'Link in Bio' is a Slow Knife (anildash.com) 63
Anil Dash: We don't even notice it anymore -- "link in bio." It's a pithy phrase, usually found on Instagram, which directs an audience to be aware that a pertinent web link can be found on that user's profile. Its presence is so subtle, and so pervasive, that we barely even noticed it was an attempt to kill the web. Links on the web are incredibly powerful. There are decades of theory behind the role of hyperlinks in hypertext -- did you know in most early versions, links were originally designed to be two-way? You'd be able to see every page on the web that links to this one. But even in the very simple form that we've ended up with on the World Wide Web for the last 30 years, links are incredibly powerful, opening up valuable connections between unexpected things.
For a closed system, those kinds of open connections are deeply dangerous. If anyone on Instagram can just link to any old store on the web, how can Instagram -- meaning Facebook, Instagram's increasingly-overbearing owner -- tightly control commerce on its platform? If Instagram users could post links willy-nilly, they might even be able to connect directly to their users, getting their email addresses or finding other ways to communicate with them. Links represent a threat to closed systems. Here's the thing, though: people like links. So closed systems have to present a pressure release valve. Hashtags are a great way out. They use the semiotics of links (early versions of hashtags on social platforms were really barely more than automated links to a search for a particular term) but are also constrained by the platforms they live on. A hashtag is easier to gather into a database, to harvest, to monetize. It's much easier, sure, but it also doesn't have all the messiness of a real link. Instagram doesn't have to worry that clicking on its hashtags will accidentally lead people to Twitter, or vice versa.
For a closed system, those kinds of open connections are deeply dangerous. If anyone on Instagram can just link to any old store on the web, how can Instagram -- meaning Facebook, Instagram's increasingly-overbearing owner -- tightly control commerce on its platform? If Instagram users could post links willy-nilly, they might even be able to connect directly to their users, getting their email addresses or finding other ways to communicate with them. Links represent a threat to closed systems. Here's the thing, though: people like links. So closed systems have to present a pressure release valve. Hashtags are a great way out. They use the semiotics of links (early versions of hashtags on social platforms were really barely more than automated links to a search for a particular term) but are also constrained by the platforms they live on. A hashtag is easier to gather into a database, to harvest, to monetize. It's much easier, sure, but it also doesn't have all the messiness of a real link. Instagram doesn't have to worry that clicking on its hashtags will accidentally lead people to Twitter, or vice versa.
Oh the humanity!!! (Score:1)
It's a slow news day I guess..
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One of the slowest, it seems.
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And the slow knife penetrates the shield?
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This is an ad.
Ironically, check out the link in his bio.
What? (Score:5, Insightful)
That aside, this blog post is an incoherent mess jumbled together after partaking in a bit of the devil's lettuce that reads like it was written as an entry to a contest about who could use the largest number words to say as little as possible.
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I don't know about you, but it was fairly clear to me that the author was a Zelda fan. And frankly, I agree.
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That aside, this blog post is an incoherent mess jumbled together after partaking in a bit of the devil's lettuce that reads like it was written as an entry to a contest about who could use the largest number words to say as little as possible.
You don't know what a relief it is to read your statement. I felt a little weird earlier, like perhaps I was having a stroke. Then when I read TFS I genuinely feared I'd actually had one.
In summary... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I've carefully read the summary twice. All I have to say is... what? I have absolutely no idea what this person is talking about. I ain't even going to bother with the actual article.
Then you'll be relieved to know that the summary actually quoted a good deal of the article. I've noticed a lot of this lately on Slashdot, and it's really too bad -- there's enough incoherent bullshit on the web without duplicating the content.
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About half the articles being posted these days seem to have started with a search for "climate apocalypse."
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These days, climate change / political debate threads generate more comments - i.e. more monetizable activity - than tech posts.
The site editors are in a bind where they have to regularly post CC entries to keep the outrage-porn honeytrap running.
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What I recently submitted to the firehose that was published, they use 0 of the words I submitted. They simply used their editorial discretion to replace all my words, which contained a short quote and a basic description in nerd vocabulary, and replaced it with a larger block quote from the article.
They just select the link in the submissions that are from in-network sites, and then write a spammy summary based on whatever guidelines their spam network dictates.
It would be bad, except you're not supposed t
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same. why do i care about this drivel? The ethos of the internet has always been to prevent that kind of walled garden of communication -- it sounds like a good thing to me.
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The complaint is that people somewhere were allowed to communicate without the risk of link spam.
