[chromacity]

Yes, but here's the realization I had some time ago: no one cares. The billions of people online don't care. The internet is overwhelmingly accessed from mobile devices and used chiefly for shopping, scrolling through TikTok, watching Netflix, swiping on Tinder, and so on. More importantly, we don't care, not really. We pay lip service to it, but what have we done to foster the open / small web today?

Many of us work at companies that aren't moving the needle in the right direction, and in our free time, we seem to be content debating AI-generated think pieces and press releases from AI vendors. As I write this, in the top ten HN stories, I see press releases from Deepmind, Cursor, Tailscale, and Qwen. Even when commercial interests don't dominate and someone's passion project makes it to the top, how often do we offer meaningful encouragement or support?

The "old web" is something we like as an abstract idea, but in reality, we don't lift a finger to preserve it. I'm guilty too. When I'm done writing this comment, I'll probably go back to doomscrolling on walled-garden social media for a while.

[pdonis]

> When I'm done writing this comment, I'll probably go back to doomscrolling on walled-garden social media for a while.

I won't. I don't do social media. I have a Facebook account but I never use it. I don't even have a Twitter account. I don't use TikTok or any other such apps. If I'm using my smartphone and it's not for a call, texting, or an essential app like my bank's, it means I'm reading an e-book on it. (It's true that I get most of my ebooks from walled gardens--Google and Amazon. Unfortunately the vast majority of freely available ebooks are simply unreadable because of crappy formatting. But it's still not social media.)

But I'm an extreme outlier. I wish I weren't, and to be honest I'm not sure I understand exactly why I am. But that's how it appears to be.

[alephnerd]

> I don't do social media

You do realize Hacker News is social media right? And that too owned and operated by YCombinator.

And unscrupulous data crawlers have been mining HN's datasets for years. Heck, there's a fairly robust live HN dataset on Hugging Face right now [0].

OP is right.

[0] - https://huggingface.co/datasets/open-index/hacker-news

[gausswho]

How many times must we trundle underfoot this lazy canard that HN is social media. A link aggregator with comments is not what anyone thinks of for that term.

[dyauspitr]

I mean, there is discussion and a sense of community here. I’m not sure what exactly defines social media, but this is more than just a link aggregator.

[Jensson]

Old forums weren't called social media. I think for it to be social media it has to be about your social graph, here on HN I almost never read peoples names and I don't really connect with people so it isn't social media, its just media with comments.

If I could subscribe to peoples feeds and such then it would be social media, but HN doesn't have that feature.

[pdonis]

> there is discussion and a sense of community here

That's been true of discussion forums for longer than the Internet has been available to the public. I was on discussion forums over dialup in the 1980s. The term "social media" didn't even exist yet, nor did the business model of trying to monetize people's online data.

[alex1138]

There's a massive whitewashing of what "social media" is. I don't feel there's one singular definition but I could be wrong, maybe I am the one who missed the boat. But I'd really love to see it quantified more

eg "Social media leads to addiction!" - ok take Facebook

Are you referring to

a) non-chronological feeds? Who knows what posts you'll actually find? You come back for more. You can't just log off for a week and come back and the most recent posts are there (you don't even see everything, the platforms regularly hides stuff). That's certainly addiction

b) fake notifications? That's fraud, and certainly addiction

c) the corollary of a), you don't know who's seen your posts so your mental model gets shaped. That's certainly addiction

d) forced Messenger and read receipts can be addiction especially given bullshit like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4151433 so FB wants to subvert email

I'm fine with people railing against all this. I just want people to quantify it more

[pdonis]

I would say "social media" is a site that is trying to monetize your data, and using convenience as a lure to get you to give it your data to monetize. ("Data" here includes everything you post there.)

[jacquesm]

I would say social media is any website where the connections between the participants are as important or even more important than the content. As soon as you get 'followers' it is game over.

[alephnerd]

> As soon as you get 'followers' it is game over.

This is already happening on HN now via HackerSmacker [0].

I've found a couple HN users who have that have apparently been using it to follow and target me with comments whenever I post.

