Iran's blogfather: Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are killing the web
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
More or less all theorists have thought of gaze in relation to power, and mostly in a negative sense: the gazer strips the gazed and turns her into a powerless object, devoid of intelligence or agency. But in the world of webpages, gaze functions differently: it is more empowering. When a powerful website – say Google or Facebook – gazes at, or links to, another webpage, it doesn’t just connect it , it brings it into existence; gives it life. Without this empowering gaze, your web page doesn’t breathe. No matter how many links you have placed in a webpage, unless somebody is looking at it, it is actually both dead and blind, and therefore incapable of transferring power to any outside web page.
Apps like Instagram are blind, or almost blind. Their gaze goes inwards, reluctant to transfer any of their vast powers to others, leading them into quiet deaths. The consequence is that web pages outside social media are dying.
Best part of the piece, imo.
The prominence of the stream today doesn’t just make vast chunks of the internet biased against quality – it also means a deep betrayal to the diversity that the world wide web had originally envisioned.
and,
The stream, mobile applications, and moving images all show a departure from a books-internet toward a television-internet. We seem to have gone from a non-linear mode of communication – nodes and networks and links – toward one that is linear, passive, programmed and inward-looking.
When I log on to Facebook, my personal television starts. All I need to do is to scroll: New profile pictures by friends, short bits of opinion on current affairs, links to new stories with short captions, advertising, and of course self-playing videos. I occasionally click on the like or share button, read peoples’ comments or leave one, or open an article. But I remain inside Facebook, and it continues to broadcast what I might like. This is not the web I knew when I went to jail. This is not the future of the web. This future is television.
Instead we need are other services that does the opposite of Facebook. Instead of containing us in a bubble it will help us exploring the diversity of internet; it will take us to the least visited corners of the web and introduce us with new people and new thoughts.
A lot of people seem to assume that just because something exists and it's used (and does a few things) then life without it would be inevitably worse.
Not saying that's your case exactly, but I'm not sold that Facebook offers something net positive long term to the people using it. If it's for communicating with other people, we never had more options: phone, IM, email, Skype and tons of other things besides. I find FB a more poisonous version of these things, based on lifestyle jealoushy, shallow exchanges, and allowing people to "keep up" with others without making any effort -- so, helping isolate them in effect.
Facebook is just another communication platform. I tend to think it like a phone where you can make really cheap phone calls. Now what the user will communicate is based on their socio/economic/political/life preference. And that surely includes a lots of meaningless noise.
And I think that's alright, because freedom is inherently chaotic.
Recently blockchain based ideas of twitter (like service) was mooted[1]. I guess we all should work on such apps and get Facebook first, and then twitter to just go obsolete. Reclaim the Internet.
[1] https://medium.com/backchannel/how-bitcoins-blockchain-could...
Link-age : http://newmediasoc.com/projects/link-age/
Quite a lot of the web has also been converted into streams, thanks to infinite scrolling web pages.
Many Google links no longer point to information, they point to information that was visible when the site was indexed, and that you might find if you keep scrolling down for long enough, but probably won't.
What might differ then with the old web is that people are no longer represented by websites, they are represented by profiles, profiles that are somewhat limited, somewhat forced into a mold, so that it is easier to polish and curate them. That is a discussion in and of itself, but the point I'm trying to make is that there is connection between people going on, and in some ways, better than before.
[0] http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/181055/english-eq...
Using hashtags gives your content eyes and gives
Do instagram hashtags only work within Instagram? Do hashtags within Instagram look outwards, or inwards? How about Twitter? Does Twitter hashtags cross over to other "Content Producer" friendly applications?
In effect it's an isolated web. A web of images.
Anyway, that sounds like the next big startup, a simple service that links hashtagged (and otherwise tagged) content from ig, twitter, blogs, and puts its access into one portal.
http://uk.businessinsider.com/new-billion-dollar-startup-uni...
