a careful read. I
suggest going further. Many of you are quite capable of making
your own web based facilities, know people who you can collaborate
with... In short you're in a position to actually make your own
web environment. An environment that grows your own cognitive
abilities, that enables you to learn well, that enables human
growth instead of diminishing brain function.It's a good idea to
take control. Shape your own web, don't let it shape you.
leephillips - 6 hours ago
I agree with this author and implemented all his suggestions years
ago, both as a consumer and creator of web sites. But sewers like
Facebook and ad networks are low-hanging fruit. Search for
something on the once-indispensible Google, and, after five or six
ads, you will likely see a Wikipedia link. On the fifth page of
results will be the professor's .edu page that the Wikipedia
article plagiarizes from.Google succeeded because their pagerank
algorithm discovered useful sites. But now those same algorithms
promote popular (or Google-profitable) sites at the expense of
higher-quality sites (that often carry no advertising). W3schools,
anybody? It was probably a natural evolution: the algorithm ate
itself, and results that might actually be useful are buried under
sites that are popular. I think sites like Wikipedia and Google
feeding off each other is a more insidious problem - one with no
quick technological solution, like installing an ad blocker.
ChuckMcM - 3 hours ago
I agree with the author, if people would pay for the information
they got over the Web then the providers of that information would
be open to not selling information about you to people who wished
to exploit it.The challenge though is trust, and of course
transparency. Even if PrivacyBook (the mythical anti-facebook
product) had paying customers and no tracking, how could you really
verify that they weren't selling your information? And of course
nation states always have a large hammer when they can put you out
of business if you don't hand over data that they deem important.In
some ways DAO's are an interesting response to this, immune to
pressure from nation states they may be able to provide a
foundation for a distributed service that resists oversight. It
might be a viable business plan if you could get more than the tin
foil hat demographic to buy into it.
blunte - 7 hours ago
This is a good an informative essay.However, there's another
element of "user-hostile" that I didn't see addressed (maybe I
missed it in my haste?) -- that is the websites trying to control
exactly how the content is consumed by the user.It seems
increasingly that web content is being delivered in video form.
That itself is hostile to some people. Some of us want the freedom
to read (or scan quickly). But many of the providers of "content"
know they have little to provide, so they drag it out in video
form, saving the actual information for the last 10% of the video
(if ever!) This I find incredibly hostile, and it makes me
eventually abandon that source as a matter of principle. Then
there are javascript-jacked sites, sites that are unbearably slow
and clunky because of a mix of javascript/ads. I won't mention any
specific sites, but I stopped reading one similar to Mired.com long
ago for that reason.This problem isn't just limited to the web
though. If you're unfortunate enough to see modern television (or
movies, for that matter), it's clear that the amount of content has
gone down, the noise has gone up, and the efforts to lock the
audience in have increased.There are some people who advocate
avoiding all news and media. I think it's a bit extreme, but it
may be more beneficial than harmful.
_jal - 7 hours ago
I'm with you on this. Honestly at this point, if the information
is only contained within a video, I skip it and move on[1]. (I
usually leave video in the browser crippled, only turning it on
when I actually want to watch something.)[1] The trend of support
docs for enterprise software going video is horrible, stupid, and
a negative mark when I'm evaluating products. If someone has to
spend hours of eyebleed rewinding some bullshit video over and
over while writing actually usable documentation for incident
response, of course that cost is part of the cost of the product
in question.
shams93 - 6 hours ago
Yeah personally I learn much faster and better by reading than
via most videos. You can't keyword search a video, with text
documentation I can keyword search within the page to find out
exactly what I'm looking for.
mikegerwitz - 6 hours ago
Another problem I have with videos is that I can't go at my
own pace---I'm stuck at the pace of the speaker. Some videos
I'll watch at 2.5x speed, but the speaker may speed up and
slow down at times.With text, I can speed-read, slowing down
at key points as needed. And if it's a text I want to devote
more study/attention to, then can print it (which facilitates
speed reading as well.)
ThrustVectoring - 4 hours ago
It's not just pace, but order. If someone presents
information out of the order you need it in a video, it
gets really awkward to consume. If text is out of order,
you can easily skip around and re-read portions.
hutzlibu - 3 hours ago
Exactly. There are obviously use cases for video - which
you can't present in text. Visual tours of architecture,
nature, machines, etc. - or other kinds of visual
information.But for facts - reading is simply superior.What
sometimes works, if it is wellmade, is a mixed
presentation: text, pictures and video, where you can
controll the pace of information. But I seldom see
something like this wellmade.
baxtr - 4 hours ago
Same here. I simply hate sites with videos and no related text
content/summary. I?ve noticed that especially news sites are
increasingly employing this ?feature?. I assume the main reason
for this is that can force you to watch the 20-30s video ad.
There is no way of avoiding it other than opening a new tab and
doing something else for 30s... what a waste of life time
jdavis703 - 2 hours ago
What would be a better solution for ensuring the video's
producers continue to receive funding to make more videos?
marlokk - 2 hours ago
ethics
chesimov - 1 hours ago
Not to be facetious, but I'd really prefer there to be
fewer drawn-out videos of the nature described in the posts
above. The issue of payment for content is of course real
though.
fiddlerwoaroof - 2 hours ago
Mining cryptocurrencies while the current tab is in the
foreground. (supposing a suitable GPU/ASIC-proof
cryptocurrency is available)
akoncius - 1 hours ago
sure and drain the whole battery on my smartphone/laptop
while I watch that video? thanks but no thanks.
fiddlerwoaroof - 1 hours ago
The browser could throttle the cc mining based on your
battery level/power state. In theory, your device could
even mine while charging and then distribute the mined
tokens later.
akoncius - 24 minutes ago
so I could not get access to content if my battery is low
and I cannot mine cc ? or would I get access with
"credit" so I would need to return "load" later?
