Isn't gentrification the opposite of what's been happening to the Internet? Previously, only a small, well-educated minority was online, but now the Internet has never been more accessible to the masses. With a cheap smartphone and data, even rural Indians who make a fraction of the average person in the West are able to have access to the Internet, while previously you need an expensive computer, an expensive modem, and the required knowledge.
And let's not get into the cost of server and hosting, which have never been so low.
From a consumer perspective, definitely, the next billion and the billion after that are all getting online, and that is genuinely amazing.
From a producer's perspective, though? It's a disaster! There's a huge pressure to shape content in a specific way, to post it to specific sites. Even something as simple as sharing a non-image or a non-video file with somebody is a lot harder now than it was a few years back. File hosting sites are going dark left and right, cloud storage services are shuttering direct file access capabilities, the new types of devices have limited options for simple file management, and so on and so on.
Author seems to use gentrification to describe a shift in power dynamics: those who are on the internet now have more rules governing their behavior and those in charge of the internet are now more interested in corporate profits than the public good.
Now I disagree with using gentrification to describe that, and I don’t totally agree with the authors point anyway, but I think that is what he’s trying to say.
Yea gentrification seems like the wrong term for sure.
Honestly, the most worrying though to me is Google. #1 search engine, #1 browser, #1 email provider, #1 mobile platform, #1 online video platform. The concern is with all those places domination google can dictate de-facto standards or push standards that they want.
Gone are the days that one person or small team could keep up and maintain all the standards for a "modern browser". Microsoft even gave up.
I don't think Microsoft gave up so much as shifted strategy. Building on Chromium means they start out already compatible with most websites on the Internet, neutralizing one of Google's advantages. They have enough resources to maintain a fork and add their own features.
Google did the same thing starting with Safari's WebKit.
But at the same time everything's gone from a dank esoteria to polished standards. In the sense of visual aesthetic the internet has been "gentrified" I'd say.
If your street full of esoteric expensive artisan stores was replaced by a Wall-Mart, you wouldn't call that gentrification. Gentrification casts out the low-income residents, it doesn't invite them in en masse.
Actually, that's typically what does occur as part of gentrification. Typically a bohemian neighborhood has all sorts of interesting indie stores selling books, art, antiques, etc. But these stores aren't that profitable -- a chain retailer can pay much more rent and so the owners evict the indie stores.
True, but generally the bohemians and artists are the first ones to replace the working-class character of the neighborhood with their own, until they themselves are replaced by young urban professionals...
Comparing the wide Internet to a neighborhood with fixed space constraints is a rocky analogy to begin with. The foundation of a new city would be more appropriate, starting with a small population of intrepid explorers in a wild uncharted wilderness and growing to a massive commercial behemoth...
Facebook and the like aren't the Walmart of the web though, they're the Wholefoods and sushi bars; Craigslist would be the closer Walmart equivalent; shoving out weaker sites while still being pretty lower-income
"Polished" for search engines maybe. Bad UX is rife across most commercial sites, with intrusive ads and social trackers being the worst offenders: autoplay videos, on-scroll triggered, page re-positioning, Taboola garbage, increased load times.
All of this made the web worse, not better. "Gentrification" as it relates to neighbourhoods at least means access to better amenities. When it comes to the Web, Wikipedia offers "amenities" in the way of easily accessible, extensively cited information. Most websites on the other hand gatekeep content via email signups ("get my free ebook!"), and the content itself is basically lead gen for what ever product they're pushing.
Perhaps the right word is "de-counter-culturation"? It's no longer a subculture in any way, it is the culture; there is direct crossover from the chan boards all the way to the White House.
For a deeper understanding of the Bohemian nature of the early internet, you might want to check out this book on Goodreads: Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35953464-broad-band
At the ground floor of my former office was a cafe. It wasn't an old, established cultural icon like my local dumping spot, but it employed people who provided their goods and services. That was one year ago. It's been vacant since the rent was raised.
