Somewhere along the way, we lost the original vibe of the Internet. There was a time when it was fundamentally a community. People hosted things for the sheer joy of doing it and for the satisfaction of contributing.
If I loved King Crimson, I might create a site expressing that love and also host lyrics to their songs. Not to generate ad revenue. Not with any expectation of being reimbursed for hosting costs. I did it because it was fun and because sharing knowledge felt like the point.
I would actually flip your statement around. Today, many people feel entitled to be paid for sharing things on the Internet. In that sense, they are the newcomers. The original ethos was about sharing information simply because it mattered to someone else, and a few of us still believe that value has not gone away.
The signal (fan sites) to noise (sites focusing on revenue) ratio is way off today. The issues are that ad revenue generating sites are too plentiful, in some cases they are generated by code and they are more highly placed in search engine results. SEO and procedurally created content is where we lost the way (I think the lure of getting rich as a social media influencer or streamer further moved us away).
I was looking for discussion around a brand new album last night (not King Crimson related...), like from an internet forum, reddit, even a review, but the first few pages of search results were all storefronts selling/streaming it, PR (not even reviews) or AI generated pages about the artist. The stuff I was looking for existed, but I only found it after adding "reddit" to the search terms. I was hoping to find a new forum similar to this one focused on that kind of music. Reddit is not ad free, but at least it has a raison d'etre beyond advertising...
So, it's harder to find fan sites, and I'm sure fan site maintainers are less motivated to keep up for this reason (a more popular site is probably more fun to maintain). At least compare this to FOSS projects. I think findability is easier for those, and the popular ones are reasonably well maintained.
Geocities ran ads, but the user's page was still in the spirit of OPs comment. I'd say that lasted until the late 00's. Around 2009. I partially blame the rise of Facebook for the proliferation of "social," though, people tend to get bored with _anything_ if it stagnates too long. Regardless, the internet was inherently social before that; they only changed the landscape. Not for the better in my eyes (though hindsight's 20/20).
There are distinctions to be made between rotating/static display ads, spam and everything (i.e., user surveillance) that encompasses digital advertising today. Personally, ads don't bother me. Spam is annoying in terms of UX. But really, user surveillance is what we need to worry about in terms of UX, our privacy, security, etc.
I think there's a worse-step beyond passive surveillance, where ad-networks function as a channel for viruses that seek to change your computer, along with scams and phishing.
Ad-blocking--refusing to run their code--is a simply common sense when the networks are not liable for ensuring that the code they send is not malicious.
Geocities was full of a lot of things. There were pages that were just ad farms, often with no meaningful content except a bunch of key words hidden in the background. But there were also plenty of clean and useful sites by people who wanted to share their passion with others.
The later all but ceases to exist. Even if you are sharing your passion, you are doing it on a social media platform that is using your content to drive your audience into seeing their ads. You are ad bait.
That's very different from the web of the turn of the century.
It was 96/97. I remember thinking "The drones are moving in on this."
Canter and Siegel had nuked Usenet in 1994, and banners were invented in 1994 by Hotwired. But it took a while for the tech to eat the web, because the web was a niche interest for the first few years.
During that time you could - and a lot of people did - put together a simple site with a text editor and free hosting supplied by your ISP.
The majority of internet users wouldn't have experienced that supposed world.
The median age in the US in 39, which means at least half of all Americans would have been in elementary school or not around during that supposed era of the internet, and the mass adoption of the internet only really began in earnest in the early 2000s.
> "that supposed world ... that supposed era of the internet"
"Supposed: Presumed to be true or real without conclusive evidence". You think there isn't conclusive evidence that the internet existed before 1995? o_O
>If I loved King Crimson, I might create a site expressing that love and also host lyrics to their songs. Not to generate ad revenue. Not with any expectation of being reimbursed for hosting costs. I did it because it was fun and because sharing knowledge felt like the point.
Unfortunately, music lyrics are protected by copyrights so your site of King Crimson lyrics would not be authorized unless you paid for a license. The music publisher may not expend the effort to have a lawyer send you a "Cease & Desist" letter to make you take it down because your personal website is small fish but they wouldn't ignore a popular website that tried to show all lyrics for free with no ads.
The legitimate ongoing licensing costs from Gracenote/Lyricfind for their catalogs of millions of song lyrics will cost significantly more than the hosting bill. The cost is beyond the resources of typical hobbyists who like to share information for free.
EDIT: I have no idea what the downvotes are about. If you think my information about lyrics licensing is incorrect, explain why. Several decades ago, volunteers were sharing guitar tabs for free on the internet and that also got shut down by the music publishers because of copyright violations. Previous comment about that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24598821
> The music publisher may not expend the effort to have a lawyer send you a "Cease & Desist" letter to make you take it down because your personal website is small fish but they wouldn't ignore a popular website that tried to show all lyrics for free with no ads.
Exactly. Now what if there wasn't one popular website with all the lyrics, but a million different small fanpages?
There's a tension that the fan engagement is what really makes entertainers rich. The industry has every right to crack down, but if they do say they are really cutting their own legs off.
I think if there's any negative phrasing in your first three words, those reading from the Philosophers Chair (bathroom) are primed to take what immediately follows as Bad Vibes and downvote accordingly. They're not in this for accuracy.
