
Wikipedia co-founder slams the ‘appalling’ internet - L_226
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/05/wikipedia-co-founder-larry-sanger-slams-facebook-twitter-social-media.html
======
iamsb
I agree with Larry about abuse by Facebook and Twitter.

I also strongly encourage him to look at state of wikipedia moderations.
Specially in a country like India. Lot of pages related to political content
is moderated by people who are deeply partisan and have no respect for facts.

~~~
tenpies
> state of wikipedia moderations

I'm glad others are keeping an eye on this issue. It is incredibly ironic to
me that anyone in a leadership role at Wikipedia would criticize Zuckerberg or
Dorsey. It's not even just political content, it's getting to the point where
history is being actively re-written and re-interpreted to match a radical
narrative.

In some sort of temporal example of humour, I've gone back to recommending
people use Britannica as a starting point and for surface level reading.

~~~
gerikson
> It is incredibly ironic to me that anyone in a leadership role at Wikipedia
> would criticize Zuckerberg or Dorsey.

According to (ironically) Wikipedia[1], Sanger left the project in 2006^W the
early 2000s:

> Frustrated by sustained content battles and feeling he had a lack of support
> from Wales, Sanger eventually left the project.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Sanger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Sanger)

~~~
iamsb
Thanks. My bad.

------
everdrive
The internet was much nicer before most people were using it. We usually focus
on the technology problems here at HN: filter bubbles, skinner box addictive
UIs and content feeds, algorithmic and centralized control. Has anyone simply
wondered if the problem with the internet is fundamentally that everyone's on
it? It used to be an escape from the problems of the real world. Now it's just
a new way for the problems of the real world to reach you.

~~~
rolha-capoeira
I hear you. But this teeters dangerously close to gatekeeping, elitism, or
something along those lines. I'm sure you didn't mean it that way, but I think
how others feel after reading our comments does matter.

Better put, because everyone is on the internet now, the real world's problems
are now the internet's problems. It used to serve as an escape, true. It has
made the world a smaller place, where problems from a distant state or country
can reach me and I can't help but be aware of them. I may even be affected by
them.

Is that good or bad, for us as individuals or as global citizens? That's heavy
stuff.

~~~
rabidrat
Gatekeeping is the only way communities can keep themselves healthy. There is
no such thing as a universal 'community'.

From day one, life has been about letting in certain elements, and keeping out
others. Without this selection, development and differentiation are
impossible. Similarly we don't (and shouldn't) let every person into our
homes, or our countries, or our servers. Why is it seen as an obvious truth
that we should allow every single person onto the Internet, without ever being
able to remove them?

~~~
krapp
>Why is it seen as an obvious truth that we should allow every single person
onto the Internet, without ever being able to remove them?

For the same reason it's seen as an obvious truth that everyone should be
allowed to use a telephone, or send a letter in the mail. The internet is a
communications platform, by definition it belongs to anyone who wants to use
it.

The internet being used by everyone no more makes the development or
differentiation between cultures impossible than the planet Earth being used
by everyone does.

Also, because the anarchist hacker ethos that led to the internet was about
liberating _humanity_ from the constraints of gatekeepers - the systems of
governance and proprietary control over access to information and freedom of
expression that divided the world between the elite and the serf.

What we're seeing now is not that model breaking down, but only beginning to
come into its true potential.

Yes, there may be negative effects to the ability of the internet to remove
the barriers between cultures and communities, even states, but the world
would be a lot worse still if it had never left the confines of a few
universities simply to keep the normies out. The value of the transformative
nature of the internet on civilization itself is greater than the value of the
internet monoculture whose relevance it no longer recognizes.

~~~
gmfawcett
The ethos that led to the Internet belonged to the military-industrial
complex, not the anarchist hackers.

------
decasteve
Avoid the mainstream media, advertising-centric sites, social media, et al,
and the Internet is mostly fine. Stick to the niche sites and services that
have always been there and it’s a much more pleasant place.

~~~
polskibus
Any particular niche sites that you have in mind and could recommend to
others?

~~~
jasonjayr
Isn't this antithesis to the issue at hand?

These niche places are great exactly because they're hard to find, and the
community there grows organically.

I'm on HN now because slashdot was flailing years ago, and a friend I knew IRL
mentioned it ....

~~~
giaour
Most of the niche sites I've seen aren't great because they're exclusive but
because they're built around a specific interest. Anybody can join, but if
they don't share that interest, they'll get bored and leave.

------
throwaway8879
I'm going to take a cynical stand and claim that the internet as the
greybeards envisioned decades ago is just not going to happen. Or perhaps
happened for a short window in the early 2000s. I don't see how we can just
turn things around.

Something new will pop up in a few years, limited within hacker circles,
perhaps in a medium beyond computers/phones. It'll have all the nice qualities
that we seek such as privacy, encryption, anonymity, pro-free-speech etc,
except that none of those things will last for very long. It too will have
it's own eternal September, followed up ad-tech/media/government screwing
things up. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Any new kind of "internet" that depends on traditional infrastructure that is
under the control of states/corporations will end up being exactly like the
one we have now.

~~~
AlexandrB
This kind of repetition is inevitable because there's no technological
solution to systemic social problems. An internet like the greybeards
envisioned would require changes to our political and economic systems to
remove (or at least lessen) the incentives to muck it all up in service of
money or power.

~~~
hombre_fatal
There’s also just human nature in general, like our penchant for outrage and
world-view confirmation.

