Infinite Scrolling and hyper personalization are evil

I miss the old BBS and forums long gone the few that exist are like ghost town. Once in a blue moon I go back and I remember vividly certain topics or obscure knowledge bits. The ability to navigate and map the information with section, broken down into topics and comments.

The main page was the same for everybody and everybody knew what the other would get.

Those are two things missing from the modern web. Both infinite scrolling and algorithmic selection of content destroy this fragile organization. No matter the social media you cannot easily go back to look for something you truly liked and in pure 1984 double speak the word "like" which should have been a way to bookmarkt / remember something are just a way to get your daily dopamin.

Infinite scrolling further destroys this by provading a near infinite wall of constant crappy data and you have no ways to easily go back to something you liked or can spend hours recovering back some obscure post that contained what you liked thus getting ultimatly distracted.

Those two things makes impossible to properly communicate and organize this contsant flow of data. Everybody gets an ultra personalized experience designed to enrage / engage them. By discoverying Gemini and some of the modern BBS I have to say I like a lot the way things are simpler and easier to categorize.

(to the admins / mod if this post is not in the correct subsection feel free to move it)

Posted in: s/Geminispace

🦂 urbanhacker

2023-12-13 · 5 months ago · 👍 gritty, jsreed5, s5, gemalaya, jmjl, Nono, Yretek, hellfire103, chluehr, N10A

9 Comments ↓

😺 gemalaya · Dec 13 at 16:05:

"A near infinite wall of crap" :D It's actually a pretty accurate definition of what "X" and those other "social" platforms are.

🚀 jsreed5 · Dec 13 at 17:00:

Small wonder why we now have the concept of "my truth" versus "the truth". The Internet tells some people the economy is crashing while telling others it's soaring, and neither group will ever see data to the contrary. Same with social issues, politics, personal relationships, science, etc. There's nothing social media doesn't touch--and warp--anymore.

🍀 gritty · Dec 13 at 17:32:

as odd as this may sound I miss the disconnected society we had. your wandering thoughts were probably about something local and not the ethereal place called the internet. no wondering what's on this part of the web or how to craft a comment such as this in your personal time, or in between tasks.

🦂 urbanhacker [OP] · Dec 13 at 20:05:

I couldn’t agree more, also you were not harassed with thousand of notifications all competing for your attention.

🍀 gritty · Dec 13 at 23:56:

@clseibold - how is a like button similar to tick tick boom? honest question.

🕹️ skyjake [...] · Dec 14 at 05:35:

@clseibold Instead of being snide, perhaps elaborate a little what you're talking about? "Double speak" can be used in a colloquial sense, too. This was clearly not meant as a literary reference.

To keep the discussion on topic, I agree with the OP's sentiment. Modern web has (at least) two big problems: massive, unmanageable scale and profit motives. Together, these have led to the current situation where users are resources to be exploited, not human beings.

🦂 urbanhacker [OP] · Dec 14 at 12:34:

It @skyjake it also removes users from the decision loop since they are not customers but the cattle producing the raw data that is then sold.

Its funny how early 90 BBS and forums are easier to navigate and browse than 2020 modern websites.

🍀 gritty · Dec 15 at 12:17:

@clseibold thanks for the explanation. I saw the movie a while ago but didn't know it was about all that.

I get your frustration with everything being 1984 reference but sometimes when you have a good, common reference I think it's fine to use. I wouldn't have known about superbia. Being this isn't the regular web I think the occasional reference is fine, but again I get the normal overuse on the web.

🦂 urbanhacker [OP] · Dec 16 at 12:48:

I just looked at superbia and it’s fascinating how it predicted in some way the future we are now living. I’m more familiar with 1984 like many people and I was not aware about Superbia.

There is also the death internet theory that says most of the content we consume / interact with are generated by bots and farms to keep us addicted.

I also wonder if (maybe this is elitist) with the ease of use to create / add bullshit you just have low quality because you have no effort to think. You can just vomit your toxicity.

While with this BBS (and similar to other BBS in the 90) you need to access it, its quirky, you can’t just sweep left / right so before answering I need to think deeper and longer.