Another horrible trend is to hide links behind Javascript. Simple Hypertext links should never require Javascript to be clickable, on many websites they very often are.
The marketing team believe linking to sites other than our own drive people away. Instead they internally link to product/service pages that are often barely relevant and rarely (if ever) what anyone reading the post wants to see.
It makes me want to throw the whole thing away and start over.
Informally, through personal observation: if anyone has a list of actual editorial policies that preclude doing that, I'd be happy to look at it!
BBC News, afaict, will typically drop an external link next to the article.
That's a Google-inflicted SEO trend. People are worried about "losing PR" to linked sites / being considered link farms rather than "leaf" sites with content. This kind of SEO is worse for the structure of the web and web page usability than most of the tricks used by FB et al.
I don't know if it ever was - SEO "experts" will tell you all kinds of amazing things, usually not what Google recommends (but Google naturally doesn't give SEO advice, just suggestions for playing nice). But even if it was valid advice, a more useful page would probably win in the long run - see Wikipedia and consider what it would be like without external references in the articles.
Super annoying.
and other greasemonkey scripts.
Also uses JavaScript so you can't turn that off.
Initially a search result link on Google looked like this:
<a href="http://example.com">Example<br>http://example.com</a>
<a onclick="trackpage(this)" href="http://example.com">Example<br>http://example.com</a>
<a href="http://google.com?redirect=example.com">Example<br>http://example.com</a>
<a href="http://google.com?redirect=example.com">Example<br>http://example.com</a>If you send a link to a friend that you found by searching Google, it's in Google's business interests for your friend to first come to Google and then the site you were trying to get to. Annoying, even if it's just a redirect, but profitable for Google in many ways.
https://plus.google.com/collections/featured
This looks like a web page to me, not a web app. but Google seem to have engineered it to render more like a web app. If Javascript is disabled, the links in the 'cards' lead nowhere.
If Javascript is enabled, you can't hover over a link and see the URL destination in the browser status bar. You can't right-click the links in the cards and choose 'Open link in New tab' either.
These are pretty annoying as well, though.
Further simply linking to interesting things became less useful so simply sharing link collections stopped being a thing.
But then I remember Google giving "trusted" domains such as digg and reddit extra weight and it was quite depressing seeing the top result for the exact title of one of my blog posts going to the digg and reddit page that merely pointed to my article.
Nowadays it seems practically impossible to get good rankings even for unique phrases and you have to buy advertising and backlink services unless you want to wait 2-3 years. And a lot of blog posts here automatically get accusations of blog-spam even though some of them actually aren't.
Google results aren't static, so you may see something different, but when I search for /dev/urandom, I get the German and English Wikipedia first (getting past that is nigh impossible, reddit is nothing compared to that), then my essay, then(!) the man page, then tptacek's blog post, then one of Pornin's fantastic Stackexchange answers.
Actually, digg and reddit don't feature anywhere in the first twenty results.
Google will show results by changing the ranks a little bit for random people to see which one has better CTR but mostly they are unchanged. It also probably knows that you would prefer your essay so it shows it higher than normal.
And digg/reddit/hn results were manually de-emphasized by a google update, I think it might have been the Panda update or before that, so starting a link aggregator is also much harder than before.
Google has given these websites a free moat.
This is off putting to most content creators.
Sounds a bit like the US, which went from a nation of inventors to a nation of salesmen.
Google started drowning in spam and began to tweak it's algorithms in favour of big content. Simultaneously Twitter/Facebook/Instagram and god knows what else captured the mainstream eyeball.
There's still great independent content out there - but somehow it now feels like it's a side-channel rather than a vanguard.
Even Wikipedia used that software in the beginning, as did many other projects. As MediaWiki and Wikipedia got more well known, many sites upgraded their Wiki to MediaWiki.
I was intimately familiar with using it - indeed, I started using it when it was good, as http://www.altavista.digital.com (in those days we had to type both the http:// and the www).
