
The Gentrification of the Internet - jboynyc
http://culturedigitally.org/2019/03/the-gentrification-of-the-internet/
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joefourier
Isn't gentrification the opposite of what's been happening to the Internet?
Previously, only a small, well-educated minority was online, but now the
Internet has never been more accessible to the masses. With a cheap smartphone
and data, even rural Indians who make a fraction of the average person in the
West are able to have access to the Internet, while previously you need an
expensive computer, an expensive modem, and the required knowledge.

And let's not get into the cost of server and hosting, which have never been
so low.

~~~
sgillen
Author seems to use gentrification to describe a shift in power dynamics:
those who are on the internet now have more rules governing their behavior and
those in charge of the internet are now more interested in corporate profits
than the public good.

Now I disagree with using gentrification to describe that, and I don’t totally
agree with the authors point anyway, but I think that is what he’s trying to
say.

~~~
anfilt
Yea gentrification seems like the wrong term for sure.

Honestly, the most worrying though to me is Google. #1 search engine, #1
browser, #1 email provider, #1 mobile platform, #1 online video platform. The
concern is with all those places domination google can dictate de-facto
standards or push standards that they want.

Gone are the days that one person or small team could keep up and maintain all
the standards for a "modern browser". Microsoft even gave up.

~~~
skybrian
I don't think Microsoft gave up so much as shifted strategy. Building on
Chromium means they start out already compatible with most websites on the
Internet, neutralizing one of Google's advantages. They have enough resources
to maintain a fork and add their own features.

Google did the same thing starting with Safari's WebKit.

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tranced
It's pretty interesting how the author attempts to tie gentrification, caused
by real life constraints like supply+demand, to a corporate-backed internet
mono culture.

It's kind of a stretch since one of the causes of real-life gentrification is
protections for existing stakeholders, the lack of
change/adaptation(Friendster -> myspace -> FB for example), and an inherent
lack of supply(whereas on the internet there's a near infinite).

I'm not sure whether you can call this gentrification or rather the internet
being less of a niche sub culture + more mainstream or just attribute it to a
human tendency to self-segregate/put ourselves in our own bubbles.

Tbh, internet n/yimbyism doesn't really have too many effects besides
sanitization of content. Other message boards have names for it like noob or a
popular one where the word start with "old" or "new' after all.

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mistypedlambda
Neoclassical economics tells the story that algorithms drive differentiated
news and other content because different users seek different content out, and
the market obliges. This form of gentrification, like many other forms, is
generally downstream of an equilibrium around different preferences, whether
stated or just manifest. Given how many commerical forces shape the structure
of the internet as a marketplace of ideas, I don't think this is the only
thing going on, but I think it's ignored at one's peril.

> Platforms like reddit and 4chan still operate this [non-
> algorithmized/gentrified] way, but most social media platforms use existing
> IRL personal networks to link users and push content.

This passage in particular struck me as revealing. Reddit is a meta-community
with a notorious echochamber problem while 4chan is a meta-community with a
notorious troll/dirtbag problem. That the majority of internet users tend to
avoid both isn't due to unfair competition over their eyeballs from Facebook
et al. so much as an appetite for curation, content
accountability/surveillance, content differentiation, community standards, and
all the other forms of "online gentrification".

The same attitude that bemoans the existence of content differentation as a
cause of problems rather than a response to existing conditions that are far
harder to improve seems to drive the belief that the appetite for fake news
will evaporate if fake news is made harder to find. I consider both rather
wrong-headed.

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joemi
The Master Switch by Tim Wu describes this "gentrification" process (though
not with that term since it doesn't seem to be the best term for this).
Further, the book shows how it happens systematically whenever a new invention
initially leads to greater freedom. Radio, TV, etc have all suffered the same
fate. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in digital freedom, though
its message isn't exactly uplifting.

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fartcannon
The Eternal September.

------
emptyparadise
I miss the old internet.

Discovery and interaction were the big thing - meeting strangers in strange
places. Now, that's basically impossible because each site that you use is
designed with the goal of boxing you, keeping you where you are, talking to
people who are just like you, because that apparently makes the most money. So
now you'll pretty much always be stuck in an echo chamber into which only the
angriest, meanest crowds can break through.

You could really be anybody, try strange things and explore strange ideas -
and you did it all under an alias that you could just easily abandon if you
felt unsafe. No doxxing, because nobody knows your real name. Good luck
pulling that off now. The logging, the real name/email/phone requirements,
it's just not possible anymore. The combined might of sockpuppet abuse,
increasing complexity of bad actors' attacks, and the need for gathering real
customers' information took that away.

I miss the old internet. And I don't even know how it could have survived to
the present day. It makes sense why we entered the age of surveillance
capitalism. You give data, you get free stuff. It's simple. People love free
stuff, after all. But I wonder, did people even imagine that things would turn
out like this? I wonder, is there some sort of an alternate future where this
could be avoided? If things played out just a little differently?

What could save the old internet? Could it be the subscription-like model
where sites you visit get a few pennies from you? Could it be keeping things
decentralized, keeping the costs low enough to be manageable?

Or is this just it, is an internet that's this corporate-greed fueled quest to
gather more data and to show you more stuff the only way?

