I miss how decentralized the internet used to be (which is why I like hexbear/federated spaces). I know some of you guys were in the hellhole that was LUElinks, and theres a lot of negative things to say about old internet, but I just miss how personal things could get. Used to have friends on mirc channels and whatnot, would integrate with small communities where people shared how to learn how to do basic hacking stuff. Centralization did help tame a lot of the shittier behavior of people online though… but also the impersonal nature of the current web allows people to do shittiness in a totally different way.
I mean yeah, a lot of it just went under the surface. Instead now people are more dickish because why spend time trying to talk to some random in a sea of millions of other people when you will likely never encounter them a second time? Not going to say that we’re not even guilty of being assholes here at times, but it feels pretty warranted/easy when some complete random shows up and just wants to be difficult. Guess I just miss online spaces where people had more accountability and at the scale of a lot of these centralized spaces theres a lot of room to treat it as space to be shitty to one another. Its laughable that people thought web2.0 was going to usher in some new era where we’d all be politely engaging with one another and sharing thoughts/ideas/ideology when instead its all so impersonal that theres very little reason to engage in good faith.
Oh I thought you were saying people are better now that everyone is on reddit than when we were all in our own weird little corners hah. I definitely think there was more accountability back in those smaller communities where you had a reputation to stake rather than being able to spin up dozens of anonymous sock puppets, basically.
Yeah thats basically what I’m getting at. There was definitely still aggro people who would go out of their way to be a social menace in those small communities, but the social effect of the community had a powerful effect to keep people in check. Its obviously an aspect of how people socialize in the real world that just doesn’t function at scale well. I miss doing things online, like playing early MMOs, where people actually felt that social contract still existed. Now you have to really try to find spaces where that magic is still alive because the cats out of the bag and we all know you can largely be an asshole on the internet without consequence.
I do like telling random fascists online to go fuck themselves though, lol.
Smaller communities also meant it was easier for mods to sniff-test users being assholes. Now with large-scale platforms using AI to auto-moderate, chuds figure out how to be assholes in ways that don’t trigger the algorithms.
I’m aware, but one of the fundamental problems is that the scale of web2.0, or the centralized internet (whatever we want to call it) has trained people to behave anti-socially. That cannot be undone no matter what space you’re in, unfortunately.
I miss how decentralized the internet used to be (which is why I like hexbear/federated spaces). I know some of you guys were in the hellhole that was LUElinks, and theres a lot of negative things to say about old internet, but I just miss how personal things could get. Used to have friends on mirc channels and whatnot, would integrate with small communities where people shared how to learn how to do basic hacking stuff. Centralization did help tame a lot of the shittier behavior of people online though… but also the impersonal nature of the current web allows people to do shittiness in a totally different way.
Did it really though
I mean yeah, a lot of it just went under the surface. Instead now people are more dickish because why spend time trying to talk to some random in a sea of millions of other people when you will likely never encounter them a second time? Not going to say that we’re not even guilty of being assholes here at times, but it feels pretty warranted/easy when some complete random shows up and just wants to be difficult. Guess I just miss online spaces where people had more accountability and at the scale of a lot of these centralized spaces theres a lot of room to treat it as space to be shitty to one another. Its laughable that people thought web2.0 was going to usher in some new era where we’d all be politely engaging with one another and sharing thoughts/ideas/ideology when instead its all so impersonal that theres very little reason to engage in good faith.
Oh I thought you were saying people are better now that everyone is on reddit than when we were all in our own weird little corners hah. I definitely think there was more accountability back in those smaller communities where you had a reputation to stake rather than being able to spin up dozens of anonymous sock puppets, basically.
Yeah thats basically what I’m getting at. There was definitely still aggro people who would go out of their way to be a social menace in those small communities, but the social effect of the community had a powerful effect to keep people in check. Its obviously an aspect of how people socialize in the real world that just doesn’t function at scale well. I miss doing things online, like playing early MMOs, where people actually felt that social contract still existed. Now you have to really try to find spaces where that magic is still alive because the cats out of the bag and we all know you can largely be an asshole on the internet without consequence.
I do like telling random fascists online to go fuck themselves though, lol.
Smaller communities also meant it was easier for mods to sniff-test users being assholes. Now with large-scale platforms using AI to auto-moderate, chuds figure out how to be assholes in ways that don’t trigger the algorithms.
It made it easier to moderate it
Moderation doesn’t have quite the same role as the sort of social contract that a tighter more personal community has, though.
Oh absolutely.
There’s still plenty of small irc servers
I’m aware, but one of the fundamental problems is that the scale of web2.0, or the centralized internet (whatever we want to call it) has trained people to behave anti-socially. That cannot be undone no matter what space you’re in, unfortunately.
Yup