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- Hacker News
- A good quote: "Sell people a worldview, and they will advertise it for free because criticism of the product now feels like criticism of the self"by mglvsky
- So I think there is an oversight in this essay, and it's that society becoming predatory is much bigger than the Internet: it is the story of the decay of America, reflected and exacerbated by the internet, as it becomes a anti-democratic huckster society dominated by grifters, theocrats, and snake-oil sellers.
Forget the internet, you can't get your home repaired, your car worked on, an appliance purchased, shop for food, or do anything else without wading through a corrupt morass of that mixes woo, subcultures, grift, and subscriptions. Maybe it's the hospital that wants to charge a $25 a day fee to make the hospital room TV grant access to basic cable channels instead of nothing. Maybe it's the elementary school district that mandates every physical interaction between students is called in to the police - like little Jenny shoved Johnny who skinned his knee because he teased her, call the cops, it's policy. Or the way that every customer service interaction is routed through endless AIs because it's cheaper than solving a problem. Or how it seems like nobody will do right by anyone else until lawyers get involved. Cut taxes year after year, while everything decays, we fail the younger generations, and everyone thinks you fake it till you make it because it's all zero sum... It's how America heads straight to banana republic, and it might be too late to turn.
by Glyptodon - This so exaggerated. If you think some of the people you know are assholes, that's fine. If you think all of them are assholes, you are either choosing the wrong places to be, or (more likely) the problem is with you.by aktenlage
- I wish I knew more assholes. It's the imbeciles that I keep running into.
- There are two competing ways of looking at this.
1. If everyone you know is an asshole about some particular thing, then you're probably the asshole. Think politics or design.
2. Everybody is an asshole some of the time for some reason. Because the internet connects and exposes us to so many people that even if someone only acts like an asshole very rarely said connectivity and algorithm boosting ensures you get exposed to it.
by pixl97 - I don't think everyone is an asshole exactly but something is wrong with more and more people and you see it everything from how people drive to the degree to which so many things seem more adversarial or feel like part time jobs.by Glyptodon
- >This so exaggerated
No, it's just what's happening online.
>If you think some of the people you know are assholes, that's fine. If you think all of them are assholes,
Wrong thread? Doesn't seem to correspond to anything in the article.
- It's written in a hyperbolic way, but I don't think your characterization is right. The author isn't saying everyone is an asshole, he's saying the systemic forces are mostly aligned in a predatory direction, and that part is absolutely true. I have a good time on Instagram despite the ways the platform is structured.
- In a previous generation, people would detect those technological snake oil sellers , call them out , even chase them. Because they could tell scammers from non-scammers.
Now we have already 2-3 generations raised to consider scam practices to be the norm , and even to celebrate behavioral tricks and audience maximizing optimization at any cost (clickbait!).
I cannot be convinced this is a normal thing. Over time, things revert to normal, but often in an explosive way.
by seydor - "There's a sucker born every minute" is a saying for a reason. It's a damn shame, but these things exist and happen because they work to a non-trivial degree. There are two forms of capitalism: in service to your fellow man (solving a problem/fulfilling a need) or in opposition (arbitraging naivety and ignorance). There are customers for both and always will be [1].by rglover
- I have developed this clickbait allergy that I just won't read an article if the title doesn't adequately describe the post even if I'm interested. If it ends with ellipsis you don't even need to read the title (yes, it's almost always intentional).
There is probably a catalog of dark-patterns for the titles somewhere, but you can usually tell.
If you (try to) read the news you can get good at it very fast. It's amazing how they twist and bend words together to leave an effect on you even if you are just scrolling.
by wseqyrku - Really. I think snake oil sellers were so popular because people believed them. It's no different today.
Today you can recognize snake oil scams, most people can't. Nothing has changed.
Millions of people still fall victims to pyramid schemes and that's not due to the internet.
by flyingshelf - Ok article, and has similar points to “You should quit Reddit” (which was a pretty good book).
About 2/3 in, the sentences got choppier and shorter, and you could tell some context rot was setting in.
by linster - What did you like about that book or what points stuck out to you?by tayo42
- pangram says 100% the first paragraph is aiby tehjoker
- I did not pick up on this being ai generated. I guess this was the first time I am realizing I can no longer tell, and it doesn't feel good.by dominick-cc
- After reddit prevented browsing old.reddit.com without signing in, I got a lot more active on lemmy. There's some amount of old internet feeling there, you don't get exhausted by the amount of material and it's not overrun by corporations. So far it's been nice.
- I follow reddit through RSS, at least that still works but probably that would be the final nail in the coffin for me. There are some really good subs out there and there is no replacements of those on the open internet. Maybe on Discord but I don't really like to use to that for anything else besides voice chat.by haunter
- What killed Reddit wasn't just its corporate chase for profit. It was also the fact that the general public's default internet device shifted to the smartphone and its limited keyboard and screen, no longer the computer. That led to comments largely being reduced to 140-character quips, no longer substantial discussion.