The search itself was ok in the sense that it indexed things correctly. However, the ranking was very naively implemented and used basic TF-IDF style ranking of pages that matched the query, with strong bias towards the META tags (remember them?).
That meant that meta-tag stuffing was a thing, and very simple keyword stuffed pages ranked very highly.
That's what I mean by Federation. I don't really care if you get there by having tax-funded regional networks, or tons of private ISPs from big multinationals to mom-n-pop shops serving individual communities.
We currently live in a Republic where the masses have some degree of representation through government committees and administrations, but really it's a handful of big-money private interests with the most in the game.
The problem with that line of reasoning in relationship with the WWW is that the WWW is the platform and it is vast, federated or republic doesn't matter to the spammers, as long as there are forms and buttons to click spambots will come because the similarities between federated sites are still large enough to take advantage of them.
The problem is that the 'I' in ROI is tiny. I occasionally put up custom web forms for sending feedback about my software. All custom fields etc. And after a period they will start generating spam, despite the fact they send only to me and some spammer had to go and create a completely bespoke spam bot to fill it out. It is clearly worth it for spammers to hit just about every open web form on the internet, as far as I can tell.
Facebook, intentionally or not, gets to control part of YouTube's fate and relevance. It has every right to, but that's a bit scary when it's the only way to share a video with my friends.
Then there's google images, which shows the images on the google site itself (a vast copyright infringement, unlike the search engine result pages these are copies of the images at quite high resolution).
Every web company, as soon as they get large enough will stop playing nice and will start trying to lock their users into their own ecosystem.
Well, image search would be a lot less useful if it didn't show images. And Google's image thumbnails are very modest resolution copies. The larger image previews displayed when clicking a specific image result are actually hotlinked from the original source, and hence not copyright violations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inline_linking#Copyright_law_i...
So the website pays the cost without getting the benefit of a visit?
The larger image preview is still moderately sized (it loads the original image but in a smaller frame), so most users probably click through to the original page (since most users aren't savvy enough to right-click and go to the image directly, or mouse over to the "view image" button).
I think you hit something here... Why is this happening? Over and over again? Like a broken record. It is deep roooted, survival instincts which are acquired unconsciously because of the medium you're born and living in. Can this be changed? So future (web) company wil not be like this? Is anyone reflecting on this? Working on this? It is one's resp/job/passion to do this? I would love to know, help.
Also for many people this stream is their one-stop-shop web, which is fine, do whatever you like, but now it has reached the point where social media has to be appeased just to get people to look beyond the stream, which I think goes against the openness philosophy of the internet. As the builders of the web (majority of HN base) we should stay conscious of this philosophy.
I thought the "stream as something that only gazes inward" was a nice metaphor.
"Aren't there outward links on Facebook?" is a less relevant question to the author's point than "What's the chance I click on a link in Facebook and it takes me to something unexpected?"
> Apps like Instagram are blind, or almost blind. Their gaze goes inwards, reluctant to transfer any of their vast powers to others, leading them into quiet deaths.
Not clear what "them" refers to here. Is it instagram or "others"?
> The consequence is that web pages outside social media are dying.
This seems to imply that it is the "others", but I'd love a second opinion.
The author nailed it when talking about "two of the most dominant, and most overrated, values of our times: newness and popularity" and the shift from a book to tv mentality. The newness/TV aspect is another way to look at FOMO...these things are exploiting deep fears about group status and exclusion.
I don't think this means the death of ideas, but they are secondary now and spread when tied to a story/hero's journey involving a strong persona. Ironically, the author has a great one in being imprisoned for his ideas then freed.
Brilliant.
I would add that just this point in itself is a sufficient reason to stand up for an internet whose technology and culture allows you to be anonymous
It's fun pointing at corporate villains. I've done it. But it's more true and less satisfying to say that we enable the online world that has come to be.
I tried working for a start up and I hated it. But I love YC news for everything the web has ceased to be,
Interesting and intellectually engaging Quick to load Simple UI Strictly text
Which was the internet when I first encountered it I all its 28kbs glory (with songs gifs)
No matter how susceptible someone is to something, a decision they make is their own.
