
‘The Internet Is Broken’: Ev Williams Is Trying to Salvage It - Vannatter
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/technology/evan-williams-medium-twitter-internet.html
======
Veen
Ev Williams is not trying to fix the web: he's trying to kill the web and to
replace it with his own vision of what it should be.

> We never realized the potential of it that we saw with blogging and the open
> Internet. In the next three years, it’s going to look massively different
> and it will do well.

> The idea won’t be to start a website. That will be dead. The individual
> website won’t matter. The Internet is not going to be about billions of
> people going to millions of websites. It will be about getting it from
> centralized websites.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2015/09/09/mediums-
ev...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2015/09/09/mediums-evan-
williams-to-publishers-your-website-is-toast/#6351c51c4dfc)

------
krapp
I'm sick of people deciding that the problem with the internet is other
people.

The internet isn't "broken." The internet is the only mass communication and
media paradigm which doesn't have to present a facade for the sake of
commercial interests, but an honest, unfiltered glimpse at the zeitgeist. It's
a mirror, an honest mirror. If we don't like what we see, it's because we had
a naive understanding of what we are.

~~~
weberc2
I agree. In particular, the NYT and other large media organizations seem to
talk as though the internet became abruptly disharmonious during the election.
It wouldn't be an NYT article of it didn't have "Trump supporters are evil"
undertones. Our country isn't going to get better if we are constantly
demonizing those with whom we disagree.

~~~
disantlor
what's an example of a trump supporters are evil? keep in mind that
demonstrating that someone is uninformed, perhaps willfully, is not the same
as evil.

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chongli
Unbearable read. Overflowing with intellectual elitism. Completely out of
touch with reality. If this is PR [0], Evan Williams should demand a refund. I
don't know, maybe this crap appeals to yuppies living in the coastal big
cities? Tools like Twitter and Facebook have done more to connect more people
of all income and education levels than anything else. Medium is not going to
reach these people, who don't read the New York Times, let alone frequent
quaint used bookstores.

Long form anything is going to continue being dead until we find a way to fix
society so that families don't have to spend every waking moment struggling to
pay the bills. All indications are that this problem will only accelerate as
automation wipes out more jobs, with self-driving cars and trucks at the
vanguard of this revolution. Stay tuned.

[0]
[http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

~~~
Veen
If we had this attitude --- nothing of greatness or substance or length will
be tolerated until everyone can have unfettered access to it --- we'd still be
living in caves. The future is always unevenly distributed. The solution is
not to demand everything stop until everyone is equal, but to make sure no one
is left behind in the long run.

Rejecting intellectual elitism is a huge mistake.

~~~
chongli
I have no problem with Medium existing for the people who have the time and
inclination to read it. I've enjoyed reading it myself. What raises my hackles
is the suggestion that it'll replace Twitter.

Edit: Please don't conflate intelligence with intellectual elitism. One is a
net good that is universally valued. The other is a form of patronizing and
dismissive behaviour that leads to political polarization.

------
skewart
> Mr. Williams — a Twitter founder, a co-creator of Blogger — set everyone
> free, providing tools to address the world. In the history of communications
> technology, it was a development with echoes of Gutenberg.

Uh, hmm, no. That's a bit too much of a stretch.

It's hard to take an article seriously after a claim like that.

~~~
soneca
Quotes (and subsequent commentary) on HN comments are a great way for me to
decide what to read or not. Yours is a great example of that, thanks for that.
I wont read it.

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stupidhn
Great phtograph of a beautiful kitchen, complete with a chef providing catered
lunches, captioned with a description of how the company had to lay off staff
because the company executives can't figure out how to make money. Perhaps
that should come before the chef? Why is it such a badge of pride to provide
perks on other people's dime? Silicon Valley in a nutshell.

~~~
dwrowe
I read the word "pivot" and later in the article, it mentions their raise and
valuation. It doesn't read like the layoff was money related, rather pivot
related.

------
skewart
It seems like everyone I know likes to hate on Medium - either because the
content is lousy or because the business model is broken. And yet, I end up
clicking on something that takes me to Medium on a weekly, if not daily,
basis.

Medium feels like it's ubiquitous and mildly despised at the same time.

At the scale of Comcast or Facebook that might be a sign of success. But I
suspect it's a pretty bad sign for a company in Medium's position, given what
they're trying to be.

------
dilemma
Medium's customer shouldn't be readers but publications. Medium should be a
new AP and sell content to publications around the world.

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jtraffic
I'm getting tired of people saying "the ____ is broken" for everything, and
always at the beginning of a pitch for a new vision of the world. I suppose
having an alternative is better than an empty critique, but the business
interest usually makes the new vision ring hollow to me.

~~~
dilemma
"* is broken" is the ultimate expression of a highly potent mixture of
ignorance and narcissism. It assumes that everyone but you is an idiot, that
the answer is simple, and that you have it.

~~~
weberc2
"Toxic" seems to be its moral equivalent, and it was also featured in this
article. This word gets thrown out when someone wants to call some other group
"evil", but the actual rationale invites too many parallels to be drawn to the
accuser's own tribe.

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bogomipz
I found the juxtaposition of these two statements odd:

>"Twitter is a hive of trolling and abuse that it seems unable to stop."

>"Then came Twitter, which wasn’t his idea but was his company. He remains the
largest individual shareholder and a board member."

Why is it - "it seems unable to stop" and not "we seem unable to stop"? Does
he really have no influence or power as an outsized share holder, board member
and founder of Twitter? He can't help fix that "broken" bit?

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employee8000
Silicon Valley season 3. I love how that TV show is skewering the entire
Valley and shows how ridiculously predictable we are.

------
Animats
Summary: the guys behind Twitter and Hot or Not created Medium to atone for
their sins.

------
BlackMonday
More like society is broken.

~~~
hk__2
…said someone somewhere pretty much every second since 3000 years.

~~~
hutzlibu
... even though there are indeed many broken society's all the time. Just like
there are many working ones. And alltogether it is somewhat mixed.

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andai
In this article: Ev Williams reveals his disdain for human beings.

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mdekkers
Yeah, no. Entrepreneur states " _X_ is broken, and my solution _Y_ will fix
it"

News at 11.

------
wayn3
Ev Williams is trying to save the world with a blogging platform that is
slightly better than blogger.

Meanwhile Elon Musk is over there being a selfish little bitch keeping all the
cool toys to himself.

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progx
I am pretty sure the internet exist before Twitter and Blogger.

And i am sure, that people were able to exchange information and definitly
more anonymous as today with twitter and everything else.

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ungzd
Seems that fixing Internet with Medium already clearly failed. It's the blog
service with the least "diversity" ever, Medium is used mostly by people like
its creator: narcissistic developers from Silicon Valley. Even its post
creation UI and page look is designed for this audience and causes disgust for
others, even for hipsters. And I can't remember any interesting post on
Medium, only graphomania about newest js things.

~~~
redditmigrant
You fail to mention how medium's UI discourages non-"narcissistic Silicon
Valley" developer from creating posts? As far as I can see they have tried to
remove cruft so you can just focus on the writing. What about that is
alienating?