I am skeptical any non-corporate replacement like Lemmy can bring the old internet feeling back, because even on those alternative platforms, you just won't get many people using computers again.
by TFNA - What ruined the internet is monetized social media, regardless ad driven or direct monetization. Monetization will basically ruin anything meant to be fun, even a simple board game with friends and family, if it stopped being about spending quality time and having fun and now there’s a competition of how much will each make at the end, it won’t be fun, you will see tribalism, manipulation, cheating, and other shenanigans.by tamimio
- > What ruined the internet is monetized social media, regardless ad driven or direct monetization
Agreed, and the first step ought to be a push for demonetized / citizen-owned platforms:
https://www.noemamag.com/the-last-days-of-social-media/
Note, however, that even with achieving this first step, we'll still have a platform full of profit-motivated actors, because our economies incentivize this behavior whether online or IRL.
Both problems need solving, but the first one is easier, and demonstrating its solution on a large scale could help convince everyone that it's an endeavor worth applying to all domains.
by swed420 - This also seems to be spilling into the real world. Because of this internet addiction, it’s almost guaranteed that everyone has a relatively expensive computer in their pocket. This has turned into an increasing number of real-world scams, as well as supporting trafficking networks for stealing phones. The scams range from old school pickpocketers to sympathy schemes to full out phone-related accusations – anything to get you to take your phone out of your pocket, potentially unlock it, and have someone swipe it.
If it’s unlocked, they may do some further scams from what’s available on the device, but either way, within days, your phone is somewhere in Asia, disassembled, and sold for scrap and parts.
- The thing is, the "old" internet is still out there. No one is stopping you from writing a futile blog (as I do.) Or using YouTube only for instruction for tasks around the house. Or learn about any topic imaginable. It's just that the bigger ecosystems have followed their incentives to their logical conclusion (hyper-addictive content to maximize earnings from ad sales.) Any new, "for the people" platform is going to face overwhelming pressure at some point to morph into the platforms we have today. It's just too profitable.
The only way out is: don't to go to the casino in the first place. We need to tend our own [Voltarian](https://www.openculture.com/2020/09/what-voltaire-meant-when...) gardens.
- 100% agree. Only thing is, as the last few years have shown, if you don't jump into the cesspit but a majority of your fellow humans do, it affects you anyway.by egonschiele
- Nice article by Stephen Diehl - I really liked his latest on crypto.
I noticed that in certain sections there seems to be a heavy use of LLM-assisted writing, such as this one:
> The platforms did not invent fear, greed, loneliness, or status anxiety. They industrialised their extraction. Their recommendation systems are vast reinforcement-learning loops that continuously experiment on human weakness. Each objective is a moving composite of high-dimensional signals for attention, retention, and conversion, dispersed across models, metrics, tests, and feedback systems. The subject cannot see the experiment. The operator cannot fully explain it. The regulator can barely comprehend it. The loop knows only that one stimulus keeps a person scrolling while another lets them leave. Calm accuracy loses. Threat, transgression, humiliation, and impossible promises win. The resulting social damage appears nowhere in the objective function. It arrives as an externality.
Not sure what you think of it.
In my view, his ideas are nice and interesting, and I would rather read less verbose, less "perfect" blog posts, and reduce or remove the use of LLMs.
- That paragraph jumped out to me, as well. Thats also when the writing got very long winded and seemed to be repeating itself.by ChiperSoft
- Same. Every time I see LLM has contributed to the work I feel it greatly dilutes it. I'll push through if the topic is important and there's good points. But e.g. on YT, a sloppy script that barely stands on its own becomes a hard no on the very first "it's not X, it's Y".by maqp
- That does indeed seem like LLM text to me, which makes a depressing article even morning depressing. Inauthentic and hypocritical.
I'd like to give the author the benefit of the doubt, but since we've set all ourselves on being cynical....
by MattyRad - > People increasingly behave like addicts because addiction is the business model.
I sense my internet addiction got a lot worse in recent years. I don’t use social media, but I consume news, blogs and newsletters - and comment threads - voraciously.
I think the addiction began as soon as I started to work at a desk behind a computer which had internet access - 20+ years ago. Like putting an alcoholic to work behind a bar and thinking he’d restrain himself.
It seems to have worsened in recent years. I’d like out, but the dealers are on every corner.
by Biologist123 - > I’d like out, but the dealers are on every corner.
Since the industry stops for noone (and you kinda have to keep learning in software dev) and due to the state of the economy it feels like one big rat race to me, I don't foresee that sort of outcome for myself.
I can easily imagine how lazing in the sun in Italy or someplace like that (if the hot summers nowadays don't fuck that up), going swimming and eating healthy food with not a care in the world would surely help one get rid of the dopamine addiction, getting there being the hard part.
The fast paced modern lifestyle and being always online can feel a tad anxiety inducing and unnatural.
by KronisLV