
The four ways that ex-internet idealists explain where it all went wrong - jesperht
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611805/the-four-ways-that-ex-internet-idealists-explain-where-it-all-went-wrong/
======
MichaelMoser123
The tragedy of the commons is another explanation
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons)
you have a common playground where some players start to spam the mailing
list/newsgroup/discussion board for their own benefit, this destroys the
commons as more spammers join in. Eventually you need moderators and
centralisation, now the policeman tends to have an agenda of his own - and the
common ground has been appropriated. Where is the new element in that? Self
regulation works in small groups but it all breaks down when the group is
larger than a village.

~~~
syshum
Centralisation is the problem on the internet today, not a solution.

What we need is MASSIVE decentralization, and open protocols,.

------
adriand
This reads like an article that got half-written before the author said, "fuck
it" or ran out of time. The first half is excellent but it gets shaky with
"The Hopeful", then falls apart in "The Revisionists" with what sounds like ad
copy for a design agency. The worst part is the ending: there isn't one.

It's a shame because I feel like there's a whole article lurking in there
somewhere, with some interesting ideas underpinning it.

------
sarcasmic
I grew up with a web where labor-of-love personal websites -- often about a
deep topic the author was passionate about -- were slowly crowded out in
number by dynamic blogs where the engine handled all but the content, and the
barrier to entry of sharing personal details was lowered. Correspondingly, the
depth of the material got more shallow, but the breadth of it got wider.

This transition was happening as commercial ventures first moved beyond sites
that were mere billboards, individuals began reading news portals and opening
webmail accounts, and communities like phpBB and vBulletin forums flourished
as pseudonymous, do-it-yourself takes on newsgroups of old. Aggressive
moderation typically kept the conversation in check.

There were corners of the web where moderation was shallow, and some of these
places achieved notoriety for being cesspits of depravity, and eventually,
hate. The depravity was authentic. But there was an air of privileged bravado
about the hate, where its expression was used as a shibboleth to an in-group
more so than an authentic expression of beliefs. If you were a true hater,
finding other true haters was not a trivial task.

Early social networks were pseudonymous. It wasn't until Facebook's meteoric
rise that it became mainstream and commonplace to put one's real name next to
one's off-the-cuff words online. Ten years of Facebook moved the Overton
window quite a bit, and now there's a set of people who aren't afraid to bare
their cards, or of doxxing and reprisal. And now, they too have tools to build
online communities of their own and find like-minded people on the web rather
than in person, regardless of the popularity and acceptance of the views they
hold.

Meanwhile, e-commerce is now everywhere, and so is content and services that
can be consumed with no upfront cost. Both of these are supplemented by
adtech-like schemes that harvest and correlate user behavior. Despite real
harm having occurred from these practices, jurisdictions have been slow to
regulate them for many reasons: ineptitude, lobbying, corruption, and
ineffectiveness in enforcing regulations in a global, dynamic, resilient
system. Shady, underground actors and mainstream actors alike will continue
these practices until widespread, debilitating user backlash, or widespread
regulation puts and end to them. If they are regulated, only ruthless actors
will engage in this behavior: trolls, stalkers, profiteers, and intelligence
services.

~~~
adventured
> I grew up with a web where labor-of-love personal websites -- often about a
> deep topic the author was passionate about -- were slowly crowded out in
> number by dynamic blogs...

The labor-of-love deep topic authors came to entirely dominate across the
board.

They sit at the top of every single search result, under the Wikipedia.org
domain.

They moved from writing in-depth on their personal blogs/sites, to writing
epic volumes on a site like Wikipedia instead. A place where that vast
glorious compilation of human knowledge can easily be shared with all in a
quite friendly non-profit, non-soul-eating sort of way (ie the anti-Facebook
sort of way). I don't have to get lucky browsing around or dig for hours to
find their obscure topic content there, I just conveniently type words into a
search box or click one page to the next. No filtering through tons of trash
results or in-result ads on Google to find decent quality content.

~~~
DuskStar
And then other people arrived on Wikipedia and decided that five-page articles
on every single character in the Star Wars extended universe (pre-Disney)
weren't desirable, and deleted them.

~~~
Joeri
This is a real problem for future historians. Prior ages kept records of what
they deemed important, but failed to document the mundane, which makes it hard
to reconstruct today how people lived back then. The same problem is posed by
wikipedia. Some of the content being filtered out as irrelevant may prove
important to understanding the flow of history in 500 years. We can’t know
today what will be important and what won’t be.

That’s why archive.org may be a far more useful compendium of human knowledge
than wikipedia.

------
sp332
Aza Raskin, a pioneer of infinite scrolling, also has regrets about the effect
the design has on users.
[https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/technology-44640959](https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/technology-44640959)

~~~
rapnie
Aza Raskin is one of the co-founders of The Center for Humane Technology [0]
which aims to 'Realign technology to humanity's best interests'

[0] [https://humanetech.com](https://humanetech.com)

~~~
newsbinator
> Unfortunately, what's best for capturing our attention isn't best for our
> well-being:

> * Snapchat turns conversations into streaks, redefining how our children
> measure friendship.

