'Where Have All the Websites Gone?' (fromjason.xyz) 171
An anonymous reader shares an essay: No one clicks a webpage hoping to learn which cat can haz cheeseburger. Weirdos, maybe. Sickos. No, we get our content from a For You Page now -- algorithmically selected videos and images made by our favorite creators, produced explicitly for our preferred platform. Which platform doesn't matter much. So long as it's one of the big five. Creators churn out content for all of them. It's a technical marvel, that internet. Something so mindblowingly impressive that if you showed it to someone even thirty years ago, their face would melt the fuck off. So why does it feel like something's missing? Why are we all so collectively unhappy with the state of the web?
A tweet went viral this Thanksgiving when a Twitter user posed a question to their followers. (The tweet said: "It feels like there are no websites anymore. There used to be so many websites you could go on. Where did all the websites go?") A peek at the comments, and I could only assume the tweet struck a nerve. Everyone had their own answer. Some comments blamed the app-ification of the web. "Everything is an app now!," one user replied. Others point to the death of Adobe Flash and how so many sites and games died along with it. Everyone agrees that websites have indeed vanished, and we all miss the days we were free to visit them.
A tweet went viral this Thanksgiving when a Twitter user posed a question to their followers. (The tweet said: "It feels like there are no websites anymore. There used to be so many websites you could go on. Where did all the websites go?") A peek at the comments, and I could only assume the tweet struck a nerve. Everyone had their own answer. Some comments blamed the app-ification of the web. "Everything is an app now!," one user replied. Others point to the death of Adobe Flash and how so many sites and games died along with it. Everyone agrees that websites have indeed vanished, and we all miss the days we were free to visit them.
News just in... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:News just in... (Score:5, Insightful)
The answer to the question is that many websites are gone or haven't been updated in decades because it's just too much work to maintain them. Back in the day I could be bothered to write HTML by hand, upload it and sort out all the inevitable hosting issues. These days... Well, I wrote my own minimal CMS thing, but for most stuff that is basically transient I'll post it on Slashdot or a forum where the effort and cost are close to zero.
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Add to it the headache of having to ensure that https now work even if you only serve static public pages.
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Re: News just in... (Score:3)
That's not really a ball ache anymore thanks to the excellent Let's Encrypt service.
Re:News just in... (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been publishing my daily blog for almost 30 years on my own website -- hand-coded HTML (with all the associated errors).
It still has its own small community of followers and allows me to say what I want, how I want to, when I want to. I don't have to worry about upsetting some mega-corp that is engaged in full-on virtue-signalling and therefore shadow-bans my content or even cancels me completely. The freedom is fantastic -- even though most of my commentary is related to matters of technology and science.
There is still a place for individual websites in this world of X/Meta/YouTube/Tiktok/whatever.
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Who hosts it?
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I'm the same way. I am not as good as having my own hand-tuned HTML, but I use WordPress in a virtual machine with some additions, and back up the site every so often. (This is why I like ZFS or btrfs snapshots and docker volumes, since I can snapshot the data volumes, then have Borg Backup whisk the data to a repository on Borgbase for safekeeping. If the container gets compromised, a restore and restart of the container handles that.)
What I've seen happen with a lot of social media is that there are ne
Well, they are wrong... (Score:2, Insightful)
We have 20+ years of information about neurotypical using technology made for neuro-atypical geeks and nerds.
It's depressing AF. Exhibit A is much of Gen Z; Exhibit B is the "iPad generation" much of us Millennials are raising in Gen Alpha.
Those of us who grew up in the 80s and 90s with older tech need to stop making excuses about how "it didn't hurt us" since the tech and usage patterns are not comparable.
Re: Well, they are wrong... (Score:5, Interesting)
Neurotypical people want TikTok, not Reddit. They want a little buzz from 9 seconds of flashing images and loud music.
In my day if you needed that sensory overload you only had to walk into an arcade. And for most people, most of the time, life doesn't need to be anymore complicated than seeking a little stimulation.
