The Internet Is Being Ruined by Bloated Junk

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/01/long-youtube-videos-tiktok/677130/

by paulpauper • 2 years ago

13 7 2 years ago

paulpauper• 2 years ago

Yup...the infamous 10-minute youtube video or podcast, in which the first 5 minutes is rambling and ad placement, plus another 3 minutes of ads , product placement, and digressions for something that could have been condensed into 2 minutes .

OliveMate• 2 years ago

The old Wadsworth Constant[1] is being worn thin with each passing year. Half the time it feels like you should skip all the way to the last 30% of whatever to get what you're looking for.

A side note about YouTube in particular, I find SEO tactics to be like dart frogs. Bold titles with garish bright thumbnails means avoid!

[1] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Wadsworth%20...

kunley• 2 years ago

And that article is filled with junk ads every paragraph

eternityforest2• 2 years ago

The Internet is mostly fine from a technical perspective. The oldest hardware in common use runs everything pretty much acceptably. The 20MB JavaScript doesn't matter when it's all cached because there are only 15 sites anyone visits.

I'm not even sure personal sites are the answer, hosted platforms like neocities seem to have all the benefits with few of the hassles.

What's ruining the internet is that we use it too much, endless scrolling, social platforms that don't prominently feature the actual user avatar and name near the content, algorithmic curation, etc.

Decentralization would be nice to have, but federation isn't really decentralized, and it doesn't matter if the content and community is so awful nobody wants to use it.

Most "Let's fix the internet" proposals are actively part of the problem which is that the internet has very little real world to reflect anymore. They're just putting the focus more on the tech itself.

90s internet tech was awful. Tech in general was worse in almost every way compared to now. I don't think I own any gadgets I'd like to replace with the old version... but we did seriously amazing things with it all, because the focus was on doing cool stuff, solving real problems, making art, etc, not making more tech and vaguely handwaving about what we might use it for.

People never do anything but scroll, so there's nothing to write about, and no familiar reference points outside the internet to allow any understanding.

Even the world's most major political issues are thought of in terms of memes these days.

hulitu• 2 years ago

The Internet is mostly fine from a technical perspective.

Until you need to use it. No, more than 1 second loading time in 2024 is not acceptable. Gray on gray, missing scrollbars, needed to click every damn thing on a page, to discover where is a menu or a hyperlink, is not acceptable.

And from a security perspective, is a disaster waiting to happen.

eternityforest2• 2 years ago

2 seconds isn't terrible. Instant would be nice but I don't really ever notice loading time. It's faster than I can ever remember it being in the past.

Security is also better than I can remember at any previous point, including pre-internet.

Privacy is pretty terrible by most coders standards, but that's probably less of a technical thing and more of a "It does exactly what it was designed to because free stuff where you're the product sells really well" issue.

GravityLab• 2 years ago

Make more Internet. It is an unlimited supply. :)

The Internet Is Being Ruined by Bloated Junk

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