> * Instagram glorifies the picture-perfect life, eroding our self worth.

> * Facebook segregates us into echo chambers, fragmenting our communities.

> * YouTube autoplays the next video within seconds, even if it eats into our
> sleep.

> These are not neutral products.

> They are part of a system designed to addict us.

------
Synaesthesia
As Chomsky put it, in the mid 90’s, the internet was handed over to private
corporations for their own use, mostly commerce. It’s now even more in the
hands of private power, with net neutrality being gone.

------
ashleyn
I mean, George Carlin said this best. Garbage in, garbage out. Maybe something
else sucks around here...like the public.

Before this decade, the Internet was by and large an aristocracy of liberal,
competent tech workers discussing their career and their interests. Today,
it's been democratised enough to allow your racist aunt to ramble on Facebook
about how Obama is actually an alien born on Pluto, sent to America to destroy
Christianity. The remaining escapes on the Internet devoid of this are
vanishing.

We tend to worship democratising institutions without considering whether or
not the people recieving these new powers are capable of handling them with
the correct values, motivations, and competencies. The Internet has given too
much to those who are not curious about the world or have a serious interest
in improving it. Like anything else we lose hope on, it will never change
until those using it change.

~~~
anonytrary
> We tend to worship democratising institutions without considering whether or
> not the people recieving these new powers are capable of handling them with
> the correct values, motivations, and competencies.

Who exactly are the right people to be using technology? How do they decide
what constitutes correct values, motivations and competencies? Your sentiment
seems to carry a lot of hubris behind it. The world is just not that simple.

> The Internet has given too much to those who are not curious about the world
> or have a serious interest in improving it.

This sounds like a generic pretentious sentiment. What are you exactly trying
to say? Because I'm pretty sure that widespread access to the internet has
resulted in an overwhelming net good for the world, allowing people to learn
more and do more than ever before.

~~~
DennisAleynikov
the tech is rarely the issue at scale. When almost everyone uses something you
run into the same problems you get from any crowd. traffic, deviancy and abuse
of resources. humans are animals and we need to keep that in mind for when we
expect large groups of them to act like anything but a herd

~~~
anonytrary
> humans are animals and we need to keep that in mind for when we expect large
> groups of them to act like anything but a herd

Then it is equally foolish to assume that humans are capable of shepherding
each other. Either every human is an animal, or none of them are. Which
animals get to decide how the rest of the animals use something in the world?
It's not as easy as it seems. Finding "clever" ways of partitioning people is
a recipe for disaster.

~~~
imartin2k
Well, humans are the only animal which is able to actually act against its
animal nature. But this requires work, education, self-awareness. Acceptance
and understanding of one’s cognitive biases. Not everyone on the internet is
acting equally destructive. But possibly at this point in collective human
evolution, people (on average) maybe are not ready for the internet.

~~~
anonytrary
> Well, humans are the only animal which is able to actually act against its
> animal nature.

Think about this some more, it doesn't actually make sense. There are aspects
of humans we can differentiate between other species, but there exists no
subset of behaviors amongst humans that are non-animalistic. It's a
contradiction.

~~~
imartin2k
I don’t see what you mean. If certain patterns of behavior characterize 99,9 %
of the animal species, and if humans are the only species which is able to
deliberately act in a way which 99,9 % of the animal species can’t/won’t, then
describing this as “non-animalistic” behavior is very practical to use for the
topic at hand, and not a contradiction, in my opinion. Because this is what
sets humans apart from all animal species.

~~~
aluren
>certain patterns of behavior characterize 99,9 % of the animal species

There is no such thing. Unless you mean very basic things like eating and
sleeping, and that's not even certain.

Also, every species has its own idiosyncracies that no one else does. The idea
that humans somehow 'arose' through evolution atop the masses of the mindless
animal kingdom is a bit quaint.

------
api
This is fairly shallow. It doesn't really explain why surveillance and
manipulation became the dominant business models of the Internet.

I think the culprit is "free." Everything has to be "free." As a result, some
indirect means must be found to pay for it. The most convenient model is to
turn it around and make the user the product. Use free services to attract
users, then surveil and manipulate those users for paying customers --
advertisers, governments, intelligence agencies, think tanks, etc.

~~~
ukyrgf
"Free" worked for me 10-20 years ago. There was the old "if you aren't paying
for it, then you are the product" adage. Now, even if you pay, you are being
sold.

~~~
disqard
Fair point, but there are _some_ exceptions. For instance, the Atlantic's
Masthead subscription gives you ad-free access to their audio podcasts.

Overall, I agree with you: once I _am_ a paying subscriber of NYT (say), why
should I be served the same ads as a non-subscriber viewing the same article
in an incognito window?

------
sandov
Both optimists and pessimists were right. The Internet is the most powerful
tool we have to spread knowledge, but it's also the most powerful one to
spread bullshit. If you hang around smart people you'll get positive effects
from the internet, if you are an idiot or hang around idiots, you'll get crap.
Author seems to be of the second kind.