Illustrating my point (Score:2)
As a guy in his 40s who frequented arcades as a kid, all I can say is thanks for showing your age and making my point while trying to be relevant...
You know damn well that arcades and TikTok have virtually nothing in common in how kids experience(d) them. First of all, most arcades were a mix of screens and non-screen systems. Second, most of the video games in arcades were limited by money (a very real and practical limit for
Re: Illustrating my point (Score:2)
Something I do notice is that nowadays it seems hard to get young people to watch even a ten minute YouTube video.
Granted, not all videos are equal but lately YouTube seems to be adopting a similar model to newer social media sites wherein they just swarm your feed with more videos then you can possibly watch in a day, let alone a lifetime. As such, users may start a video, but never not necessarily finish it. Hence the popularity of the Shorts format.
I would be very curious to see the statistics on how man
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Something I do notice is that nowadays it seems hard to get young people to watch even a ten minute YouTube video.
I can think of two reasons for that.
The first is that in 2021, YouTube started putting midroll ads in non-Partner videos. This makes viewers a lot more likely to drop out at the first ad.
The second is communities moving from forums to Discord and other group chat platforms. Unlike forums, chat tends to have a greater sense of urgency and fear of missing out because there's more friction against replying to a message that is several hours old. As Dave Cheney wrote in "Why Slack is inappropriate for open sour [cheney.net]
Re: Illustrating my point (Score:5, Insightful)
Kids could watch other kids play and still get a thrill even when out of money. Trust me, that was me, since I grew up poorer than kids whose family was on welfare.
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*tell themselves "I thought there was meat here, we were told there was meat."
then web nerds insist there used to be [imgur.com]
It's probably for a lot of reasons (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:It's probably for a lot of reasons (Score:5, Insightful)
Good point but this is a website (Score:2)
I'm on one right now! (Score:3, Informative)
Also, realclearpolitics.com, realclearinvestigations.com, realclearscience.com and all their sister sites are all pretty great. Nice, middle of the road sites that won't steer you down any rabbit holes.
Re: I'm on one right now! (Score:5, Interesting)
Real Clear is a tool to bring center right moderates into the fold of conservative politics. The funding and and ads are very much part of America's right wing.
A safer bet, but not a complete substitute for RC, is the British periodical The Economist. It is center right and pro corporation but at least not tightly coupled to American politics. Most of the articles are fact based, but with the bias of how particular world events might impact economics and the bottom line. At least there is honesty in greed. Cults on the other hand are not trustworthy.
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Real Clear is a tool to bring center right moderates into the fold of conservative politics.
Wow, every other article on RCP is from the NY Times, The Atlantic, WaPo, or some other left wing organization, and the site has been extremely popular among journalists (who are overwhelmingly left wing), yet you've been able to discern a massive right wing conspiracy in the their funding and ads!
Bravo!
Re: I'm on one right now! (Score:4, Informative)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: I'm on one right now! (Score:2)
If you think the NYT is "super hard left" you can't even ante in this game.
Left-of-center, sure, but you're imagining it's Pacifica or something, which it is certainly not.
The NYT greased the skids for W's nonsensical invasion of Iraq, fer Chrissakes!
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NYT is (...) Left-of-center, sure
Not even left-of-center, unless by "center" one means the center of US politics, whose Overton window is so skewed to the right it's almost entirely on it. For most everyone most everywhere else, the NYT, even at its most leftist moments, is still at best center to center-right.
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American left-of-center means Wallstreet-friendly, loves capitalism, supports the class system, but might have a nuanced opinion about Israel and flag burning.
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super hard left NEW YORK TIMES
Super hard left? Cool! I didn't know the New York Times advocated for the suppression of private means of production, for worker-owned factories, for collective decision-making via assemblies of workers, for the disalienation of workers through work and the dialectical materialist critique of class consciousness, for an international armed revolution of the proletariat, and for the implantation of a dictatorship of the proletariat through which a Socialist State will open the way to the stateless Communism!
