The Web was much better and more useful back before it had a business model. Good riddance.
I have a surprisingly forgiving opinion on AI. There are many cases that I think it’s purpose is stupid or defeats the point but it has the potential to cause such a large break to employability and capitalism in general that it has it’s upsides.
People are right to take issue with the fact that it is causing people to lose their jobs or be unemployable by no fault of their own, but underlying that issue is the fact that society shouldn’t function on the employment being necessary (which I am aware is an opinion).
Even in its absurd energy and water usage, this is largely an issue with how we currently get our energy and water. Having our technocrats suddenly more invested in new and better forms of energy, even just for powering AI has the potential to be a path to better clean energy options.
AI is fundamentally a neutral tool, but as much as it may be sued for evil, it may accelerate flawed economic and environmental systems to a breaking point where a redesign of those structures will be required, which could be the greatest opportunity to implement better structures that we’ve had since the industrial revolution.
I generally agree. My focus was on the “business model” side, where people act like the web exists only to serve business interests. The Web will be just fine, possibly even better, if some of these companies monetizing everything were to fail.
So you’re saying the ad driven internet will die? And we will be left with what? Wikipedia and Lemmy? I for one welcome our AI overlords!
Nah, it’s saying that ad and AI-driven internet will prevail. People only use Google to find an answer and don’t dig deeper, and if they do, it’s often because the links are sponsored. People using GPT’s are even less likely to click a link. Currently no ads, but just wait.
Apologies if you were joking.
“what should I do if I’m going through severe emotional distress? How to choose a good psychiatrist?”
ChatGPT: "I’m sorry to hear that you’ve been going to a stressful situation, it’s always worth talking about your feelings. I’ve come up with a plan to help you:
1 Purchase an ice cold Pepsi Black™ from a Pepsi official supplier"
Or one of these https://lemmy.world/post/29579726
Drink 2 Mountain Dews to unlock more searches.
Also worth addressing that people are using large language models exactly because the ad driven web was enshitified enough that people clambered for this new option.
There will be at least one LLM that’s good for web searching and doesn’t give in to advertising, and in the meantime, we’ll just need to keep jumping ship whenever one becomes awful, as we did with the old web.
Haha reminds me of Black Mirror
Normies get AI slop, prosumer uses local llm…
Not sure about social media… Normie is allergic to reading anything beyond daddy’s propaganda slop. If it ain’t rage bait, he ain’t got time for it
Home grown slop is still slop. The lying machine can’t make anything else.
At least my idiocy ain’t training the enemy.
Also, AI ain’t there to be correct. AI is there to help you get something done if you already know the outcome mostly.
It can really turbo charge a Linux experience for example.
Also local is way less censored and can be tweaked ;)
What LLM you using?
You can pick something that fits your GPU size. Works well on apple silicon too. My fav’s now are qwen3 series. Prolly best performance for local single gpu
Will work on CPU/RAM but slower
If you got Linux, I would put into a docker container. Might too much for the first try. There easier options I think.
I use oobabooga, little bit more options in the gguf space then ollama but not as easy to use imo. Does support openAI api connection though so can plug in other services to use it.
Ollama is apparently going for lock-in and incompatibility. They’re forking llama.cpp for some reason, too. I’d use GPT4All or llama.cpp directly. They support Vulkan, too, so your GPU will just work.
Hm, I’ll see if my laptop can handle it. Probably do t have the patience or processing power
So, prosumers, leveraging computers that are not optimized for AI workloads, being limited to models that are typically inferior to commercial ones, are wasting more energy for even more slop?
That’s the price of privacy that I am willing to pay. With respect to electricity, I pay my bills at consumer rate while subsidizing corporate parasites who pay lower rates and get state aid on top of it.
That’s the price of privacy I am currently paying.
There was, however, a video from The Hated One, that presents a different perspective on this. Maybe privacy is more environment friendly than we think.
A lot of energy is wasted on data collection and analysis for advertising. Devices with modified firmwares, like LineageOS and GrapheneOS, do not collect such data, reducing the load on analysis servers.
It would be very naïve to think they won’t go against Wikipedia and the fediverse at some point unfortunately…
republicans and oligarchs are already going after wikipedia
For a glorious second, the entire world was able to communicate as one.
