Future prediction: The so-called modern web will die soon

submitted by [deleted] from unixsheikh.com

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[–]369 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

There are contingencies.

[–]magnora7 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

Perhaps. It does seem like the path the internet is on is becoming increasingly unsustainable. Few people on this world want to do the job I have to do here as admin, and that's part of the problem. It's a lot of work, dealing with a lot of people who are intentionally fucking with admins constantly because there are no real consequences to doing so. Who wants to be responsible for the speech of hundreds of thousands or millions of people? It's becoming increasingly obvious this is a burden that no one really wants to bear.

And that's not even touching on the rise of AI chat bots that are smart enough to barely pass as human, and the rise of internet censorship tools and coordination, as well as the rise of shill groups.

The internet is an absolute mess at this point and I don't see a quick way things will get better... at some point it's just going to be all bots and shills talking to teach other, and social media will be as useless as talking to a billboard.

Searching for specific things will become more useful again, but "internet culture" seems to have been irrevocably hijacked by bad actors because of how easy it is to amplify their voices through the internet, as the meek and inquisitive are pushed aside completely and ignored in modern internet culture

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

The internet is an absolute mess at this point and I don't see a quick way things will get better... at some point it's just going to be all bots and shills talking to teach other, and social media will be as useless as talking to a billboard.

There is an easier way to look or accept this contextually. Social media commenting has been pretty negative for around 5 years- if not more or less; the quick fix is to have bots submit good comments first. The user-base is harmed psychologically under the duress of hostilities and insults flying around and has led to disruption. Some people may have even tried to storm a capitol building or something so the idea is to have bots submit good comments which lays the foundation for user criticisms and further discourse below it.

It was mentioned at one point that commenting follows a herd pattern. The first comment leads to the next one and so on. Bad actors start out with expletives or utter pessimism to increase anxieties which then reflect back on the forum by users. So have a bunch of bots comment good things first and addressing hostilities below may be a quick fix.

[–]magnora7 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Interesting idea. But we'd basically have the "good" bots trying to outpost the "bad" bots, and then any real conversation would be lost in all the bot talk, and it would just end up being bots talking to bots which wouldn't have many users (or maybe it would if the bots were good enough, I don't know)

The first comment leads to the next one and so on.

I think that's true to a degree, but there are people who are genuinely deadset on destroying or messing up any forum website, so that seed will always exist and constantly be planted in the forum culture. So it seems a defense is necessary too, not just a good offense, so to speak. But I like the way you're thinking...

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yes, if its that tedious. Things are fine as they are, the point was to provide some levity so it wasn't all negative.

[–]Node 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

people who are intentionally fucking with admins constantly because there are no real consequences to doing so.

One of my first 'real' jobs was working for a company that could accurately be characterized as a mafia front. This was awhile back. I still admire the no-nonsense approach they took to being fucked with. The manager of my store (a Pagan) was apparently having trouble remaining serious about company money and practices, so a car swerved into his motorcycle on the way back from a 'talking to'. This resulted in him hitting a concrete bridge abutment at around 70 mph.

A standard that's underrated in today's world.

[–]magnora7 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Don't advocate violence Node...

[–]369 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The reality is that prodding a popular identity until they pay you attention is a viable strategy for marketing information. A lot of the modern day social marketing techniques resolve around manipulating hierarchies. Getting someone that's got renown attached to their name or face to offer you attention satisfies recognition and gives one the ability to convey a message or to shape one. This is where the Reddit model has historically failed.

Appeals to vanity govern, in large part, veracity in the minds of your average user. It's mostly due to recent exposure, though.
There's something called Vicarious Conditioning, which is a learning pattern, which is essentially the fulcrum of modern learning conditions (digitally, at least), which really dictates a user's experience online. When this is coupled with something called Compassion Fatigue, average users learn to become assholes because they see other people getting rewarded for being an asshole. This is how "trolling" (which is just provocation and can be very useful) was popularized. The ramifications, however, appear to be a regression of compassion, or at least a period of saturation. This is, more or less, how humans have developed egoic issues through constant use of the internet and have become demoralized at the same time...

In essence, this is being done on purpose. There is an alternative and it works much more efficiently than you're told.
Anonymous imageboards are regularly flooded with gore, pornography (sometimes child pornography... which makes it super obvious that you're not supposed to talk about something), things that are supposed to disgust you and images or comments that are entirely irrelevant. Navigating Reddit clones is easy compared to imageboards. The kinds of methods they use here aren't nearly as ambiguous and that's largely due to these spaces being a bit more refined. This is why random places on the internet always have wonky ass front ends, by the way.

So, the Internet isn't dying, we're just finding out that we're not supposed to be in social circles with millions of people and that there's consequences for innovating like this, biologically speaking.
My guess is that the Reddit model will have fluctuations of sorts. The concept of "trolling" or simply wasting people's time, refutes this model to its core.