Trying to absolve the decision maker of responsibility for their decision is a sure way to disaster. If people at large start to feel that they are not to be blamed for their actions and it's considered acceptable to pin the blame on some corporate overlord, things will get out of hand real quick.
At the risk of wandering into a lengthy philosophical discussion, this is really untrue in a non-dualistic materialistic universe, which our universe appears to be. In other words, free will is an illusion, and the decisions made by people are entirely a product of their genetics and experiences.
So if people's experiences can be strongly manipulated by corporations, then so can their behaviors. It's not about responsibility, it's about reality.
People in general are irresponsible. A complex world makes it harder to identify pandora's boxes lying all around. And that just amplifies irresponsibility at a speed and scale we haven't seen before.
His writing can be found on his personal site: http://hoder.ir/en
Those three services are quite different. Instagram is a stream of photos, nothing more, nothing less. It's not a site that links outward, it's not even a site you really link to. It is simply pretty pictures. There's nothing wrong with that, really. Instagram doesn't want to and doesn't need to be a communication tool.
Facebook is website for keeping in touch with friends and relatives, organising your social life, viewing advertising videos, viewing plagiarised YouTube videos, and viewing sponsored BuzzFeed videos. It doesn't link outward much because that's not really what it's useful for. Facebook wants to deliver you a stream of mostly garbage, addictive and not-entirely-unpleasant content. It's almost useless as a platform for real communication, and nobody should expect it to be one, they'll be disappointed.
Twitter is a website for following people who interest you, and sharing things with people interested in you. Twitter, unlike Facebook or Instagram, is actually very outward-looking: Twitter is a huge source of links to other websites. People use Twitter to share pieces they find interesting, to share content they have created, to comment on pieces they have seen. People use Twitter and end up finding new and wonderful websites.
None of these are killing the web in the end.
And this really is a choice thing. Many people (myself included) can't afford not to be on Facebook, but I'd argue we do have the choice of whether or not to use it much.
Or is it that a massive number of people have arrived to the Internet knowing only the FB, IG, and WA apps. Those people don't quite get it yet. Some of them are new because of finances. Computers and routing equipment too expensive 10 years ago. The smartphone has brought massive numbers of new arrivals.
I think the problem could be app stores. Could be paid search results.
But these are short term problems. I think eventually all these new people will discover blogs. And podcasts.
Just like people these days are discovering grunge rock, and mullet hair. Or at least they were 8 years ago - last time I had a look.
Many simply don't know what the web is and how to write a search on Google. Someone has to explain them the concept or show them by examples.
It would certainly help if Android and iOS show a short introduction video about the web. Though both are more interested in guiding the new users to their AppStores.
It's not like Facebook came out of nowhere and invented the concept of a free platform to publish your musings. No, Facebook is popular because it's more convenient than any of the free services I mentioned in the above paragraph.
Facebook provides not just hosting but a fully-set-up CMS with no configuration necessary or even allowed (a selling point back in the day when people were complaining about MySpace's unreadable themes with annoying autoplaying music), social networking to connect you with your friends, advanced data mining and machine learning features to make sure you're matched up with the content you want to see, an IM service built into the platform, etc.
Mine (TNG) is one of them.
Do a WHOIS (with DENIC.de) for koschima.de, it’s an example for a domain that you get for free with them. (It’s what my dad got).
(Don’t do a ICANN whois, because that only shows you the technical admin, not the domain owner).
The problem is, you cannot do it any more, at least not without significant expenses.
Problem 1: either you choose a provider to handle incoming email for you (basically you want Google Apps, which costs $$$) or you end up with your inbox filled with spam, viruses and bullshit.
