I read an article today that I feel summarize some of the things I find difficult on the modern internet. Not what the article describes is possible, but the feeling of hopelessness toward the experience of the modern internet.
The problem, I feel is that it's too easy to get drawn in and spend hours on something I hadn't planned. And that's by design because those who serve content on the internet today make their money by selling ads next to what other people create. They then use that money to grow so they can show more ads and make even more money. This is regardless of whether it's Youtube, Meta or any of the other big content hosing sites. But when the number of users stop increasing as rapidly as it used to, they instead try to keep the users they have for longer sessions on the sites so they can show more ads. I don't know how many nights I've spent watching just one moreTM Youtube short for hours. I can't have that as a person. I need my control back. And unfortunately my main option seems to be to block Youtube altogether.
This article reminded me why I relaunched my blog, why I backed the Tangara and why I put my smartwatches away. I don't want to always be online, looking for the next thing. Weather that's an e-mail I didn't know would come, a video I didn't want to watch anyway, or even something I had been waiting for. I kind of wish I could put my phone away too, it's part of the same system of devices designed to hook you in to those services. But for now I can't and will have to settle for blocking some of the worst apps.
The article pinpoints my mixed feelings about the pen blog community today. That's a hobby I used to enjoy, and be part of. But one by one most of the people I used to read have either disappeared or become so big they started trying to make a living off of Youtube and Twitch. I don't want to go there to enjoy my hobby. I'm sure there are new people writing new blogs that I haven't found, but I don't know where to look any more. It feels like people aren't linking each others or even their own webpages anymore, it's all social media handles. And when the community moves there, it's hard for me to follow. For me this means loosing that community.
I had a long paragraph written here about how great RSS is, but RSS isn't the point. The point is that we used to go out and actively find things to read and do (weather that was online or offline).That also meant that we used to give tips and ideas to each other on things to read, watch or do. But now it seems like the common way of finding things is to just go to the same place regardless of what you want and hope that it will magically appear. And we probably have the technology to get close to that, but it's not being used to show what you are looking for. It's used to get you to stay on the site, usually by showing you things you don't want, and sometimes things that are actively harmful.
As usual I'm blaming capitalism for not letting the super rich just be happy that they have a comfortable life but instead they feel like they need more which has left us where we are today.
Anyway, this article reminded me that it wasn't always like this and it won't always be.
Here's the article from Molly White: https://www.citationneeded.news/fighting-for-our-web/
posted 11 oct 2024