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The Internet Idle

Is the Internet About to Get Weird Again? (rollingstone.com) 83

Long-time tech entrepreneur Anil Dash predicts a big shift in the digital landscape in 2024. And "regular internet users — not just the world's tech tycoons — may be the ones who decide how it goes." The first thing to understand about this new era of the internet is that power is, undoubtedly, shifting. For example, regulators are now part of the story — an ironic shift for anyone who was around in the dot com days. In the E.U., tech giants like Apple are being forced to hold their noses and embrace mandated changes like opening up their devices to allow alternate app stores to provide apps to consumers. This could be good news, increasing consumer choice and possibly enabling different business models — how about mobile games that aren't constantly pestering gamers for in-app purchases? Back in the U.S., a shocking judgment in Epic Games' (that's the Fortnite folks') lawsuit against Google leaves us with the promise that Android phones might open up in a similar way.

That's not just good news for the billions of people who own smartphones. It's part of a sea change for the coders and designers who build the apps, sites, and games we all use. For an entire generation, the imagination of people making the web has been hemmed in by the control of a handful of giant companies that have had enormous control over things like search results, or app stores, or ad platforms, or payment systems. Going back to the more free-for-all nature of the Nineties internet could mean we see a proliferation of unexpected, strange new products and services. Back then, a lot of technology was created by local communities or people with a shared interest, and it was as likely that cool things would be invented by universities and non-profits and eccentric lone creators as they were to be made by giant corporations....

In that era, people could even make their own little social networks, so the conversations and content you found on an online forum or discussion were as likely to have been hosted by the efforts of one lone creator than to have come from some giant corporate conglomerate. It was a more democratized internet, and while the world can't return to that level of simplicity, we're seeing signs of a modern revisiting of some of those ideas.

Dash's article (published in Rolling Stone) ends with examples of "people who had been quietly keeping the spirit of the human, personal, creative internet alive...seeing a resurgence now that the web is up for grabs again. "
  • The School for Poetic Computation (which Dash describes as "an eccentric, deeply charming, self-organized school for people who want to combine art and technology and a social conscience.")
  • Mask On Zone, "a collaboration with the artist and coder Ritu Ghiya, which gives demonstrators and protesters in-context guidance on how to avoid surveillance."

Dash concludes that "We're seeing the biggest return to that human-run, personal-scale web that we've witnessed since the turn of the millennium, with enough momentum that it's likely that 2024 is the first year since then that many people have the experience of making a new connection or seeing something go viral on a platform that's being run by a regular person instead of a commercial entity.

"It's going to make a lot of new things possible..."

A big thank-you for submitting the article to long-time Slashdot reader, DrunkenTerror.


This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Is the Internet About to Get Weird Again?

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  • Android already allows third-party app stores.

    Witness F-Droid, as one worthy example.

    Third-party payment options are not currently available.

    Neither third-party app stores or payments are available on iThings.

    • We're /. aka massive geeks: you can use our experience as a reference point for what average Joe does.

      Yes, it's technically possible to install a 3rd party store beside Google Play Store. But Google has designed the whole thing to make it slightly discouraging (accordingbto the Epic lawsuit), so the end result is that only a few geeks are on F-droid, Chinese are on alternate store because they're banned, and virtually every single other Android user on this planet is only using Google Play Store exclusively

      • But Google has designed the whole thing to make it slightly discouraging (accordingbto the Epic lawsuit)

        Google just has absolutely terrible lawyers, because Apple managed to beat the same accusations and sideloading on iOS is a genuine pain in the ass due to the way Apple manages app signing.

        On Android, you just go into the device settings and enable apps from untrusted sources. The fact that people don't want to do this to install your 3rd party app isn't really Google's problem.

        • What *should* be happening is that Google and Apple should be allowing users to add trusted root certificates, and there should be an agreement on a set of trusted app sources.

        • Google just has absolutely terrible lawyers, because Apple managed to beat the same accusations and sideloading

          One claims to be a walled garden, the other claims to be the mainstream internet. You're not a lawyer, but that's not enough of an excuse to think those are the same.

      • While Valve is definitely user friendly in a different way they were a bit of the progenitor to "open a marketplace, take a 30% cut". Now obviously they don't have an exclusive like the app stores but in 2003, boy howdy nobody had anything really like that yet.

        • While Valve is definitely user friendly in a different way they were a bit of the progenitor to "open a marketplace, take a 30% cut".

          I gotta say, I'm genuinely surprised at Steam's success. I didn't think PC gamers would be so willing to accept a DRM-ridden marketplace where you own nothing and like it. But I suppose with the death of physical media it was bound to happen eventually.

