This is another one of those "duh" posts that many people seem to be slowly waking up to while the python of AI wraps around the body of the internet and squeezes the life out of it in preparation to shove the whole thing down its gaping maw. Still, everyone will go on about how great vibe coding is, and LLM models and sing "Nearer my God To Thee".
ZKPs (as well as C2PA and similar user attestation systems) are quite literally a DRM scheme for the web, fraught with all the usual control and accessibility issues while still being relatively easy to circumvent by a sufficiently motivated and funded actor. Given the huge number of shady companies that run "phone farms" for purposes ranging from social media spam to Spotify royalty farming, I doubt they would even put a dent on this kind of automated abuse. They would however be very effective at locking every Linux and GrapheneOS user out of the internet.
I don't know where this nostalgia is coming from. "The Internet" has never been this super perfect place on a pedestal some people make it sound like. The Internet is what you make of it. Not more, not less.
I was there in the early days (90's, early 2000's)
It was categorically, undeniably better--that's where the nostalgia is coming from.
There are lots of reasons why this happened (and those are interesting questions.) But simply denying that it was better doesn't seem particularly reasonable to me.
I miss the early days. I made my first "telnet" connection in either 1990 or 1991. I remember exploring gopher, FTP, early web sites, the transition from BBSes to early ISPs. It was all so exciting and new.
The Internet of today is barely recognizable. The very thing that made it sustainable (commercialization) is also what led to its demise.
There are still sites (like HN!) that give me a taste of the old world. But they are few and far between.
Constraints tend to make you enjoy something more. I agree that a lot of the things that annoy me today weren't present back then. But a lot of other things that I take for granted these days also weren't present back then.
If people are being honest, the nostalgia comes from a time where people only had to interact with other high-income, high-education, broadly-cosmopolitan technology enthusiasts similar to themselves. The moment the internet become used by everyone, including the riff-raff, it suddenly become "not fun".
There are two conflicting messages here: AI is ruining the Internet, but also now the relationship with the Internet is more "peaceful".
A more peaceful relationship with the internet does sound good, and most of us probably waste too much time with social media in some form (including here).
My "optimistic" take on this is that AI will ruin the Internet and cause us all to spend more time with people in real life. And maybe that's a good thing.
That's assuming that AI Internet slop is such a turn-off that most of us will decide to disengage from it, which is a big assumption. But I did say it was optimistic.
Every document I read at work has been AI generated at some capacity. It's becoming so annoying that I have to use AI to create a summary.
I don't know if anyone agrees, but AI generated documents are so verbose and explain things in an overcomplicated way that makes me exhausted after reading. Sometimes I don't even understand what AI is trying to explain
> in an overcomplicated way that makes me exhausted after reading
This. I can't even listen to youtube videos any more because of their chat-gpt generated scripts. LLMs will readily generate several pages of superfluous prose, rehashing the same idea with punchy witticisms for no reason. But it uses such compelling connecting words that you might be tricked into believing there will be a payoff long past the point of diminishing returns.
I have been enjoying reading literary classics for their poetic concision. Sometimes, a bit of context can allow a simple sentence to form a picture in your mind's eye that would take a few minutes to explain syllogistically. I wish to communicate more like that.
No kidding. I got a feature handed down (with links to 4 other markdown docs) for what was discussed in person as "api to record audit events". The result is <goes to AI for word count then gives up>
While I disagree with The Dark Forest hypothesis, the way AI and LLMs interact with the internet validate the theory in this specific instance. Individuals hosting their own slice of the internet have to deal with crawlers DDoSing them into oblivion and other islands retreat into privacy to avoid them entirely.
I'm beginning to wonder if one resolution to the Fermi Paradox is an Ouroboros loop of personalized content tailored to be exactly what one craves. No need for hunter killer robots, or global pandemic, just a gradual painless decline into virtual solipsism ought to get the job done. Brawndo for the mind.
Don't romanticize the internet. The modern internet has torn society apart at the seams. It's made the world less tolerable and made civic discourse impossible.
