The internet turned into a crowded mall. Now you need a corner shop | Hacker News Reader

The internet turned into a crowded mall. Now you need a corner shop

pithandpip.com

114 pointsmaguay55 comments

I try exploring the 'alt-internet' or indyweb or whatever we call it from time to time. I've messed around on Mastodon instances, but it never really clicked with me. I never really used Twitter though, either, so not surprised. I did enjoy old Instagram around the time stories came out because it was just my friends sharing less-polished pictures of what they were doing, so I thought maybe I would enjoy Pixelfed. I played with Scuttlebutt for a while and found it the most fun, just a pain in the ass to use.

However, they all have a similar problem. There's almost no one except bored tech people on them. Don't get me wrong, I think retro computing is cool, and I like seeing people's DIY hardware creations occasionally, but it's only a small niche. The corner shop is boring if it's almost always empty, and the only people that ever show up are other corner shop proprietors or corner shop enthusiasts. At the same time I'm aware that attracting the rhetorical racist uncle from Facebook over to your Mastodon instance is not the goal, and it wouldn't make it better to have wider appeal.

There are very few non-tech-specific old web holdouts that I know of. One of my favorites is Crazy Guy on a Bike [1]. It's a special purpose site, forum, blogging platform, etc. specifically for bike touring, all run on donations by one crazy guy writing Perl like it's 1998. It's been around for over 20 years, and as cool as it is, it's also fixed scene that isn't growing or attracting new members. As people move on and donations dry up I'm sure it'll disappear.

I don't want it to be so, but I feel like whether you're at the mall or the corner store, the internet is just a boring place now, and yet I spend more time with it than almost anything else. Probably says more about my age and the fact that AIM chat and quirky HTML sites were a part of my childhood than anything else.

[1] https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/

> However, they all have a similar problem. There's almost no one except bored tech people on them.

In the case of Mastodon this very much depends how you 'build' your personal timeline. It is empty at the start, and you have millions of people to follow.. or avoid following. Some countries have less inhabitants than the number of active users. I'm sure in most cases there are enough people around who are involved in ones particular non-tech interest areas.

Mastodon particularly is a format that I cannot get into. Same problem with Twitter for me. Sure I could go mining the depths for that one person who posts something I like, but in my few superficial attempts, it just feels like I'm walking around catching fragments of conversations, most that don't really interest me.

> The corner shop is boring if it's almost always empty, and the only people that ever show up are other corner shop proprietors or corner shop enthusiasts.

As a self-identifying corner shop enthusiast, I think the magic of corner shops is that they're an exercise in shifting to a hopefully healthier mindset.

Before: Something always going on, most of it not adding appreciable value but keeping us engaged anyway, often through FOMO

After: Lots of silence and empty space, but people communicate with far more intent. The signal-to-noise ratio goes way up and rather than living plugged in constantly, you can easily keep up with the discussion checking in maybe every few days. It leaves space for a more mindful, deliberate life. (Okay, I'm overselling it a bit, but hopefully you get the idea)

However, it's not just a mindset thing. Beyond the usability challenges of Mastodon in particular, for the best social experience, in my opinion, you really _need_ to either operate your own server (of Mastodon or Pixelfed or whatever) or personally know someone who does (or at least be in some community with them). And that group == bored tech people. I don't really know of a solution for that besides node admins becoming more active as real-life community organizers but that's not the most common intersection of skills/interests.

To your last point, though, I recommend checking out the Tildeverse (https://tildeverse.org/). It's _extremely_ nerdy (hope you like IRC!), but I don't think the tech people there are bored. There's a community radio, various art projects, people making games and other console apps.... Of all the neat places I've hung out online, I think it's the one that's actively inspired me most.

I also liked instagram back in the day for photography. Someone is building https://grainery.app/ focused on (film) photographers. I think we'll see more of a trend towards niche social media, which is cool.

There already was a huge trend toward niche social media, around the time FB was made. Stuff like Path, Diaspora, Bandcamp, and Yo. They were either cloned and destroyed by bigger social sites or they couldn't find enough traction in their niche.