I work in a new building now, but I walk past the former store most days of the week. Through the wall of glass I could see people engage in their activities under the glow of a cliche Edison lightbulb arrangement. I would walk past and see the adjustments of aprons, the exchanges of cash and mugs of coffee, the hats and t-shirts hanging off slabs of wood pinned to the walls, and the sacks of coffee beans stored on top.
A dark and empty room sits behind the facade of LEDs that now occupy the glass. Advertisement.
I think you are conflating gentrification with access. My city has more people and a better public transportation system now. More people have access to the sidewalk in front of my old office where you could once purchase a decent cup of coffee. But what used to be a store, a small seedling of human existence, is now just a wall to display ads on.
Discovery and interaction were the big thing - meeting strangers in strange places. Now, that's basically impossible because each site that you use is designed with the goal of boxing you, keeping you where you are, talking to people who are just like you, because that apparently makes the most money. So now you'll pretty much always be stuck in an echo chamber into which only the angriest, meanest crowds can break through.
You could really be anybody, try strange things and explore strange ideas - and you did it all under an alias that you could just easily abandon if you felt unsafe. No doxxing, because nobody knows your real name. Good luck pulling that off now. The logging, the real name/email/phone requirements, it's just not possible anymore. The combined might of sockpuppet abuse, increasing complexity of bad actors' attacks, and the need for gathering real customers' information took that away.
I miss the old internet. And I don't even know how it could have survived to the present day. It makes sense why we entered the age of surveillance capitalism. You give data, you get free stuff. It's simple. People love free stuff, after all. But I wonder, did people even imagine that things would turn out like this? I wonder, is there some sort of an alternate future where this could be avoided? If things played out just a little differently?
What could save the old internet? Could it be the subscription-like model where sites you visit get a few pennies from you? Could it be keeping things decentralized, keeping the costs low enough to be manageable?
Or is this just it, is an internet that's this corporate-greed fueled quest to gather more data and to show you more stuff the only way?
You asked so many great questions that could be part of a LongNow debate / discussion. I think this is a very relevant question / exercise:
"I wonder, is there some sort of an alternate future where this could be avoided?"
There's a dystopian set of novels called "The Domination" where the author explores this. Instead of the Internet, because of a protracted Cold War between two superpowers (not the ones you're thinking), this alternate world has iron fused memory cores immune to any hacking that we can conceive of in our timeline.
Small forums like that did a number of things that I feel we haven’t been able to replicate. You got to know people over time. It wasn’t a feed you vaguely subscribed to, but a forum (in literal definition of the word) that you chose to participate in.
I often think about what probably defines a typical experience online for people these days and I feel that the smaller and more cozy feeling of actual community has been replaced by the digital equivalent of big box stores. Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, Twitch, Netflix. Big corporate places with portals and algorithms. I think it's safe to include reddit there now too with the direction that site has been going in.
These aren’t necessarily bad things in and of themselves (aside from the chasing of a world in which _nothing is left unplanned_), but I’m trying to hone in on the idea that the sheer randomness of this medium has more or less vaporized. The concept that anything and everything you do on the Internet wasn’t aggressively being tracked and developed into digital profiles to be traded, used, shared, and sold by ad companies and an array of other organizations was a fart in the wind compared to what it’s like online today. Websites simply didn’t have 5 megabytes+ (!) of Javascript whereas now you need a half a dozen browser extensions to make the internet a halfway decent thing to be on.
My hunch is that once upon a time, people (at least those that even had access to it) had a kind of amateur desire of wanting to create an account at a website (particularly a forum). Coming up on 2019, I think long and hard before creating another account anywhere. There even was an expectation to introduce yourself in some introduction subforum at many of these boards.
A theme that has become completely domineering is the inflated ego linked to tribalism. I see people being so serious about everything; there can be no reciprocal discussion about anything. "You're either with us or against us" and other types of fallacy-addled thinking. I've also seen a lot of the kind of lowbrow "edginess" caked in psuedo-ironic bottom of the barrel commentary where people try to pass off low effort one liners as a means of scoring cheap points with a crowd. And then there's also this brand of posting [0].