Well my problem isn't with the writing in its original form, it's with the downvoting in response to it. I am fine with someone bringing bad news if it's helpful info.
> If I loved King Crimson, I might create a site expressing that love and also host lyrics to their songs. Not to generate ad revenue. Not with any expectation of being reimbursed for hosting costs. I did it because it was fun and because sharing knowledge felt like the point.
Anyone can still do this today (I don’t know the legalities of publishing copyrighted lyrics though). Of course, the proportion of people who wanted to do that was much higher in previous decades.
But we also spend much more time and bandwidth today than decades ago, so maybe it just wasn’t feasible to expect that much quality content from volunteers to keep flowing.
But in search results, you only find the sites that game the system to maximize their profits, while millions of other well-meaning sites get little to no traffic, and eventually people lose interest in maintaining an online presence. They move toward big silos like Instagram, platforms that just use their content to attract more ads.
Ads do break the internet, or let's say, fundamentally change the model of how it works to the detriment of most people
But no-one would ever find it - which might be fine - and that seems like a waste.
>> to expect that much quality content from volunteers to keep flowing.
This is a big change in perspective & expectation. The original web was not volunteers doing work for others, but humans voluntarily doing work to share with others.
Nobody could find it back in 1994 either! That was part of the fun. You stumbled on a webring or somebody's curated oracle and found a bunch of interesting weird tiny websites.
I was trying to use a grain/chaff analogy to respond to your post, but I think there were just less crops in the old days. For the sites (crops) that were there, you had a lot more healthy ones. As spam and low-quality sites proliferated, the signal->noise ratio of sites got completely out-of-balance.
Yes, and yet we would do well to distinguish hobbies from necessities, like quality journalism. Not saying there's an easy fix, but there better be one.
I disagree with that. I can easily tell when my non-native English speaking coworkers use AI to help with their communications. Nine times out of ten, their communication has been improved through the use of AI.
if only there was a difference between native languages aiming at lossy fluency (feels better) and programming languages aiming at deterministic precision.
As someone else mentioned, the community is gone. But, I think there's also the feeling of victory from when you actually connected. You may have needed to autodial for hours to get onto the BBS. There was a huge amount of anticipation that led up to getting connected. Once you were on, it felt more special that it does today with the instant connection.
I definitely waffled a bit on multi-property support, but decided against it for initial launch. Multi-property avid terminal users seems even more niche!
I have one of the best looking lawns in my neighborhood. I cut it whenever is most convenient for me. That might be any time between 9AM and 7PM. I cut it no matter the outside temperature. The only thing I avoid doing is cutting it while wet.
The is exactly the advice that one of my favorite podcasts, Manager Tools, would prescribe. Don't give feedback about emotions or internal feelings, give feedback about behaviors. Telling someone they are acting like an asshole can be met with, "but, no, I'm not acting like an asshole." Telling someone, "When you cut off people mid sentence and speak loudly, you will have people complain about you." gives them actionable ways to change their external behavior in the future. It doesn't matter if they are still an asshole on the inside.
Do these places ever discuss receiving feedback? Genuinely actioning feedback like this requires an extremely high level of trust, and expecting that level of trust in a short time window is borderline predatory.
For example, I would never provide critical feedback within the first 6 months (minimum) of a new hire starting (similar window I apply to providing feedback on codebase issues etc).
Sorry for the late reply. The Manager Tools podcast definitely talks about both sides of feedback. Everything they teach is predicated on building strong relationships, through weekly 1x1s, and starting off with positive feedback only after multiple months of conducting 1x1s.
After reading your comment, one might come to the conclusion that Europeans see Americans through the lens of reporting and social media, just as Americans see Europeans through the same lens. Both sides believe characterizations of the other.
> one might come to the conclusion that Europeans see Americans through the lens of reporting and social media
Heck, Americans see Americans through the lens of reporting and social media.
Look at the incredibly polarized climate. Why is it a novelty to just bring together people of "opposite sides" to talk? When political "debate" is just a grounds to get your sound bites out to the media, democracy is in danger. And not just from the current administration.
The conclusion is correct, I would say. I know plenty of Americans who are not the archetype I portrayed, but this is HN, and that’s the HN American I see here a lot. Not all, but a lot. And we seem to be fundamentally incompatible. It’s really unfortunate, but that’s what it seems to me, and I’m sorry for the bitter undertones, it’s just really hard to stay optimistic in the current social climate.
As someone trying to piece together family history, after most of my family has died, I really appreciate this. Any and all efforts to make records available helps with clues. Building an accurate family history is a process of "one more document". This effort is definitely helpful to me. I've already utilized your service to submit a request for my grandfather's records. I'll be spending time searching for other relatives as well. Thanks!
If I loved King Crimson, I might create a site expressing that love and also host lyrics to their songs. Not to generate ad revenue. Not with any expectation of being reimbursed for hosting costs. I did it because it was fun and because sharing knowledge felt like the point.
I would actually flip your statement around. Today, many people feel entitled to be paid for sharing things on the Internet. In that sense, they are the newcomers. The original ethos was about sharing information simply because it mattered to someone else, and a few of us still believe that value has not gone away.