Invasive tracking and pay-for-play search engines has broken the internet. It’s time to reclaim our independence with the Small Web.

  • MudMan@fedia.io
    811·
    3 days ago

    Who is “we”?

    Technoactivists can’t even get people to use free software when it works and there’s like five of us over here in AP land.

    Who is out there willing to create a movement to go back to navigating an page index or a webring? In what universe? Multiple governments freaked out about TikTok because the data was going to the bad spies they didn’t like and they STILL couldn’t get people off TikTok and into anywhere else.

    I mean, if you have a time machine I’d happily blow up Skynet and tell 90s communication scholars that they were right about every single thing they were saying about search engines and algorithmic content, but that genie got out of the bottle, regained his freedom from the kindly street rat-turned-prince with his third wish and is halfway through Disney World by now.

    • Vittelius@feddit.orgEnglish
      15·
      3 days ago

      For a lot of people it’s not even “going back”. They are either to young to have experienced the old web or did but bounced of it. There is a sizeable group of people out there, who went online for the first time not despite facebooks privacy invasive profile building but because of it.

      Lemmys default web UI doesn’t have a endlessly loading newsfeed. That’s a intentional design decision to help users spend less time on the platform. Because spending to much time on social media is bad for your mental health. So having friction points is a good thing.

      Except the competition doesn’t do that. So what is your average social media addict to do when they hit a friction point? They won’t close the browser. Instead they will go back to the commercial platforms.

      Some people like junk food. But creating addictive social media yourself isn’t a good option either

      • MudMan@fedia.io
        5·
        3 days ago

        You’re not wrong.

        The biggest caveat I’d have is that social media with a friction point is still bad. The negative effects of the whole thing are fundamental to the types of interactions it fosters. Even purely direct messaging applications can and will generate a lot of the same results.

        And I would even argue there was no Web 1.0. Back in the webring days I was already in IRC and Usenet was a thing. The only reason it seems healthier from a distance is that fewer people were doing it. Get back to that tech with the same user counts we have now and you have the exact same thing. Just with more ASCII art and fewer AI filters, I guess.

      • MudMan@fedia.io
        23·
        3 days ago

        Oh, man it’s been ages. I’m talking being in high school and having teachers talk to me about this. And then being in uni and having it be a thing people argued about.

        I do not have any of the papers on hand or even remember the authors or names. The idea that algorithmic searches would create a bubble of self-selected media and erode a sense of shared reality isn’t new, though. We’re talking mid-90s here. People were arguing this about Altavista.

      • tarknassus@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        3 days ago

        Sherry Turkle’s book “Life on the Screen” was an amazing read back in 1997

        The blurb:

        Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet is a book not about computers, but about people and how computers are causing us to reevaluate our identities in the age of the Internet. We are using life on the screen to engage in new ways of thinking about evolution, relationships, politics, sex, and the self. Life on the Screen traces a set of boundary negotiations, telling the story of the changing impact of the computer on our psychological lives and our evolving ideas about minds, bodies, and machines. What is emerging, Turkle says, is a new sense of identity—as decentered and multiple. She describes trends in computer design, in artificial intelligence, and in people’s experiences of virtual environments that confirm a dramatic shift in our notions of self, other, machine, and world. The computer emerges as an object that brings postmodernism down to earth.

        A good look at the sociology and psychology of the early internet and how it has potential to impact in both positive and negative ways.

      • lasers4eyes@piefed.socialEnglish
        4·
        3 days ago

        I wasn’t around back then, but people like Oscar Gandy and Dan Schiller were open critics of personal data and centralization. Maybe that gives you a good lead.