Problem 2: Unless your email address ends in Google, Yahoo or one of the other big companies, chances are high that other servers will just dispose of emails you wrote. Especially true if you self-host your server (e.g. an AWS virtual machine, or a rootserver with an IP range of your mass-hoster), because other people's hacked servers will put the entire IP range on public blacklists due to spam originating from these.
Problem 3: you will, if you self-host, have at least three servers to control: your DNS server, your SMTP server and your IMAP server. In addition, you will need to take care of your SSL certificate. All three not easy to do and people will try to hack you all day and night. And you will need at least three machines (two DNS, at distinct providers, and a SMTP/IMAP server). Your DNS must not go down in any case, but your SMTP server isn't as critical because SMTP allows for outages as long as the domain name can be resolved.
"Thus, I predict that software freedom that we once had, for our MTAs and MUAs, will eventually evaporate for everyone except those tiny few who invest the time to understand these complexities and fight the for-profit corporate power that curtails software freedom. Furthermore, that struggle becomes Sisyphean as our numbers dwindle."
He's got a point. All I can say is it hasn't reached Sisyphean for me yet and I will continue to run my own infrastructure as long as it is possible, cloud notwithstanding.
Self-Hosting email is also no issue, at least in the German world – as most people are with gmx, web.de, etc (or one of their hundreds of alias domains) and hotmail.com/outlook.com, yahoo.com and co always ended up in the spam filters.
From what I understand of my own family's experience, it is safe to say that far fewer butchers would have discovered safe havens in Rwanda (such as my grandmothers' -- my muzungu father calls it the Anne Frank house of Kigali. I never noticed the bullet holes littered throughout the bricks in her compound until my latest visit...) through their own self-determination, if the locations had not been broadcast on government radio channels... sigh
[0] http://www.evgenymorozov.com
[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/evgeny_morozov_is_the_internet_wha...
[2] See "To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism" by Evgeny Morozov
Was it the availability of easy to use technology (smartphones) that created the market for populist interfaces or the simplification of interaction that made the demand for simplified devices? That's a debate. However as more and more people came online, they didn't want to explore the frontier. They wanted their patch of land. They didn't want diverse ideas, but affirmations for their beliefs, as News media has trained us all to expect from the world.
It was this way before. Most people's idea of music was limited to whatever was on the radio or MTV. Political discourse was limited to what was the news. The reason early Internet was the bastion of outsiders, freaks, geeks and degenerates because these people wanted to break new ground, wanted new ideas. Those people are still here, but they are minority.
I do think Derakshan overestimates the value of the blogospheres. My primary interaction was message boards, which were closed-off, and in many cases private spaces. That is whete I discovered new music, new movies and new ideas. They too still exist, but they are also minority, as far as reach and influence are concerned.
People I know use the "big-3" because it allows them to easily connect to their real-world friends and share tidbits with them, not because they are looking for a publishing platform to reach the entire world.
I think the wider issue is content discovery outside social networks. I wonder whether there are still lingering issues for blogs after the death of Google Reader, or whether new services have been successful at filling that void.
His argument that they only show you what you like, keeping you in a little bubble, feels plausible, but is it true in practice? Those who are interested in new ideas will find them regardless of FB, and may even be shown them by FB if it works out that is what they will like. And those that are more passive get the benefit of the net without effort. Seems like a good arrangement, at least for now.
Centralisation of power is not just a problem in that Facebook tailors content to your preferences, but also that it has the power to choose how it does so. For example, I believe that Facebook said that it might choose to ignore that a user clicked "Show me less of this", because what we say we want isn't always what we actually want. Another example is that when even people who have liked an organisation's page don't see its content, Facebook basically forces them to pay for advertising.
Some of these ideas I found in a TED talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8ofWFx525s
It's all too easy to remove yourself from alternative points of view, which was another prediction David Brin made in his novel Earth.
Support and backing for the choices we make give us a warm and fuzzy feeling that we're in a good place or on the right path there.
Bubble is good. Cognitive dissonance is a bitch.
These platforms are the gateway to a better web not born yet, which is just about to emerge. High-quality content is becoming more relevant.
