It struck me recently that as the quality of content on the internet has arguably gone to shit, in the form of increasingly frequent ads plastered everywhere, paywalls or superficial/dumb blog posts or mainstream media articles, the basic idea of a link aggregator platform can naturally lose its quality, or struggle to maintain a level of quality, and so lose its appeal.
I think I can see this on lemmy (which is my favourite fediverse platform) to some extent and have probably noticed it on somewhere like hackernews to an extent too. I see a link that has an interesting/important sounding title on an interesting/important topic, then click the link and see an article or web page that maybe is just not worth my time.
I'd be curious how many people upvote a link here without reading the cited article/page?
All of which is sad and speaks to general problems with media today, with AI garbage, of course, probably about to make it worse. But regarding the fediverse and lemmy, I think it maybe raises interesting questions.
Obviously the idea of a link aggregator is to seek out and share "the good stuff". But maybe talking about where that generally comes from needs to be a more prominent and open question? Or maybe I need to subscribe to fewer news communities? More ambitiously though, maybe, at least over time, it will get more important or valuable to lean into the forum-like or even blog-like aspect of lemmy where it's increasingly all about the "OC" here, especially as engaging with actual humans with actual personal thoughts gets more and more valuable over time? Could private, maybe even invite-only communities even be of value here?
Thoughts?
Neal Stephenson predicted this (of course). Google, reddit, and others in the cohort are effectively 'shallow web,' easily searchable and manipulated by SEO. As such, you get 10-15 sites with all the same content, reducing the quality of your searches and the overall quality of web content.
It's an effort to get clicks and monetize.
There's no coming back from it.
Algorithms have become so powerful that for a forum community to form, there are so many hurdles.
Biggest issue right now are the information “silos” that any algorithm-led social media platform algorithm will choose for you. It’ll show you similar content, but rarely from the same person because there are just so many people posting content online that there’s always a next better thing, a trend to chase. People who chase those trends end up exhausting themselves and replaced by others who are willing to be more different and engaging, until they get burnt out as well.
I used to follow a few forums, and I loved the mindless scroll of Reddit, but I found myself going back to YouTube or Instagram when I slid further into the doom scroll mentality. Those forums have now gone, due to increasing costs of hosting, and being unable to monetise a community to a sustainable degree. Reddit have understood the value of user attention and platform control to push their ads, got greedy, and locked everything down. Instagram (and meta) are, in my opinion, the leaders in algorithm based social networks, and they drive the trends without being in direct control of them.
The emotional rollercoaster that I’ve caught myself experiencing, where I get a photo of a friend suggested to me, and I start subconsciously comparing myself, only for the next post to be a soothing, highly targeted video that the algorithm knows I would enjoy and it dulls the emotional impact of the previous post, making me forget about it. The algorithm doesn’t care how you feel, but it knows what will make you engaged.
My reply became a bit of a rant about algorithms, but that’s where we’re headed. In fact, a friend has a theory that suggests that we’ll be reduced to a burst of quick content blocks. Inputs of little importance, like yes/no questions, because only us, humans, can make those little decisions that will add up to something bigger. When we get exhausted we get our rest and back in the machine we go. What would the bigger thing be? Who knows.
Gosh look at me, I sound like one of those internet prophets that talk out of their arse.
So just to make sure I understand where you're coming from (hope that's not rude) ...
Algorithmic feeds are so addictive and controlling that active human generated forums/blogs are just unlikely to gain enough momentum to form. And, projecting into the future (with a good dose of dystopia, that's a trend unlikely to change such that human activity on or consumption of the internet is likely to devolve to an incredibly simple and subjugated form ... ??
I predict in the future, there will be two forms of useful information:
- code, which can be compiled to do something.
- books.
Everything else will be seen as entertainment...and should we not be entertained?
I wonder if future historians will look at all of us the same way we view Nero, who fiddled while Rome burned.
The algorithm flaw is it only works for as long as the average human poo. So quite literally, these algorithms are poo algorithms, designed to hold our attention for our median bathroom duration. Poo algorithms are relatively powerless--they have no sway over the human mental condition.
In fact, we should marvel at the unifying element of the poo algorithm, an entire species locked in on a common, unifying experience. The UN could open up sessions with "did you see this while on the shitter?" and we would be better for it.
/s, sorta.
Quality was always shit, what else is new :)
I agree (I think); to me, Lemmy is best when its posts like yours. Most likely a human, with most likely other humans responding. I think it is wise and good to treat Lemmy as a prestigious magazine and support with well-thought-out letters to the editor, and by that, I mean shite poste as well as actual content.
When linking to a blog post, it doesn't feel right. This isn't a strike against Lemmy, but a feature/improvement over other sites, a change worth adapting too.
It is easier (IMO) to write directly inside Lemmy.
One thing I have considered was creating a blog just to link to my (future) Lemmy comments and posts; flip it on its head. I don't really care who reads my hypothetical blog, just like I don't care who reads my posts. I do want to remember the ideas of other people and, occasionally, my own.
I have lots of thoughts on this one. I totally agree that the amount of junk out there is on the increase. One of the reason I like Reddit/Lemmy is to crowd source the findings for worthwhile content. I think the secret is being selective of what you subscribe to. I also use reeder by Readwise and let it summarize using AI anything I throw its way. I then use the summary to decide if I even want to read the full content. I’m staring to pay more attention to platforms like Substack and paying for content. In general the problem you highlight is one that I think AI can’t help greatly in fixing. Maybe an AI that knows you and can pre read something and tell you if you should even bother.
Or maybe I need to subscribe to fewer news communities?
That's my take: curation. It only mitigates some of the issues and you still need to put some effort almost everyday, but it's the only way for me to make it beareable.
The first thing I did on Lemmy was to set the homepage to "Subscribed", and only went to "All" a few times to populate a small inital list of communities. From that point, you can organically discover the rest.
I also recommend an RSS reader, it's the best way to get control of "your homepage".
But I've never tried the other option you mention: more private circles (paid substacks, discords, ..), so I cannot compare.