Zelizz - 1 hours ago
Or you could distribute tokens mined from a computer
that's plugged in somewhere, or even purchased with
normal currency. But I'm not sure I'd want to navigate a
web where I'm constantly making purchase decisions with
every hyperlink.
akoncius - 23 minutes ago
so why bother with additional steps (and cryptocurrency)
instead of just pay with real money from the beginning?
you are suggesting to introduce just additional
unnecessary steps.
s73ver_ - 1 hours ago
That's even scummier than most of the ad targeting stuff
out there.
na85 - 57 minutes ago
What is with the huge percentage of users here that think
this sort of thing is okay?
na85 - 58 minutes ago
I think the point is we don't want them to continue making
videos.
QAPereo - 6 hours ago
I'm with you on this. Honestly at this point, if the
information is only contained within a video, I skip it and
move onSame, and I've noticed this trend for quite a while now.
Text can always be trivially copied, even by a granny, and
inserted into an email or forum. A video? You can have a DRM
arms race with video.Videos also prevent skimming, and demand
consumption of all content.
joepie91_ - 4 hours ago
> Videos also prevent skimming, and demand consumption of all
content.To an advertiser, that's a feature. This is half of
the problem.
FridgeSeal - 2 hours ago
As someone who reluctantly works in advertising, I can tell
you that advertiser's view themselves as God's gift to the
internet and think they're doing great things for it. So
many people in the industry have drunk the coolaid and
honestly, earnestly think that exploiting anyone they can
for information just started to to make an add ever so
slightly more (creepily) personalised is a good thing.They
need to be put back in their box and have a bunch of their
toys taken away. GDPR is a good start.
JoshTriplett - 3 hours ago
> even by a grannyPlease don't use this as a substitute for
"novice computer user" and similar. I've encountered people
twice my age with grandchildren who are experts, and people
younger than me who are novices.
eggpy - 3 hours ago
My office provides a license for Pluralsight. I have found some
courses with high quality content and interesting information,
and it's really useful to have it all in one place. BUT,
especially with programming, I find video to be a really
challenging medium. It's so much more useful to scan for things
you don't know or context of examples and spend some time
digesting, or just playing around with sample code. Not
everyone can learn at the same rate and text is great for
allowing people to learn at their own pace. I really wish they
provided a full text log of video caption instead of requiring
the content to be consumed solely in video. Udemy suffers from
this as well. I might as well look up the info on youtube.
duncan-donuts - 1 hours ago
One thing I loved about RailsCasts was that I could watch the
video and then go back to an ASCIICast to actually review the
source if I needed to implement something like it. While I
don't do rails development anymore I truly miss the days of
cutting my teeth on the web with Ryan.
nxsynonym - 7 hours ago
Apart from the normal Facebook detractors, this is big part of
why I deactivated my account. 95% of content on facebook is now
in video format. Aside from the reasons you mentioned, it's also
a huge drain on battery and slows the responsiveness of the site
down considerably.If I want to see videos, I'll go to youtube or
vimeo. Don't force them on me when I'm trying to find quick info.
delecti - 5 hours ago
I cannot remember the last time I saw a video in my facebook
feed (in the feed, not directly linked). Maybe your facebook
friends were just particularly annoying.
giobox - 4 hours ago
You are exceptionally lucky then. As of several years ago,
they autoplay in my and everyone I've seen using facebook's
feed all the time, many (perhaps even most for some) of them
are ads rather than friend posted content. Fortunately they
appear to stay muted until selected, but it's still annoying
none the less. This is both via the website and in app (iOS,
I'm sure other platforms suffer the same).
mattmanser - 3 hours ago
There's an option to disable autoplay in the settings.https
://www.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=1020263...
giobox - 1 hours ago
Thanks for this, I was unaware, I suspect I am not alone!
[deleted]
mtgx - 5 hours ago
It doesn't help that Google (the owner of the biggest video
platform) is giving videos increasingly more power in its search
engines.
itsboring - 7 hours ago
I?ve noticed this thing on social media lately where a single
image is turned into like a 10-second video...of nothing but the
still image (and sometimes stock background music). This is
usually done by low-effort clickbait sites, but I don?t get why.
iotku - 6 hours ago
Videos might have more weight for the suggestion algorithms or
other timeline filtering probably. (or at least they think it's
otherwise effective)
ComodoHacker - 6 hours ago
Better "retention" metrics?
vmateixeira - 6 hours ago
Exposure period
krapp - 1 hours ago
>that is the websites trying to control exactly how the content
is consumed by the userYou seem to be arguing against the content
being served by websites, and by extension, the freedom of the
owners of those sites to choose to serve content you don't like.
I would agree with you as far as DRM and javascript dark patterns
go, when sites try to take control over the browser in ways that
are harmful to users' freedom, but if someone wants to serve
video or ads (useless as they are) instead of plain text, then
that's entirely their right, because it's their server, and they
get to decide what goes on it, not you. It's not user hostility,
it's merely a decision with which you personally disagree.Of
course, once the response gets to your browser you're free to
block, filter or do whatever you like to it, but user freedom is
only half the equation here. Publisher freedom is important as
well.
[deleted]
duxup - 6 hours ago
I read some sports related sites. Many have auto play video that
seems to pop up just a bit after you've already started
reading.The video almost always is unrelated (different team,
different story) to what I'm already well into reading. This is
annoying 100% of the time. It's never useful to me.Even worse.
Some stories will be just a few words and a video. So I go to a
site, read, play video.... and that same site's autoplay video
will pop up and play ON TOP OF THEIR OWN CONTENT. I don't even
know what to think about that, what could they possibly feel
they're accomplishing?Do they visit their own site? Do they feel
like shotgunning content at me and having me fight to close
different windows is a good thing?
cobbzilla - 5 hours ago
In Firefox, in `about:config` you can set
`media.autoplay.enabled` to false to permanently disable auto-
play video everywhere. I love it. Now videos only play when I
press play. A slight annoyance when watching netflix/etc, but
well worth the price everywhere else. If I could whitelist a
set of domains to allow autoplay it would be perfect.
duxup - 5 hours ago
Thank you. I hear chrome is going to or maybe has and is
going to make a similar option more visible.I agree, having
to hit play is a small price to pay.
briandear - 4 hours ago
Safari disables autoplay by default.
megaman22 - 5 hours ago
I'm convinced nobody at ESPN has tried to use their website in
a long time. I remember it not being a dumpster fire of UX
once, but that was like 10 years ago.
abritinthebay - 4 hours ago
Speaking as someone who works for a site who produces a lot of
video content and is trending more that way I can give you a
simple reason why.People consume it more.They stay on the site
longer, they tend to watch more videos than read articles, and
they share videos more.Now obviously the videos still need to be
good content but the reason you?re seeing more video content is
not because of some nefarious scheme: it?s because content
producers see better user engagement with it.
