alt Hacker NewsThe early Internet had many more small personal and hobby sites, and it was easier to find them. Some are still there, but they get drowned out in the noise. If the commercial noise were gone, in some hypothetical new web, personal sites would be all that remains.
The Gemini protocol space is somewhat like this now, it’s very cozy. (But I’d prefer a Gemini-like web with guaranteed privacy and anonymity.)
I am a former blogger, people have regarded me as a entertaining writer with a knack for words, and yet I have zero interest in going back to writing things on the internet. The world has changed in key ways.
Firstly, the vast majority of people interested in topics and hobbies I’d like to write about no longer read longform text: the general public, and even many nerdier people, now prefer short videos, podcasts, or Instagram image posts. Younger people are unlikely to visit any third-party website at all outside of social-media walled gardens or phone apps. So, one simply cannot build much of an audience any more, except for bots.
Secondly, those bots can scrape the content that authentic human beings produce, then pass it through an LLM to rewrite, and repost it on a site laden with advertisements in order to generate profit. This is happening a lot now.