You're describing the 2010s era of algorithmic social media, I think OP is referring to the earlier internet

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.

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krapp 16 hours ago | parent [-]

>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

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pixl97 15 hours ago | parent [-]

Lol, in your dreams.

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.

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krapp 15 hours ago | parent [-]

It's more like saying make a small petri dish for only a single culture and maintain proper contamination protocols. Anything from the outside dies on contact. What people liked about the old internet was its exclusivity, and that's what alternatives like Gemini provide. By design, it will never be useful to the mainstream. Even most people on HN think it's a bit too ascetic. That's exactly why it will survive when even HN gets eaten by the grey goo.

And if contamination is inevitable, just burn down the lab and start the experiment again elsewhere.

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pixl97 15 hours ago | parent [-]

You're missing what made the old internet exclusive, lack of a computer/telephone line. Effectively a pretty large financial and skill barrier.

If I had any reason to I could pump out thousands of Gemini slop sites and turn the ratio of real sites to slop up to 1 to a million. Then publish article after article on how all Gemini is is junk and for the most part it will be true.

	▲	krapp 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		>If I had any reason to I could pump out thousands of Gemini slop sites and turn the ratio of real sites to slop up to 1 to a million. Yeah but you don't. It literally isn't worth the effort. We're talking about a few thousand people at most, less than the userbase of HN. And if you did, those sites would just go ignored. And no one would read those articles because no one outside of geminispace actually cares about geminispace. It would be like trying to kill a housefly with a cannon. Even if we were talking about the fediverse, which provides a much bigger target, people just wouldn't federate with the slop. The decentralized architecture guarantees that the community splits and fractures as it grows, so you can have greater inclusivity across the board, but exclusivity within instances. Go ahead and pump out thousands of instances. No one has to care. So far self-limiting and opt-in architectures do work to hold back the tide.