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I don't think "the majority" matter, in the context of what parent commenter is talking about. I generally subscribe to the idea of Eternal September (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September), where "the majority" is the root cause of the problems. The early web was not great because capitalism didn't exist and corporations were nicer back then, etc. The early web was great because it was a subculture, driven by a niche population that was more technically savvy and prone to create rather than just consume. Today's web is poor because it is now the mainstream culture, it is driven by a wide population of casual, unsophisticated users that are prone to consume content only and are therefore best served by walled gardens. As the casual consumer web grew, the early maker web's signal got increasingly lost in the noise. There are still interesting blogs out there, but they are harder to find and attract less engagement because even those of us from the spirit of that original web now spend so much time on platforms like Reddit (and even HN) instead. Even if you want to produce novel content, you really HAVE to engage with the entrenched closed platforms in order to reach any audience at all now. And therefore there's little way to discriminate, if you want to attract a community of early-web minded people while avoiding the mass normies. Most attempts that try this either fizzle out altogether, or inadvertently take a wrong turn into culture wars, instead attracting alt-right trolls who think the problem with the web is too many political progressives now. I think it is a pointless goal to try to change the entire mainstream Internet. To somehow change 2020's normies into 1990's geeks. I think the only feasible goal, and only necessary goal, is to carve out space for that geek community to thrive as a subculture once again. Honestly, "the web" itself may be an inappropriate platform for this. It may only be possible with something new that requires some technical savvy and friction in order to access, to discourage all the phone users from venturing in. |