If AI forces people to re-weight their priorities (i.e. be less on the internet), perhaps that's a good thing?
Yea, that internet was great, but that internet wasn't real. Or to put it in a better way, that internet wasn't in equilibrium with reality.
While social media may have ruined the internet, think of that as more of hitting the ground after falling off a cliff. It was the constant connection that really started changing everything. Instead of getting on the internet and disconnecting from the internet, we were always on. The algorithm that filled this new environment was inevitable.
Simply put there is no route back to those early days.
This is no different than saying make a huge pitre dish and ensure no mold ever lands on it and grows. Aka: a completely unrealistic view on how systems work.
> Don't romanticize the internet. The modern internet has torn society apart at the seams. It's made the world less tolerable and made civic discourse impossible.
Pretty much the same thing the printing press did. Breakthrough communication technologies force underlying societal problems to the surface. It will end up being a good thing long term as long as we survive it.
That's what happened to me and I'm happier than ever.
For the past five years I made an effort to seek out and finish long posts or videos that seem interesting at first in the name of exercising my attention span.
I'm now quick to bail on anything when I don't know the author, and bail on authors if their quality starts slipping. When the daily fire hose started running out, I realized I was mainly looking for distraction and spent more time being healthily bored.
I don't understand why people talk about "the internet" as if it was a static thing. The internet when I grew up using it prior to the dotcom bust in the late nineties and early two thousands was a set of GeoCities websites where people made their own content. I remember reading the green "great websites" HTML book with examples of beautiful websites (with backgrounds that looked liked notebooks etc).
The modern internet has just become privacy scraping and adverts if you visit websites that do such things and serve such content, but that doesn't stop anyone setting up and running their own domain, which is what the old internet was? If anything, it's easier than ever to "be on the Internet" with your own VPS or Pi at home. Far easier than it ever was. Just stop putting all your content into someone else's locker.
The lack of discoverability has always been a problem on the internet, which is why Yahoo had their category pages and why search engines exist.
People keep talking as if "the internet" is a thing that came and suddenly disappeared. But it hasn't. The only thing that has appeared are apps that use specific domains, where the services behind those domains are colossal vacuums of data. A lot of people use those apps, but it doesn't mean I need to. And it doesn't mean I can't go and search for some specific website holding specific data about a given topic. People keep talking as if that was lost? Am I missing something?
As for it "tearing society apart", society has always been fractured. It just means more people can speak now, and more people can listen; if they're not choosing who they listen to or weighing concepts in their own mind, that isn't the "internet's" fault - that's their own, any more than someone writing a newspaper article in the 1980s would be held responsible for "tearing society apart"?
Pay attention to what you consume. Find sources you trust, creators you enjoy, and communities that are real. Participate.
Not sure what else to say. Yeah, if you consume the "internet" like some firehose of information you spray at your face hoping for the best then, yeah, even today you're going to wind up gargling mostly shit.
The "internet" being a small group of well-minded people who largely shared a similar outlook on things was the anomaly, not what's going on now.
Directionally I think social media is going to be regarded like tetraethyl lead and asbestos. (So is a lot of the ways we use plastic, though maybe not actual e.g. polyethlyene itself)
In the short term, I think AI may do something like this, but in the longer term, I fear that its capacity for propaganda and surveillance will produce something even worse than social media.
Slop is awful, but I've found networks like Mastodon and Bluesky where most users are actively antagonistic to still be enjoyable. Beyond that I've taken to leaning on RSS, private chats and automated filtering where it makes sense. Folks are setting up blogs again too. Most of the bigger platforms are flooded with slop, but their owners are encouraging that. Those spaces weren't healthy to begin with and they aren't now, but the reasons are different.
The never ending catastrophizing of every little thing is going to be the greatest cause of societal collapse. It's sucking the joy out of every aspect of life and it's usually some idiot hyperbolizing that most people don't grasp because most people don't even grasp sarcasm now because it's been so overused. It really wears on me and makes me think that Most people just want life to be horrible.