Filligree - 4 hours ago
Well, of course people stay longer in the site. You're forcing
us to, since skimming and searching is no longer an option.It's
a worse experience, and I avoid that sort of site if at all
possible.
abritinthebay - 2 hours ago
Yes, I know you may think that that but that's not based on
the numbers I'm afraid.It can be true for you of course. But
if so you're an outlier.Long story short - we see people
actively engage with video content more (ie - they share it,
they comment on it, they respond to it more positively, etc
etc).The numbers don't lie, and they're pretty clear.Article-
based/written content isn't going anywhere, but it's not the
only delivery stream anymore. It hasn't been for years really
but it was contained in YouTube for the most part. But social
videos (instagram, twitter, etc) really blew the lid off that
and now videos are becoming a whole new and different
category of content.Now obviously sites that just do a 5
minute video full of junk instead of a 3 paragraph article
are just that - junk. But that's why I said the video content
still needs to be good content. Sites that don't do that
deserve to be ignored - and not all sites are good at
producing video content.I work at Bleacher Report and we very
specifically craft our videos to be more than what you're
describing (they respect the medium and don't replace
articles at all). But we're still producing more and more
videos because they are extremely popular.
anigbrowl - 1 hours ago
Are you giving people a real choice, though? And to what
extent are they just hooked on your eye candy?
wvenable - 6 hours ago
Microsoft is the worst for providing content in video only form
(Channel 9). There have been tons of potentially interesting
content posted to HN from Microsoft but I'm not going to sit
through an hour long video at work. And they almost never
provide any alternative text content (an article) for what's in
the video.
psyc - 6 hours ago
Unity is terrible too. The text documentation is terse and
barely complete. All the details and workflow information is in
video form.
arca_vorago - 3 hours ago
UE4 has OK text documentation that tends to be a bit out
date, but when you want to do something practical you pretty
much have to watch one of Epics live streams.
[deleted]
tzahola - 4 hours ago
Same with Apple. There are some weird behaviors that don?t get
mentioned in the docs, yet if you stumble upon the _right_ WWDC
video from 2014, it?ll explain everything.But at least the
content is covered by search engines via asciiwwdc.com
walterstucco - 3 hours ago
Am I wrong or usually channel 9 provides a transcript of the
video content?
k__ - 2 hours ago
Same problem with messaging these days.People increasingly do
voice messages.1. Because messages are faster spoken than
written2. Your "listeners" can't interrupt you, like on a phone
call3. Your messages aren't searchable as easily as text-messages
anigbrowl - 1 hours ago
4. it's easier for people who are driving etc. which is at
least somewhat valid
DeusExMachina - 5 hours ago
If video content would be so "hostile", it would have failed on
its own already. People would flock to other places where they
can read instead.I don't buy this idea where everything is always
imposed on us by evil corporations.More and more websites using
video to me seems more like a proof that people prefer videos
over written content. That's why videos usually autoplay, also on
YouTube and Facebook: if a person starts watching and listening,
it's much more likely that they will stay instead of closing the
page.We have taught things to each other by talking for as long
as hundreds of thousands of years, probably more. By contrast,
reading has been common among a large percentage of the
population only for a couple of centuries.We evolved using verbal
communication, not written one. Written form has, of course, its
advantages, but it does not mean that it's the preferred medium
for most people.Videos and audio are also easier to watch/listen
to while you are doing something else like cooking, gardening or
commuting. There are a ton of contexts where you cant read, but
you can at least listen.That's why even books are converted into
audio formats nowadays.The fact that a small crowd on HN prefers
reading is not the proof that video is "user-hostile". HN is
rarely the reflection of the general public.Although I keep
reading a lot of online content or books, lately I have consumed
a lot more valuable information in a podcast/video lecture format
than in a written one.
ryandrake - 3 hours ago
Is this the media consumption version of the efficient market
hypothesis?The argument sounds like, "If Comcast was such a bad
company it would have failed on its own already."Could there
other forces at play that would explain how video as a format
might succeeding despite not being preferred by users?
x0x0 - moments ago
Comcast has a monopoly, or, at worst, a duopoly in huge
swaths of the country. How is anyone being forced to watch
web videos online? There are dozens of alternate
entertainment sources, and several high quality news sources
that don't use much video.
sergiosgc - 4 hours ago
> If video content would be so "hostile", it would have failed
on its own already. People would flock to other places where
they can read instead.Video ads pay a lot better than ordinary
display ads. 15$ CPM vs 30? CPM on my media sites. It's not a
1-1 comparison on UX (you may lose half your reader base and
still come out ahead).
lotsofpulp - 4 hours ago
It's easier to make money from videos than from text, and
that's why websites would prefer that. There's not much else
to it.
yellowapple - 4 hours ago
It's also harder to block the ads if they're woven into the
video itself (in the form of endorsements / product
placement, or in the form of commercial breaks in traditional
TV broadcasts). Same with audio. Text-based media can
emulate that somewhat, but (IMO) with nowhere near the same
effectiveness.
DeusExMachina - 4 hours ago
Maybe it?s easier to make money from videos because they
people actually like them?
dragonwriter - 44 minutes ago
People do like them: they have a lot stronger emotional
impact than text.They are also (considered as a single or
primary channel) a much worse mechanism for actually
effectively communicating anything other than emotion
(though they can be a useful accompaniment to text.)
gowld - 3 hours ago
No, the videos are distracting and seize the user's
attention for ad delivery.Imagine that I followed you
around all day bumping into you, waiting for you to drop
some money and then walk away without noticing, so I could
pick it up. That's annoying and hostile to you, but
profitable to be with sufficient automation. That's the
modern commercial web.
s73ver_ - 1 hours ago
sigh No, no it isn't. Not even close.The fact of the
matter is, people want to be paid for the stuff they
create. That's how they're enabled to create more of that
stuff. We learned a long, long time ago that people
didn't want to outright pay for things. That doesn't
leave many options.
