The Slow Death of the Hyperlink (halifaxexaminer.ca) 40
The decline of journalism has been attributed to many factors, from slow adaptation to the internet to the dominance of tech giants in advertising. But a veteran journalist offers a new perspective: the death of the hyperlink could be changing the fundamental nature of the internet, with significant implications for the news industry. Matt Pearce: There is a real bias against hyperlinking that has developed on platforms and apps over the last five years in particular. It's something that's kind of operating hand-in-hand with the rise of algorithmic recommendations. You see this on Elon Musk's version of Twitter, where posts with hyperlinks are degraded. Facebook itself has decided to detach itself from displaying a lot of links. That's why you get so much AI scum on Facebook these days. Instagram itself has always been kind of hostile to linking. TikTok as well...
If you degrade hyperlinks, and you degrade this idea of the internet as something that refers you to other things, you instead have this stationary internet where a generative AI agent will hoover up and summarize all the information that's out there, and place it right in front of you so that you never have to leave the portal... That was a real epiphany to me, because the argument against one form of this legislation was, "My God, you'll destroy this fundamental way of how the internet works." I'm like, dude, these companies are already destroying the fundamental way of how the internet works.
[...] If you look at what technology has done to journalism over the last 10 years, it was journalists who figured out how to make Twitter work for them. It was journalists who figured out how to be really good on Instagram and Tik Tok. I know there's this argument about content creators and versus journalists, but I'm like, we're all in the same ecosystem. If you're performing the functions of a journalist, you're a journalist. Some people are really good on different platforms. But it's hard to imagine a scenario where Google is going to be the party that creates a more humane, intelligent, responsive form of journalism.
If you degrade hyperlinks, and you degrade this idea of the internet as something that refers you to other things, you instead have this stationary internet where a generative AI agent will hoover up and summarize all the information that's out there, and place it right in front of you so that you never have to leave the portal... That was a real epiphany to me, because the argument against one form of this legislation was, "My God, you'll destroy this fundamental way of how the internet works." I'm like, dude, these companies are already destroying the fundamental way of how the internet works.
[...] If you look at what technology has done to journalism over the last 10 years, it was journalists who figured out how to make Twitter work for them. It was journalists who figured out how to be really good on Instagram and Tik Tok. I know there's this argument about content creators and versus journalists, but I'm like, we're all in the same ecosystem. If you're performing the functions of a journalist, you're a journalist. Some people are really good on different platforms. But it's hard to imagine a scenario where Google is going to be the party that creates a more humane, intelligent, responsive form of journalism.
The slow death of Twitter (Score:1)
The overall premise may or may not be true... but using Musk's arbitrary and capricious whims as an example of what's trending is probably not a great choice.
Re:The slow death of Twitter (Score:5, Insightful)
In this case, it's a strong example. Each of the social media sites is trying to keep their viewers INSIDE the walled garden. If a user clicks a link and goes outside the site, then that's less time for them to sell the viewers' eyeballs to companies placing ads.
The big shift has been social media sites of all kinds going from "links are fine," to "put an intermediary 'warning' page to scare the reader about how they're going outside the site," to now just outright refusing to show posts that have links.
Re:The slow death of Twitter (Score:4, Interesting)
But social media sites and the internet itself are not the same. This article is about the "decline of journalism", using the worst social media site, and one of the smallest, as an example just demonstrates the real decline of journalism, a total lack of concern with the story and the employment of the unqualified. The internet presents garbage as journalism for profit. That's the real problem, not what Leon Musk does.
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But social media sites and the internet itself are not the same.
Is it though? I mean sure we know that to be true, but from an average dumb user perspective what is the internet if not a collection of Facebook posts of TikTok feeds. You don't have to look far to find that these platforms effective *ARE* the internet to a lot of people. These sites are gatekeepers to the content of the internet - not forced, but rather through addiction and algorithmic capture.
Re: The slow death of Twitter (Score:2)
Forget Twitter, this is the bigger issue:
But it's hard to imagine a scenario where Google is going to be the party that creates a more humane, intelligent, responsive form of journalism.
