remember when the internet was fun and full of possibilities? yknow how now it's a miserable hell? reminder that what happened is that capitalism colonized it and now it's just as shitty as everything else capitalism's got its hooks in
like. seo, algorithms, targeted advertising: these are all DESIGNED to keep you from finding some weirdo's X-Files fan page or geocities star trek web ring. I would 1000x rather find those than tweets from the u.s. president, yet here we are #thankscapitalism
@polychrome @skirts Yeah... even I mostly just blather on mastodon and occasionally my phlog rather than using my neocities site for more than stupid playing with javascript.
I should at least put together a project page for my AJD clocks.
@skirts This. I remember the the Matrix came out I had my own fanpage. The main "marketing strategy" was: submit to webrings and some of the bigger link collection sites. I was so proud that I learned some HTML and CSS. And I only used visual editors back then, but it was still awesome.
Now even a simple blogpost can be a chore. What's the best title for it, so they can find me? Is it long enough for Google? Etc.
Frak that shit.
Just create!
It worth noticing that indeed https://freedombone.net/ from @bob is truly a #revolutionary project.
We need small servers in every home.
@skirts it's not capitalism, it's normies. the internet becoming more useful to ordinary, average, non-technical people (which was largely done by capitalist entities trying to make money, and is probably on the whole good) also made it so that weirdo content was massively swamped by content of interest to normal people
@skirts and the content of interest to normal people is national politics and interacting socially with people you know, under your real identity
@skirts there's still plenty of "weird" content out there to be found, and plenty of ways to block ads and publish weird things on the internet, but there just aren't as many weird people as normal people, and now that everyone's using the internet, you can't expect to see the good weird stuff
@skirts also, frankly, in my experience the number one thing making the internet a miserable hell is communities with authoritarian leftists - particular feminist women - finding ways to classify peoples' weird content as a type of oppression so they can feel good about calling for its removal
@skirts Its not capitalism, its corporativism, and its not a new thing either... Long ago, the internet wasnt so massively extended as it is today. Plus, technology was not so accessible. For instance, smartphones were a thing, but they werent so advanced and people didnt care about them.
There was corporations exploiting the internet back then too, but at a much smaller scale...
@ebel for real!
@skirts I still think this is just the Eternal September thing, especially since it has happened before on NNTP. It's no longer just a bunch of geeks using it, the general population is here, and turns out that what they are interested in is entertainment, politics and shopping. Who would have guessed.
@duck57 @deshipu @skirts Which are all parts of natural human communication. By wilfully avoiding them, it left a big hole in the way things could be discussed. This and more meant things got discussed in what other channels were available, but not best suited to them.
As best I can tell, all online discussion methods develop on demand. There's no over-arching design criteria for what makes a healthy forum/medium for nuanced discussion.
@skirts 
aww webrings! I remember those! I used to spend hours in my high school computer room clicking through Sailor Moon "shrines"!! oh god and all the autoplay midis and the DIY banners... good times.
@NoGodsNoSenpais @skirts 36 variants of und_cost.gif
@skirts It's not just capitalism by a long shot. There was and is also a willful disregard on the part of programmers and designers for natural human communication, knowledge sharing and embedded logical fallacies.
It was designed by people with a tech aptitude who refused to accommodate those without it and as such baked-in social dysfunction at a code level. A lot of online shit is the end result of less tech-aware peeps working around deliberate gatekeeping from the old guard.
@skirts so much this
@skirts It's called #crapitalism
@skirts going back a bit here, internet history-wise.
unfortunately, capitalism fucked up (public) web 1.0 as well, it's just that there was resistance to web 2.0, both in and out of the industry.
people in the industry thought they could have capitalism without the "bad capitalism" and at least from many corners, sort of rolled over (but with objections) when web 2.0 came into being.
people ridiculed Amazon, but none of us (myself included) boycotted and shut down Amazon, either.
@shoutcacophony
whoa these are great points! ugh this is fascinating history
@skirts actually I get homepage results when those exist! Trouble is they barely do - most people now days turn to Facebook Pages before they consider setting up a webpage ("it's hard"). Having your own actual webpage is seen as something for "pros" now, which is obviously wrong.
Website authoring needs to be made simple for the average Joe without them studying HTML/CSS/JS (think desktop publishing) and simple, free hosting like Neocities promoted.