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Those guys are great, they want to take all the money away from rich people. They have no platform position on religion or transgender children or any of the other lines in the sand conservatives have drawn. Technically CPUSA's view are completely compatible with MAGA's. You are just hung up on the name.
Main issues of concern would likely be that CPUSA doesn't want to spend money fighting foreign wars, which I think some MAGA's would agree to but some would not. And that people of color should be treated li
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Just because you think NYT is a "left wing organization" doesn't mean it is true, or that every article cherrypicked from them is part of a far left propaganda machine.
I suspect The Economist's article criticizing the NYT [economist.com] will also be a difficult pill for you to swallow given its harsh treatment of America's new right wing movement. These guys are probably doing something right if everyone with extreme views is upset.
Re: I'm on one right now! (Score:5, Interesting)
I've had my research featured in The Economist, and from that single anecdotal experience, I can tell you that the reporter and editor worked hard to be accurate and unbiased.
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I've had my research featured in The Economist, and from that single anecdotal experience, I can tell you that the reporter and editor worked hard to be accurate and unbiased.
I've had a few encounters with the press (nothing as prestigious as The Economist, though, congrats!), and read the resulting articles. From those anecdotal experiences I have always found the reporters and editors to be hardworking people who really want to report accurately, clearly and without bias... and I've found that they almost always fail.
Accurately reporting the news is just really, really hard. It seems like it should be easy: "Just write what happened!". But that assumes the reporter actually
Re: I'm on one right now! (Score:2)
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I love America and being American, but man we tell ourselves so many lies that it's good to step outside for some perspective.
Re: I'm on one right now! (Score:5, Informative)
Also, The Economist is frequently on the front page of RCP. It is squarely left wing.
You're kidding right, are we reading the same magazine? The Economist is pro economic liberalism, supporting the market, individual property rights and individualism. If editorial support for free markets, free trade, free immigration, deregulation, and globalisation is left wing then what do you define as right wing?
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Yeah the guy is smoking something. Hard to have a serious conversation with him. I get that left-right political spectrum is often relative, but man where is this guy's origin point?
center: cool with the current hierarchy. ideally no more nor less. "Look, just leave me alone. I have to go to work." ... by ANY MEANS NECESSARY. Also, believes they belong near the top of
left: trying to destroy America. hates social hierarchies. "Look, just leave me alone. I'm late for a workshop."
right: everything a hierarchy
Quick Answer (Score:5, Funny)
Gemini (Score:4, Interesting)
I have been moving my WEB Site to Gemini on sdf, I find Gemini much easier to maintain. It is at the forever 95% done. Gemini is quite like the early days of the WEB plus no tracking :)
There are plenty of Gemini hosting systems and I think some are free. Also there is LEO, a kind of Gemini "webring".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(protocol)
https://gemini.circumlunar.space/
https://wiki.sdf.org/doku.php?id=gemini_site_setup_and_hosting_features
https://tilde.team/wiki/gemini
Re:Gemini (Score:4, Funny)
I'm sure both users are very happy that you've made the switch.
Ignore the idiots (Score:4, Interesting)
I see over and over people posting about 'mass appeal' and 'adoption'. They need to take a trip back to the world of the BBS and realize that adoption and mass appeal are unimportant. Global access to technology results in enshittification. Full stop. We thought "wouldn't it be great if millions, no billions could access our stuff!" The answer was a resounding no.
Setting up a small community relatively inaccessible to the normies is actually a great thing. Good on you. Fuck social media.
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I remember looking at Gemini some time ago, and I thought it would be a great fit for my minimalist website. But I don't really see much point in it besides the geek factor. If I'm trying to reach a wide audience with my website, it should be accessible in a standard way without extra apps.
If you like the minimalist geek esthetic of the early web, you can still do it using the same HTTP and HTML we used back then; genuine vintage tech instead of this wannabe retro approach. There's also no need to includ
Re: Gemini (Score:5, Insightful)
Mass appeal is overrated. Popular stuff is rarely good. It's not simply my own snobbishness but a limitation on anything that must satisfy many different people. Usually that means going for the most basic appeal of giving our lizard brain a little serotonin kick.