Governments putting google in charge of making sure that journalism is funded is a fucking terrible idea, yet this is exactly what governments around the world are asking for when they make mandatory licensing agreements between Google and news publishers.
Oh you're not on Google's good side? Well fuck you, not only are you not getting paid, we're not even going to link to you either so nobody will ever know that you even exist.
Google killed it first (Score:5, Insightful)
I call Facebook "Meta[stasize]" now. (Score:3)
"That's why you get so much AI scum on Facebook these days. Instagram itself has always been kind of hostile to linking."
Hence part of the reasons I call it "Meta[stasize]" now.
Journalistic Ignorance (Score:1)
I do not understand this idea that the hyperlink is dying. The hyperlink is the basis of the Web; without it the Web is a mass of separate files without a link among them.
It is obvious that whoever wrote that article has no clue what the hyperlink is for, but if hyperlinks do not work for journalists, then they have themselves, and themselves alone, to blame for their ignorance.
Also,what the **** are journalists still doing in X at all?
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All rather amusing, I don't use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or - originally because of their hyperlink munging - Google Search.
DuckDuckGo serves up the links as they should be, although they use Bing and that means a fair proportion of the links go through msn.com. Since msn.com no longer works with my browser, I either survive on the 4-6 lines of text DDG serves up or I look at other links.
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The hyperlink is the basis of the Web; without it the Web is a mass of separate files without a link among them.
And the author claims it will be AI deciding what content to present you with. After all, AI knows what you want better than website authors.
As far as I'm concerned, the death of the Internet began with login requirements because as we all know, a site isn't worth anything if advertisers don't know who you are. Not all too surprising, these same login forced sites are also the worst abusers of JavaScript.
I wishfully hope client side AI might bring back the possibility of finding websites that respect priv
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I'd have to say that it is actually you who must be ignorant of what a hyperlink is then...
It has been happenning for a long time, but EVERY place wants you to STAY in their place. Google search showing snippets, Facebook showing previews of links, then adding their own click tracking info to any links posted, and then just opening links inside of Facebook.. Twitter popularized link shortening services, The rise in popularity of video (TikTok, etc.) which make linking difficult, or at least buried in a link
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I still send plain old text emails.
Same. I still use Alpine, too. Works fabulously.
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Been happening since AOL...the original walled garden. This isn't a problem. If most people are only on a few pages, so what. The other pages still exist and if you want to utilize them, they will be there.
Like a lot of things in life, people change what sites they tend to visit over there lifetime. A lot like where we go shopping as we get older. As you acquire new hobbies, you find new websites and offline stores that support it.
Today is TikTok. Who knows what tomorrow will bring. TikTok wasn't even a thi
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Journalists have always used Twitter...because they are lazy.
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They only meant that 'hyperlinks that point to outside domains' and in particular 'for contents posted on social networks'.
Culturally reflective (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it's reflective of where we are as a culture, a society. We were a much more open, high trust society in the early years of the Internet. The idea of an open internet has been slowly dying since then, with more walled gardens popping up. We're going back to a "pre-internet" way of gathering information, in part due to the hostility towards things like so-called "misinformation" (alternative viewpoints and inconvenient facts). Nobody trusts the other sources of information, they pick what they trust and - evidence be damned - stick with what they've got.
Re:Culturally reflective (Score:5, Insightful)
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You can take the quotes off misinformation. There's a lot of deceptive, lie-based, agenda-driven content out there, and even the legitimate stuff happily amplifies it without context or critique to get clicks.
Re:Culturally reflective (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with the sentiment, but add a semantic quibble: You can also put the quotes right back on, because it's not "misinformation". Usually it's straight-up disinformation.
"Mis-" implies that there's some sort of accident involved. Though I suppose you might get some misinformation as backscatter from dimwitted idiots ("dimwitiots") semi-reading and then repeating the disinformation they've heard, with the inevitable distortions that come with intellectual laziness and an indifference to the truth.
Some of this stuff is so foully insulting to the intelligence that I feel justified in changing the I to a Y, and call it "dysinformation".
Re:Culturally reflective (Score:4, Insightful)
It appears you know nothing about a "pre-internet" way of "gathering information" and your preferred source is Kelly Anne Conway.
