This isn't fun anymore (2017)

Can I just take a moment to say how much I appreciate Hacker News?<p>In an internet filled with advertising, tracking, toxicity and trolls, HN is a relief.<p>The design is simple, fast and functional. The community does a tremendous job of legislating itself. The content is incredibly valuable.<p>Hacker News reminds me of the internet I grew up loving, not the thing it has become.

I have no experience with what this guy is talking about.<p>Maybe &quot;They&quot; are tracking me just as assiduously as him, and desperately trying to get their ads projected onto my retinas, but I never see any online ads at all. Hence, I never see targeted ads.<p>If I were ever to turn off UMatrix, I probably would be shocked. But why would I do that?<p>So my main complaint about The Web These Days is that everything works badly, when it works at all. Amazon search can never bring up what I want to buy, even when I know it exactly. Ebay, likewise. Google cannot find anything that might be vaguely connected to a Product they would rather I were searching for instead.<p>Google Maps was going all to hell until recently, but appears to have recovered, some, and arrested the slide.

&gt; &quot;If people like me can&#x27;t be sure our home life won&#x27;t leak onto the sidebars of corporate presentation, or the recommendations of software our kids are using, we&#x27;ll stop using it entirely.&quot;<p>What a fucking joke. You and I both know there&#x27;s no escape, here; we&#x27;re trapped here forever, and things will always only get worse and they will never get better, and there isn&#x27;t a god-damned thing we can do about it.

The web isn&#x27;t as much fun in many ways but seeing the jacket I looked at four years ago and rejected, appear over and over and over again since then, actually gives me much more of a chuckle than today&#x27;s grim headlines.

The listening part is what is really the most mind-blowing. I routinely get mobile ads about things I only talked about with others and never typed anywhere. Google can deny as much as they want: They listen to every single word

The internet used to be a paradise of sorts. Sure, there was the occasional troll, affiliate link or Viagra ad in your inbox; but that was the spice of the &#x27;net. Today it&#x27;s all spice, no curry.

Y&#x27;all been to Newgrounds recently? It&#x27;s still incredibly fresh and creative, just like it was back in the day. In fact, you yourself can contribute to it with tools that make it easier than ever!<p>I&#x27;m beginning to think people just never liked the old web to begin with because they had to put real thought into contributing.

I think of the Internet today as being in the “gathering” stage. All our data is just being slurped up, hanging around on the servers of a few dozen companies. It’s alarming, to be sure, but just you wait! A few years from now - when computers are faster and storage is cheaper - we’ll enter the “disseminating” stage.<p>That’s the stage we’ll enter as soon as an entire internet’s worth of content becomes easily transferable.<p>That’s when all your private information from 2019 (your medical history, gmail messages, bank details, your search and browsing and shopping history, your private photos, etc) will leak to the public.<p>It’s just a question of time because any morsel of data only needs to leak once to be henceforth online forever. It will be a complete nightmare.

I used to dream of switching out roots and making a new internet, but that seems like it&#x27;d never work. What about a TLD instead, with the simple tenent that no advertising or tracking was allowed, ever? Doing so would get your domain sinkholed. Something like that done right, with some free or ultra cheap tier for honest users, I could see attracting users. And more users maybe more companies would want to join in. I don&#x27;t know, I&#x27;m just thinking out loud. I share the sentiments of the author, and find the modern web gross. Outside of maybe 4 or 5 websites(this one included), I don&#x27;t use it much anymore. And this isn&#x27;t just an old man hating change, it&#x27;s objectively much different, and all worse.

While I don&#x27;t disagree with the rant, I note that the latest post on this gentleman&#x27;s blog is today (December 10. 2019).<p>Not using the internet isn&#x27;t a real option anymore.

I need to get rid of my Alexa cuz I know it’s listening but it’s such a convenient timer

Don&#x27;t use the web on your phone.