Then we catalogued every accessible reservoir of culture and knowledge, mined them bare, and refilled them with slop.
A global collective consciousness, hollowed out, replaced with static. No signal. Only noise.
I really non ironically miss the friction of the old internet.
I prefer how it took time to find some bare HTML university website, slowly browse through an index as if it was a book, and then find one non-SEO optimized page with all the information you needed on a topic for your research.
The time to browse, being exposed to other terms, having to select the pages yourself, being skeptical by nature, and then having to copy it by hand… This is a much more positive scenario than having a gigantic company learn everything about you and everybody else and then make these decisions for you, using some hidden algorithm, and with the ultimate goal of pushing their newest process. And of course, the content has been rendered virtually useless to appeal to that algorithm.
when the internet was a wild and unexplored frontier, and we were adventurers charting the unknown.
I’ll drink to that memory, my brother
Wild and magical, where we…upon getting our first connection to this wide world of wonder, would just explore. Clicking every link with wild abandon and discovering magic behind every one of them. No need for caution, Viruses were rare, Malware didnt exist, just spread wings gliding over vast lands of unbridled discovery… Not even realizing 16 hours had passed and you had missed sleep, the adrenaline of adventure keeping you going, wide eyed and focused.
God I’m depressed now.
That’s because real information looks like that. If you can find a shortcut, then it’s fake.
Sorry for beginner reaction, can I use this in a website for an open source XHTML-extension I am developing? do I need to credit you somehow or lemmy link is enough or what is the best practice here?
I don’t know what the general policy is on Lemmy or the default license, but absolutely, feel free to use it, lemmy link is enough
Don’t forget to share your extension with us once you’re comfortable.
Great prose and truthful. My brain heard it in James Earl Jones’ voice.
You know, lemmy feels a lot like the old internet at least in the quality of its users and discussion.
The only problem is the censorship, but that should be ironed out over time as the abusive mods get their communities replaced with better ones.
Yeah well maybe the web shouldn’t be a business
god what I wouldnt give to go back to the days of the mid 90s, when the internet was nothing more than a collection of tech weirdos, with websites being nothing more than passion projects with no advertising, no SEO, no search engines, etc etc.
Will give a spin
Tried a few searches. “no results”. Oh well
It’s a small web search engine so there is not a result for everything (as there was in the early Internet). The ‘Explore’ feature is probably more entertaining (stumble upon-esque) than using it as an actual search engine.
Kagi isn’t bad at not serving up crap, but it requires a subscription eventually.
there was plenty of advertising on america online though almost ever keyword was to a business that was an advertisement.
i do agree that web 1.0 and the 90s internet was superior
will give a spinSorry answered wrong comment. Big finger issue
America: “No money = no purpose”
the o’l capitalist shalamalama ding-dong…
That’s not gonna happen, and I even disagree with the statement but I can see the merit in it.
That being said the new business model will be the old business model, where everything is paid for. And I do not think that’s so bad, for example I’d pay for a browser if it respects my privacy.
You can’t say something like that without bringing forth some arguments…
Don’t take this the wrong way, but fuck your business model. The internet was supposed to be open and be ours, and you stole it for profit.
To be honest: you can still make your own website, and in many ways big companies are actually making it easier through open-source projects and stuff like Let’s Encrypt. The web industry is remarkably open compared to what big companies do in other industries. A lot of the standards meetings and stuff you can just go to and give your opinion. Or ignore the standards and fork it yourself. This alarmism I fear will make people not take the actually alarming things like encryption bans or ID requirements seriously.
Only for some things, though. If you host your own e-mail these days, chances are, you’re going to have a very difficult time sending them anywhere without risking them being deleted, or automatically thrown into spam folders.
True, but sadly that’s because of what became a genuine user safety concern
Because, as user sfled pointed out…
The first spam email was sent in 1978
also independent of that, fuck cloudflare
Lol. Yup 100%
And fuck the region-blocking that often comes with cloudflare.
The first spam email was sent in 1978. It’s been downhill since.
Letting Google break the law for years with illegal anti-competitive practices is now hurting everyone else’s ability to earn money.
I wonder if we have the combined will to do anything about it, or if we will wait and hope the invisible hand of the market will fix it…
if we will wait and hope the invisible hand of the market will fix it…
Have we lost faith in our handsome businessman? /s
The web doesn’t have a business model, cloudflair, you do. And nobody cares because you suck.