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Eh, the number of people online today compared to the late 90s is vastly different as well. The masses were not online yet. We have pretty much everything from the 90s, plus a bunch more social network sites for the masses to enjoy.
So umm, what is there to go back to? You can still host your own little website and forum. I still occasionally visit these individual sites for various hobbies. Sure, reddit has communities, but nothing says you can't go build your hobby site. Tell your friends and network at in
Also, video (Score:5, Insightful)
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It is awfully hard to put a hyperlink in a video and unfortunately people have stopped reading in favor of just passively watching.
It's extra irritating when they watch those videos in public.
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It is awfully hard to put a hyperlink in a video
Actually it's super easy. If you want to find out how, check out my other video. The link to it is in the description below. *points down*.
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HAHA!
This is not news. (Score:2)
Sites have been deliberately avoiding outbound links since audience-based revenue streams arrived on the Internet.
That was a long fucking time ago now.
Everyone wants to be compuserve... again. (Score:4, Interesting)
Compuserve and AOL wanted to be the single place everyone went for information. Now Google and others want to do that with AI... which will have the effect of reducing people to obedient slaves to whatever AI says.
We need look no further than the Post Office Horizon scandal [wikipedia.org] to see where blind trust of "the computer" leads. In the past, linking meant you could verify resources, understand the limitations and exceptions of an argument, and become better informed about the subject matter at hand. And, if you had questions, you could often email the author directly.
AI summaries do away with all of that. They tend to polarize and drive people toward simplistic, jingoist, extreme views. The same tendency of overgeneralization - which lies at the root of sexism, racism, etc... - are magnified by AI summaries. And, if any of the major players working on AI are to be trusted, AI is socially harmful. We don't need an angrier, dumber, misinformed populace. Rather, we need the opposite - a population that can understand not only their own positions, but the perspectives of peoples in different positions.
I guess I was fortunate to have been raised in a time when teachers encouraged us to think for ourselves; if Big AI has its way, we'll all hold the same positions, and we won't be able to think at all without The Machine.
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We don't need an angrier, dumber, misinformed populace. Rather, we need the opposite - a population that can understand not only their own positions, but the perspectives of peoples in different positions.
I guess I was fortunate to have been raised in a time when teachers encouraged us to think for ourselves; if Big AI has its way, we'll all hold the same positions, and we won't be able to think at all without The Machine.
There was some big event a few years ago. People were being mocked for doing their own research and coming to their own conclusions. The world is a wild place.
It's the rise of walled gardens, nothing is dying. (Score:1)
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The only thing i've been able to figure out is to keep ahead of them by doing different technologies. They eventually catch up, but many years can be bought that way.
"Functions of a journalist?" (Score:2)
> If you're performing the functions of a journalist,
> you're a journalist
Except that the narcissistic brats that are the instagram/tiktok "influencer" mob are absolutely *NOT* performing the functions of a journalist. FFS... it's right there in the name those people chose for themselves: "influencer." Now, you may make the case that those people are aspiring to be "pundits" or "commentators" or the like, sure. But journalists are supposed to INFORM, not INFLUENCE. The insta/tiktok kids are litera
Um (Score:1)
Um ... mainstream media is the absolute worst at not using hyperlinks. Yes, the others are bad, but newspaper websites are among the worst offenders.
Strip-mall-ification of the Internet (Score:2)
Nope. It's commercial services ... (Score:2)
... and walled gardens, that don't want external links or egalitarian syndication (that would be Google preventing that).
I see perhaps some room for some serious groundwork for a handful of new protocols and perhaps a new standard of browser and the accompanying markup.
HTML is historically grown, could use a redo. RSS could use a revival. DNS definitely is broken, with a fix now overdue some 3 decades or so. Cryptography and E-Mail are another candidate from the dawn of time that could use a serious redo. B
Um... (Score:2)
You see this on Elon Musk's version of Twitter, where posts with hyperlinks are degraded.
Actually, I don't. I don't see things on that version of Twitter. I stopped going there long ago.
can't wait (Score:2)
If hyperlinks go away then so do social media sites. I can't wait.