These social media websites are not killing the web. I'd argue it is doing something that is opposite to killing the web. People can find people who share the same ideologies in the social media platforms described. A decade ago, would you consider the web more prosperous without the presence of these social media platforms? I'd like to think that these platforms are gateway to a better web.
Bloggers are still rock stars in contemporary time. Hossein Derakhshan is just looking at the wrong place.
There is also more competition in the blogging space. What does he think happens when there is an inflow of supply?
People are smarter now. In fact, they are getting really smart with the availability of knowledge, wisdom, skills, and ideas. If you want more people to read your blog? Better start finding ways to influence new people and affect their lives, while offering meaningful. Furthermore, I hope he finds a way to get the numbers he wants by out-competing other bloggers in his niche.
He didn't make that claim, that's a strawman. The social media things are not the normal web anyway. His point isn't complaining about his audience issues, it's about the closed silo nature of these systems that give them massive power as gatekeepers in ways that the normal web doesn't.
> People are smarter now.
Now that's just the rantings of a myopic futurist-cultist.
Was it not implied from reading the whole article?
>social media things are not the normal web anyway.
What is normal? If billions of people are using social media would that not be normal still? How many people have to do a certain behaviour for it to become normal?
>> People can find [other] people who share the same ideologies in the social media platforms described.
It is a close silo.
>Now that's just the rantings of a myopic futurist-cultist.
Now that's just the rantings of a pessimist. How about things like the Flynn effect. Or do you have proof that people are not getting smarter or people are getting dumber?
Re: pessimism vs futurism etc., you're the one that made the "people are getting smarter" claim, which is quite bold and demands evidence. I'll grant that it's possible that more percentage of people are getting adequate nutrition, health care, and education such that they are potentially more intelligent, but there's no basis for just asserting that an educated, well-nourished person today is generally any smarter than someone of that status from generations ago. So the curve is more about the percentage of people with decent health and education, and that's not something that leads to a conclusion of ever-increasing future intelligence.
AOL was going to kill the Web in its infancy, ensuring a walled off garden.
Microsoft was going to kill the Web and dominate cyberspace by inserting various points of control. Magazine cover after magazine cover predicted and warned on this for years in the mid to late 1990s.
Apps were going to kill the Web.
Facebook, Twitter et al. are going to kill the Web.
Four or five years from now: new thing is going to kill the Web. Rinse & repeat for an eternity. Absolutely nothing has changed in the argument, they just keep replacing one boogieman with another. I'm pretty sure after watching it for two decades that it's just an excuse to whine, forecast doom, and be overly dramatic. As it turns out, the Web is extraordinarily resilient + adaptive and will be just fine.
What people mean by "killing the web" can be compared to what people meant when talking about Eternal September, but now it got worse, and way more people are in it.
No one sane allows trackbacks on his blog any more. Too abused and spam-ridden.
it was even kinda a surprise to the twitter crowd where most of the activists hanged out
in the two following years, twitter played a major role in sharing information on whats happening in the streets vs what the controlled media show
twitter and facebook did kill the web they revolutionised the world, literally
There's a scene when Charleton Heston shows his, I believe, father some refrence books that he stole from the rich guy.
On the books, I saw report for 2016 to 2025.
I thought to myself, I'm glad we are not living in a Solent Green world--yet. I thought about just how difficult it is to predict the future.
That said, I don't like the direction of this internet. I loath FB. I loath it for various reasons. I'm trying to be objective. "Do I dislike it because I don't have a lot of friends?" I don't know? I just loath the site. Always have, but I'm a odd person. I'll cop to that.
Somebody above me asked for solutions. I think we should share anything we have. Yes, there are poachers, with deep pockets, that will steal ideas, but we're talking something that was very special. I liked the Internet in 2008. I don't like it as much now. So, please offer solutions?
(To the Downvoters, give people a chance to offer their ideas without your petty boos. It's not all about you, and your precious, fragile mood?)