Semaphor - 2 hours ago
We need to discern between unrelated videos for an
article or the content being in the video. Because I know
that many, many people prefer content in video form (I
absolutely hate it and only watch them as a last resort).
walterstucco - 3 hours ago
No, because they are easier to produceWriting an article
takes a lot of timeWriting a good one, is not for
everybodyBut making a video is really easy
watwut - 50 minutes ago
I dont know why this was downvoted. I heard this exact
thing from coursera teacher and some youtubers - that
they found making video was significantly less time then
equivalent writing.I would not say it is really easy for
everyone, it would not be easy for me. But it is easy for
people accustomed to talk a lot.
learn_more - 2 hours ago
I agree. videos of product features are much easier to
make than written documentation about those features.
bloaf - 1 hours ago
I think people don't want to admit that the reading experience
on mobile is mediocre-at-best.
[deleted]
blunte - 5 hours ago
The videos that I speak of are ones that have replaced basic
informational articles -- information that might only take a
few paragraphs to disseminate, and which allow the reader to
quickly glean the content. When given as video, they impose a
time and data penalty just for the viewer to either get the
nugget of information or to realize there's nothing of value
for them. +Edit autocorrect
s73ver_ - 4 hours ago
So write those articles yourself.
sctb - 19 minutes ago
Can you please stop being personally thorny towards other
users here, like we've already
asked?https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
1_2__4 - 3 hours ago
> If video content would be so "hostile", it would have failed
on its own already. People would flock to other places where
they can read instead.That is not the slightest bit true and is
in fact the entire basis for the conversation we?re having.
Alex3917 - 2 hours ago
> That is not the slightest bit true and is in fact the
entire basis for the conversation we?re having.Is it? The
original article is talking about web tracking, the entire
point of which is to give you more of whatever you like.
Facebook just gives you more of whatever you click on, so if
you're disappointed with the stuff you get on Facebook then
probably you're just in denial about your own tastes or
identity.
K0SM0S - 1 hours ago
Agreed.Anecdotal, but I recently managed to reorient my
Facebook feed into a more "positive" light.- I
systematically un-followed sources of "negative" content
(e.g. stupid, demeaning, cynical, deceptive/disingenuous,
etc.) One strike, max two. This included some friends
(repeated offenders - lol). No engagement whatsoever with
these posts (no 'angry'/'sad' reaction, no display of
comments).- I liked/followed many "positive"
pages/communities (notably authors, non-fiction books,
self-help or growth-mindset).- I made a point to
like/comment/share "positive" posts and comments (e.g.
clever, beautiful, grateful, fair, virtuous, etc.)My main
criteria was quality, above topic. E.g. bye-bye "petty"
content even if it's "science" (which I like). I was quite
selective, as it's easy to re-sub later.I stayed unusually
long on the site over a few days, to extensively
clean/curate my feed.Within a week, everything changed to
suit my newfound tastes: basic feed is great, ads/sponsored
content more relevant; it even seems there's been a
positive shift in post sentiment selected from my
contacts.My Facebook feed is actually somewhat pleasant
now. It fits my mindset of choice (away from the overly
critical/cynical/negative individual I used to be in
previous years). All it took is a little self-discipline
and some manual curating (I've always refrained from liking
too many sources, so there wasn't much to deal with).
edgarvaldes - 4 hours ago
IMHO how-to's of manual activities are better in video form.
Other than that, text form is way better.
walterstucco - 3 hours ago
recipes are absolutely a lot better in video to get an
ideabut when you have to actually cook something, having
something in writing with some illustration is much easieryou
don't have to start/pause/skip/rewind the video with your
greasy hands, you can just skim with your eyesthat's why in a
lot of cooking books from the past the recipes take one or at
maximum two pages that can be read side by side
pera - 4 hours ago
I do agree that not everything is imposed by evil corps, but
hostile products don't necessarily fail by their own:
cigarettes and junk foods are just one example of this.In
general I'm not against video content in a web page, as it
actually can be a good source of raw data that we can use to
understand something in great details, but I would argue that
in many cases video is objectively inferior to text: texts are
much easier to parse (both for computers and humans) and also
some irrelevant information included in the audiovisual format
can reduce the entropy of a content (e.g. how a reporter looks
like physically).
DeusExMachina - 4 hours ago
Cigarettes and junk food are not hostile in this context. We
are talking about things that people don?t like but are
forced to get anyway.Cigarettes and junk food are definitely
unhealthy, but people love them. So much that it?s hard to
take them away from them.
smhost - 3 hours ago
That's a very bizarre definition of love. Few people are
happy about their addiction to an unhealthy habit. Don't
you think it's disingenuous to talk about user preference
without talking about reward hacking? I think the internet
is actually worse in this respect because much of it is
systematically designed to induce addiction with no upper
limit.Your evolutionary arguments are also pretty bizarre
and reductionist. Maybe we did evolve using verbal
communication, but we didn't evolve to be schizophrenic
voyeuristic mutes without face-to-face nonverbal feedback.
sillysaurus3 - 2 hours ago
Can we stop framing arguments as "bizarre"? It's unduly
personal.I don't think their arguments are bizarre, and
it's better to meet them head-on than to insinuate
they're weird.
walterstucco - 3 hours ago
> We are talking about things that people don?t like but
are forced to get anyway.- Driving: a lot of people drive,
very few of them like it or they would learn how to do it
properly- Public transport: 99,99% of people using public
transport hate it- Going to the dentist- eating vegetables-
taking kids to the pooland so on?all of this things are
incredibly annoying to many, yet they have not failed
akoncius - 18 minutes ago
so watching ads is a job?
coldtea - 2 hours ago
>I do agree that not everything is imposed by evil corps, but
hostile products don't necessarily fail by their own:
cigarettes and junk foods are just one example of
this.Cigarettes and junk foods are not hostile -- they are
incredibly enticing. What they are is harmful (which is
something different).Video, similarly, whether harmful or
not, is very welcome by lots of people who strongly prefer it
to reading.
s73ver_ - 6 hours ago
I'm sorry, but I cannot get behind the idea that a creator
choosing to deliver their content that they made in a form they
chose can be hostile to you.
tomc1985 - 6 hours ago
Why not? Content creators are not inherently virtuous beings.