And anything that aims for an average intelligence is automatically a failure because that excludes half of the population by definition. The sweet spot for maximizing profit is to dumb things down to be inclusive but not so dumb as to be insulting to average people.
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Your argument basically comes across as if your telling outliers, us nerdy folks, that we should only concentrate on popular stuff. Thing is? Us outliers are outliers because we don't much care for the popular stuff. Let us have our little niches that keep us from blowing our brains out over how banal and stupid the world is and leave us be. We aren't actively hurting anyone. Calling us snobs only makes you feel better, and accomplishes nothing but creating yet more alienation for people who already feel pl
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It seems pretty obvious that only one of us is bitching in this conversation. You're angry that people do things that aren't popular. So? Go do your popular thing and enjoy yourself. Let us do our thing.
I'm perfectly fine being an outlier and like doing my own thing. I'm also fine with others doing group gathering popular things. I don't see why you've turned that into something to fight about.
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nothing you said makes the work on this gemini thing worthwhile, useful or good for anyone but a few snobbish tech guys
It is often that case that meeting niche needs or wants is more straight forward and can go deeper than meeting a broader appeal for the general public.
Most of the I can go to the grocery store and buy the same carrots as everyone else. They are just fine as they are. I don't need any sort of specialized carrots.
But some people desire to ride a motorcycle, and it suits what they want to do much more than a car does. And a motorcycle is arguable better at several things. But I'm not going to pretend that eve
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s/most of the I/most of the time/
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I use "overrated" knowing that there is not a likely way to objectively measure these things. It's a matter of personal opinion and of course one person's opinion will typically differ from the average opinion of a large population, that's just math.
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Right? Good thing this thread is in English, the most popular language in the world. I'd hate to come off as an indie elitist by speaking something else.
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what an absolute waste of man hours and development talent becuase this is never, ever, ever, going to get mass appeal
Maybe it does. Minimalism periodically gets in and out of fashion. But even if it doesn't, that's just a hobby, like any other.
I believe someone set us up the bomb. (Score:5, Funny)
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We no longer get signal.
Main screen turn off.
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How are you gentlemen!!
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Take off every zig [ziglang.org] for great justice
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All your site are belong to us!
TFA is a good read... summary will mislead (Score:5, Informative)
From the /. summary you'd think the article was saying web sites are gone and it's al doom
TFA is saying what my own experience says:
There are plenty of web sites out there but yes, it's true there's a vast amount of content being generated for and within a smaller number of big social media/aggregators
For instance, lets use Slashdot as an example - how many years have /.ers complained that folks just read the summary/respond to the summary and not TFA? (Oh look how meta, I'm doing it)
Someone could point to Shalshdot and say "oh it's a shame there are no sites anymore",... yet most every article here is pointing at a news or tech site or blog or whatever the source is -
Yes Youtube and Tic-Toc are hosting the content and folks create FOR Them - TWITx and similar are a mix of "content for that site" with links to outside but there are if anything, more sites than ever out there.
TFA mentions that we've kind of offloaded our curation/discovery to the social media sites and algorithms... and it's got a point.. The Internet is a bit of a firehose... it can be hard to drink from it. Social media algorithms do offer to help with that but of course they're optimized not so much to help us discover and delight but to drive revenue...
However I think a bigger issue is that search (yes google I'm talking about you most specifically, but other big players too) has been so co-opted by pay for play placing and also by aggressive SEO and junk content farms spitting out low effort crap designed to abuse and tickle the algorithm that you have to be actively looking for the quality to get it.
It means likely using a meta search engine like SearxNG or similar and likely sticking to desktop rather than mobile ... I know I could not tolerate the current state of the Interwebz without Firefox running NoScript and uBlock Origin.
ok babbling on
TL;DR: no there are plenty of sites - TFA says it well, the summary here not so much.