I think the big difference now is how these sites stay alive. Now that we know things like Nebula or Kagi can work using a paid model, more of these types of user-supported communities will pop up. What's interesting about this, I think, is that in order for places like these to collect enough users to support themselves, the creator class of the community will have to become famous on one of the free-to-publish communities, like Twitter or YouTube, and then encourage their fans to come with them to the paid community. I imagine at some point YouTube and Tiktok et al will start restricting these types of promotional material to retain users, which is not fun to think about.

Path used a paid model and still didn't survive.

It's true the techies who lament the decline of corner stores are now more excited about things like Kagi and I'm pretty sure a lot of their marketing is exploiting those feelings on niche sites like HN.

But really, how long have they even been alive? Path tried their best for years and then failed. I hope that maybe enough has changed that folks like Kagi can now survive since wishing ill on something being built isn't my way.

I went to the URL. Login-walled. Closed tab :(

My HN of the past was k10k[1], SurfStation[2] and a raft of niche web design communities. What made these communities special is that they had unashamedly indulgent and whimsical chrome around the content, more akin to a magazine.

It felt alive.

Around this time it was hard to pull off complex designs on the web as internet connections were slow and HTML, JS & CSS were primitive. I think precisely because of these constraints, a sense of awe & wonder proliferated when people pulled off a fancy interface which led to an explosion in peacocking. It's what dragged me into the world of crafting high-quality user experiences from the positive reinforcement loops that were embraced and encouraged.

Some communities exist today like Dribbble that possess some of the aforementioned traits but they feel soulless or just self-promotion machines. Then again, there may be millions of relevant communities that exist that I haven't stumbled upon, yet.

In a world of post-scarcity, it almost feels necessary to create artificial bounds to encourage these esoteric & competitive communities.

Maybe finding, creating and contributing to magazines is a better metaphorical aspiration than a corner shop.

1. https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/kaliber10000-2003

2. https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/golden-age-of-web-design/sur...

Edit: formatting

I really like the design of that website kulor.

It would be interesting if you could have a REPL in that style design, and you can reorder the panels of running processes, it reminds me of Yahoo, Lycos, Excite portals in the early web. I think they're also called portlets.

>But the trick of Hacker News, the thing that keeps you going back, is that it covers such a wide range of interests.

I'd argue that big part of the success is the way it's constructed. You always have fresh stuff on top, and you are encouraged to take part in discussing them, as opposed to regular forums where people can discuss on the same topic for years or decades.

Reddit and 4chan work the same.

People have short attention span, they always want something new and they are after instant gratification.

I enjoy both types of forums, the ones where you see mostly new content and ones where you can discuss whatever topic interests you, as long as you like and as long as you have discussion partners.

I'd agree with this - it really works here because I don't actually know who anyone is, or see their comments regularly (other than when someone's username points to them being someone I know elsewhere, such as Jeff Geerling).

On most forums, there's an 800lb Gorilla who dominates everything, and they will set the tone of the place. I can think of two (one I used to engage with, one I have to engage with for work reasons) where there's one person who does this, and I stayed away as much as possible because of that opinion-domination which happened there.

I don't see that on HN, and it's one of the reasons I like coming here, maybe twice a day.

I’d argue that a big part of the success is dang.

Moderation is the key to community building, and HN has the best.

Yes, it often takes 1 'rotten apple' to drag down discussion into nasty stupid personal fights. Kudos to him in how well he manages that, not sure if he sleeps or takes actual vacations without internet.

He's not the only mod, though he is the only mod that communicates publicly.

Also, part of the success is the fast load time and navigation.

Hackers want a page that refreshes close to as fast as Ctrl-R in their editor.

But why did forums die? Was it bad UX? Were feeds of kittens more interesting and addictive than sequential debate? In particular, Reddit etc. are many-to-one (one post, many comments), where a forum thread are sequential pages of comments. And in that sense, perhaps there is no obligation to understand the entire conversation to participate, you just react to the OP.

If single-topic Facebook Groups / sub-reddits exist, then why is the internet "crowded"? Is the problem not solved? Again, is the UX broken, and what's the alternative?

I'm very interested in this problem.

Any recommended literature? In particular on the topic of social dynamics, herd behavior, and what we've learned not to do from the last 20 years of forums and social networks.

I see that everyone has their own pet theory, so I'll throw mine into the mix as well

Forums discouraged low effort postings and branching shitposting.