------
peterwwillis
A lot of people keep declaring the web needs to be more decentralized. I don't
think they really have a plan for making things better, though, because
decentralized doesn't really mean anything except 'not centralized'.

It doesn't mean 'privacy-focused', because the internet is decentralized, and
your privacy isn't inherently guaranteed by it. It doesn't addess how to fund
online products, which is what drove the systems we have today. It doesn't
describe how we're supposed to convince the world to build products that don't
exploit people, and aren't used by the powerful against us.

Saying we need the web to be more decentralized is like saying we need more
transparency in politics. Sounds great, but even if it's more transparent,
that doesn't mean more legislation is going to get done, or done better. We
need more concrete goals, and to focus less on the means of getting there.

------
raphaelj
Is a decentralized social network really the solution?

I'd rather enjoy having a social platform managed for the greater good, by a
not-for-profit organization. The Mozilla or Wikimedia of social networks.

~~~
dboreham
Doesn't most of the money supporting both Mozilla and Wikimedia come from
search engine companies?

~~~
raphaelj
Mozilla yes. Wikimedia gets most of its income from donations.

------
werber
I find these rants about social media patronizing, people are aware, they just
don't care. It's not whistle blowing, it's self congratulatory yipping at this
point. If you want to make a better solution that happens to be decentralized
and works with just as little effort, then do it if you actually care _rant
over_

~~~
oco101
Well, he did it is called Everipedia witch is a decentralized version of
Wikipedia, it is a work in progress still but it getting better by the day.

~~~
magnamerc
It's on EOS though, a network prone to cartels. Yeah, no thanks.

------
milansuk
I think a big part of the problem is lock-in! How easy is to migrate all your
data from one service/app to another? We actually have alternatives across
different products, it's just people are lazy or even worse, it's not
possible. Facebook exported my data and then what? With an easy way how to
move your account data, the best products would win.

------
stunt
> “A decentralized internet, a freer internet, that’s what led to the internet
> being created in the place,”

What Facebook did to MySpace, may happen to Facebook soon when a good
decentralized social network pops up.

~~~
metalliqaz
No, that can't happen to Facebook now the way it happened to MySpace. Facebook
has too much money. At this point Facebook and Google essentially own the
advertising business on the Internet. With that kind of money, they can just
buy competitors.

~~~
Upvoter33
That is true. Which is why the alternative needs to be grass-roots, good
enough, and not for profit. It has to be a mission, rather than a corporation.
I am curious to see if this can happen....

~~~
jschwartzi
It will also have to be something cool and exclusive for a while, and not
something your dad is allowed to use. That's the thing these "new social
networking platforms" are missing: the original cachet of Facebook was that
you could only get on it if you had a .edu email address like you would if you
were in college. It was cool because college students were on it, sharing
their very similar college experiences with each other and basically using it
to hook up.

Tinder worked very well for 20-somethings as well because they had figured out
that 20-somethings are usually not looking for a deep, meaningful relationship
right out of the gate. So they required you to tell your story in pictures,
and they eliminated the 3000-word deep and meaningful profiles that people
still dating in their 30s and 40s are using. So it almost immediately excluded
your dad from using it. And it had a lot of cachet because of that
exclusivity.

The thing that made Google+ not cool was that its major enthusiasts were the
kind of insufferable tech dweebs that would take pictures of themselves
wearing Google Glass in the shower with their Pixel phone. That's very much a
dad thing to do, and it's the wrong kind of exclusivity.

So if we want a really good social network to replace Facebook, it has to A)
not be full of insufferable tech dweebs, and B) be exclusive by way of not
being full of parents on day 1. I'm certainly too old to start something
meeting those requirements.

------
cwyers
I have really, really soured on Wikipedia over time. I find the site has
gotten worse and less compelling, and contributing to it is a massive slough
that nobody sane would undertake at this point.

This is a decent writeup of some of the issues:

[https://www.gwern.net/In-Defense-Of-Inclusionism](https://www.gwern.net/In-
Defense-Of-Inclusionism)

------
qwsxyh
I like twitter. I'm in the minority here, but I genuinely do. I keep my
timeline curated, I am very very liberal with blocks and mutes of anyone who
vaguely annoys me, and I enjoy using it.

~~~
kabwj
I liked Twitter before it was popular. Being liberal with blocks works but
eventually you realise you are spending more time curating your experience
than actually enjoying the website.

~~~
qwsxyh
Hardly. I only follow ~50ish people, of which I only interact regularly with
~9ish. I only block a few people a day max.

~~~
WorldMaker
I liked Twitter before Twitter decided that advertisers and "trending topics"
and virality were more important than personal curation. The out-of-order
timeline with forced ads and both Likes and Replies becoming less
deterministic retweets were some of the last straws for me.

~~~
qwsxyh
My timeline is completely in-order and I don't see ads.

~~~
WorldMaker
It's good that ad blockers exist and they added an in-order option back after
I left, but the problem remains that the defaults are still anti-curative/pro-
advertiser/pro-"engagement metrics". Having such terrible defaults makes the
whole social network less trustworthy, because while you might curate your
feed, do the people you follow still do? Do the people they follow?

------
GershwinA
Thanks for sharing, nothing groundbreaking, but the general principle is
there. Modern internet is all about freedom, and sharing, access to info and
so own, Wikipedia is a great example of how progressive internet could be.
Then there's Facebook that will go miles to access users data, and Trump is
tweeting nonsense. I get why people are angry with the state of internet atm.

~~~
pixl97
You mean the wikipedia where a few super users dominate the discussion and
delete the rest?