Usually this behavior has a negative effect associated with it as this kind of driveby posting encourages more of itself at the expense of discussion. Quality then decreases as people seek other sources of community (I think this is what has been happening with reddit).
I think it’s probably trivial to dismiss this as nostalgia but I feel there are some real truths to this. The Internet is something you had the choice of actually logging off and disconnecting but today, everyone is constantly connected. We are in the age of distraction and preoccupation. Think about it: how many times have you picked up your (smart)phone purely out of reflex, not even to check something with purpose? You see it everywhere in public, certainly. The constant stream of brightly colored iconography, beeps, alerts, buzzing, push/notifications, and beyond are endless. Everything demands your attention, and it is never enough.
Wow, you knocked it out of the park. This is exactly how I feel about the direction the internet, or maybe even western society as a whole, has been going in over the last 10 years.
It's been going this way for longer than 10 years if you look past the Internet as the medium.
It might be possible to trace this back to the inception of the 24 hour news networks if not earlier; that first taste of ad-fueled insanity, and the modern terrorist attacks of (2001-0)9-11 on US soil sort of catalyzed the trend. It really became solidly about fear and outrage, and the enfeeblement of being unable to actually do anything to address that negative emotional state.
A real solution is going to require the people as a whole to "grow up", to take responsibility in the sense of breaking the cycles of fear, violence, and greed. To instead focus on building a world where we all get better, and do better overall, rather than individually getting enough and kicking the ladder off for those that should follow.
Neoclassical economics tells the story that algorithms drive differentiated news and other content because different users seek different content out, and the market obliges. This form of gentrification, like many other forms, is generally downstream of an equilibrium around different preferences, whether stated or just manifest. Given how many commerical forces shape the structure of the internet as a marketplace of ideas, I don't think this is the only thing going on, but I think it's ignored at one's peril.
> Platforms like reddit and 4chan still operate this [non-algorithmized/gentrified] way, but most social media platforms use existing IRL personal networks to link users and push content.
This passage in particular struck me as revealing. Reddit is a meta-community with a notorious echochamber problem while 4chan is a meta-community with a notorious troll/dirtbag problem. That the majority of internet users tend to avoid both isn't due to unfair competition over their eyeballs from Facebook et al. so much as an appetite for curation, content accountability/surveillance, content differentiation, community standards, and all the other forms of "online gentrification".
The same attitude that bemoans the existence of content differentation as a cause of problems rather than a response to existing conditions that are far harder to improve seems to drive the belief that the appetite for fake news will evaporate if fake news is made harder to find. I consider both rather wrong-headed.
It's pretty interesting how the author attempts to tie gentrification, caused by real life constraints like supply+demand, to a corporate-backed internet mono culture.
It's kind of a stretch since one of the causes of real-life gentrification is protections for existing stakeholders, the lack of change/adaptation(Friendster -> myspace -> FB for example), and an inherent lack of supply(whereas on the internet there's a near infinite).
I'm not sure whether you can call this gentrification or rather the internet being less of a niche sub culture + more mainstream or just attribute it to a human tendency to self-segregate/put ourselves in our own bubbles.
Tbh, internet n/yimbyism doesn't really have too many effects besides sanitization of content. Other message boards have names for it like noob or a popular one where the word start with "old" or "new' after all.
The Master Switch by Tim Wu describes this "gentrification" process (though not with that term since it doesn't seem to be the best term for this). Further, the book shows how it happens systematically whenever a new invention initially leads to greater freedom. Radio, TV, etc have all suffered the same fate. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in digital freedom, though its message isn't exactly uplifting.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 72.7 ms ] threadAnd let's not get into the cost of server and hosting, which have never been so low.