Re:TFA is a good read... summary will mislead (Score:5, Insightful)
For instance, lets use Slashdot as an example - how many years have /.ers complained that folks just read the summary/respond to the summary and not TFA? (Oh look how meta, I'm doing it)
One of the reasons people do this is because users keep posting links to paywalled or adwalled sites. I'm not going to read an article that I need to register an account for the privilege of reading it or turn off my ad-blocker so they can shove a hundred irrelevant ads in my face. The fact that this article lead to something I could actually READ was a breath of fresh air.
Yeah, the websites are out there. Just sign up for a free account today! Support us by turning off ad-blocker!
No thanks.
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For instance, lets use Slashdot as an example - how many years have /.ers complained that folks just read the summary/respond to the summary and not TFA? (Oh look how meta, I'm doing it)
I feel like we need a modern version of this video: HOW TO READ A NEWSPAPER: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
TFA mentions that we've kind of offloaded our curation/discovery to the social media sites and algorithms... and it's got a point.. The Internet is a bit of a firehose... it can be hard to drink from it. Social media algorithms do offer to help with that but of course they're optimized not so much to help us discover and delight but to drive revenue...
It makes me sad we let RSS and self-curation of content die off*. Part of it was that it wasn't the most normie friendly thing to setup for yourself, but the other, bigger one was the reversal of the idea of an "open web" to a siloed one. Getting and keeping people on your site became more important so now we have social network walled gardens instead.
Personally, I still use a "home page" with R
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Re:TFA is a good read... summary will mislead (Score:4, Interesting)
From my POV, "the old internet" died slowly about 7 or so years ago, when Google Search started being dominated outright by ads and no search engine stepped up to fill the void.
That's why web sites died: the search engines became useless at finding them. So people just stuck to their tradition of going to certain cites, or started spending more time on social media.
Google basically shows ADs as search results (Score:5, Insightful)
Because before, the ads where usually showing up on the side as some side search results.
Today they are PAGE after PAGE before you get rid of the endless AD based search results.
Then you could discover new sites all the time.
Today, not so much. You literally have to learn of some site from someone else
or use your vast collection of pages from the past, some dead, some still alive.
Who's we? (Score:2, Interesting)
"No, we get our content from a For You Page now -- algorithmically selected videos and images made by our favorite creators"
Speak for yourself pal. I use these wonderful things called "bookmarks" which while all browser makers seem to be increasingly be making harder to use they're still pretty useful.
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Indeed. I have a lot of them and basically all go to those "websites" the story claims nobody is going to...
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I'm clearly a sicko. What the hell is a "For You Page"? Which apps or websites have them?
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Things Change, news at 11 (Score:5, Interesting)
In the mid-late 1990s, we got the Internet, and that gave rise to websites and chat programs, but there were plenty of people who didn't have a personal computer and used the ones at work/school.
The early 2000s saw everyone with a home computer. Armed with your digital camera, you could take photos of events, go home, load them on your computer, and share them with anyone you wanted. Or post them online to your website or blog or your favorite web forum.
It was the birth of the smartphone that transformed things greatly. No more home PC for many. Their phone is their computer. No more websites, use an app. Social media exploded once they became apps. Discord is the new web forum. All the messengers collapsed to be replaced with texting, iMessage, and apps like Whatsapp.
In 20 years, you probably won't have to email/text/Slack a link to someone anymore. You can just add it to their feed on some wearable device everyone will be wearing and make walking around with a smartphone sound as archaic as walking around with a discman sounds to us now.
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COMMENT FROM THE FUTURE: Wearable device? What kind of luddite are you that you didn't get the brain implants? WTF?
'Where Have All the Websites Gone?' (Score:3)
Long time passing....
Amazon still has a website.
I don't use apps since I don't have an apple
Apps are captive portals that allow a great deal (Score:5, Insightful)
more spying on you for attempts at monetizing your every breath/thought/second of life. There are a number of "services" I will not even entertain because they do not have a website at all. Fuck "apps".
