zlacker

The "good" internet was run by rich people's money, we had a good run because someone paid for it without expectation to make the money back right away but to acquire " internet real estate". Now these people want their money back, they want to scoop the returns of their investments.

Google, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit were all magical. Digg was also magical but it died out when tried to scoop returns in inelegant way.

Rich people did not become rich and don't stay rich by giving money away. When Youtube was advertiser unfriendly it was magical but it was also burning a billion $ a quarter, the same goes for all those "evil" companies. It all was a scheme to create and grow a market up until they run out of people. When they run out of people, it's time to make the money back out of it. Hmm, maybe I should remove the " " of "evil" but I am not sure. What was the alternative? The French "internet" maybe, but it died if in the face of capital fuelled frenzy of the American internet.

BTW, that's why I am an Apple fanboy, I like the idea of directly paid services. The relationship is simpler.

>>mrtksn+(OP)
Oddly I’ve not yet heard the NSF described as “rich people”.

>>nr2x+id
Exactly. It was literally the government/edu/dod/doe that gave us the internet.

Web service should be nationalized, and so should Chrome.

Those "rich people" are in the position they are due to consumer ignorance and apathy, but above all, they are our guests at the trough.

Show me someone complaining about over-regulation, and I'll show you someone whos being a hog.

>>artifa+ro
Why would the government want to nationalize the dystopia? It's better run by private business, just like most other things where profit seems to be a useful proxy for desired quality. It could also be useful to seem to be optimizing for profit regardless of actually optimizing for it: "Youtube recommends this video because it thinks it might help keep people engaged and show more ads" is much better implicit marketing than "US government wants people in Elbonia to watch this video".

>>nr2x+id
Not the infrastructure but the attractions.

>>mrtksn+(OP)
I'm probably too old, be "Google, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit" are not "old internet" to me. I would rather think of a network of self-hosted web pages with unique and not marketing-driven content that people produced for fun. And yes, I feel a lot of nostalgia for that - I know such pages still exist but they are overshadowed by the "Web 2.0" which sets the rules, both directly and indirectly.

>>mrtksn+(OP)
> BTW, that's why I am an Apple fanboy, I like the idea of directly paid services. The relationship is simpler.

Except you don't really own your hardware :(

>>ameliu+Zd1
I do. I know what you mean but this rhetoric is ridiculous, I don't think that Apple or any manufacturer is obligated to make their product modifiable.

As far as I am free to do whatever I want with the hardware I purchased, no matter how hard it is to do it, I do own it.

Let me put it this way, I can't put diesel in my petrol car in the sense that it wouldn't work because the manufacturer did not develop their engine to run on any fuel. They also made the refuelling hole in different size. This doesn\t mean that I do not own the car, if I feel so I can modify it to work with the fuel I like. Actually, it's widespread to install kits to make the car work with Propane but if I really want to I can convert it to electric or diesel too.

The same goes with any Apple product. Want to make the hardware do something that is not designed to do or actively prevented doing it? Hack your device. You own it. As long as the police doesn't knock on the door due to me fiddling with Apple made device, I do own it.