From a producer's perspective, though? It's a disaster! There's a huge pressure to shape content in a specific way, to post it to specific sites. Even something as simple as sharing a non-image or a non-video file with somebody is a lot harder now than it was a few years back. File hosting sites are going dark left and right, cloud storage services are shuttering direct file access capabilities, the new types of devices have limited options for simple file management, and so on and so on.
Now I disagree with using gentrification to describe that, and I don’t totally agree with the authors point anyway, but I think that is what he’s trying to say.
I do agree that using a loaded and buzzy term like 'gentrification' makes the article a bit of a misfire.
Honestly, the most worrying though to me is Google. #1 search engine, #1 browser, #1 email provider, #1 mobile platform, #1 online video platform. The concern is with all those places domination google can dictate de-facto standards or push standards that they want.
Gone are the days that one person or small team could keep up and maintain all the standards for a "modern browser". Microsoft even gave up.
Google did the same thing starting with Safari's WebKit.
Comparing the wide Internet to a neighborhood with fixed space constraints is a rocky analogy to begin with. The foundation of a new city would be more appropriate, starting with a small population of intrepid explorers in a wild uncharted wilderness and growing to a massive commercial behemoth...
All of this made the web worse, not better. "Gentrification" as it relates to neighbourhoods at least means access to better amenities. When it comes to the Web, Wikipedia offers "amenities" in the way of easily accessible, extensively cited information. Most websites on the other hand gatekeep content via email signups ("get my free ebook!"), and the content itself is basically lead gen for what ever product they're pushing.
I work in a new building now, but I walk past the former store most days of the week. Through the wall of glass I could see people engage in their activities under the glow of a cliche Edison lightbulb arrangement. I would walk past and see the adjustments of aprons, the exchanges of cash and mugs of coffee, the hats and t-shirts hanging off slabs of wood pinned to the walls, and the sacks of coffee beans stored on top.
A dark and empty room sits behind the facade of LEDs that now occupy the glass. Advertisement.
I think you are conflating gentrification with access. My city has more people and a better public transportation system now. More people have access to the sidewalk in front of my old office where you could once purchase a decent cup of coffee. But what used to be a store, a small seedling of human existence, is now just a wall to display ads on.
Discovery and interaction were the big thing - meeting strangers in strange places. Now, that's basically impossible because each site that you use is designed with the goal of boxing you, keeping you where you are, talking to people who are just like you, because that apparently makes the most money. So now you'll pretty much always be stuck in an echo chamber into which only the angriest, meanest crowds can break through.
You could really be anybody, try strange things and explore strange ideas - and you did it all under an alias that you could just easily abandon if you felt unsafe. No doxxing, because nobody knows your real name. Good luck pulling that off now. The logging, the real name/email/phone requirements, it's just not possible anymore. The combined might of sockpuppet abuse, increasing complexity of bad actors' attacks, and the need for gathering real customers' information took that away.
I miss the old internet. And I don't even know how it could have survived to the present day. It makes sense why we entered the age of surveillance capitalism. You give data, you get free stuff. It's simple. People love free stuff, after all. But I wonder, did people even imagine that things would turn out like this? I wonder, is there some sort of an alternate future where this could be avoided? If things played out just a little differently?
What could save the old internet? Could it be the subscription-like model where sites you visit get a few pennies from you? Could it be keeping things decentralized, keeping the costs low enough to be manageable?
Or is this just it, is an internet that's this corporate-greed fueled quest to gather more data and to show you more stuff the only way?
"I wonder, is there some sort of an alternate future where this could be avoided?"
There's a dystopian set of novels called "The Domination" where the author explores this. Instead of the Internet, because of a protracted Cold War between two superpowers (not the ones you're thinking), this alternate world has iron fused memory cores immune to any hacking that we can conceive of in our timeline.
I often think about what probably defines a typical experience online for people these days and I feel that the smaller and more cozy feeling of actual community has been replaced by the digital equivalent of big box stores. Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, Twitch, Netflix. Big corporate places with portals and algorithms. I think it's safe to include reddit there now too with the direction that site has been going in.
