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Stop Liking What I Don't Like: Tiktok

Letting out some of my dissatisfaction with the modern web seems to become a regular thing here. Here's the take of somebody else on some of these things. It's a different angle than my own. But I agree with lots of it. Maybe it's just a video that you're supposed to watch for fun and move on. But I had a few thoughts while listening. It's a video on YouTube. But the audio is most important.

Absolute Unit - Stop Liking What I Don't Like: Tiktok

Most of the thoughts that I had aren't worth mentioning. But here is one anyway: I forget what I wanted to say. Anyway, I just felt like sharing the video anyway.

Also: "The Small Web" with independent small web sites doesn still exist. "Little corners on the internet", "hidden jems you can stumble upon", "creativity". It's not gone. It's just flooded by other web sites and forgotten while posting and reading on some few central web sited.

The Web Sucks

Not all of it. But definitely most of the world wide web sucks. I recently stumbled upon a blog post that puts many of my thoughts about the modern web into words well and that I'd like to share:

The Web Sucks by Chucho.

25 years ago I imagined what would be possible if I had access to the internet. 20 years ago we were excited about and enjoyed the possibilities of the web It was better than imagined. 15 years ago we were excited about so much more interesting and useful content, "Web 2.0" and the new possibilities that really started to become useful tools in everyday life. 10 years ago pretty much everbody was online, it had become too crowded but we knew where to go, which browser extensions to install and what to filter for a good experience. 5 years ago I started to realise how fucked the web had actually become.

It happened so slowly that it felt normal. But eventually the vast vast majority of content on the web was and still is commercial websites that mainly serve a purpose other than educate the reader, share experience, knowledge or other content. Almost all of the sites that appear or claim to exist for spreading information contain more paid content than actual content. It has long become impossible to filter out the pieces of the web with a less-than-creditable intent. I think way back when you considered to install an ad blocker for the first time, that's when a major line was crossed. It became so much worse so quickly that I can hardly remember how benign a large potion of the web was years ealier.

More people than ever share content in good faith on the internet today. But even this urge to share experiences, be it for the gratification of an urge to present the author's thoughts and feelings (like this entry) or for altruistic reasons for a greater good, is commercialised and directed into channels optimised for profit maximisation. You can't even access most of it without signing a legal contract that you definitely don't understand (because specialised legal experts aren't even sure how to interpret many of the most important parts) with one of the subjectively most evil companies in the history of mankind.

No wonder many people try to abandon the web as much as it is still possible (which is becoming less and less). No wonder the Gemini project was founded with built in feature contraints and has their users argue and decide against implementing basic features into the protocol that would help make browsing the gemini space a more comfortable experience. From the technological view, openness to new festures, the extendibility of the protocol, has made the mess the web is today possible.

Of cource I'm ignoring many things here the modern web enables and that I use and choose to continue to use. I'm still wondering wether any of it is worth the trouble. From relatively small trouble, like megabytes of at best useless Javascript to larger trouble, like huge companies using AI-created algorithms that have never been evaluated for anything but how much money they potentially could produce when put to use, and intentional policy choices, pressing most of humankind to produce less helpful but more profiting content and, more and more commonly, intentionally harmful content on a scale science is starting to realise is impairing quality of life, empathy and may even have notable bad impacts on international politics.

Seriously, what are we doing allowing to be done with this technology?

, sich an die Regeln zu halten.

Irgend wie habe ich es geschafft, bis zum Beginn der so genannten dritten Welle in Deutschland zu bestehen, ohne diesen Gedanke gehabt zu haben:

So ziemlich fast so gut wie quasi alle Corona-Infektionen, die derzeit stattfinden, wurden durch Missachtung der Hygieneregeln ermöglicht. Es sind nicht verzeihlich wenige Fälle, die durch verzeihliche Mishaps entstehen. Es sind größtenteils im privaten Bereich von Menschen, die unachtsam, ignorant und unverantwortlich mit ihren Kontakte umgehen, stattfindende, zum Großteil sehr einfch vermeidbare Infektionen.

Daraus folgernd will ich versuchen, nicht mehr so nach außen verständnisvoll zu reagieren, wenn Mitmenschen der Ansicht sind, mich maskenlose und/oder abstabdslos belästigen zu müssen.

(Toll, ich habe entschieden, arschlochiger zu werden. Entscheidung zurückgezogen.)