          • Re:3rd parties (Score:4, Interesting)

            by jacks smirking reven ( 909048 ) on Sunday December 31, 2023 @04:31PM (#64119985)

            That's part of Valves success though that other companies, especially game companies failed to copy and just want the sweet sweet cut.

            The DRM is as close to invisible as you can get in that I have never opened Steam and not been able to play, at this point the platform is 20 years old so it has user trust, it's not going anywhere, even with the DRM you are still free to mod your game however you like and they've added tons of value to the platform;

            mod workshops, discussion forums, a 2 hour no questions asked free trial window, cloud saves, local streaming and perhaps the best gamepad customization tool available today.

            And by far the biggest thing is that there are always sales, sales, sales that will keep people coming back. When you get a AAA title for $8 most don't tend to care if it's DRM'd

            At least with Steam compared to the other app stores I can sorta see where that 30% goes.

            • Not to mention, if it's a single player game, you can play it in "offline" mode. Never had it not let me play a game. Ever.

  • by david.emery ( 127135 ) on Sunday December 31, 2023 @02:00PM (#64119651)

    Well, I for one, don't see so much of the mandated technical solutions from "regulators" as being in the best interest of users. I'm tempted to take my Lightning cables and mail them to Brussels. Breaking the curation in app stores benefits different big tech companies, it's not clear to me at all if end users will benefit. A HUGE advantage of the current Apple single store is a single unified easy way to cancel subscriptions.

    The continued proliferation of websites with all kinds of pop-ups and 'sign up for our notifications, mailing list, log in with Google' enshittification again has no benefit for end users. I do give the EU credit for GDPR, and think US is -way behind- in regulating the surveillance industry. Beyond that, the knee-jerk reaction of too many politicians and regulators seems to be "they're too big, they must be doing something illegal" is something I find appalling.

    • by olmsfam ( 1399493 ) on Sunday December 31, 2023 @02:15PM (#64119677)

      Take for example a smart watch like the pebble. people still have them, but both the vendor and apple took away support. If there was a big enough niche, someone could get their smart watches working again with IOS by side loading, which is currently impossible.

      Another example is like fortnite, get banned, well no big deal you can just side load!

      Web browsers are not currently allowed on the apps store that use anything other than webkit. The likes of firefox and chromium could use a (potentially better) different web renderer.

      Apples walled garden it is nice, but so is choice. now you can have both, and dont HAVE to use side loading. It is literally win win. there is no downside.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      How can getting Apple to use USB C be anything but good?

      If you like Apple's subscription management, and don't mind paying more, stick with Apple. Nobody is forcing you to use other systems.

  • @david.emery [slashdot.org]: “The continued proliferation of websites with all kinds of pop-ups and 'sign up for our notifications, mailing list, log in with Google' enshittification again has no benefit for end users.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    there's no going back to pre-myspace levels of Septembers, any entry friction has been eliminated by fischer-price hardware/software they have no control or understanding of, the services themselves are fully committed to pandering their vapid appetite for ego and celebrity

    corpos didn't come marching in to take over Just Because, the shallow masses are here to stay and thus so is their odor for attracting commercial interests

    opening up mobile stores is all well and good but the Septembers don't care, it's n

    • The 90s and 00s internet was great. It had problems but it didn’t have our problems.
      Well the current smallweb is no doubt bigger than the 90s internet. You just have to start using it and start ignoring Twiteers, tiktok, insta, and so on.

      Some of you might be upset that you can’t blast the nword over and over anymore but that’s not true either! Stormfront, 4chan, and bb.com misc still all exist! Though bb.com will censor it to N******, you probably won’t get a ban.

  • by michaelmalak ( 91262 ) <michael@michaelmalak.com> on Sunday December 31, 2023 @02:31PM (#64119699) Homepage

    Twitter’s slide into irrelevance and extremism as it decays into X has hastened the explosive growth of a whole host of newer social networks.

    The death of Twitter is greatly exaggerated. While revenue is down to 2014 levels, the number of annual users is growing steadily upward (aside from a plateau 2015-2020). https://www.businessofapps.com/data/twitter-statistics/ [businessofapps.com]

    • ROFL, some people are absolutely desperate for that claim to be true. The media hit job on Elon and those that have developed EDS from it has been interesting and troubling to watch.
    • by organgtool ( 966989 ) on Sunday December 31, 2023 @03:56PM (#64119907)

      While revenue is down to 2014 levels, the number of annual users is growing steadily upward

      Can Twitter pay its bills in annual users? The number of annual users is a cool metric for billionaires to brag amongst themselves, but it's pretty useless if their ability to monetize those users keeps dropping.

      • Can Twitter pay its bills in annual users?