On all successful platforms such as reddit such content is quiet literally encouraged. It takes very little effort to just throw in a one-liner that's kinda funny and press comment, and lots of people are gonna read it, chuckle a little and maybe think of something even better.

Now they don't have to worry about detracting from the discussion, as their comment thread can always be hidden by closing the tree. As such, a lot of people get sucked into it as a form of entertainment. What previously was a discussion with people loosing their opportunity to throw out their funny one liner because someone else was quicker then them has now become an instant gratification machine you could endlessly use, and thus the userbase grew

My argument would be that forums never really had a chance at mass appeal as their format only works with few participants. But the eternal September kept going, so they were always going to become obsolete.

I'd use 4chan as proof for my pet theory, as that's an ancient forum at this point that literally encouraged unhinged shitposting and made it super easy to branch out into new threads, enabling everyone to just respond to whoever they want to (even themselves)

The first forums did branch, like usenet. Some software I Used in the late 90s would even sync with a usenet group in some fashion (I never used it)

The single thread ones one because they were more popular

> The first forums did branch, like usenet. Some software I Used in the late 90s would even sync with a usenet group in some fashion (I never used it)

True, but they didn't have the concept of up/down voting, so readers were never actively involved. Engagement doesn't happen unless the users have a very low effort way of participating.

>But why did forums die? Was it bad UX? [...] , and what we've learned not to do from the last 20 years of forums and social networks.

I'm old enough to have experienced various UI paradigms of computer communications over the decades. I ran dial-up BBS forum, paid a subscription to dial-up CompuServe forums, used USENET forums (both in dial-up eventually broadband), participated in a bunch of old web forums such as vBulletin/phpBB, and now Reddit/HN. Some observations...

One issue is that using different URLs as the "discrete unit of navigation" for each topic is very high-friction -- especially on mobile phones and tablets using thumbs to type in URL or the more cumbersome touchscreen copy&paste. Yes, browser bookmarks can help but that doesn't remove friction of navigating to new websites. It's easier to instantly go from "reddit.com/r/worldnews" to "reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive" and to any other "reddit.com/r/<ANYTOPIC>" ... rather than a hypothetical different urls "www.worldnews.com" to "www.explainlikeimfive.com". Going to a different website would involve a different web UI and possibly require a new login signup.

So sites like reddit or Facebook groups aggregate a bunch of topics for super easy navigation. Especially ergonomic for easy one-handed thumb swiping on smartphones. Arguably, a RSS reader software would also "aggregate" content to somewhat mimic Reddit to lessen the high-friction of navigating to different URLs. However, RSS is one-way "read-only" and not a standard way to participate and write comments on each website URL. And no, each website discussion forum setting up OpenID to re-use login credentials still doesn't lower friction enough compared to Reddit.

E.g. Back in 1980s, I learned a lot of C Language programming tips from USENET "comp.lang.c". But these days when I want to see some recent discussions on C++, I just visit "reddit.com/r/cpp". As another example, I was researching air conditioning units and I found some discussions were in a phpBB web forum dedicated to HVAC. I really really didn't want to signup with a new login just to ask a question. The UI friction was too high. Yeah, I lived with slow 300 baud dial-up but I'm lazy now. I want instant gratification.

>But why did forums die?

and if you did stick around, there were cliques and resident dweebs with >9000 posts with join date in the 90's. get into an argument with one of those fucks, and you might very well get banned.

modern forums are completely impersonal. I've been on HN for 10+ years, and I don't recognize anyone by name.

I don't miss the old forums at all.

I am a very old forum user and enjoyer. I recently joined a new forum and deleted my account a few days later. The first reply to my post was basically paraphrase, "You're doing everything wrong and you don't know anything.", and then the next few replies were entirely off topic derailing what I set out to talk about.

Forums can be great, but they generically are full of cliques.

I'd forums died for several reasons. One the consolidation of the world wide web means people only visit a few websites. Two many forums can't be used very well on mobile. And finally what I'd argue is the most important part of their decline is that search engines are terrible at surfacing forums (or really anything that's not already established) meaning it's hard to get traffic.