Many, I would say, are quite the opposite.
s73ver_ - 4 hours ago
I wouldn't, because they could just as easily not make the
content, and then you wouldn't have it in any form.And the
greater point there, that you appear to have missed, is that
content creators don't really owe you anything, unless you've
paid them. Thus, their actions are not hostile to you.
tomc1985 - 4 hours ago
> and then you wouldn't have it in any form.This would be
a blessing for much of the "content" out there.Do they owe
me anything? Of course not. But if they want my precious,
precious attention and the opportunity to advertise to me
then they need to play ball my way. Otherwise, fuck them.
s73ver_ - 4 hours ago
So don't consume it, instead of complaining that they're
being "hostile" to you. Or, even better, create your own
content in written form to compete.
tomc1985 - 3 hours ago
If I could make written content to compete then why would
I be watching said video in the first place? The
objective of consumption is to learn, but what you
advocate only works if one has already learned
something.What about when the video contains exclusive,
important trade-related info? Is dismissing someone to go
create their own content on exclusive information really
a coherent counterargument (or useful strategy)? Do you
really want the internet to be even more polluted with
more second- and third-source crap than it already
is?Video is creators stroking their egos. The creator is
unimportant, only his/her ideas, which internally
manifest as words and should be transcribed as cleanly
and accurately as possible. Video is an extremely poor
medium for most ideas.
s73ver_ - 3 hours ago
All content creators are stroking their egos.I'm sorry,
but I still see nothing "hostile" about them choosing one
medium over the other. You might have a slight
inconvenience, but that's it.If you don't like things
being in videos, then write written content to compete
with it. Otherwise, stop with the over the top
exaggerations and feelings of entitlement from content
creators.
tomc1985 - 2 hours ago
Like I have the time or desire to compete with most of
these yokels. We give in some areas and take in others,
that's how the world works. Content creators are not some
unassailable gift horse immune from inspection or
criticism. People are free to criticize the things I
contribute to this world; and my feelings will not be
hurt if they do. Perhaps you could learn from this.Video
needs smothering, not competition.
s73ver_ - 1 hours ago
"Like I have the time or desire to compete with most of
these yokels."Then stop complaining."Content creators are
not some unassailable gift horse immune from inspection
or criticism. People are free to criticize the things I
contribute to this world; and my feelings will not be
hurt if they do. Perhaps you could learn from this."But
you're not criticizing. You're getting all in a tizzy
because others aren't doing things exactly the way you
want them. You're demanding that your entitlement be
fulfilled."Video needs smothering, not competition."Not
according to the vast amounts of people who find it just
fine. If you wish to prove that another medium is better,
then feel free to create competing content in that medium
to show it.
tomc1985 - 17 minutes ago
So one should just be happy with everything they have,
dislike, and cannot change or compete on? How is that a
reasonable expectation?"Vast amounts of people"? Vast
amounts of people kill other vast amounts of people, are
you ok with that? Vast amounts of people vote for laws
that screw over other vast amounts of people, is that
cool? A vast amount of people boarded the Titanic, look
where that got them...If some idiot Youtube personality
wants to flap their jaws for an hour, droning on and on
about whatever stupid pointless thing in their life is
stuck in their craw or whatever, fine. But for
information dispersal, unless the video is densely packed
with visual content, it needs to be text. Doers all over
the world will thank you.Entitlement is, if anything,
forcing poor viewers to sit through a 15-minute life-
story-slash-prologue just so they can continue to
participate in a Reddit discussion or finish their task
or whatever.
joepie91_ - 4 hours ago
What? That's stringing together a bunch of things that have
absolutely nothing to do with each other.The primary
motivation of many "creators" is to gain more income; to
that end, they do not need to produce user-friendly
content, they just need to produce content that earns
money. That doesn't even require maximizing
readership.Aside from that, whether one person is being
hostile to another person has absolutely nothing to do with
anybody "owing" anybody else anything. These are two
totally unrelated concepts.
s73ver_ - 4 hours ago
No, the idea that something can be "hostile" hinges on
the idea that you were entitled to it in the other form
to begin with. Someone not providing content in the form
you wish is an inconvenience at best.
lovich - 1 hours ago
I could be hostile to you right now, and you wouldn't
have even requested anything from me. Hostility has
nothing to do with what someone owes someone else.Have
you ever seen the soup Nazi from Seinfeld? Would you say
he's not hostile because no body is owed his soup?
s73ver_ - 44 minutes ago
I just cannot buy this argument. Comparing the Soup Nazi
to someone who chose to make content for you, is just
ludicrous. For one, the Soup Nazi actively berated
people. Someone making videos because they want to make
videos is not doing anything close to that to you.The
worst you can claim a video is, is an inconvenience.
That's it. Saying it's "hostile" because you'd prefer
text is entitlement to the point of craziness.
coldtea - 2 hours ago
>It seems increasingly that web content is being delivered in
video form. That itself is hostile to some people. Some of us
want the freedom to read (or scan quickly). But many of the
providers of "content" know they have little to provide, so they
drag it out in video form, saving the actual information for the
last 10% of the video (if ever!) This I find incredibly
hostileIsn't that a kind of entitlement?I might prefer text
myself, but it's up to the content provider, who gives me FREE
content, to put up whatever they like.And they have a reason that
they put out videos, as they are much more popular with certain
demographics.
hsod - 2 hours ago
Yes, I think we cross a line when we begin making demands about
the content itself. If you want content created to your
specifications, you can produce it yourself or pay someone else
to do it.Video content isn't "user hostile" any more than a
movie you don't like is "user hostile".
anigbrowl - 1 hours ago
Video that is deliberately structured to keep people watching
without delivering much information is absolutely user
hostile. That's why TV is full of shows with bullshit
cliffhangers leading up to ad breaks and so on. Stringing
users along in order to monetize the content is somewhat
voluntary but easily tips into being exploitative.
krapp - 1 hours ago
Not all video is, or is meant to be, about maximizing
information density. Mere entertainment isn't "user
hostile" if people enjoy it.
anigbrowl - 58 minutes ago
Sure, but I thought we were talking about the context of
documentary /instructional /information videos.For
entertainment that's fine, I enjoy cartoons, drama etc.
as much as anyone.
