PSA: Do Not Use Services That Hate the Internet | Hacker News Reader

PSA: Do Not Use Services That Hate the Internet

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68 pointslehi26 comments

An aside to those curious, linking to jwz's blog from HN is not liked by him, and the website, if it detects a direct visitor HN redirects to a vulgar NSFW image. This apparently is a work around.

Here's the NSFW image, if anyone's curious. https://cdn.jwz.org/images/2016/hn.png

Accurate

Oh, I was thinking it was going to be something more shocking. I can appreciate this flavor of grumpiness.

I resemble that remark

I can understand not wanting the traffic, but it sounds like he has something personal against the HN userbase. Do you know what that is?

Some people have a deep intrinsic need to be contrarian. His criticisms of HN are especially ironic given his involvement in startups and his fortune coming from a Netscape liquidity event

Check the link to the "NSFW" image. If you don't want to: My interpretation is that he sees it as a place where business ruins good-will technologists.

It's complicated.

Most people on here are libertarian techbros. Hard not to hate.

In light of this, his grandstanding about the open web and open standards, etc. falls a bit flat if he implements such referrer-based tactics.

Ironic, given this post. Hive is bad, because it doesn't let you link to posts from other places on the internet, like ... his own blog?

Why do you allow the referrer to be set?

https://www.jwz.org/blog/2022/11/psa-do-not-use-services-tha...

why?

The bi yearly angry gorilla post from jwz. How is it that always people that actually had the means to change something are the biggest cry babies? I guess it's remorse?

Just because something is part of Internet does not mean they need to participate in World Wide Web and if they are not participating does not mean they hate Internet.

Imagine that every internet connected device needs to have webpage. Ridiculous.

I agree that it's a clunky simplification, but the point is clear.

Just read "non-vendor supplied client" for every spot "browser" appears.

If it doesn't support custom clients-- as real, first-class citizens, rather than a Twitter-style "we'll hobble the API access of any successful client" mentality, you're not going to get external search, interoperability, or much user control.

I eventually figured out how to get the URL of a facebook post (you click the timestamp and it will bring you to a page with just that post with a permalink - this is not exposed in the ... dropdown menu) but I was puzzled when trying to refer someone to a comment that answered their question, there is no way to hyperlink to a comment ! they don't have URLs!

>there is no way to hyperlink to a comment ! they don't have URLs!

It's the same. Click on the timestamp of the comment or just right click copy link on the comment.

This article confuses the web with the internet. There are many applications that use the internet, but are not themselves websites.

No, he is not confused at all. He's specifically railing against walled-garden, closed services where your only access to them requires a mobile app (which of course uses the internet), and has no (or limited) web-based functionality.

(Also note that this is Jamie Zawinski, who wrote the UNIX version of Netscape in the 90s. I don't think a guy who wrote a web browser would be confused about the difference between the web and the internet.)

No, it does not. It’s pretty clear that whatever Hive is (as well as other content silos), it uses the Internet to communicate with the mothership but does not meaningfully participate in the World Wide Web (aka the web). The article speaks of this exact scenario.

He repeatedly says “only use one that is part of the world wide web”. I’m not sure how you got from that that he is confused. Also it’s kind of funny that someone would think jwz would make that mistake.

He said that mobile social apps that don't have web presence hate the internet. These apps don't hate the internet because without it they wouldn't work. The majority of people use mobile apps instead of websites for social apps so it is not a big priority for these apps to invest in recreating the app on the web.

The Internet was created with openness and interoperability in mind, so although I may not agree with some of his most extreme opinions on other subjects, he's spot on when he criticizes the app-only approach. A lot of services can be accessed only by phone apps, the reason being that mobile platforms aren't "plagued" by open protocols, so they're easier to monetize because there's no open competition.

No, they want people to use the app so that they could be tracked better.

An example is reddit, which makes the mobile web experience awful to force people to install their shitty application.

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