And nobody stopped them.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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I fully understand your pain.
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I've carefully read the summary twice. All I have to say is... what? I have absolutely no idea what this person is talking about.
As I was reading the summary, I kept thinking "is there an actual point here?" But since it mentions Facebook I think it was intended as another "Facebook is Evil" post - which, while true, is pretty much already self-evident.
Re:In summary... (Score:5, Informative)
Instagram forbids you from posting links in your photo descriptions. Because the intent is to be a photo with a caption. "Here is me sitting by the beach!"
However, people like money. So as a result they will want to write:
[Photo]
"Here is me sitting by the beach, wearing my gap swimsuit! Buy it here: gap.com/productid?referral=InstaSalesperson113 #SoCute"
So Instagram decided to ban all links except in your profile bio.
InstaSalesperson113
"I enjoy long walks on beaches where I sell things. Also if you like the swimsuit in my latest photo, go here: gap.com/productid?referral=InstaSalesperson113"
Post #1:
[Photo]
"Here is me sitting by the beach, wearing my gap swimsuit! Link in bio! #SoCute"
Obviously paid ads don't have this limitation. In fact paid ads let you put "Buy Now" buttons directly over the image. So the author is upset that Instagram lets you put links in your posts if you pay Instagram money. Something Something Something free and open web rant... something... something... walled gardens rant.... something...
The icecream I dropped on the floor has no jimmies (Score:3)
Seriously, in this day and age when just getting a permalink to a resource is a challenge, and
even if you get one, whoever runs the website is just going to tear the website down in a few months
or reorganize it to break all the old links, this is a minor detail.
Also this is a two-edged knife. Referer URLs can be seen in certain situations as a privacy
invasion jeopardizing the ability of anyone from privately discussing web content without
alerting the author/publisher, and really the author/publisher has no right to know who
reads or refers something they have put out in the public barring copyright or GPDR
matters. The technically savvy can turn referrer URLs off, but the general public barely
even knows they exist.
Early Hacker stuff (Score:2)
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I have seen some epic uses of that sort of hack...
Re:Early Hacker stuff (Score:4, Funny)
"I'm gonna winnuke you as soon as I get your IP address!"
"I'll save you the trouble! It's 127.0.0.1."
<l33th4xx0r has left the chat>
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Someone once asked me for help using Back0rifice. I took a wild guess and figured the clueless idiot installed the trojan on his own computer. ICQ would show the ip address of the person you were chatting with.
A download of the client and a couple of clicks later, his computer has restarted.
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There is still no security built in to browsers. They are designed to run arbitrary code downloaded from untrustworthy parties. As such, they cannot be secured.
Google to the... rescue? (Score:3)
With Amp now Google can control every link between any two sites, ensuring monitization.
Amp is the cancer of the internet, not whatever bullshit the summery is going on about.
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The internet has many cancers, but they all stem from one underlying cause: The internet as it emerged in the early days, as many Slashdot readers remember so fondly, was a terrible platform for making money.
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This was the reason I switched my search engine to Yahoo! Starting from a Google search, I had no way to get a non-AMP version of a news article (to post, etc.).
Generally... (Score:2)
Safari and Chrome are done protecting privacy. Mozilla seems to still be trying. [mozilla.org] DoT and DoH [cloudflare.com] seems like good steps. It seems each walled
Um .. (Score:3)
Links on the web are incredibly powerful.
Ya, links are what make it a web -- dumb, dumb. Otherwise, it would be the World Wide List of Pages.
Other than that, what's your point? TFS and TFA both seem a little incoherent or, at least, inconsistent and I'm not sure there's really anything new, insightful or even interesting here.
I too miss Geocities (Score:2)
AOL Keyword anyone? (Score:2)
This is why AOL pushed keywords instead of domain names/urls back in the day.
Joseph Elwell.
This is a feature, not a bug (Score:3)
The internet is not designed to be a close system, and any attempt to build a closed system on it is actively damaging to the internet itself. And that is the intent of those who want to build closed systems on the internet. To destroy its openness, to take it away from the world at large, and make it their private property.
You, apparently, consider this a good idea.
You, sir, are the reason the internet sucks.
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>closed system
I think we call these programs.
Networked web sites shall continue to be network webbed.