        That depends on how good Musk is at selling blue checkmarks. Or selling raffle tickets to win a free Cybertruck or one-way trip to Mars aboard a SpaceX rocket.

      • by taustin ( 171655 )

        User eyeballs will sell ads. Maybe to different advertisers, but eventually, they'll find their market.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          I hear that Disney was paying more than Jack-Off Pants in terms of Twitter ad spend.

          • Golly, but Disney can't possibly be more important than Pillow Guy, can they? I mean, everybody has to sleep, right?

    • Right! All the bots Musk was worried about when he bought the company, have now been replaced by AI.

    • the number of annual users is growing

      The number of annual bots is growing. Not "users."

  • by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Sunday December 31, 2023 @02:45PM (#64119731)

    The internet isn't "about to get weird" - the author just discovered some new-to-him websites and is trying to create some bogus narrative based on that. Not to mention that his derived narrative doesn't really support "weird". But, in any case, none of this is particularly recent.

    The site everett-pipkim.com was created in 2018. stefanbohacek.com was created in 2014.

    The School for Poetic Computation was founded in 2013, they've just added a few additional URLs that take advantage of new TLDs coming online.

    Mask On Zone was created in 2020, same TLD comment as above. Similar stories with Elan Ullendorff and youtune.glitch.me.

    • Good points, also who in the world is Anil Dash? Seems like he's had a number of non-entrepreneurial jobs and has paid for edits to his Wikipedia article. It looks like he's just making these comments to get himself some press, regardless if he believes it or not. Perhaps he paid for bots to get this article on Slashdot? From the edit history of his article on Wikipedia: Grayfell Naked puffery. Vacuous passing mentions and cruft. Wikipedia isn't a platform for promotion or advocacy. This kind of poorly-
    • The internet isn't "about to get weird" - the author just discovered some new-to-him websites

      I assumed that he's talking about websites he's invested in as if they're new-to-him.

  • by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Sunday December 31, 2023 @03:13PM (#64119807)
    ...was, is, & will be winner takes all. If it's not Google or Apple, it'll be some other company that finds a way to become gatekeeper. With AI bots now flooding the interwebs pipes, let's see who or what gives, & which corporation can capitalise on becoming the new gatekeepers. They don't care about our wishes, aspirations, or feelings, only their revenue streams.
    • ...was, is, & will be winner takes all. If it's not Google or Apple, it'll be some other company that finds a way to become gatekeeper. With AI bots now flooding the interwebs pipes, let's see who or what gives, & which corporation can capitalise on becoming the new gatekeepers. They don't care about our wishes, aspirations, or feelings, only their revenue streams.

      You're right about the outcome, but placing the blame (if blame it is) in the wrong place. The reason the web has become centralized and will continue to be centralized, and the reason it wasn't that way early on is not because of tech companies but because of users, and especially abusers. In the 90s the Internet was a niche, fairly geeky thing, and there was a non-trivial percentage of its user base that was happy to run their own servers and build their own sites and systems. This was facilitated by t

  • 2024 has been declared the Year of the Linux Desktop

  • The author says we're going back to a more decentralized Internet, but fails to give any concrete/technical basis for those points - and then mentions a bunch of irrelevant and highly niche "social art" type sites.

    I feel like I'm being gaslit.

    What was distinct about the 90s wasn't someone's ability to make a niche website about their interest or group. That never changed - though the less technically adept have avoided it, usually going to a social network group (eg. facebook group) instead of paying it don

    • [In the 1990s] The content on the Internet was largely written by technical, knowledgeable people.

      I was using the internet back in the 90s. Unless you're only talking about the first part of that decade (when the web was just getting started), I don't think that's an accurate statement. Garbage sites and non-maintained link farms were everywhere in the second half of the decade. Geocities started in 1994. Web rings of low-quality-content websites were rampant.

  • For an entire generation, the imagination of people making the web has been hemmed in by the control of a handful of giant companies that have had enormous control over things like search results, or app stores, or ad platforms, or payment systems.

    If the argument is that regulators are going to change all that, then we'll see if the regulators do any "hemming in" themselves.

    • yup, the mainstream internet has been coopted by large corporate interests that herd all searches in their favor
  • Is the Internet About to Get Weird Again?

    About to? Again? :-)

  • by Growlley ( 6732614 ) on Sunday December 31, 2023 @06:46PM (#64120343)
    like advertisers and social media, big media companies etc.
  • Meaning of no value. Zero new solutions are part of what they're talking about.

  • No.
    Corp interests in putting everything behind a wall wont allow it to be.

Reality must take precedence over public relations, for Mother Nature cannot be fooled. -- R.P. Feynman

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