[deleted]
woogley - 2 hours ago
It's not entitlement, it's just an opinion. OP said they move
on to a different source with their preferred format.
s73ver_ - 57 minutes ago
Saying it's inconvenient, or that you'd prefer text is an
opinion. But that's not what OP said; they said it's hostile.
That is an entitlement.
dep_b - 1 hours ago
It's strange that text content needs to be semantic having all
kinds of divisions for different kinds of text. Yet video can
remain an unstructured unnavigatable blurb of content. It should
have semantic stuff like menu, header, footer, h1, h2 or p as
well.
anon151516888 - 1 hours ago
PornHub is making some headway there already. Though they are
using other tags than h1, h2 and p.
autokad - 3 hours ago
an example of controling how the content is consumed is gifs.
gifs work great, there needs not be a replacement for them. one
of the beautiful things about a gif is you can save it.the
current web hated that, it didnt have control. they are trying
to 'wean' us off gifs through companies like giphy.how many
people cringe when you click on a link on reddit and realize its
a link to youtube and you have to watch a commercial for a 30
second video? I am like omg, youtube, close
chrisseaton - 6 hours ago
> It seems increasingly that web content is being delivered in
video form. That itself is hostile to some people. Some of us
want the freedom to read (or scan quickly).And what if some of us
want the freedom to watch? Maybe I'm illiterate? Just like you, I
could say that putting something in writing instead of a video is
'hostile' if it doesn't meet my preferences.Talking about
'hostile' is hysterical.
tomc1985 - 6 hours ago
I think we are at a point at a species where, if one can't
read, then one really needs to learn to read. It is such a
requirement for so many things. Or get a screen reader...
grasshopperpurp - 6 hours ago
It's fine to make a video, but if your work is serious at all,
it should also be in written text. It's much quicker to read
than listen to someone talk. I'm sure there are exceptions
where video format makes more sense, but, as a rule, it's
incredibly stupid.
chrisseaton - 3 hours ago
I can?t understand the arrogance of telling other people that
they ?should? produce their content in a format of your
preference.
joshwcomeau - 5 hours ago
There are certainly times when video is appropriate, but I feel
like we can all relate to the times that it's not; when someone
has a list of 6 things, and instead of just listing them, they
make a snazzy video. The video is still text-based; maybe
there's an image slideshow as well, but it's effectively the
same information in the same format, just spread out over a 2
minute video.
kuschku - 6 hours ago
You can always use a screen reader to automatically have it
read the text to you, and it works well enough.I can?t have an
OCR system automatically translate a video into text.
mikegerwitz - 6 hours ago
Even if you can have it transcribed (which is possible
today), videos contain far more information than what is
spoken: gestures, emphasis / how words are spoken, body
language, objects, diagrams, etc. While skilled speakers may
try to mitigate that so that the presentation degrades
somewhat gracefully to a transcription, it's by no means a
one-to-one translation, and it doesn't always make sense.
ntoe845noe - 6 hours ago
While you make a good point about screen readers, there
actually are tools that automatically translate a video into
text. In fact, doesn't YouTube's "CC" button do that? The
translation isn't great, but it's usually good enough and
will probably get better over time.
kuschku - 3 hours ago
YouTube?s CC button is bad. Seriously, Google Translate is
far better, and even that is impossible to understand.
Especially when the discussion includes technical terms.The
only time YouTube?s CC button works even slightly okay is
if the uploader manually transscribed everything.
paulddraper - 6 hours ago
Videos articles are far more difficult to make than text
articles.If you make a video, just include the transcript.
eggpy - 2 hours ago
But that's precisely the point. Just like HTML should be
written with accessibility in mind, content ought to be
provided with accessibility in mind. Obviously if you are going
to a video-focussed site a la youtube you expect to watch
videos. But what if I want to skim the news and happen to trust
a particular organization? It would be ideal to have this
information in a number of formate so I can consume their
information in a manner best-suited for me. No one is saying
"banish all video!", they are simply saying certain areas of
information are better presented in text form for many people
and it would be nice to easily consume info in that way.
pattle - 5 hours ago
This was my main reason for leaving Facebook, almost every post
in my feed seemed to be a video or an image with text in, why not
just type the words instead of wasting all that
bandwidth?Generally the value of the content was extremely poor
and very click bait-y. My analogy I use is I see using Facebook
like eating junk food when I could be spending that time
consuming more meaningful content.I've probably been off Facebook
now for a year and I don't miss it one bit.
patja - 6 hours ago
I hate the trend to video as well (I can read and comprehend
faster than any video can speak), but I wonder if it is just the
inevitable result of the continued expansion of who is on the
web. Many people in the world are not nearly as literate as HN
readers.
afarrell - 5 hours ago
I think it is the result of the reduced copyability of video
compared to plain text. This makes it easier to monetize video.
Since lots of writers don't have a secondary source of income
and have to pay for housing/food/loans/etc, they have an
incentive to spend the effort to write video scripts rather
than essays/articles.
nyolfen - 5 hours ago
it's because video ads pay better
Thriptic - 4 hours ago
> But many of the providers of "content" know they have little to
provide, so they drag it out in video form, saving the actual
information for the last 10% of the video (if ever!)0:00 - 00:10
Useless video animation00:10-2:00 "Hey guys welcome to my
channel. Make sure to like and subscribe and let me know how I'm
doing in the comments. Also make sure to check out [sponsor] and
use coupon code [code] for 10% off"2:00-5:00 Useless personal
story about why creator is making the video5:00-10:00 Useless
history of the subject matter10:00-11:00 The actual useful
content
dredmorbius - 2 hours ago
Trick: Skip straight to halfway. If the meat is being
covered, roll back, else forward.Binary search works well.
kfriede - 4 hours ago
I often feel this way about podcasts. Many great podcasts have
a 0:30 intro, 1:30 of ads then 08:00 of random babble before
getting into 5:00 of the meat of the podcast. The most recent
one I can think of is 99% Invisible, though they're not even
close to the only ones that do it.