These aren’t necessarily bad things in and of themselves (aside from the chasing of a world in which _nothing is left unplanned_), but I’m trying to hone in on the idea that the sheer randomness of this medium has more or less vaporized. The concept that anything and everything you do on the Internet wasn’t aggressively being tracked and developed into digital profiles to be traded, used, shared, and sold by ad companies and an array of other organizations was a fart in the wind compared to what it’s like online today. Websites simply didn’t have 5 megabytes+ (!) of Javascript whereas now you need a half a dozen browser extensions to make the internet a halfway decent thing to be on.
My hunch is that once upon a time, people (at least those that even had access to it) had a kind of amateur desire of wanting to create an account at a website (particularly a forum). Coming up on 2019, I think long and hard before creating another account anywhere. There even was an expectation to introduce yourself in some introduction subforum at many of these boards.
A theme that has become completely domineering is the inflated ego linked to tribalism. I see people being so serious about everything; there can be no reciprocal discussion about anything. "You're either with us or against us" and other types of fallacy-addled thinking. I've also seen a lot of the kind of lowbrow "edginess" caked in psuedo-ironic bottom of the barrel commentary where people try to pass off low effort one liners as a means of scoring cheap points with a crowd. And then there's also this brand of posting [0].
Usually this behavior has a negative effect associated with it as this kind of driveby posting encourages more of itself at the expense of discussion. Quality then decreases as people seek other sources of community (I think this is what has been happening with reddit).
I think it’s probably trivial to dismiss this as nostalgia but I feel there are some real truths to this. The Internet is something you had the choice of actually logging off and disconnecting but today, everyone is constantly connected. We are in the age of distraction and preoccupation. Think about it: how many times have you picked up your (smart)phone purely out of reflex, not even to check something with purpose? You see it everywhere in public, certainly. The constant stream of brightly colored iconography, beeps, alerts, buzzing, push/notifications, and beyond are endless. Everything demands your attention, and it is never enough.
[0] https://i.imgur.com/iYT5pPl.png
It might be possible to trace this back to the inception of the 24 hour news networks if not earlier; that first taste of ad-fueled insanity, and the modern terrorist attacks of (2001-0)9-11 on US soil sort of catalyzed the trend. It really became solidly about fear and outrage, and the enfeeblement of being unable to actually do anything to address that negative emotional state.
A real solution is going to require the people as a whole to "grow up", to take responsibility in the sense of breaking the cycles of fear, violence, and greed. To instead focus on building a world where we all get better, and do better overall, rather than individually getting enough and kicking the ladder off for those that should follow.
> Platforms like reddit and 4chan still operate this [non-algorithmized/gentrified] way, but most social media platforms use existing IRL personal networks to link users and push content.
This passage in particular struck me as revealing. Reddit is a meta-community with a notorious echochamber problem while 4chan is a meta-community with a notorious troll/dirtbag problem. That the majority of internet users tend to avoid both isn't due to unfair competition over their eyeballs from Facebook et al. so much as an appetite for curation, content accountability/surveillance, content differentiation, community standards, and all the other forms of "online gentrification".
The same attitude that bemoans the existence of content differentation as a cause of problems rather than a response to existing conditions that are far harder to improve seems to drive the belief that the appetite for fake news will evaporate if fake news is made harder to find. I consider both rather wrong-headed.
It's kind of a stretch since one of the causes of real-life gentrification is protections for existing stakeholders, the lack of change/adaptation(Friendster -> myspace -> FB for example), and an inherent lack of supply(whereas on the internet there's a near infinite).
I'm not sure whether you can call this gentrification or rather the internet being less of a niche sub culture + more mainstream or just attribute it to a human tendency to self-segregate/put ourselves in our own bubbles.
Tbh, internet n/yimbyism doesn't really have too many effects besides sanitization of content. Other message boards have names for it like noob or a popular one where the word start with "old" or "new' after all.