[0] - https://hackersmacker.org/

[tacitusarc]

I don’t believe Hacker News is social media, it’s news aggregator/message board.

Social media requires social network effects, where a large part of the draw is the network effect, and that just isn’t a part of HN.

[pdonis]

> You do realize Hacker News is social media right?

No, I don't. HN is a news and discussion site. It's not trying to monetize my data.

> unscrupulous data crawlers have been mining HN's datasets for years

They've been mining every byte of data that's visible on the web for years. That doesn't make every single website on the Internet social media.

[necovek]

Was Facebook social media before it started adding ads or not?

Will non-monetized old school "forums" escape the wrath of "social media" bans for children? Will HN?

[pdonis]

> Will non-monetized old school "forums" escape the wrath of "social media" bans for children?

I haven't seen anyone trying to apply such bans to them. Have you?

> Will HN?

I guess we'd have to ask the HN moderators that question.

[necovek]

The first Google search hit for the UK variant of the law[1] says this:

  This includes a range of websites, apps and other services, including social media services, consumer file cloud storage and sharing sites, video-sharing platforms, online forums, dating services, and online instant messaging services. 

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/online-safety-act...

[pdonis]

> Was Facebook social media before it started adding ads or not?

AFAIK it's had ads for practically its entire existence, and other than venture capital investments, ads have always been virtually its entire revenue.

[necovek]

Depends on what you consider "practically its entire existence": the same could be said of Google Search if we are looking at how long they did not compared to the rest of the time, but I distinctly remember the period when they did not and when I recommended them to my entire social circle as The Search Engine (compared to Yahoo, Altavista, MSN or whatever else was there at the time) or The Social Network (compared to MySpace, I can't remember anything else that was comparable).

[bruce511]

To be honest, I'm not sure I even understand what the term "Open web" is supposed to mean?

Does it mean that each individual and company is hosting their stuff on their own physical hardware? Is it OK to use say AWS?

Does it mean that Facebook is the Open Web as long as you work at Facebook? But it's not if you don't?

Is any site with a login "not the open web"? So if I'm hosting on my own metal, paid for by paying subscribers, then I'm not Open Web?

To your point, I think no one cares because the term is so meaningless that it's irrelevant. Actual real people aren't interested in some technical distinction which is completely unrelated to their goals for being on the web in the first place.

It seems to me that the whole concept of "Open web" is so poorly defined, and the reasons for caring so obscure, that it pretty much never comes up anyway. Joe Public doesn't care because there's no reason to care, and he doesn't even know it's "a thing".

[cosmicgadget]

> Is any site with a login "not the open web"?

This one. The open web is freely accessible to anyone on the internet.

> So if I'm hosting on my own metal, paid for by paying subscribers, then I'm not Open Web?

Yes. It's not necessarily bad, it's just not open.

[bruce511]

Thanks for the feedback. So hosting on say Wix is still Open Web?

I suppose, is the converse free? Is a site that allows access without a login Open Web? Like say YouTube?

[cosmicgadget]

I know indie web camp has a thing against hosting services and probably the small web people would also say blogspot and wordpress and wix are too corpo.

So imho drawing the distinction at not requiring payment/login works as an open web definition. And if self-hosting is a requirement for some people, there are other terms to use.

Youtube, Substack, Medium and the like are open-ish. They're far more of a heavyweight platform than a web host or publishing tool. They could become walled with the flip of a switch. And they can be ad-walled which is testing the limits of openness.

[JKCalhoun]

If I go to Wix, Substack, Medium and I'm tracked with cookies, sent analytics to Google, a popup begging to allow notifications, a subscription—not "open".

[echelon]

A world where hyperscalers don't dictate the technology choices of 99.99% of people and totally control distribution.

A world where platform taxes and gatekeeping don't stifle innovation or put a ceiling on startups.

A world where the balance of power is more evenly distributed.

A world where single giant point of failures can't dictate the security posture and privacy of the entire civilization.

The brief period of time between 1993 and 2008.