My dad frequents a very niche forum. A couple thousand users, many posts made daily, I'd guess a 80/20 split between long-timers/newcomers asking a question about that niche.

Biggest reason they seem to be struggling? The person who set up the PHPBB forum 15+ years ago has long since moved on and there's very few left within that community who know what do if things don't work. One day it'll die/get hacked/server disappears and that'll be it for them.

A few thoughts, without any specific evidence:

- UX surely played a part in it, especially for the oldest of forums that collapsed the thread by default. Then again, Dpreview still has that layout, and while it clearly wasn't successful enough for Amazon to want to keep it on, it still has a loyal following.

- Hiding content—or rather, only showing low-quality image previews to logged-out users—makes the "drive-by" experience less nice. HN—and Reddit, to a lesser extent—avoided that enough by not allowing images in comments, leading to users creating their own workarounds.

- Profit, or the lack thereof, likely was a larger problem. Banner ads just don't make enough profit, especially compared to Facebook et al's in-feed ads.

- Maybe the collective internet just isn't content with the smaller crowds that would have seemed great in the forum heyday that, today, pale in contrast to the traffic from one viral post on social media.

>But why did forums die? Was it bad UX?

Most people want to centralize around something popular, because there's an instinctive desire to be part of the "in" crowd and that is most often defined by what is popular. The convenience that comes with a centralized service is also strongly desired by most people who have bigger fish to fry than keeping track of so many forums and services.

Also, it's not just forums that became centralized; so have other communication mediums. One particularly impressive example is Discord: Remember Internet Relay Chat? AOL Instant Messenger? MSN Messenger? Skype? Yahoo Instant Messenger? ICQ? Teamspeak? Ventrillo? They all became Discord, both in private and professional contexts. Outliers like LINE and Microsoft Teams only survive out of specific cultural or fiscal clout.

>And in that sense, perhaps there is no obligation to understand the entire conversation to participate, you just react to the OP.

HN is also laid out like that, you are also just "reacting to the OP" rather than going down an impractical chain of chronology.

>If single-topic Facebook Groups / sub-reddits exist, then why is the internet "crowded"?

Because it's still <centralized service> rather than <a service>. Some people hate <centralized service> but have no alternatives, unlike 20 years ago when twelve dozen individual services on any given subject matter were just internet'ing away with naught a care if you patronized them or not. You had options, today you don't.

> Was it bad UX?

One of the reasons I saw on the forums I am on is that they took too much time to move to image previews. Many PHPBB do text very well, but with social media I got used like almost everyone else to see an image preview for the text or topic discussed. Everything material will benefit for a good preview picture. Alas, most forums are stuck with outdated thumbnail size previews, while the rest of the internet has move to cards as a proven format.

> But why did forums die? Was it bad UX?

Reddit and HN are what killed forums for me. These two sites allow for branching discussions. You can comment on follow-ups to the main post, and other people can do the same. It's like being in a crowd of people discussing a topic and you can move around and talk to different people.

Forums force you into a serial, sequential form that I feel stifles conversation. It can work if there are only a few people, but it feels like a guided discussion where only one person can talk at a time.

> were feeds of kittens more interesting or addictive than sequential debate?

Absolutely yes.

> no obligation to understand the entire convo

Definitely part of Reddit's appeal. Thread derailment is no longer as big of a threat when off-topic trees can be collapsed.

Likewise, there's no one to get pissy if you force the topic to return to the OP instead of engaging in the latest sub-topic.

> FB groups & subreddits

Both act as subsections of an everything forum. No need to make new accounts for each community.

I never liked the structure of most forums, what I always prefered were 3frame forums it's just so much better to read and keep track of postings.

Forums didn't die they just didn't grow with billions of users like social media did.

In the world of audio and music production forums like KVR, GS,ASR, and DOA are as popular as they've ever been. I'm active on VI-Control and the forum has been steadily growing for the past years.

No, fucking spammers ruined much of them. Bastards. They are the top reason we can’t have nice things.

Spam, moderation time, updates, hosting costs

I enjoy a website called halfbakery

It's not wise to wonder why things aren't good anymore. The zeitgeist of what people value is different to what it was in the 90s.

I want to make and do good things so that's what I focus on writing about or programming.

