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Comment by tannhaeuser | Hacker News Reader

What is it exactly that we want to save? Bloated browsers so complex that not even MS can keep up with development? Shitty web apps needing obscene amounts of resources and power just to lock you in into web services? Clickbait journalism, a monopolistic attention economy, privacy invasion, surveillance, censorship, influencers, and propaganda?

I guess the conclusion is that the web is only as valuable as the content delivered over it, but has no inherent value of its own, or even a net-negative value. We should salvage valuable content off the web, and take stuff we want to keep elsewhere. We should create new content in a way that isn't locked to the web.

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You mean a interroperable, international standard based information plateform sharing the vast humanity has access to "has no inherent value of its own" ? I call BS on this one.

Anything that's worth something is imperfect. Not the other way around.

The Internet has value, sure.

But what value does the WWW have, if all the content on it is worthless?

What are the value of a hammer if all the nails are crooked ?

That's not a really interesting question because:

- IRL, all nails are not crooked

- it's unlikely they ever become so

- we can make other nails

- we can use hammers in other contextes

- you can always make another hammer, or hammer-like tool if this one doesn't suit your need

- hammers are damn useful on their own, as a concept

- people still use hammers, so I guess it has value for them

The Internet has changed the world and just ignoring it won't change it back. We won't be able to completely evade the tiresome phenomena you mention, either on the web or irl. I still have a faint hope we might be able to carve out a niche where we can use the web without falling prey to these things more than absolutely unavoidable. However, the masses have spoken and it seems glaringly obvious that they don't give a rodent's backside.

The masses have done no such thing though, if you really think about it. New people get born every day, they still get to speak. People can change their minds, they still get to speak.

And it's not like we're talking about informed decisions by people making free choices, there's all sorts of pushiness. The war on general computing isn't waged by the average person, they're the victim of it.

The Internet is not the web. The later is part of the first one.

Easy for some to say. Billions of people rely on the current web, because it’s functions have replaced the previous traditions and infrastructures. Highly mobile folks will pack up and go elsewhere, leaving the masses to suffer under the list of features you mention. I think what we should be saving is the functionality society as a whole depends on. This is not so easily done.

This article (clearly you didn't read it) is actually about data privacy and social manipulation.

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