Look for text based media. As soon as images are introduced to a platform, memes take over and tank the quality of discourse.
replyI see this sentiment on here frequently. Yes, content delivery now sucks like it’s written by bots for consumption by bots solely with the goal of supplying mindless dribble for ad impressions.
replyHowever the technology is so much better. As a developer I can build web and media applications that you couldn’t ever imagine building 20 years ago. I am not talking about framework garbage like jquery or React. I am talking about things like WebSockets, HTML5 audio/video, Node/Deno, and more.
I agree that the technology is fine, and I also appreciate the breadth of tools I can fiddle with and how surprisingly approachable they've become for me (mdn docs are amazing to explore). But I miss the community spaces of the old internet. Different forums for the different games I played. The non-profit driven youtube / twitter. Truly the biggest pandora's box of the internet is the addition of profit incentives for posters. It was fine for a while, I liked it when video makers who put effort into their creations were compensated. But then it got gamed into becoming the worst self-fueling internet hate machine. Rewarding those who put out vapid and inflammatory content for the sake of serving ads to enraged (and engaged) viewers.
replyI share your frustrations. I was hopefully for the relaunch of Digg, but it very quickly started to feel like Reddit, especially when people inject politics (with an heavy bias) into everything. I purposely didn’t follow the politics community, as I had a feeling that would be bad, but that mindset very quickly started infecting many other communities and discussions. It seemed impossible to have a good faith discussion of the actual issues. I gave up yesterday, deleting the app, logging out of the site, and deleting my bookmark. I’m too old to waste my time dealing with conversations like those.
replyReddit has a meme problem as well. Also a bad mod problem.
replyIt’s such a boon having such a large unpaid workforce but it’s kind of a Faustian bargain.
replyIf you start a link blog with an RSS feed and an email or some way to comment I will subscribe and participate if it’s good enough.
replyStart here:
https://simonwillison.net/2022/Nov/6/what-to-blog-about/
Well, then, checkout mine
replyThere are probably some very high quality mailing lists or discord servers out there, but I wouldn't know where to find them.
replyI have personally never seen a high quality discord server. The chaotic ui lends itself to noisy random conversations and dropped threads.
replyI don’t have any recommendations for you. A big part of the problem is that heavy moderation is necessary to keep forums from devolving into the slop that stands in for discourse these days. For example, even when there’s a fairly good question posted on reddit, the comments are just a string of one liners, snide quips, and snark. Few people know how to engage in thoughtful discussion anymore.
replyCheck out https://cyberspace.online/
replySorry, I tried. If you want to have good things you have to use them when you first see them.
replyCheck out mine
replyWow. Can’t believe this is the first time in human history when someone thought things were better when they were younger.
replyThank you for the thought-terminating comment. Progress is always good, and we should never stop to look back, thinking perhaps that we have taken a wrong turn along the way.
replyYes, it is cliché at this point to complain about the Internet, but there is a reason people do complain and it’s not because of rose-tinted glasses.
You really think rose-tinted glasses is 0% of it?
replyTwitter
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