[samhw]

> Without competition from free-but-funded-with-$billions ad-supported services, most of the valuable stuff would probably be replaced by volunteer and non-profit efforts.

It wouldn't just be 'non profit', it would be 'considerable loss'. You can't provide a service like YouTube or Google without incurring enormous expense, even if you're only counting the infrastructure costs.

> It'd work out fine.

You have no idea whether it would work out fine. Neither do I. I'm intensely sceptical of anyone who issues hand-waving proclamations about how a dramatic change would affect an almost indescribably complex system.

You may have your own wishes and preferences, but it's not a good idea to let those invade the rational, evaluative part of your mind.

> Most of the rest isn't valuable.

Anything that's used by someone is valuable to someone. I don't like paella, but I don't propose to eradicate all paella restaurants for that reason. Again, this feels like a hand-wavey and not very wise answer to dismiss problems with your idea.

[handrous]

> It wouldn't just be 'non profit', it would be 'considerable loss'. You can't provide a service like YouTube or Google without incurring enormous expense, even if you're only counting the infrastructure costs.

I'm not a bit worried we'd go without capable search engines, without ads. Very likely there'd be donation-supported ones that are at least as good, and maybe better for some purposes (IMO Google's utility peaked around '08).

The free side of Youtube is a UX problem to be solved by something like torrent clients (maybe plus some RSS). Or probably a dozen other ways. It's far from insurmountable, there's just no motivation to fix that now (because there's no demand for it). That's the story for most of the services that could be replaced by [two or three existing protocols] + [some not-exactly-rocket-science UX effort]. The commercial side of it is solved by... hosting videos. Yourself, or paying a service to do it for you (these services already exist, despite YouTube's dominance, all the way from simple video-hosting to full white-label video streaming services).

> Anything that's used by someone is valuable to someone. I don't like paella, but I don't propose to eradicate all paella restaurants for that reason. Again, this feels like a hand-wavey and not very wise answer to dismiss problems with your idea.

It's plain that a huge percentage of online content could be replaced with Snake Game on an old Nokia with ~0 loss of enjoyment for the consumer. A perfect replacement for them is a book of Sudoku puzzles. People look at the stuff but the value is extremely close to zero, in that nearly any other time-wasting activity is just as good. And that's after dismissing the ~75% of the Web that's spammy garbage of negative value (because it drowns out better material covering the same thing).

> You may have your own wishes and preferences, but it's not a good idea to let those invade the rational, evaluative part of your mind.

Beats accepting the wishes and preferences that created the bad situation that exists now, right? Why should that be privileged over what I'd prefer? Has zip to do with a lack of rationality on my part, though it's easier to dismiss ideas if one first paints them as irrational.

We can have useful, widely-used open protocols or we can have spying (ads may or may not also be on the table, but take away the spying and there goes much of the advantage of the huge tech companies, anyway). The two very clearly cannot co-exist. I'd prefer the former.

[samhw]

> I'm not a bit worried we'd go without capable search engines, without ads. Very likely there'd be donation-supported ones that are at least as good, and maybe better for some purposes (IMO Google's utility peaked around '08).

This isn't necessarily wrong. I personally use Gigablast, which is excellent and entirely independent (unlike many 'alternative' search engines it isn't backed by Google or, more often, Bing).

However, pace the problem of other minds, I am not the only person in the world, and many people enjoy and rely on Google. I think this conversation is continually falling into the trap of muddling up what you personally prefer vs what would most satisfy the majority of people, and thus achieve adoption.

It's not a good solution if most people consider it worse for their needs, irrespective of your own personal preferences, or your feelings about what other people should like.

> The free side of Youtube is a UX problem to be solved by something like torrent clients (maybe plus some RSS).

Come on. This is as near as possible to an objectively worse solution. Again, I think you're struggling to see beyond your own preferences and abilities, to how most people in the world interact with technology.

> It's plain that a huge percentage of online content could be replaced with Snake Game on an old Nokia with ~0 loss of enjoyment for the consumer.

I refer back to my previous sentence. [Also, both Snake and old Nokias are exactly as available today as they ever were, and I see no sign whatsoever of this happening, despite the clear advantages in price, battery, uptime, etc.]

> People look at the stuff but the value is extremely close to zero, in that nearly any other time-wasting activity is just as good.

I refer back to my penultimate sentence.

> Why should that be privileged over what I'd prefer?

I refer back to my antepenultimate sentence. The answer is: because you are one person in a world of seven billion, and your solution is not going to go anywhere if the mass of people don't like it.

---

Look, in summary, this is not a useful conversation if all you have to contribute is moralising about the worth of other people's preferences. I don't care if you think most people should spend their time knitting or listening to Brahms. I'm trying to come up with a solution that satisfies people, and, therefore, can actually compete.

[handrous]

You seem to be assuming I don't consume a bunch of content that could be replaced with Snake Game or Solitaire at ~0 loss of enjoyment, because it's incredibly low-value entertainment, so am somehow looking down on others. What do you think this is? That I'm doing right now? The value, in every sense, of nearly all online activities can be found next to "marginal" in the dictionary.

[EDIT]

> if all you have to contribute is moralising about the worth of other people's preferences

Definitely a complete characterization of my views on this, and of these posts. You've looked carefully, considered thoughtfully, and discovered the entire thing. Very good.