[Night_Thastus]

You can't fix it, because it's a problem of incentives.

* Businesses want to maximize shareholder value

* Those running websites want to do as much SEO-slop as possible to appear first

* Content creators need to maximize views, which means rage-bait, clickbait, etc.

* Addictive content = more time spent, more ads seen

You can't 'fix' the internet. The internet, like many things, is a tool. Shareholders and individual actors are only interested in maximizing their own gains - and so use this tool to that purpose - regardless of any negative effects on the whole. That's how humans operate in general (with rare exceptions).

You may as well say "Human selfishness and greed sucks, how do we get rid of it?". You can't.

[Morromist]

I suppose people could try to make a non-monitizable internet.

Everything would have to be self-hosted. No ads would be allowed anywhere. No business would be allowed to build anything, just users. Some kind of super-admin would have to have to power to perma-ban any website or user that breaks the rules.

But you'd still have the problem of people who aren't directly monitizing things, like influencers. You'd have bots. You'd have subtle ads that don't quite appear to be ads, or users writing fake testimonials.

Still, despite its obvious flaws, it would be cool to see someone try to build such a non-commerical internet someday. I wish them luck.

[Night_Thastus]

Bots and influencers are minimal concerns if there's no money to be had - since that's ultimately the driving force between those.

But trying to make a 'non-monetizable' internet is an oxymoron. If it has the ability to allow people to communicate, then it can be used to sell things.

You can't have an exchange of information without that information potentially containing garbage designed to make someone else money. You can only eliminate spam calls if you decide to get rid of the invention of the telephone.

[Morromist]

Heh. True. The saga of r/art this last few weeks is a good lession in how trying to demonitize things can be difficult.

Still, with intense moderation it is sometimes possible. Wikipedia has a vast amount of information passing through it and has stayed pretty free of monitization - although, certainly some companies have written themselves some pretty positive wiki-pages - in general I would say it is a success.

[Night_Thastus]

Intense moderation eventually breaks down. Ultimately, the people doing the moderating are driven by the same selfishness as all humans. Even if a you can find a handful who won't bend for their own gain, they will be forced out by those who do and see an opportunity.

This is the same problem law has, even at the global scale.

You can't moderate when almost every single person in the chain is a bad actor. Individuals will chip away at any structure or organization day by day, year by year, until they are eventually rewarded.