~~~
reciprocity
Small forums like that did a number of things that I feel we haven’t been able
to replicate. You got to know people over time. It wasn’t a feed you vaguely
subscribed to, but a forum (in literal definition of the word) that you chose
to participate in.

I often think about what probably defines a typical experience online for
people these days and I feel that the smaller and more cozy feeling of actual
community has been replaced by the digital equivalent of big box stores.
Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, Twitch, Netflix. Big corporate places with portals
and algorithms. I think it's safe to include reddit there now too with the
direction that site has been going in.

These aren’t necessarily bad things in and of themselves (aside from the
chasing of a world in which _nothing is left unplanned_), but I’m trying to
hone in on the idea that the sheer randomness of this medium has more or less
vaporized. The concept that anything and everything you do on the Internet
wasn’t aggressively being tracked and developed into digital profiles to be
traded, used, shared, and sold by ad companies and an array of other
organizations was a fart in the wind compared to what it’s like online today.
Websites simply didn’t have 5 megabytes+ (!) of Javascript whereas now you
need a half a dozen browser extensions to make the internet a halfway decent
thing to be on.

My hunch is that once upon a time, people (at least those that even had access
to it) had a kind of amateur desire of wanting to create an account at a
website (particularly a forum). Coming up on 2019, I think long and hard
before creating another account anywhere. There even was an expectation to
introduce yourself in some introduction subforum at many of these boards.

A theme that has become completely domineering is the inflated ego linked to
tribalism. I see people being so serious about everything; there can be no
reciprocal discussion about anything. "You're either with us or against us"
and other types of fallacy-addled thinking. I've also seen a lot of the kind
of lowbrow "edginess" caked in psuedo-ironic bottom of the barrel commentary
where people try to pass off low effort one liners as a means of scoring cheap
points with a crowd. And then there's also this brand of posting [0].

Usually this behavior has a negative effect associated with it as this kind of
driveby posting encourages more of itself at the expense of discussion.
Quality then decreases as people seek other sources of community (I think this
is what has been happening with reddit).

I think it’s probably trivial to dismiss this as nostalgia but I feel there
are some real truths to this. The Internet is something you had the choice of
actually logging off and disconnecting but today, everyone is constantly
connected. We are in the age of distraction and preoccupation. Think about it:
how many times have you picked up your (smart)phone purely out of reflex, not
even to check something with purpose? You see it everywhere in public,
certainly. The constant stream of brightly colored iconography, beeps, alerts,
buzzing, push/notifications, and beyond are endless. Everything demands your
attention, and it is never enough.

[0] [https://i.imgur.com/iYT5pPl.png](https://i.imgur.com/iYT5pPl.png)

~~~
Grangar
Wow, you knocked it out of the park. This is exactly how I feel about the
direction the internet, or maybe even western society as a whole, has been
going in over the last 10 years.

~~~
mjevans
It's been going this way for longer than 10 years if you look past the
Internet as the medium.

It might be possible to trace this back to the inception of the 24 hour news
networks if not earlier; that first taste of ad-fueled insanity, and the
modern terrorist attacks of (2001-0)9-11 on US soil sort of catalyzed the
trend. It really became solidly about fear and outrage, and the enfeeblement
of being unable to actually do anything to address that negative emotional
state.

A real solution is going to require the people as a whole to "grow up", to
take responsibility in the sense of breaking the cycles of fear, violence, and
greed. To instead focus on building a world where we all get better, and do
better overall, rather than individually getting enough and kicking the ladder
off for those that should follow.

