alt Hacker NewsI find it honestly wild that so many have been inspired to recreate web discovery platforms in the vein of StumbleUpon at its peak, but not one seems to have really stuck or set a new standard for web discovery. The web is also a much bigger place than it was in 2009, there's so much more to discover, but it's so much harder to sift through what isn't worth paying attention to. I wonder if this speaks more culturally to how we consume new media.
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> not one seems to have really stuck or set a new standard for web discovery
It's because most content worth seeing these days is behind a walled garden: Twitter, reddit, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and even news articles these days are often paywalled. It's just a fundamentally different internet than it was in 2009. The corporations have definitively won.
One reason I personally like AI is that it at least puts the end-user on the same level (at least automation-, scraping-, and compute-wise) as big companies.
Content Security Policy broke the use case. Although it would work well as a mobile app.
> it's so much harder to sift through what isn't worth paying attention to. I wonder if this speaks more culturally to how we consume
I think it’s culturally how lots of people treat many things in their lives.
People always want the best X, whether it’s a place to eat, or hike, or vacation, or get a selfie. It leads to pathological situations where the neat little backstreet spots become overrun, popular hikes get trashed, and people sit around mulling which restaurant to go to for so long that they go way too late or just give up.
People are afraid of a diversity of experience. I understand that time is limited and the desire to not waste it. But, many times the experience is what you make of it, and there’s some good to find most places, not just those with 4.98+ stars.