There's definitely more to be said on this topic, though.
The web works just fine for me. I just route around the damage. It's not like anyone has a gun to your head forcing you to have an Instatwitbook account.
Has anything similar to this happened?
So if all blog hosts hand out the same sticky cookies and then exchange the tracking info to collectively spy on its users - that will be the killer app (or killing app) for hyperlinks and decentralized blogs ;-)
Now what happened is that the online audience got much wider - now my guess is that this added audience did not result in more people reading and investigating stuff - its the same old number. (the author probably lost touch with his former readership while in prison, but eventually they will come back - if the author is still valued, but that's a separate question).
The net can't make us more curious all by itself...
At the time of Iranian disputed elections of 2009, I worked as an engineer for one of the biggest Iranian websites with millions of audience looking for reliable source of news, in the strict absence of any news, when people were getting killed on the streets of Tehran.
I see the need to clarify who this self-titled 'blogfather' of Iran is. I see this need as things get out of control quickly on hn due to hype and links like this jump to get 1k votes, where most of the voters simply vote because others voted.
For those who do not know, since just before the Iranian disputed elections of 2009, Hossein Derakhshan has been living in Iran. He was 'supposedly' in jail, but there were rumors about his collaboration with the Iranian government to build their cyber presence, which almost did not exist at the time. Shortly after his arrest, many anti government bloggers inside Iran were arrested too, there are speculations that he revealed their identities.
Years before entering Iran, Derakhshan was busy with 'blogfathering' Iranian web space for a few years, explicitly being anti Iranian government, which always bring visitors. This way, at the rise of the weblog era, he was doing good. He had a big number of visitors which could make him enough money to not look for another job.
During post golden era of weblogs, specially when the Iranian Digg copy websites appeared, his monopoly weblog business was going south. At that point, he started publishing more unconventional content in Iranian web space to gain attention. Mostly, they were of sexual nature. A good example is a video he published where he asks an Israeli girl to repeat graphic sexual words in Farsi (Persian) after him. The girl did not speak a word of that language. Another example is his dedicated website to naked pictures of Monica Bellucci.
I am not writing this to reveal that Hossein Derakhshan is a successful web attention seeker. I am writing this to let you know that in summer of 2009, when our tiny team was trying to protect huge DDoS attacks on a handful of low budget EC2 instances funded by donations, we were convinced that on the other side of the line, Mr Derakhshan had made a deal to conduct the operations by hiring Russians. This was by tracing his old account on our website to multiple new accounts claiming how they enjoy taking down the website, and let me tell you this, if you write thousands of lines on the web with your identity, it is not easy to escape your writing style when you pretend to be someone else.
Another elections is coming in a couple of months in Iran, where the government allows high profile media to report from inside Iran, hence this article pop up out of no where. This is a known pattern.
I had to get this off my chest after so many year. It is disturbing to see links like this on the front page of hn, where people claim to be pro democracy and freedom. This hurts.
So many people reposting his article!
For him.
and I would say that he certainly shouldn't be alone in preferring the 'old world'.
I can imagine a person who went to jail before the rise of NSDAP and got out into the Nazi Germany could be horrified by the new world. All the while everybody around them is happy with the change because the world got clearer, simpler and with a lot fewer annoyances like freedom of speech and all the confusion it causes.
Dismissing such an observer as an outcast who just doesn't get The Brave New World would be easy, convenient and very unwise.
I can understand why this perception could be read into his post, but I think the much stronger argument here is that the web he sees now, after his release, is not a web at all - it's 3-4 massive nodes that are connected only because they use the same pipes
If onewaystreet had said "guy complaining about kids these days" then sure, shouldn't downvote for opinion. But "because he can't adapt" is not what the article's about. As far as I can tell, that dismissal is factually wrong. So a downvote is okay.
Slightly off-topic, does he realize that this was a fable and not a true story as human beings can't live for 300 years much less without food, water and a way to expel waste?