• infinitevalence@discuss.online
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    8 days ago

    I’m seeing an incredible turn towards the kind of organic platforms of the 1.0 web world. They may never hit the same level of popularity as the commercial platforms like Facebook and Twitter did, but these new platforms like Lemmy, Mastodon, and others are letting us build a new space.

    Probably the best part is that so much of it is built on FOSS meaning that the monetization and enshitification by investors will have a much harder time taking root.

      • Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        7 days ago

        They can try but they’ll never be able to reach all instances that defederates from them. Meta and the rest of the fediverse will be like two non-overlapping ecosystems.

      • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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        7 days ago

        Yeah but the beautiful thing about the fediverse is that instance admins can just be like “lol no, fuck you” and defederate, and moreover coordinate to blacklist anything affiliated with Meta et al.

        And then there’s people like me who, as a result of the election, have started to think about how they could go work for tech in the context of some sort of fifth-column effort, because I fucking HATE the amount of societal damage these hypercapitalist megacorps are doing. But of course I would only do that in Minecraft.

    • 🔰Hurling⚜️Durling🔱@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      Agree, but I fear they try to get those apps banned, similarly to what happened to tiktok (yes I know it’s not FOSS) because the only reason why it was banned was because it was killing the revenue of FB and Twitter.

  • cm0002@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    No, the platforms are enshittifiying, but the underlying nuts and bolts of the internet are still there untouched and so far every attempt by big tech to enshittifiy/proprietarize those has thus far failed

  • Lifecoach5000@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    I feel like smartphones have just made people “internet lazy” - myself included. The masses just want to get an app and let it accomplish whatever you need, without worrying about any kind of enshitification as long as it’s free.

  • renegadespork@lemmy.jelliefrontier.net
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    8 days ago

    I’m starting to feel like the Cyberpunk 2077 version of the internet is not too far-fetched. It’s split into 2 parts:

    1. The “old net” - This has been completely overrun by AI programs that are so fast and powerful they almost immediately compromise any non-AI powered system that connects to it.

    2. The “net” - Blocked off from the old net by the “Blackwall” (a big firewall that keeps all AI out) is basically your standard internet that humans use via cybernetic implants.

    I honestly could see AI basically filling the internet with so much garbage and malware that it becomes completely unusable. This is already starting to happen. However, if we create a new one with just human-controlled computers, I don’t see how we could stop people from just connecting AI to that one.

  • AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net
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    7 days ago

    There’s a phrase that I learned recently that feels relevant to this. “Hermeneutical Injustice”. It means injustice that arises when we are literally unable to meaningfully discuss our experiences with others. For example, “sexual harassment” is a relatively recent phrase, coined in the 1970s, a period when more women were entering the workplace, and employers didn’t have policies for how to respond to workplace sexual harassment. It’s a useful phrase, both legally, and interpersonally, and having access to this phrase that describes something that was previously hard to articulate (“you quit your job because your boss was complimenting you?”) has helped us to reduce hermeneutic injustice by helping us to better understand and respond to the underlying phenomena (for instance, we now understand that people of all genders may experience workplace sexual harassment)

    “Hermeneutic injustice” is why I think the ridiculous prevalence of the word “enshittification” is a good thing. People have latched into that because although it may be a new word, the phenomena it describes have been happening for a while now. I’ve even seen less techy people using it. The anger I’ve been seeing extends beyond people who know about “enshittification”, but its spread and usage is a useful snapshot of how many are feeling. It makes me feel hopeful.

    I’m sleepy right now so I’ll not attempt to discuss more concrete things driving this hope (such as “small web”, Fediverse etc.), but the short of it is that I have a lot of faith in people. Leaning on our communities is how we survive and resist this bullshit, and there will always be people who want to build things for the love of it.

    • TORFdot0@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      Well put, I think at first as well I felt like the term was a bit immature and used a bit too liberally when it first started picking up steam in 2023.

      It really does describe a phenomenon that is becoming so widespread that I’ve softened on it and embraced it (as long as it’s used correctly)

  • Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
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    8 days ago

    The internet isnt a person or thing. Its a giant network and its literally whatever the nodes on the network want it to be. Thats why we are here having this discussion on lemmy.

    The internet is so many different things all at once, you can’t really generalize it or say the whole thing is being enshittified.

    I think we all just learned a hard lesson about trusting companies where we are the product rather than the customers. People were very naive in the early days of social media, and advertising.

    • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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      7 days ago

      You say that like we didn’t see people closing their Reddit communities and moving them to Discord.

      We ain’t learnt shit.

      • Brodysseus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        7 days ago

        I use discord but i can’t stand it as a platform for discussion. Forums, even reddit, seem so superior to me as a format for discussion and storing information. Maybe I haven’t figured out discord yet

        • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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          7 days ago

          I don’t think there’s much to figure out.

          It’s IRC, TeamSpeak and a Wiki, wrapped up behind a custom web UI.

          And everyone is going to be so surprised when those investors start demanding their returns, and everybody’s content gets stuffed behind a paywall.

  • JaggedRobotPubes@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    You’re asking that question in one of the places where it will be evolving. The fediverse, or something like it, is the future of the internet.

  • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    The internet, no. World Wide Web, unlikely. Commercial domains however have been shit and will continue to enshittify as long as people support their business models.

  • Toneswirly@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    Never say never. Once the VCs wake up and realize there is no ROI left they will take their billions out of the pool and 90% of companies will struggle to actually create value from a hostile userbase.

    • bobalot@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      I think 90% of the AI investments really have no commercial viability and are being developed to suck up clueless venture capital.

  • wirehead@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    So… I’m not sure if this is an entirely rational thought.

    I’d always wanted to do ham radio but hadn’t bothered. Before my time, ham radio let you do amazing things that weren’t otherwise very easy. Like have a group chat with a bunch of people all over the world. Except when I was looking for things to do, you could get on the Internet and chat with a bunch of people all over the world … without the antennas and hardware and all.

    Lately some stuff happened and my spouse’s friend who lives near Asheville NC and lived through the flooding there where ham radio was the only working form of communications, so my spouse got pressured into buying a radio, which means that I got myself a license because … well, radio works without much infrastructure?

    Mostly I figure I needed to fill the void that was getting on Twitter if something happened locally.

  • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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    8 days ago

    Well we’re literally in the middle of rolling out http3 so tech will never stop teching.

    If you pine for the old internet spin up a BBS or PHPBB and enjoy some arcane discussions - those things still exist and hosting costs are cheaper than ever so if you pop 200 bucks into an account you can keep it going for decades.

    • blackstrat@lemmy.fwgx.uk
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      8 days ago

      There are plenty of active forums these days still on specific topics. Most work well on mobile too. I personally frequent about 4 different ones and using Hermit app makes it a great experience.

  • knightmare1147@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    This ‘death of the Internet’ talk really irritates me. It’s not. Stop using the big websites and look for or make your own corner in the Internet.

    • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
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      6 days ago

      Part of the death of the Internet involves the creation of spam and being unable to find the good smaller sites.

  • FourPacketsOfPeanuts@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    See the enshitified hotspots as fly traps for the limp minded. An authentic, simple, commerce free web is still out there, one just needs to look outside of the drivel served up on page one of mainstream search engines