Monetize, monetize, monetize ... (Score:3)
Wall-less Gardens (Score:2)
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Facebook, Reddit, X/Threads ate them (Score:5, Insightful)
It got to be too complicated to make a modern, readable website. So all content moved to platforms where somebody else does that work for you in exchange for selling your info and throwing adverts at you.
Re:Facebook, Reddit, X/Threads ate them (Score:5, Insightful)
I host a forum and wiki dedicated to a musical artist with a 50+ year long career. The amount of spam and attacks is bad. Accounts to the forum require you to email the admin (on the site at the top) and ask for the magic phrase. We used to just ask a question about the artist with a 1-2 word answer. Spammers would figure it out or just find a weakness in the forum software and directly create an account. For the wiki, author accounts are done completely by hand.
I see huge amounts of traffic from certain countries and my solution is just to block IP addresses in mass from a handful of countries (e.g. Russia, China, Philippines, etc). This week I noticed that an IP in Hong Kong appears at the top of the consumers and has consumed 60GB so far this month with that being a bit under 20% by bandwidth. Positions 2-4 are bots that have Amazon IP addresses and are about 5% each or about 45GB.
Self hosting is a game of cat and mouse. I quit having a real mail service for the wiki and forum to use. I configured postfix to go through my gmail account when sending notices. Port 25 was just a constant magnet for malicious probes.
Re: Facebook, Reddit, X/Threads ate them (Score:2)
Phone browsers suck (Score:2)
So everything got appified
Hosting (Score:2)
Who is this "we" you are tallking about? (Score:3)
Because I am sure as hell not in that group of defectives...
A more relevant question (Score:2)
Where have all the venture capitalists gone?
Looking for a return on their investment.
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?
Three Reasons, Hard to Change the Tide (Score:4, Interesting)
There are three reasons why websites are fading:
1. Revenue generation via Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has incentivized individuals and companies alike to make really bad static content which in turn has driven people away from static pages.
2. People are reading less and less. 20 years ago, I could tell someone "Search Google, find a forum, ask a question, and watch all the helpful people stumble over each other to give you free advice." Today, that's too much work for most web users. Instead, they want to scan through a YouTube video or watch a TikTok. That's it. I work for a major university and when it comes to communicating with any group outside of retirees, the constant request is, "We don't read websites... please make a TikTok." It's absolutely deflating.
3. System maintenance. As a lifelong gamer, it's been heartbreaking to see massive forums full of huge amounts of information fall defunct and be deleted from the web because the original owner of the forum no longer had the bandwidth to keep up with software updates, security patches, SPAM mitigation, moderation, etc. Most people won't ever know just how much completely free labor went into making the first 20-30 years of the internet/world wide web so incredibly useful for civilization. Today, most people resort to a platform (YouTube, TikTok, Discord, Reddit, etc.) because the cost of maintenance is just too high.
Well, shit... (Score:2)
No one clicks a webpage hoping to learn which cat can haz cheeseburger.
Well, uh, shit... what am I doing here? I guess I'll be on my way then?!?
Nowhere (Score:2)
My blog vs Reddit (Score:3)
So, I've had a blog for about 12 years. I get about 10-20 visitors per day. I posted the same 500 word post on Reddit and my Blog. I got around 50 views on my blog for that post. I got 20,000 views on Reddit according to Reddit. It might be that my blog is just too specialized and that the Reddit group was large and active. My blog is mostly about statistics, games, math, and machine learning. Most of the articles are written at the level appropriate for a STEM BS. The Reddit group was "Slay the Spire" --- a popular card based computer game.
LMGTFY (Score:2)
I have no idea what a For You Page is. I've never seen such a thing, but it doesn't sound any good at all. What's stopping you from doing your own curating? When I'm interested in a topic, the first thing I do is get on a search engine and see what sites pop up that are relevant to the topic. I can even exclude keywords that I don't want to see like -facebook or -etsy or whatever.
