Mik
JA WestenbergRSS never tracked you.
Email never throttled you.
Blogs never begged for dopamine.
The old web wasn’t perfect.
But it was yours.
Email never throttled you.
Blogs never begged for dopamine.
The old web wasn’t perfect.
But it was yours.
Daniël Franke 
@Daojoan Yep, I've noticed that lately I've been regressing my tech a bit, and it feels great. Also, old models with new tooling makes for a better experience, as long as that tooling isn't made by the corps that got us in the current mess.
manchicken
Hakan Bayındır
JD
Andres Jalinton@Daojoan
I still use RSS daily.
Email is my primary work communication medium.
I still host blogs and microbloging software.
Some would say I live in the past, but I'm enjoying myself.
@Andres they can have my RSS reader when they pry it from my cold dead hands
EndlessMason
Tanega
Abie
Rupert
WhoDisturbsMySlumber@Daojoan the internet used to be our 3rd space
Patrick H. Lauke@Daojoan but...but...KPIs! engagement metrics!
התנועה לזכויות דיגיטליות@patrick_h_lauke @Daojoan noticed how they never measure engagement with family and friends? Set KPIs for mental wellbeing and sleep cycle? It's like they work for big psychiatry!
Denzil Ferreira 
@patrick_h_lauke @Daojoan inflated by bots 🤪
Martin Ueding@denzilferreira @patrick_h_lauke @Daojoan
I only have the HTTP server access logs on my website. And sometimes I have the feeling that more bots crawl my blog than actual people reading it. So I just stopped caring about the statistics and rather enjoy the occasional e-mail that a reader sends to me.
I only have the HTTP server access logs on my website. And sometimes I have the feeling that more bots crawl my blog than actual people reading it. So I just stopped caring about the statistics and rather enjoy the occasional e-mail that a reader sends to me.
@martin_ueding @patrick_h_lauke @Daojoan yep. What analytics tools are folks using nowadays? Preferably self-hosted!
Ulrik@denzilferreira @martin_ueding @patrick_h_lauke @Daojoan I use Plausible - because it respects your privacy and you can self host if you want to.
@mrbase @denzilferreira @patrick_h_lauke @Daojoan
I used Matomo (Piwik) for a while, one can host that on a simple PHP+MySQL setup. These days I just take the webserver's HTTPd log and put that into goaccess.
I used Matomo (Piwik) for a while, one can host that on a simple PHP+MySQL setup. These days I just take the webserver's HTTPd log and put that into goaccess.
catnonsense@martin_ueding @denzilferreira @patrick_h_lauke @Daojoan it is now on my RSS feed. I can learn new German words and city planning at the same time, would recommend.
@catnonsense
Welcome, thanks for giving my blog a read 🙂
Welcome, thanks for giving my blog a read 🙂
Sara Joy 
@Daojoan it's still there, I'm convinced we've just collectively forgotten how to surf the web
Luna Lactea@jackemled @Daojoan oh I agree, and I do.
Grassroots JoeNow that's some nostalgia I can get behind.
Von Xylofon@joeinwynnewood @Daojoan That's literally my daily life. It's still here, you just need to look.
Simon Hain@Daojoan A friend of mine got a bill from Telekom for replying to a mailing list - each recipient was billed separately, and only 200 e-mails per month were included.
But that was maybe an even older web
But that was maybe an even older web
Anthropy
Funes@Daojoan my Dragonball Z angelfire fan page with an endless scroll of stolen gifs however did beg for dopamine
Murdoc Addams 🧛🏻
🇨🇦
Ben Todd
ferricoxide
Peter Amthor@Daojoan I do so miss the 'wild west' days of the internet. That and the transition from BBS's to the actual web was something amazing we'll never see again.
martin lentink 🇪🇺 🇺🇦📎@peteramthor @Daojoan I actually liked BBSs. A lot. And Usenet.
Fox Trenton 🎱@martinlentink @peteramthor @Daojoan
Usenet was my first love.