Summary... (Score:5, Informative)
Okay, so I think I have this figured out after RTFA and searching (I don't use Instagram). The author is lamenting (probably rightfully so) that you simply can't post URLs or links to content on Instagram. Facebook owns and controls Instagram, and the author feels this is a way Facebook is keeping it a closed platform and forcing the only linked content to be in the form of ads that Instagram profits from. The only place you can simply post a link is in the text of your account bio. So he's saying they're killing the internet by not allowing something as fundamental as a link to be posted.
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So, what is the problem? If you do not like how this so-called "Instagram" thing (whatever the hell an Instagram is) then stop paying them money to use it and give your money to someone else who does things more to your liking. What's that? "Instagram" is free? Worth every penny apparently ...
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So he's saying they're killing the internet by not allowing something as fundamental as a link to be posted.
Wait until he finds out that the internet is not the web.
You're a bit early (Score:2)
Interesting (Score:3)
...so we've come full circle now?
What was the original metier for the web - the effortless, free, and chaotically open sharing of ideas (ie I could link randomly here to Russian Medieval Architecture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]' or Devonshire Sheep Farming https://www.boroughfarm.co.uk/... [boroughfarm.co.uk] - links would be cleaner if I gave a shit) is now being characterized as 'dangerous'?
How can we POSSIBLY DARE to operate in an internet where there links uncurated by "top men"?
What a load of crap.
Link in Bio (Score:2)
Zelda in Chem
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Shaka, when the walls fell.
Photos not Links (Score:2)
The point of Instagram wasn't supposed to be to sell things, it was supposed to be a photo-centric social network.
If you are posting text and links... you're abusing the platform. Yes, ads are an abuse of the platform, but a necessary one to keep it alive. But if they allowed every post to be an ad it would stop being a "photo" centric social network and just be identical to its competition.
Isn't April 1st (Score:2)
a ways away yet?
An... (Score:1)
Instagram is working as designed (Score:2)
It's a photo sharing platform. If you want to advertise (e.g. use willy nilly hyperlinks) you have to pay. Otherwise you get exactly one link that most people won't bother to see.
Facebook is an information sharing platform. That's why you get to post links willy nilly.
Instagram isn't a blog, it's a quick way to share photos with friends and family.
If Instagram started acting like Facebook, that'd be really silly.
Its like no one can recognise purified sarcasm (Score:1)
Well ditto for apps, and even smartphones! (Score:3)
IBM computers were so successful because they were modular and anyone could create compatible components.
iDevices and the like try to ruin that.
Open-source software is so successful because you can integrate the libraries, use the tools, etc., and nobody has to do things twice or miss any available feature.
Commercial *applications* try to ruin that.
It only kinda started to go mainstream with Microsoft and MS-DOS.
Ditto with the web an hyperlinks.
There is an app for everything (=every possible permutation of features), because there HAS TO.
You cannot just glue two small tools together with a script.
There is a device for every target group because there HAS TO.
And if businesses get their say, there will also be a Chaebol website for everything, because there HAS TO.
See, the core problem all this originates from, is always... somebody not wanting to share, because monopolies, even if just "lock-in"s, give you power, that lets you gouge prices and force your terms.
It is the logical end goal of any for-profit business with exponential growth, or any analogous for-power type group: To kill the Batman^WFree Market.
Which is also why "intellectual property" is so succesful: Instant artificial scacrity monopoly! Even if actually just imaginary.
IMHO, since it harms us as a society, it should be illegal. If anyone wants to do it anyway, he has the freedom to leave.
Trackbacks? #donotwant (Score:2)
There are decades of theory behind the role of hyperlinks in hypertext -- did you know in most early versions, links were originally designed to be two-way? You'd be able to see every page on the web that links to this one.
Yeah, if you want that on your webpages, you can have it. Just track HTTP referers, and put links to them on the pages in question. But why would you want that? That just lets people put links on your pages by linking to them. That would be terrible. You also used to be able to search google for link:[url] but they've broken that functionality. Now such searches return a bunch of irrelevant bullshit you didn't ask for.
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do love when a dreamer retcons well documented problems out of existence through not doing the research and taking it on faith >_>
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do love when a dreamer retcons well documented problems out of existence through not doing the research and taking it on faith
I'm really not sure who you're complaining about here, but I've actually used the trackback module on my [Drupal] site before, and it was more grief than it was worth.
Sir. (Score:2)
This nonsense belies a lack of understanding of the tasks of administration, misrepresents the history of hypertext systems, and conflates hypothetical frontend features with implementation in a thoroughly modern way.
I'm sure the fact you got a post on the front page of slashdot will make the VCs very happy.