[bruce511]

I feel like you're describing pretty much every industry ever.

You could be talking about food, or insurance or cars or planes or health or (dare I say it?) politics.

Of course there are well understood commercial reasons for industries consolidating. Primarily because consumers prefer it.

But while your post is good on rhetoric, it still lacks the concrete definition I seek. Specifically what hardware, OS, VM software, site-creation tools, subscription options, advertising networks, payment processors, and so on must I use to reach "Open web" status?

You're describing a world, which is a fair desire. But when I go to the local bakery to pitch an online presence, what exactly am I pitching, and how does this pitch serve the goals of that bakery?

[jacquesm]

The no monoculture one is the big one for me. And I think 2008 is very generous.

[bruce511]

I get the concept of this at a principle level. But how does it play out for you? I mean, to what extent do you succumb to the monoculture because while principles are good, you live in the real world?

So, like, what phone OS do you use? There's not much choice but did you choose Android over iOS because it's more open? Or did you go the whole way and use PalmOS or Symbian? Do you pick airlines based on what planes they fly? Do you choose Bing over Google?

I say this not to judge but rather to highlight the wide gap between principle and reality. We live in a real world, and the world consolidates behind a small number of providers because that has proven to be a beneficial strategy. (And yes, those providers can then abuse us.)

But I don't want to choose between 20 political parties, or 10 credit card processors or have to build apps for 15 phone OS's.

The sadness of losing the early days of choice and wildness are not limited to the web. Before that we lost the 20 brands of PC (all with custom OS) that we had in the 80s. Every new industry goes through this process, and every generation misses the wild heady days of its youth.

[defrost]

As a legit answer,

I don't have a smart phone or a mobile phone .. and yes, I do stay in touch with a good many people via land lines, email, some encrypted apps, radio and IRL face to face conversation.

I pick aircraft for their stability at near ground level flight, Cresco STOL's for example, and or ability to land on water, have high wings, mostly twin props, etc. Quite fond of Robinson R22 and Cabri G2 helicopters.

Typically elections here have 10 or so parties, three or four major parties, several minor single issue parties, and 10 or so independants in many districts. It's a preferential ranked voting system that allows you to 1, 2, 3 your main interests and tail off there if that's all you care to do.

I still largely use paper maps (despite having processed a great deal of digital GIS data into digital mapping pipelines).

So, yeah - we're happy being off to the side and not part of the great urban monoculture.

[jacquesm]

Props to you, you're further along that track than I am. Running a business has been one of main obstacles to cutting more of these ties. But it's getting there.

[jacquesm]

> So, like, what phone OS do you use?

Nokia N800.

> Do you pick airlines based on what planes they fly?

I stopped flying entirely.

> Do you choose Bing over Google?

Still using Google but working very hard on moving away from it.

Yes, I too live in the real world and I'm a really annoying customer for banks, insurance companies and my government by insisting they serve me without bending over and adopting some eco-system that I do not subscribe to. I have a need to interact with my bank, my government, my insurance company and my kids schools and I point blank refuse to be sucked into any of their app driven eco systems.

I'll take it to court if that's what it takes.

[bruce511]

I applaud your dedication to not succumbing to the appification of everything.

Unfortunately you are an outlier and society is not built for outliers.

Equally, unfortunately, the opinion of outliers does not really help the argument for a more open web. Yes there's some small number of people on mastodon but telling my hairdresser to not use Facebook is not terribly useful to her.

[cosmicgadget]

> what have we done to foster the open / small web today?

Personally, I did a bunch of labeling of my indieweb index. Hopefully a fair chunk of HN users read a blog or two but its understandable if the news has stolen a lot of attention.

That's all it takes. Nobody has to quit their day job or create an open Tiktok alternative, the old web just needs patrons (with clicks, comments, or hrefs).

If you prefer the walled gardens, there is nothing wrong with that. But there are a lot of open web contributors out there.

[kunai]

The reason why no one cares is because most well-adjusted adults have never interacted with the web or its many tendrils as much as the patrons of this website (and others like it) have.