I started with a First Class client. Oh, suddenly got reminded of the period PowWow existed.
Usenet was my first love.
I started with a First Class client. Oh, suddenly got reminded of the period PowWow existed.
Giles Goat@peteramthor @Daojoan When FTP and Newsgroups like alt.something were "all the rage" ( who can forget ftp.funet.fi ) and "anonymous" ( user ) 😊 ? Ah yes and still in use today IRC .. we can't live without IRC ..
Kelsey Jordahl@Daojoan blogs definitely begged for dopamine, but it was slower release than the kind we have now.
Quincy Peck
Forst@Daojoan Even these got ruined nowadays. RSS feeds often don't have the full article text. Email contains tracking pixels and links. "Blogs" have texts behind paywalls and cookie warnings. We need the old web back.
@forst Problem with that is - we often paywall our stuff these days so that it isn’t all just scraped and summarised by a smorgasbord of bots. It’s such a balancing problem
Ariella
Tobias A. Franke@forst @Daojoan I use two solutions for this more and more:
1. Some readers like NetNewsWire have a builtin readability mode. They take the URL of the RSS entry, run it through reader mode and present it as if it were the RSS entry itself. Works fantastic even on feeds that only push a URL and no text at all.
2. I coded a read-it-later service for myself that extracts entries and pushes them to a feed I subscribe to, it’s here: https://github.com/thefranke/rss-librarian
@thefranke @Daojoan Didn't know about (1), that's brilliant, thanks!
I made some custom RSS exporters for myself as well for sites that don't have a feed :>
@thefranke @Daojoan I use NetNewsWire, and it also allows this per-feed, as it turned out. Immediately enabled on the offenders.
@thefranke @Daojoan A custom Python thing, I write in what I'm familiar with. But I'm open to porting it if it can benefit more people :>
@forst @Daojoan Are you familiar with this project? https://rss-bridge.org
Basically a PHP framework where you can easily write bridges that scrape a webpage and turn them into a feed, caching and everything else is already managed by the framework.
@thefranke @Daojoan Wasn't familiar with it until now, thank you for sharing!
Don't know how interested they would be in a plugin for a very local website, but could be a fun little project :>
Don't know how interested they would be in a plugin for a very local website, but could be a fun little project :>
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Andrew Zonenberg@undefined_variable @Daojoan I still use IRC on a daily basis. It's not gone.
Aaron@azonenberg @undefined_variable +1.
There's something like 30k people signed into Libera at any moment - and all the old names like EFNet, DALnet, etc are still there.
There's something like 30k people signed into Libera at any moment - and all the old names like EFNet, DALnet, etc are still there.
@aaron @undefined_variable Even flyback is still there, lol.
użyszkodniczka@aaron @azonenberg @undefined_variable
in my country there still is whole big IRC server where i added electronics channel on autoload, sometimes i even talk there as they talk sometimes about software too
in my country there still is whole big IRC server where i added electronics channel on autoload, sometimes i even talk there as they talk sometimes about software too
Secret 3rd South African@Daojoan Old web gave serotonin. Mmmm.
gary
R@Daojoan to join the "well actually" crowd, email absolutely did have throttling, although retry and backoff logic tended to be much more reliable and well-tested back then
there was a lot of the old internet that wasn't democratized and "yours" (e.g. acquiring connectivity, acquiring compute), although the details have shifted around a lot
Serenus@r @Daojoan I feel like there were models for democratized connectivity? The earliest setup I remember using was through torfree.net, and they were one of a group of freenets running under a co-op model, I think. Looks like they’re still around and offering free service as well, which is a pleasant surprise.
@Serenus @Daojoan yeah, this existed in various places (*especially* _outside_ the United States, where suburbia and monopolies really ruined things). there also existed people hosting stuff on spare computers and using dynamic dns providers
you gain some, you lose some. nowadays connectivity and compute are *way* easier and more affordable, but the cultural knowledge that you _can_ self-host seems to be disappearing