I don't think the only way is the ID verification. That's what the spying side pushes as a narrative, but there are ways to validate each other without global registries and any government connections.

Web-Of-Trust was a good idea with poor implementation way ahead of its time. Closed communities work pretty well and seem to be almost unaffected.

So yes, the public internet is dead but I believe that it will be solved with some sort of reputational/vouch systems and invite-only groups where you have to contribute to be accepted and have an incentive to protect that seat instead of posting slop/spam/other agenda to be banned.

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smoe 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

I think even pre-LLMs, the problem was more the size of a community rather than whether it was closed. The bigger it grows, the more it orients itself towards the lowest common denominator. Every community I ever cared about was rather small. Places like Hacker News, which I think is among the better large ones, I honestly don't think I'd care much if it disappeared tomorrow.

But now with AI unfortunately I agree. Not sure if there is a way around closing off communities. Even for communities that actively use AI within.

	▲	dmantis 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule 99% of the people are in read-only anyway. The community can be closed for contributions, but open for reading. That might cut bots, ads, propaganda and espionage, but retain the sharing function for those who need without losing much.
	▲	cowlevel 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The bigger the "community" is, the less it's actually a community. HN is not a community but a social media feed, e.g. like Instagram but with text instead of video. Lobste.rs might be a community, I don't know because I don't have an invite. Most physical hackerspaces (not makerspaces) remain communities even as they get thousands of members.

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ezekg 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Who's creating the next Internet?

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cowlevel 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

The moment you assume someone creates it, you have a problem. It has to arise organically out of the individual actions of all of us.

I think of the "fediverse" as an example of this. It's usually defined as the ecosystem around the ActivityPub protocol (i.e. Mastodon, Lemmy, etc) but I think it should be redefined more broadly to mean "the ecosystem of federated/decentralised publishing and interaction", which would include ActivityPub but also blogs, websites, email, RSS, ATproto. If we really have a fedi-verse, then it can't be controlled by one entity.

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ezekg 2 days ago | parent [-]

> the ecosystem of federated/decentralised publishing and interaction

That is what I meant, yes. People built the internet, and people will build the next internet, too. I was wondering who's already doing that.

	▲	cowlevel 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		It's lacking a search engine.

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dmantis 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

To be honest, I don't really get the question.

Do you assume there should be some single big guy who creates the social spaces?

	▲	ezekg 3 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Sorry, it was a loaded question. I was more asking who's working on the foundation for this next phase of the internet. Who's working on decentralized reputational/vouch systems? Who's working on zero-trust proof-of-authorship or proof-of-being? Who's working on privacy-focused proof-of-identity? etc.
	▲	Exoristos 3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		"Who" is also plural in English.

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Loquebantur 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

But how is that an "internet"? The point of the free internet was to be free to communicate with whomever.

When you seclude yourself in bubbles, you might feel protected, but really you expose yourself to becoming irrelevant.

The crucial problem is, people confuse message with messenger.

When comments are objectively true and faithful (representing the topic correctly), it doesn't matter who wrote them.

The other way around, knowing somebody personally doesn't guarantee their messages to be true and "not spam". The important thing is to check content thoroughly for actual truth and point out deviations. Just like in an ideal scientific discussion. The remaining social part is a question of civil discourse and enforcing that.

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ezekg 3 days ago | parent [-]

> When comments are objectively true and faithful (representing the topic correctly), it doesn't matter who wrote them.

This disregards the humanity of understanding a thing. I vehemently disagree.

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Loquebantur 3 days ago | parent [-]

Objectively true statements don't depend on any human understanding them for being true. So it doesn't matter who acts as their messenger.

You conflate two disparate things there: you as the reader understand something as a human. Who wrote it plays no role for the true content. Expressions of human sentiment are another thing entirely.

When LLMs are used to astroturf and manipulate human community building, they rely on such sentiment to stir emotional reactions. Without a rational, objectively true, basis to stand on, that remains sterile if people value truth.

The problem we currently see comes from people foregoing that rooting in objective truth entirely. They act on pure sentiment and are prone to automatic manipulation by it.

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raddan 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

You seem to be externalizing the cost of verifying that a thing is true. The cost is nontrivial.

Consider for a moment that all of science is, in some way or another, the search for truth. I have a hard time seeing that any one person—or even any one person with an amazing computer program—can substitute for generations of humans trying to achieve that goal. It is extremely difficult to know what is objectively true.

	▲	Loquebantur 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		What a weird take on things: you are currently externalizing the non-trivial cost of verifying that a thing is true. When you want to understand something as true, you are the one who has to verify it, implicitly. People currently are used to others (supposedly) doing that for them. That doesn't mean, it wasn't externalized. Now, you're right about individuals being overtaxed without the collaborative effort of society. You have to have chains of trust to have any chance, or personalized AI (which again you would have to trust). But I was talking about the process of filtering truth collectively. You start from what you believe to know now, team up with others sharing your opinions and go from there. Revising your preconceived convictions is part of proper science.

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wolvesechoes 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> Objectively true statements don't depend on any human understanding them for being true. So it doesn't matter who acts as their messenger.

All such statements are pretty worthless.