I think you have a little bit of reverse causation going on here.
Pain, loss, failure are far stronger impulses in the human mind because we want to avoid them happening to us. The price for not predicting the tiger behind the bush is death as they say.
This leads to the next problem is that humans developed as smaller hunter gatherer tribes and did not travel far enough to see many new tigers. You could have entire generations dealing with the same old problems and not having to deal with categorically new problems.
You the modern man do not have that luxury. A misinterpreted signal could lead to the world flash frying. Instead of some new invention overturning your career once in your lifetime it could happen every year. The global economy means almost any problem in the world can cause problems for you locally.
The modern world is a catastrophe that violates anti-fragile design. Literately thousands of things have to keep running at any given moment for you not to dehydrate, starve, or catch disease.
As an individual I don't want that, but what do you do about it other than shrug and pay $6 more for a carton of eggs?
We have an analog internet. See: the radio. Stations would even let you call in and voice your opinion like a commenter would with OP. You even had trolls call in. Stations would lock down call ins for months at a time if they got unruly like Reddit mods. Forums like HN and Reddit are no different than a public square. We just need to revert to doing things in public and in person.
What really makes my internet use worthwhile is interest-based tight knit communities that also interact in meat-space. Members are vetted based on personhood (REAL personhood) , not points/likes/bullshit.
Depends on what you define "internet" as, and what you expect it to be. So if it becomes a garbage, probably that's the equilibrium state it could get to, due to the forces around it. There are no isolated phenomena.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 82.3 ms ] threadYou can't have your cake and eat it too...
gemini://gem.sdf.org/
gemini://sdf.org/
gemini://gemi.dev/
gemini://gemi.dev/cgi-bin/wp.cgi/
gemini://cdg.thegonz.net/infrastructure/search/
gemini://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/~solderpunk/cia-world-factbook/
gemini://geminiprotocol.net/
gopher://sdf.org/1/
gopher://magical.fish/1/
gopher://gopherpedia.com/1/
gopher://gopher.floodgap.com/1/overbite
It was categorically, undeniably better--that's where the nostalgia is coming from.
There are lots of reasons why this happened (and those are interesting questions.) But simply denying that it was better doesn't seem particularly reasonable to me.
The Internet of today is barely recognizable. The very thing that made it sustainable (commercialization) is also what led to its demise.
There are still sites (like HN!) that give me a taste of the old world. But they are few and far between.
Constraints tend to make you enjoy something more. I agree that a lot of the things that annoy me today weren't present back then. But a lot of other things that I take for granted these days also weren't present back then.
Was it better? No, I don't think so.
A more peaceful relationship with the internet does sound good, and most of us probably waste too much time with social media in some form (including here).
My "optimistic" take on this is that AI will ruin the Internet and cause us all to spend more time with people in real life. And maybe that's a good thing.
That's assuming that AI Internet slop is such a turn-off that most of us will decide to disengage from it, which is a big assumption. But I did say it was optimistic.
Every document I read at work has been AI generated at some capacity. It's becoming so annoying that I have to use AI to create a summary.
I don't know if anyone agrees, but AI generated documents are so verbose and explain things in an overcomplicated way that makes me exhausted after reading. Sometimes I don't even understand what AI is trying to explain
We should probably put some more thought toward that part and what it will mean.
This. I can't even listen to youtube videos any more because of their chat-gpt generated scripts. LLMs will readily generate several pages of superfluous prose, rehashing the same idea with punchy witticisms for no reason. But it uses such compelling connecting words that you might be tricked into believing there will be a payoff long past the point of diminishing returns.
I have been enjoying reading literary classics for their poetic concision. Sometimes, a bit of context can allow a simple sentence to form a picture in your mind's eye that would take a few minutes to explain syllogistically. I wish to communicate more like that.
If AI forces people to re-weight their priorities (i.e. be less on the internet), perhaps that's a good thing?
