Adam ConoverEveryone is asking "What's the next Twitter going to be" and bemoaning the fact that the userbase is splintering. But splintering is a GOOD thing. The internet would be a lot healthier, more diverse, in instead of 3 or 4 dominant platforms, we had dozens or even hundreds of upstarts. Yes, centralization is convenient, but as we're seeing, it's also dangerous. If the result of the Twitter turmoil is to drive people to a more diverse, less convenient, less centralized web, I say AWESOME.
Seriously, the most fun I ever had online was in the years prior to 2008 - when instead of visiting just one or two huge sites over and over, I spent my days wandering from message board to personal site to proto-social network in search of cool people and cool stuff. If we move just 1% back in that direction - with people visiting Mastodon, AND Cohost, AND whatever the fuck other sites they like - I'll be very happy.
John Harris@adamconover I think a big part of the change is that many many more people lot more people started coming online, which both caused a lot of big companies to chase the casual user (to the detriment of the old guard, who were always the enthusiasts), and news orgs also started seeing social media as the "real" internet because of the huge population.
I think the old web has never really gone away, but it's been ignored a lot lately, that's caused it to seem like it's diminished, and that perception has caused a lot of actual diminishment. Plus, old sites succumb to entropy _very_ easily, and the energy behind creating replacements has been less, and somewhat co-opted by Fandom. Instead of creating a fun and idiosyncratic fansite, people just make something on Fandom.
nohhue@rodneylives @adamconover I disagree with the notion that "web 1.0"old sites haven't gone away. Take GeoCities: It got bought by Yahoo and then nuked from the internet with no archives.
Mastodon is trying to being the "decentralized" nature of the Internet (which was the entire goal of it, BTW) back. But unfortunately, a lot of "Eternal September" users and younger generation internet users come from the "web 2.0" era which... centralized servers (like GeoCities) but unlike GC doesn't"seperate"
@nohhue @adamconover That's a big place though, that was always looking to profit off of its members somehow. People still make tiny websites in places, it's sill pretty cheap to get a domain name. "Haven't gone away" can be interpreted along a range, from "still exist somewhere" out to "are everywhere." Geocities dying was terrible yes, but there's Neocities out there. There's still free tools like Wordpress and Blogger (for now), and Tripod still offers a personal tier.
@rodneylives @adamconover Sure, but ultimately Blogger (Blogspot anyway) has "died" in the sense of relevancy. Wordpress is a mixed bag in that if you host, it can be great (despite a security/patching nightmare) but if not you're at the whim of the host (like... Mastodon instances/Geocities).
My point is/was more that web 1.0, while great, runs into the issue that Mastodon has (and I've stated on other post): Most web 2.0/newer users aren't going to throw money at hosts and--
@rodneylives @adamconover -- "support" the service. GeoCities was just an example of the "splinter" effect of many websites... however, they were hosted on a "main service" (GeoCities hosted) like web 2.0.
Ultimately, the only way to get the Web 1.0 effect back is if everyone hosted their own servers, but that requires 1) money 2) bandwith and 3) technical know-how.
Which comes back to Mastodon: Masto. wants to be the 3 above... and most folks are used to Twitter/GeoCities-alikes where the--
@rodneylives @adamconover --hosting it done "itself" and they (generally!) don't have to pay.
(I should probably tag Adam out of this and whew, Masto doesn't solve the thread/long form issue Twitter has/had. :p)