Lauren WeinsteinDec 26, 2022

Greetings. The amount of cynicism I see here about the Internet is really quite remarkable. Maybe it helps to have been engaged in this wonder of the world from the early ARPANET days (as I have) to fully appreciate what a fantastic tool the Internet is.

And yes, like any tool, the Internet can be used for good or evil. A hammer can help build a house for a needy family, or it can bash in someone's skull. The hammer doesn't make that decision -- the people using it are in control.

And so it is with the Internet as we stand on the cusp of 2023. Best, -L

Show threadMatt StegmeirDec 26, 2022
@lauren the Internet was generally quite wonderful before it was profitable.
Show threadLauren Weinstein
@mattsteg In the U.S., if it wasn't profitable it likely wouldn't exist today at all.
Dec 26, 2022 at 9:13pmWeb
Show threadMatt StegmeirDec 26, 2022

@lauren it existed and grew for decades before really being successfully monetized.

That wouldn't have magically changed.

And it wasn't "profitability" that made it structurally worse, it was that the core of widespread profitability was making end-users the product (and thus massive amounts of effort fundamentally directed at making things worse for the end user)

Show threadLauren WeinsteinDec 26, 2022
@mattsteg Don't start with the "users are the product" nonsense with me, please. That phrase has always been misleading and has become a mantra of Big Tech Haters. The Internet grew initially with large government subsidies that would be impossible today. An entirely different world. I'm a student of history, but I don't wallow in it.
Show threadMatt StegmeirDec 26, 2022
@lauren it's pretty clear that the quality and nature of online services has transformed pretty drastically (and in many negatively) from the initial .com boom commercialization where the focus was (to a much larger extent) on solving actual user problems in order to establish a foothold.
Show threadMatt StegmeirDec 26, 2022
@lauren We've (in broad brush terms) moved from services working to do the best job of giving you what you want/need, to services working to provide quality recommendations that are even better than you expected, to services finding out how much of what THEY want they can fit in there. And that's before even touching on privacy ussues.