Sums up my experience growing up

[gbargoud@masto.nyc]

@ilovecomputers

I was actually talking to my cousins about this the other day, a lot of people in our generation (Millennials but also Gen X and older Gen Z) were using the Internet before all of the really bad dark patterns were added in so we got them at a trickle rate and could develop defenses for some of them as they got more refined

How can we replicate that slow creep for kids now so that they can also build up their defenses instead of getting hit hard while unprepared?

[creatures@chitter.xyz]

@ilovecomputers every good library eventually must burn

[wannabekingpin@mstdn.games]

@ilovecomputers we should've seen the signs when it got harder to filter chronologically, and then outright impossible. they told you algo knows better what to give you. when's the last time, outside Masto, you've seen a post with zero likes, fresh out of the poster's mind?... because I can't find any (unless among follows, sometimes) on any other damn social media.

tl;dr #yeah

[suedioh@mastodon.social]

@ilovecomputers Don't buy the pulp. Your clicks are like dollars; don't give them away for nothing.
We all need to spend time away from the machines, myself included.

[bweller@mstdn.social]

@ilovecomputers speaking of cutting up good paper to sell back as pulp...

you think you're making a joke, but this is how International Paper gets the recycled percentage they claim. they send pallets of new reams by the truckload to be broken open and rebaled as consumer waste, which is then sold back to them for a small fee.

[savvyhomestead@mastodon.social]

@ilovecomputers

It is really an old story. Money doesn't just talk it dictates.

Using the propaganda model...news businesses favoring profit over the public interest succeed, whilst those favoring reportorial accuracy over profits fail — and are relegated to the margins of their markets (low sales and ratings).

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent:_The_Political_Economy_of_the_Mass_Media)

[hypolite@friendica.mrpetovan.com]

@bweller This sounds both terrifying and a familiar behavior, I'm curious about this process, would you have a source at hand? For reasons exposed in the original post, I'm afraid a web search won't cut it.

[apz@some.apz.fi]

@ilovecomputers This hits home hard, as I for with almost anything, from programming to learning Linux and all, there was very little resources in the early 90s. After learning the first steps of Linux from a booklet that came with the Walnut Creek CDROMs, it was almost insane that 5 years later you could just use Altavista to find help for your problems and discover someone's Geocities site on how to put Linux in a certain laptop and have all the devices working.

My distaste for the current state of the Internet is very hard to put in words without it being mostly swearing. I also mourn the death of actual web sites and how all the nuggets of information are nowdays social media posts, that do not get archived the same way as bare web sites were. SEO gives me the most unadulterated feelings of rage as it makes web search completely pointless chore.

If things weren't bad enough, the LLM generated web sites may start as a promising lead on something, but need to be quickly scanned through first so they don't end up just being pointless suggestions that end with "if things won't work for you, buy our Wonder Repair product".

[bweller@mstdn.social]

@hypolite nope, because I'm a primary source

i did this for them*, at a company they hired

as in, i could testify in court and discovery would show my employment and records would show the loads we took in and out

*i wasnt management, and I only worked there briefly

[albinanigans@blackqueer.life]

@mutkitta

https://ourfavoritevoid.club/directory is a webring for smolweb peeps that like to blog (or like black cats, or both)! Check out some of the folx there! We've also an old-school phpbb forum, but unfortunately would probably not qualify for your definition of "active."

https://32bit.cafe is just fantastic, too. Lots of tutorials and smallweb denizens to connect with.

@triptych @ilovecomputers

[illudium_q36@woof.group]

@ilovecomputers - When Yahoo bought Geocities for the sole purpose of shutting it down, that's when I knew it was over.

[light@noc.social]

@ilovecomputers
But the library of Alexandria still exists.
And social media is toxic whether it's algorithmic or not (source: fedi).

[light@noc.social]

@sarajw
Adding to this: https://ooh.directory/
@mutkitta @triptych @ilovecomputers

[shellsharks@shellsharks.social]

@mutkitta @triptych @ilovecomputers Here’s a ton of resources for discovering indieweb stuff out there on the web - https://shellsharks.com/indieweb. Happy surfing!

[hawthornbunny@equestria.social]

@ilovecomputers Come to Project Gemini, we have ASCII art

[yora@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@ilovecomputers And the reason for all of this is "Monetization".

Things used to be different because people put stuff on the internet because they wanted other people to see it, not to sell it.

[ilovecomputers@xoxo.zone]

@sarajw @mutkitta @triptych the first issue cover of good internet zine is pretty apt

[kallisti@infosec.exchange]

@ilovecomputers

People using their real names and faces
Governments wanting to control it
Corporations flooding it

Just a few things from the top of my head that made it all go to shit
It was certainly a group effort

[amazing_ces@mastodon.social]

@ilovecomputers I feel this in every fiber of my being. I weep for every generation that has come after me that they will never know the peace of just getting to be without being tracked, monetized and fed into a perpetual rage machine.

[ilovecomputers@xoxo.zone]

Andrew Wooldridge ⛰️ (@triptych@social.lol)

@ilovecomputers@xoxo.zone I feel like the core of what we loved about the internet is there - it's hiding in chat rooms, little closed member forums, hand crafted websites. It's not gone, just harder to see, but if you dig through the muck, you find yourself in a small meadow with a few other folks who might share with you something good.

social.lol (social.lol)

To be less of a downer, I want to pin this reply thread on this post as it contains links to indie websites and communities that continue to live on. It’s not just nostalgia; even amongst the next generation, there’s growing enthusiasm for slow tech.