~~~
krapp
Yeah... to me this is like complaining that the printing press was a bad idea
because it was once only used to publish scholarship and now it's mostly
coffee table books and pulp fiction.

------
blindgeek
"Even boosters now seem to implicitly accept the assumption (accurate or not)
that the internet is the root of multiple woes, from increasing political
polarization to the mass diffusion of misinformation."

I certainly don't accept that the Internet is the root of increasing political
polarization. It's nothing new. Ever heard of the Nika Riots? Polarization is
a story as old as time, Internet or no Internet.

On the other hand, top-down culture is breaking down on account of the
Internet. How many people watch the CBS Evening News anymore? There was, in
the minds of American "thought leaders", a sort of cultural consensus. It
doesn't exist anymore, never mind that it was probably always more myth than
reality. The facade is being shattered, and a lot of folks are running scared,
blaming the newest technology for their woes.

There are ways out of the crises we face, but neither blaming the Internet for
our problems nor treating it as a panacea is one of them.

------
KarlRutnick
People get the leaders they deserve, they are only a reflection of the
population in general. No wonder it all went downhill when that collective
came online. And yet in that process things have changed for the better. The
old guard has to fight to preserve their hold on the narrative. Technology is
the great equaliser and really the only thing that changes externalities apart
from resources and nature in general. Externalities lead, then humanity
follow. Culture and finally politics adapt, the rest is just rationalisation.
I doubt this will change short of genetically altering ourselves. So if you
want to improve the world, forget politics. I remain hopefully because today
even just one person can write a piece of software and change the world

------
captainmuon
New, disruptive technologies "want" to change society. The problem is people
assumed that would happen automatically. What happened instead is that the
establishment insisted on keeping society the way it is, and managed to
shoehorn the new technologies into the old social molds.

Example: File sharing. This would easily make it possible to give everybody
access to all media for free. But artists (and entertainment industry workers)
need to be fed, and we apparently don't know how to do this without turning
music and videos into a commodity.

I would rather try to solve the general problem: How to feed somebody whose
labor is not required by society. But the obvious solutions to this would be
unconditional basic income, or communism, or something else people don't like.
Instead we invent DRM and pretend digitalization didn't happen.

Another example is cryptocurrency. Instead of bringing upon the
anarchocapitalist utopia/apocalypse, it just got regulated to hell in record
time.

We (as "hackers" / "tech people") should not blindly believe that disruptive
technology will bring upon social change by itself. Instead, people should
address the hard social and political problems directly. Don't ask what's the
next Uber, Bitcoin, Internet, but rather what's the next Democracy,
Capitalism, Enlightenment, ...

------
beerlord
As long as websites are funded based on eyeballs, this will continue.

We need to move to a model of micropayments, where I can pay a few cents
easily (and automatically) to visit a site or read an article. The total
amount could be aggregated monthly, like Patreon does.

------
paulsutter
Remember Geocities? Friendster? MySpace? Facebook is just another point in the
curve. And we’ll get there. Don’t panic.

The optimists are still right. These are all just growing pains while everyone
competes to find the right formula.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
You say "we'll get there"\--get _where?_ The curve you describe is sharply
descending at all points. I see no evidence that it's working around towards
something that's overall positive. You're right that everyone is competing to
find "the right formula," but they're trying to maximize profit, full stop.
They're not optimizing for anything related to the public good, except
incidentally.

~~~
paulsutter
Then look at the larger pattern of human history. It’s a little absurd to
suggest that the general directing of firearm progress has suddenly reversed.

~~~
paulsutter
That’s a crazy autotype - I meant human progress!

~~~
Proziam
I think I prefer the original version, actually. Made me chuckle.

------
zoomablemind
I wish the author pointed the spotlight at an increasing bloat of the general
Internet traffic.

Comparing to Internet early days we now have communication pipes of gigantic
bandwidth... yet somehow they get overrun, ISPs still peddle more bandwidth
for more coins.

Ratio of usable content to aux (scripting, ads, cosmetics) just keeps
dropping. The pages are not only byte heavy, they now CPU heavy (due to
scripting, SSL etc).

In retrospect, I'd rather wonder wheather the current __implementation__ of
Internet is the right one. Perhaps now one could envision an alternative
implementation, leaner, more secure (or less reliant on that), more
analog/human?

After all the base purpose for Internet was to connect computers, now it's
used to connect people lives.

------
zoomablemind
The article seems to narrow the scope of problem with Internet to its effects
on social dynamics. All means of communications held at some point the
manipulative powers over the socium (TV, newspapers etc.). New means will have
them too. So nothing to regret here.

Meanwhile, as technology Internet provided goods of wider access to knowledge,
should one needed it. Indeed, it also promoted the freedom of speech too,
should anyone needed to be heard!

It's just inevitable that Internet got saturated just as well, such that
signal-to-noise is below quality threshold. Same as your cable channels, or
bookstores back in the gone century.

So now people need either to devise a better selectivity or invent and use a
new clear channel. All of current 'social messngers' are effectively trying to
offer a clear channel.