Over the years I have accumulated dozens of sites that are one-off sources of interesting or entertaining content - webcomics, tu
ISPs killed my website. (Score:4, Interesting)
I started hosting my own website with Southwestern Bell DSL way back in the day.
I later did it on my TimeWarner cable.
I've done it a couple of times since then, but every modern ISP blocks outbound web ports in the bridge device or elsewhere and makes full use of your IP address difficult at best.
I don't have a website anymore because I got tired of the work-arounds. I'm considering using IPNS with DNS. Yeah, it's a work around and it's old-fashioned static HTML, but at least I can put SOMETHING up there.
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I used to fight that battle, but eventually went to something like Pikapods for cheap application hosting, Linode, Amazon LightSail, or similar for a platform. Mainly between having to ask the ISP to unblock incoming stuff, CG-NAT, and all the other stuff. I can always use autoSSH and a VM on a cloud provider with a static IP address to allow connections internally, or use some other connection broker service like TailScale, but why bother.
Social media is the new ... (Score:2)
... improved website. Every cool kid had a website and the quality was lost in the quantity. I have a website I created in 1991 that has gone dormant. The site featured my photographs and visits were small because the interweb was saturated with photography sites.
Now, I can post on my Facebook, or Facebook Groups for photographers and all that. Exposure is maximum and SEO doesn't apply.
I see a disruptive inversion where a single site lost in a sea of sites is now one site that distributes my work to all who
Social Media Ate the Web. (Score:2)
Now it's about influencers and people following you. it's a bunch of BS, but when $$ are involved , it screws everything up. I for one can't wait for the Social Media Crash. All the money dries up for these influencers and they have to find a real job. Interviewer:"Tell me sir what experience do you have over the last 5 years?" Taking pictures and vids of my every move and posting them on Twitter/instagram/youtube etc. Oh yeah and the dic pics. Interviewer: "Most of those sites are gone, and youtub
Re:Old people always nostalgic (Score:5, Funny)
OLD PEOPLE: Yeah, but do the TikToks make you HAPPY?
YOUNG PEOPLE: Well... only fleetingly, we must admit. Did the websites make YOU happy?
OLD PEOPLE: Well... only fleetingly.
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Old people end up taking over every social media "service". Including TikTok.
Regardless - TFA's premise seems specious.
Re:Old people always nostalgic (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, but do the TikToks make you HAPPY?
The goal of TikTok is to keep you watching as long as possible and make you feel anxious of missing out on the 'next big thing'. The pressure to keep up and conform and keep watching is so strong, and they have psychologists and researchers working hard to make it more addictive and keep you on longer...very different from browsing through some dancing chipmunks and BBQ recipes.
vs the government... (Score:2)
The government: TikTok is a datamining minefield.
Of course which government is open for debate.
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Old people: Everything was better before, the world of Tiktoks is crap.
Young people: Love TikTok, bye grandpa
Fast-forward 40 years:
Old people: Everything was better when people used TikTok, it was fun and when you looked up you still connected with other people, it was real.
Young people (multitasking from within brain-wired-VR with "orgasm mode" enabled 24/7/365): k
Re:Old people always nostalgic (Score:4, Interesting)
The 'new internet' is incredibly fleeting. That's the problem I have with it. There's no way to cite it or save it, it's designed to be transient.
Unless it's on a news feed, you're likely to never see it again. Things get memory holed instantly.
Compare that to the 'old internet' where you've got a persistent archive of things going back... decades, as the case is with Slashdot.
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All of my grandparents did. And my best friend's parents managed this too. So unless you're really young, I think all of those people were around during your lifetime. Maybe you didn't know anyone who did, or maybe you did and a person's education and job wasn't something you discussed.
And technically those who work a trade would have not gone to college, but it's debatable if that fits the definition of having nothing more than a high school diploma, since an apprenticeship or trade school is more even if
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They look for a Facebook page or a Twatter account.
Which has a link in the bio to their website so you can buy their shit.
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How would searching for a social media account help someone looking for information about a company?
Won't you just find a feed of recent short messages from the company? How's that going to get you any information to act on?
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