Joeri - 3 hours ago
This is why I stopped listening to back to work. There were
useful tidbits, but I didn?t want to wade through an hour of
random drivel to get to it.
rackforms - 1 hours ago
If you're on iOS you should try my Podcast client, SkipCast.
http://skipcast.net/ The marquee feature and indeed, the
app's name, is for this exact reason. Large buttons make
skipping much faster and accurate that other players, letting
you get to the content you want faster. It's also got Skip
Silence to eliminate extended moments of dead-air.
tomjen3 - 3 hours ago
There are podcasts like that, but I admit I am strange
because all my favourite podcasts are multiple hours long,
getting really deep into the content. Jocos podcasts, which
doesn't really have ads other than for his own products, fx
are often more than 3 hours, Dan Carlins Hardcore History is
typically that long per episode, but often they are also part
of a series, like his 5 episodes on the first world war
(probably about 20 hours).
vog - 2 hours ago
This. Exactly this. I don't get why anyone would listen to
a podcast with ads and/or bad information density.I mean,
the whole point (and value) of podcasts is to remove the
private radio station crap, not to replicate it.BTW, the
German podcast scene is a quite positive example of the
directions podcasts can go.
akoncius - 55 minutes ago
but main question is how to monetize this content ... it
seems patreon is the only option?
tomjen3 - 2 hours ago
Do you mean podcasts in German or by Germans? If the
latter, any good suggestions?
sien - 1 hours ago
Omega Tau - a Science and Engineering Podcast is
fantastic:http://omegataupodcast.net/Long episodes, such
as 2 hours interviewing a physicist at ITER are really
well done.
deong - 1 hours ago
To be fair, a lot of podcasts have ads, but ads aren't
what I'm objecting to. The modern web doesn't suck
because of ads. It sucks because of the technologies
around ensuring you look at the ads, around sharing your
behaviors as you look at the ads, etc.Any podcast player
I can imagine anyone would ever use has a convenient way
to skip ads, and the neither the presence of the ads
themselves nor my decision to skip them degrades the
experience of listening to the podcast. My podcast player
doesn't demand I look at Forbes' "thought of the day" or
disable my fast-forward button in order to play. It
doesn't connect to 280 random third-party tracking
domains as I listen to an episode. It downloads a file
and plays that file for me.Who really cares that much
about ads that don't track you or destroy your
experience?
vog - 1 hours ago
> and the neither the presence of the ads themselves nor
my decision to skip them degrades the experience of
listening to the podcastI beg to differ.I see the ability
to skip ads immediately, at any time, as a fundamental
user right (and websites that try to deny this right
should be prosecute by consumer protection). In other
words, this is not the distinction between good versus
bad quality. It is the distinction between merely
acceptable versus totally inacceptable.With regard to
quality, it is a huge jump upwards if a podcast has no
ads at all, nowhere, not even hidden or implicit. It is a
really noticeable difference if the whole audio simply
doesn't care about pleasing any stakeholder besides its
audience.
s73ver_ - 1 hours ago
I cannot agree with this sentiment. You're basically
demanding that these creators work for you, for free.If
you choose to skip the ads, then how should the creators
be compensated for the content that you consumed?"With
regard to quality, it is a huge jump upwards if a podcast
has no ads at all, nowhere, not even hidden or implicit.
It is a really noticeable difference if the whole audio
simply doesn't care about pleasing any stakeholder
besides its audience."You know what else is a huge jump
in quality? Actually being able to continue to do the
show.
[deleted]
amiga-workbench - 4 hours ago
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-wadsworth-constant
dictum - 4 hours ago
> 0:00 - 00:10 Useless video animationI'm happy when it's only
useless. It's often useless and loud.
harshreality - 4 hours ago
That's because it's an unconditioned stimulus (classical
conditioning theory). If you repeatedly watch their videos,
and like them, you'll start to associate their intro
animation with the content you like, and you'll like the
intro animation. Later, you'll even come up with post-
rationalizations for why it's not quite so loud or useless.
blunte - 4 hours ago
Unless of course you're so turned off by the intro that you
bail out before giving their content a chance.
dredmorbius - 2 hours ago
The TED intro (standard series) bmakes me gag now Ten
seconds.Mind, mobile YT doesn't have keyboard sip, but
mpsyt does.
insulanus - 4 hours ago
You forgot the trailer asking you to subscribe, with some
clickable areas, and optional "bonus content at the end"
:)Makes it harder to estimate where the information in the
video is.
throw2016 - 26 minutes ago
There was always a lot of high quality content on the web,
created and shared not with the intent of making money. This
still exists but is crowded out by people incentivized to make
content to monetize it ie the old publishing model.This now
makes up the bulk of 'content' and is heavily monetized and
driven by monetization where the 'content creators' have a more
intimate relationship with advertisers and platforms to
essentially sell out their audience ie back to the old media
model of 'influencers'.The content is also derivative and
repetitive but easier to access and consume. Thanks to the
monetization the presentation and production values are higher.
There is definitely some decent content produced by this model
but it becomes harder and harder to find.There is a certain
desperation to capitalism that infects everything. Sell, sell,
sell, make money, forget everything else unless it affects your
ability to make money, and it becomes the primary driver.
Semaphor - 2 hours ago
You also forgot the slow unboxing if it's a product review. I
mean I guess some people like that, but for me, it's just
another point in favor of text.
tjpnz - 2 hours ago
I'm saddened by this because despite agreeing with the essay I know
that I'm complicit in it by virtue of working in e-commerce (same
could be said of most if not all commercial web ventures). While I
like to believe the people I work with respect the privacy of our
users I know that the online advertising industry as a whole
doesn't - as touched on in the essay. How do others deal with this
moral quandary?
ducttape12 - 6 hours ago
I've actually become a bit put off on a lot of "modern"
technologies lately. Every website tries to keep you on as long as
possible with click bait, every advertiser tries to track your
habits, video games just try to upsell you to the season pass, and
every webapp is just an upsell to the paid pro version. Heck, even
our operating systems are nothing more than data collection
points.In many ways, I feel like technology doesn't work for us
anymore, we work to serve technology.
