There is nothing to kill. Old decentralized web already died, ten or more years ago.

Yea @schmatzler we are complete opposites but we made our choices pretty much for the similar reasons. and we do agree that web devs are being underpaid for what they are supposed to know when they are hired.

Myself as a UI/UX Designer I am still being underpaid, as a junior not as a senior despite having 20 years of experience. I'll have to have a talk with the board about that later, I was assigned that position (wrongfully) after a major reshuffle of the organization due to a breakup with a UK partner (LEO Learning UK).

As for writing clean and concise code, it's just the only way I learned to do them. Nothing makes sense to my head when I read complex, hot mess code. A few years ago we hired one who was the epitome of "I dont care how I write this **** as long as it works". He did all in one file (html, css, js) and didnt even care for organization. Needless to say, he was fired a year after - boss even gave him a chance by telling me to assist him and offer help. I offered help, but he refused, so... he made his own luck.

Nowadays nearly everything is becoming more and more hostile to power users. What caused the recent Reddit protest is definitely not the first.

People who know a bit more than others tend to open up and utilize alternative venues that enable easier access to the data they want, while at the same time make the companies harder to make profit from them. As such, once third-party apps/clients that offer similar if not better features grow popular enough, it will eventually become a problem to the companies and they'll do whatever means to shut them down.

Not to mention there are app vendors who aggressively detect users who root/jailbreak or run custom systems. Security is one thing, but it's more that these users are hard to deal with both in terms of providing technical support as well as making profit from their personal data.

EDIT: It applies to desktop PC as well. Apart from VM hypervisors, the presence of some commonly used developer tools, IDEs and other utilities, that are normally not present on an average user's device, could also irritate certain games' anticheat systems causing unexpected bans and restrictions.

It's hard to change the hostility towards power users, mainly because:
- They are few compared to normal users, yet they "cause much more trouble than others".
- Little impact in long-term revenue, as there were hardly any value from their data to begin with, compared to those from normal users.
- Their voices, however loud and clear, will never have enough reach, as most normal users do not have the wisdom to understand the necessary details to be convinced, which eventually leads to their actions backfire, just like how this Reddit protest (and probably many others before this one) ended up.

There's little one could do as the companies are Gods to their own Edens (platforms). They have absolute power over everything. For that reason Fediverse existed, so that instance owners can decide for themselves while still being able to interact with others.

I love how AI is already filling the internet with false information about pretty much everything to make sure any other AI that comes after only has garbage to analyze 🤣

The Fediverse is amazing. I like the approach of having hundreds of instances that all share data between them. If one of them goes down, it doesn't really affect the ecosystem, because everybody else and the content is still there. Having all of these instances also makes sure that the users decide how to go forward. If one instance goes haywire and puts ads in, I am pretty sure they would be blocked by most of the Fediverse. We can regulate ourselves and build something amazing with it, what has been missing in the past was a big enough userbase, though.

Thanks to Reddit, the userbase of lemmy.world and the German instance I am on (feddit.de) has grown a lot and it's finally at a point where it could be a real Reddit alternative.

In the past we've seen so many social media platforms come and go, mostly because of corporate greed. MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, Instagram, Twitter...they're all either gone, shells of their former selves or turned into algorithm-based ad generators.

The old Facebook was amazing - you got shown posts of your friends and you were able to react to them and connect with them. The same goes for Instagram. But as soon as these platforms want the big money, they always act against their own users and it's been like this neverending cycle of finding a great platform and seeing it turn into a big pile of shit over the span of a few years.

I hope we can finally break out of this cycle. After Reddit's fall I deleted my account there and all of the content and I was so fed up with it that I swore to me to never use a corporation-driven platform again. The Fediverse seems a lot like the old internet to me. It's nice to visit a social media platform that has a clean website layout, no ads and no Javascript tracking scripts.

DracoNihil wrote on 2023-06-28, 20:50:

Well, maybe we're about to have another "Dot Com Bubble" someday?

I'll argue we're in a "soft" one today.
Multiple longtime online platforms are now, for one reason or another, scrambling to (re)gain a semblance of profitability by implementing draconian limitations or fees.

The investor money that was being sloshed about, with the idea that the vast growth of the userbase on these platforms would one day reap massive rewards, is probably drying up with the economy going the way it is, as it is causing these previously careless investors to now question if they will ever see those rewards, especially now that things like LLMs are scraping the ever living hell out of the platforms' contents for their own profit.
This was never sustainable, and that's why we're seeing idiotic API pricing, severe rate limiting, adblock-blocking, and so on.

Turns out that monetizing user generated, bandwidth hungry content (especially for video hosting) is not as profitable and easy for the platforms themselves as promised over the last decade and a half.
And with everything going on (Reddit protests, LLM scraping, etc.), the stability of said content is now also in question.

I think we haven't quite seen the worst of these platforms' desperate enshittification just yet.
And I think you could argue that this process is such a bubble in the process of bursting.

Regarding the Adblock-blocking on YouTube, I also blame the users here.
We've grown accustomed to consuming content for free all the time and that simply cannot work.

Every day, 4.3 Petabytes of new data is being uploaded to YouTube. All of this data needs to be stored somewhere and is costing Google quite a lot of money.
It's simply not sustainable to just run YouTube off of ads a lot of people are blocking and then pay developers, datacentres, hardware and content creators with that money.

I really don't get the shitstorm about YouTube Premium being "so expensive". It's 12 bucks a month and you get YouTube Music as well.
Spotify costs 10 bucks a month. So if you cancel that, you can still have all of the music you want plus ad-free videos for just two bucks more.