While social media may have ruined the internet, think of that as more of hitting the ground after falling off a cliff. It was the constant connection that really started changing everything. Instead of getting on the internet and disconnecting from the internet, we were always on. The algorithm that filled this new environment was inevitable.
Simply put there is no route back to those early days.
Sure there is. Make another internet and keep the normies and capitalists away from it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49541705
This is no different than saying make a huge pitre dish and ensure no mold ever lands on it and grows. Aka: a completely unrealistic view on how systems work.
Pretty much the same thing the printing press did. Breakthrough communication technologies force underlying societal problems to the surface. It will end up being a good thing long term as long as we survive it.
For the past five years I made an effort to seek out and finish long posts or videos that seem interesting at first in the name of exercising my attention span.
I'm now quick to bail on anything when I don't know the author, and bail on authors if their quality starts slipping. When the daily fire hose started running out, I realized I was mainly looking for distraction and spent more time being healthily bored.
you might as well expect people to drink less water.
The modern internet has just become privacy scraping and adverts if you visit websites that do such things and serve such content, but that doesn't stop anyone setting up and running their own domain, which is what the old internet was? If anything, it's easier than ever to "be on the Internet" with your own VPS or Pi at home. Far easier than it ever was. Just stop putting all your content into someone else's locker.
The lack of discoverability has always been a problem on the internet, which is why Yahoo had their category pages and why search engines exist.
People keep talking as if "the internet" is a thing that came and suddenly disappeared. But it hasn't. The only thing that has appeared are apps that use specific domains, where the services behind those domains are colossal vacuums of data. A lot of people use those apps, but it doesn't mean I need to. And it doesn't mean I can't go and search for some specific website holding specific data about a given topic. People keep talking as if that was lost? Am I missing something?
As for it "tearing society apart", society has always been fractured. It just means more people can speak now, and more people can listen; if they're not choosing who they listen to or weighing concepts in their own mind, that isn't the "internet's" fault - that's their own, any more than someone writing a newspaper article in the 1980s would be held responsible for "tearing society apart"?
Not sure what else to say. Yeah, if you consume the "internet" like some firehose of information you spray at your face hoping for the best then, yeah, even today you're going to wind up gargling mostly shit.
The "internet" being a small group of well-minded people who largely shared a similar outlook on things was the anomaly, not what's going on now.
NOW people start to complain. And it's quite transparent why. ;)
Yet you are the one that sounds miserable.
I think you have a little bit of reverse causation going on here.
Pain, loss, failure are far stronger impulses in the human mind because we want to avoid them happening to us. The price for not predicting the tiger behind the bush is death as they say.
This leads to the next problem is that humans developed as smaller hunter gatherer tribes and did not travel far enough to see many new tigers. You could have entire generations dealing with the same old problems and not having to deal with categorically new problems.
You the modern man do not have that luxury. A misinterpreted signal could lead to the world flash frying. Instead of some new invention overturning your career once in your lifetime it could happen every year. The global economy means almost any problem in the world can cause problems for you locally.
The modern world is a catastrophe that violates anti-fragile design. Literately thousands of things have to keep running at any given moment for you not to dehydrate, starve, or catch disease.
As an individual I don't want that, but what do you do about it other than shrug and pay $6 more for a carton of eggs?
Analog internet when?
Most multimodal models could call into radio stations and pass the Turing test.
----
The only solutions I see thrown out are "Nothing can scale in the future". That seems, problematic.
That means either AI will become interesting, or people will figure out how to stop slop ruining their places.
Either of those options might bring their own problems, but the sloppification of the internet is not a stable equilibrium.
Why can't the post-ai internet include personal agents that work for you or at least don't make you the product?
Twitter was human slop paradise before Elon's ex wife told him to buy it to quiet the liberals:
"Social media platforms are being bombarded with slop posts from bots. For that reason, I have deactivated most of my accounts, especially X."
It took you until "AI slop" to stop liking the dumpster fire of X to deactivate your account ?
Really?