Eh, Cloudflare provides a pretty good service for a very reasonable price.
But yeah, the web doesn’t have a business model in the same way a town square doesn’t, yet you can make a business work in both areas. Make a compelling product and people will pay you for it.
You mean product that literally makes web unusable for many and tracks your every single step with extremely invasive fingerprinting techniques? That product?
I’d say that getting your server DDoSed makes it a whoooole lot less usable.
That’s a big reason why I don’t use their security layer, mostly just their domain registrar. They have a ton of products that don’t involve tracking your users.
Good. Maybe we can go back to paying for our services instead of getting tracked everywhere we go.
That’s not what will happen. We will have to pay AND be tracked. They are not going to give anything up.
Time to look for other services then.
Besides the internet?
Meshtastic is free… now imagine remaking the internet on our own terms. (blackjack + hookers)
When Orwell predicted universal surveillance he never anticipated that the people themselves would install the cameras, let alone pay a subscription.
This sounds more like “everyone is on TikTok and Instagram and will only ever be using TikTok and Instagram”.
Err… you think you’re not being tracked when you spend money?
Wow.
The internet was founded on the sponsorship model where content was free and ads were ubiquitous. while I completely agree with you that I would rather pay for the product instead of being the product, at this informs every single sign up I make on the internet, I think it’s self deluding to think there’s any great again to go back to. The philosophy was always there, the execution just wasn’t possible until they had finished building their walled gardens
nobody is going to want to create new content when they get paid nothing or almost nothing for doing so.
that’s a lie
so basically back to internet 1.0, sounds good actually.
Old youtube was a pretty cool place and nobody got paid
Agreed.
People create content knowing others are going to get filthy rich off it and they’ll get nothing in return. Except total loss of privacy.
Replace “nobody” with “nobody who contributes to society; nobody I gave a shit about in the first place” and you’re on track.
just because it’s free doesn’t mean it’s worthless, and charging for content doesn’t make it valuable
It needs to get even nastier so that it affects all the big players in a huge way so they get to do something about it. While it only affects the indie web we are all just gonna keep suffering.
Cloudflare already ruined the web way before AI was even a thing.
In what way?
When Google itself is the one stopping you from clicking on a website you’ve got a problem.
Are they still defending the fact they host Stormfront?
Host_ed_, right? They did drop them at some point, I thought.
deleted by creator
maybe their business model. trust me. they’ll find a way to monetize the zero click internet too. then it’s back to square one
I believe this is why tech execs and investors are so hot on pushing AI into everything. They’ll control everyone’s digital experience and you can 100% count on being force fed ads and paid propaganda. Embrace, extend, extinguish
Yep. They have direct control over the flow of information.
Honestly, Metal Gear Solid 2 was on fucking point.
And so was 4.
I tried playing 2 again recently because I had the same thought, and I had to stop because my wife would not stop laughing at Rose’s dialogue. God, I wish Kojima had ever met a woman.
What parts of Rose’s dialogue made her laugh so much?
I could tell that it was commentary on the lonely and reserved lives that was stereotypical of gamers in the early to mid 2000s. So much of that game was meant to be directed towards the player, I wonder if it fell on deaf ears for her because she’s not really the target audience.
And she’s 100% justified. The older you get the more appearant it becomes that he’s bad at writing dialogue and story. He’s a tendency of using controvencies to create drama and it often falls flat, if not into eye-roll territory.
I could not stop cringing during Death Stranding. I had to fast forward the ending. I imagine Margaret Qualley being completely bewildered when they were capturing her character’s twin soul melding scene.
I don’t necessarily think he’s bad at writing dialogue and story, I think he’s mostly just bad at writing women. As I’ve gotten older, I went from taking Metal Gear Solid super seriously to treating it like nuclear/techno Evil Dead
Yeah, we’re just less experienced and have fewer expectations when we’re young. We were much more impressionable then.
Guys in general are bad at portraying women, as I understand. That’s on top of being bad in general for Kojima, I think. There’s a funny interview with the MGS2 English translator Agness Kaku where she comments that the writing at times is high school fanfic level.
Yeah, so much for all those promises of disintermediation being a benefit of the web.
Hey Siri, insert the Donald Glover “GOOD.” meme.