I mean, that's a damn good deal and there's nothing that could convince me otherwise.

But it's just like LTT said. YT Premium is great service, but Google is doing an absolutely terrible job promoting it.

Reddit is a bit different than YouTube. YT Creators get paid for the content they make (if they're big enough). Reddit is just working with free content, doesn't pay a dime to anyone and now wants money for accessing the free content people have made on that platform. So I can get behind YT wanting my money, some of it goes back to the creators. But I cannot get behind Reddit wanting it.

the original article had some good links and this one

https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/

explains why social media pulls the rug from under its users

there is no money to be made from engagement or information or anything of the sort - not until that yields a joining fee or enough people actually buy something (directly or because of an advert)

so while AI will flood everything with derivative and often nonsensical 'content' it wont somehow make people order more things online or pay membership fees

it might however completely drown out the chance of seeing something useful

this example in youtube (about science channels) explains it well

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McM3CfDjGs0

now imagine that those videos can be entirely generated by AI - youtube will just collapse under the weight of uploads and the decline in actual users (but not the endless AI 'users')

how to deal with it? put everything behind paywalls so that AI would have to pay - have limits on uploads, even views per unique ID - train AI to spot AI generated content and auto delete

it really doesnt look good at the moment 🙁

LSS10999 wrote on 2023-07-03, 05:57:

Nowadays nearly everything is becoming more and more hostile to power users. What caused the recent Reddit protest is definitely not the first.

i remember this being said at almost every development - even the move from DOS to windows. it's true though, a slow but steady march of commodification that follows every innovation

schmatzler wrote on 2023-07-03, 10:05:

Regarding the Adblock-blocking on YouTube, I also blame the users here.
We've grown accustomed to consuming content for free all the time and that simply cannot work.

Decades ago my PCs were hit by malware several times due to ads. I knew very little about the real world at that time and that was before adblockers were even a thing. It was so serious that I often have to wipe the drive to clean all the mess they've caused.

Not to mention some ad contents at that time were completely unregulated -- imagine seeing (borderline) NSFW ads popping up from a site that weren't NSFW to begin with.

When adblockers like ABP came out it worked like a godsend -- I could finally get rid of most if not all of those unsafe stuffs, and the pages look much cleaner afterwards.

Nowadays I'd install uBlock Origin and enforce all rules on all of my systems before actually start browsing with them, not to mention blocking especially malware-related domains on router DNS.

I know I'm overreacting, but considering those horrible past experiences... it's better safe than sorry, especially with ransomware being a real thing of concern at present.

EDIT: Technically with scripts one could intercept virtually all user inputs for malicious purposes (search "browlock" if you want to learn more). It could be considered one of the scariest form of ads. Not sure if the browsers nowadays have patched against such possibility...

I just install a PiHole on my network and never look back.

LSS10999 wrote on 2023-07-03, 11:14:

Decades ago my PCs were hit by malware several times due to ads. I knew very little about the real world at that time and that w […]
Show full quote

schmatzler wrote on 2023-07-03, 10:05:

Regarding the Adblock-blocking on YouTube, I also blame the users here.
We've grown accustomed to consuming content for free all the time and that simply cannot work.

Decades ago my PCs were hit by malware several times due to ads. I knew very little about the real world at that time and that was before adblockers were even a thing. It was so serious that I often have to wipe the drive to clean all the mess they've caused.

Not to mention some ad contents at that time were completely unregulated -- imagine seeing (borderline) NSFW ads popping up from a site that weren't NSFW to begin with.

When adblockers like ABP came out it worked like a godsend -- I could finally get rid of most if not all of those unsafe stuffs, and the pages look much cleaner afterwards.

Nowadays I'd install uBlock Origin and enforce all rules on all of my systems before actually start browsing with them, not to mention blocking especially malware-related domains on router DNS.

I know I'm overreacting, but considering those horrible past experiences... it's better safe than sorry, especially with ransomware being a real thing of concern at present.

I can tell you right now, YouTube is still this bad with ads. They are not curated, and throw anything from shock content, NSFW content (at kids too!), cryptoscams, ragebait, to propaganda at users without a care in the world.
Yet YouTubers are shown no mercy at the slightest perceived infraction, YouTubers discussing bad YT ads have even been blocked for showing the ad's content, while the ad is still going.

I therefore refuse to pay 10 bucks a month for YouTube to not show me incessant harmful content, that's creating a problem to sell the solution.
I'm ready to sit out the adblocker wars, maybe my life will even be more productive during this time 😁

Daniël Oosterhuis wrote on 2023-07-03, 11:31:

I therefore refuse to pay 10 bucks a month for YouTube to not show me incessant harmful content, that's creating a problem to sell the solution.

I think most of the industries nowadays are like this.

I couldn't really imagine how worse the future world would become if things keep going on this way...

Daniël Oosterhuis wrote on 2023-07-03, 11:31:

I therefore refuse to pay 10 bucks a month for YouTube to not show me incessant harmful content, that's creating a problem to sell the solution.

That the ads are not curated is indeed a problem they would have to solve. But some people have this entitled mindset, that access to all of the content should always be free of charge. YouTube is well within their rights to lock people out of their platform if they don't want to pay and also don't want to look at ads, in my opinion.

It’s not entitlement. They certainly have the right to try and lock me out. If they succeed, good on them. I just don’t consider YT content valuable enough to sit through annoying ads or paying a subscription. Meaning I won’t go out of my way to watch it if I have no way to access it for free.

On the other hand, I have no issues with YouTubers including sponsors in their videos, because they usually do it in a reasonable way.