DerfNet - 5 hours ago
That's without even mentioning the "internet of things"
phenomenon, standalone voice assistants, and so on. The
advertisers aren't happy just collecting web usage data anymore
and now they want into our actual homes.
ZenoArrow - 2 hours ago
I honestly don't get it. Some tech-savvy people I know are
hyped up about Alexa and technologies like it, speaking to them
about it it's like we live in a world where the Snowden leaks
never happened. Either that or the interest from exploring new
technology is hiding the downsides.
cjhanks - 4 hours ago
This strikes me as rant saying; "For years I loved eating spam. 7
months ago I stopped eating spam. Now I think spam is evil. You
should stop eating spam."The decentralized internet of anonymous
chat servers, mail servers, and communication channels aren't dead.
Most people simply do not like them.
jonahx - 3 hours ago
This is the "it is this way; therefore people must want it this
way" argument. It ignores the power of money to manipulate
through advertising (or, in the general case, of power to
coerce).To take the specific example of FB, most people don't
want to be tracked and advertised to, they just want an easy
social space to interact with their friends and family. Sure,
they'd probably prefer an ad-free, non-tracking version of FB,
but not if it costs them much effort. So, FB's growth hacking,
advertising, and critical mass have pushed millions of people
into something they themselves would consider sub-optimal
(assuming it was explained to them, ofc -- many are plain
unaware).On top of that, the average user simply does not have
the knowledge to make an informed decision. Not about what's
technically happening, and certainly not about what the long term
consequences will be, although arguably no one knows about that.
[deleted]
tlogan - 3 hours ago
This happens because people refuse to pay for anything on the web.
And you get what you pay for.I guess I'm just stating the
obvious.Now 100% sure how to fix this - but it hard problem.
leepowers - 3 hours ago
> the page is 3.1 MB in size, makes about 460 HTTP requests of
which 430 are third-party requests (outside of its parent domain)
and takes 20 seconds to fully load on a fast 3G connectionThat's a
lot of ad-tracking and ad delivery code. More than that, it's also
remarkable that so much of this code is essentially duplicated.
It's all user tracking and ad delivery but with each separate
company loading it's own "stack" to accomplish the same thing.It's
part of a larger trend from content-centered and user-centered to
advertising centered. The problem is not centralization per se but
business built on advertising revenue. Facebook is an extreme
example - the news feed algorithms are optimized for generating ad
revenue and not necessarily favoring news reports that happen to be
true.
profalseidol - 6 hours ago
In an increasingly capitalist world.
platz - 5 hours ago
Consumer's can't solve this from the ground up. What's needed is to
prevent certain kinds of key acquisitions. The law around
acquisitions is too permissive in an age of network effects;
acquisition laws were fine pre-internet but don't solve their
intended purpose anymore. Normally, the market corrects against the
biggest players because the biggest players are slow to change
culture and their business. But, acquisitions are the mechanism by
which the big players are preventing themselves from being
disrupted by smaller, more nimble players. If the big players can
simply buy up any new comers (who will want a deserved pay-out for
their efforts) on the scene, they maintain complete control
regardless of what consumers want. Otherwise, any "alternative
practices" you try to foster will simply be crushed, if they ever
become a large enough threat.Facebook acquiring Instagram is a
perfect example.
[deleted]
tau255 - 1 hours ago
I browse mainly on mobile devices and forward link to interesting
articles. Earlier I just bookmarked page after reading and it was
fine, but now that linkrot made a mess of my bookmark list I tend
to print to pdf.It is amazing how much thought is put into looks
and design of web pages that just ends scrambling everything during
printout or just prevents to obtain any meaningful result (ie.
imgur)I look around and see options to share on tweeter, pinterest,
tumblr, reddit, facebook. But no print button that would make it
easy to archive. It is like articles are disposable and not thought
to be of any reference in future (even highly technical ones).
mortenjorck - 5 hours ago
Exploring the early WWW of 20 years ago, I recall a cautionary
sentiment to the effect of "This is all free today, but eventually,
they'll charge for everything." It's funny how that came true in a
way we never predicted: Everything is still "free," and yet
everything is also monetized. Rather than a paywall in front of
every website, a hidden "spywall" extracts payment in other
forms.They ended up charging for everything after all, only through
an indirect and vastly more complex, opaque, and far-reaching
system.
tbirrell - 6 hours ago
I agree with much of this article, but at this point I'm
dangerously close to falling into the camp of, "is it even worth
it?" I have been using google accounts for almost 10 years, I'm
very much locked into that ecosystem. Even if there was a privacy
issue, I wonder if it is worth the monumental hassle to leave and
spin up my own versions of everything I use.Thanks to equifax, all
my most important information is probably already out in the wild,
and thanks to the US government (and how they deal with replacing
identifying information) I'm likely screwed for the rest of my
life. In the face of that, the harm that google or facebook (which
I'll admit to using less and less of) can do to me seems
trivial.Yeah, as a user, I'm a commodity online. But I'll be damned
if I'm not enjoying the bread and circuses they use to keep me
there. There is little to nothing I can do to prevent anyone from
doing anything with my information, so I might as well take
advantage of what I've already "paid" for.
robin_reala - 4 hours ago
You don?t have to do everything in one go; you can migrate out a
service at a time and see how it works for you.
draw_down - 6 hours ago
I used to have a boss who lived his whole life in Russia, and then
moved here after his nominal retirement. He used to say this to me,
often:"That's capitalism, baby."
jwilk - 2 hours ago
Here?
tzahola - 4 hours ago
I?m more and more convinced of the profitability of this idea I
have come up with recently: WebAssembly pages which render their
contents via WebGL. Adblocking would become impossible; content
providers could disable text copy/paste too!Brave new world, huh?
s73ver_ - 4 hours ago
And accessibility would be a thing of the past.
tzahola - 3 hours ago
WebAssembly + WebAudio speech synthesis ;)