Make good things and share them. If you don't value good then you get the fruit of it.

> What isn't rare isn't valuable, and there's never been inflation as exponential as there is in today's digital property market.

Why I recently put a post-it above my desk that says "think boutique, mofo."

If you're indie/DIY, the only way to stand out moving forward will be rarity [1].

[1] "You don't want to be the best at what you do, you want to be the only one." - Jerry Garcia

I don't think the internet needs more corner shops, even. What the internet needs is more parks and backyards. Spaces where real people interact with real people without the the burden of commerce weighing everything down.

My curiosity got to the better of me so I have to ask this question: how is it that you post in almost every single thread about "the old web" and at that so many times a day? I see your name on these threads constantly. I'm only here because I left a comment idly yesterday.

It's a subject that I am very interested in and is relatively safe to express opinions about.

Fair enough!

I'm an old BBS user and the generation that saw the world turn to the commercializing Internet in real time.

From a message forum perspective, what kept intelligent discussion and thoughtfulness/patient writing going was simply that there was a higher barrier to entry (knowledge) and fewer people. It was also not easy to use the phone to write a message, much less do much of anything online. You had to use a PC with a modem, at a minimum. And FIDOnet etc required a BBS that had a batch job to go off and sync messages.

Today it takes three seconds to post a short message that millions will read. You see celebrities do this all the time, saying something regretful because it was on a whim. But Reddit is full of low quality, quick replies that self-referentially try to re inforce or repeat meme joke. Or mic-drop dismiss someone else's perspective.

Almost no Reddit forum isn't full of what feels like spam, but isn't - it's people expressing their dumb one-liner feelings thinking it's funny. And apparently it's hilarious because it gets upvoted leading most threads to be completely unusable for information or challenging ideas.

Then there are the 'hot takes' with incredible speculation and confident views that aren't challenged intelligently but could do.

I do miss older times

HN is the closest thing to them, but suffers from a lot of anonymity. I recognize perhaps 3-4 users in all the time I've been here.

Very good article. It's nice for once to read a piece about the state of the web with a glimpse of optimism in it.

A random thought I had while reading this (specifically about the the physical location) is I wonder if there's a way to limit your website/server to a local region. Similar to how BBS were back in the day.

Something similar occurred to me while writing the piece—and then I instantly thought that to a degree that's what China has built behind the Great Firewall, and one should always be careful what one asks for.

And yet. There's something to the idea. Something very "art project"-esque where certain web pages were only available when you're physically in a specific area could be fun, at first. Could also be incredibly restrictive.

There are, but they all obviously involve means that most people here would call heresy and sacrilege: The tracking of users' IP addresses, user agents, operating system regional and language settings, etc.

You don't need to do all this though. Just look at NextDoor.com, it works fine for mostly only having locals. And the results are disastrous: it's the most toxic place on the internet.

Ip addresses don't need to be tracked for that. It could be done with a proxy that just refuses access to ips not in the right location. although i think it could be very annoying for users. some use tor or vpns, my just keep my websites open to everyone.

I guess it's hard to come back from mega malls to mom and pop stores.

Switching from globalized giants like Amazon to small specialized shops might be hard. Also is switching from Facebook to some small website.

> Switching from globalized giants like Amazon to small specialized shops might be hard

5 years ago I would have considered it near impossible, nowadays I look everywhere else first. Specialized shops put more thought into their product selection than "anything I can dropship" and compared to modern Amazon it's far easier to find something resembling quality. They may be more expensive but in my experience paying 70 bucks once to a trustworthy vendor ends far better than paying $20-30 three times on Amazon because in reality it's always the same $5 Aliexpress stuff. The downside is that small shops sometimes have a bit more friction in the ordering process or higher delivery costs.

About a year ago I didn't even have a choice: dozens of USB-C adapters I looked at on Amazon were obviously lying about the specs in their product description, I couldn't find a single one that was even worth trying. They all just go for the lowest common denominator and hope 99% of the customers don't actually check (and are probably right, sadly). A local shop meanwhile had exactly one adapter of that kind with datasheets on the manufacturer's website and it worked.

I realise last year I havent used amazon for years.

Its just shit. Its like dumpster diving, need to look out for fakes, deep search to skip the 'recommended' products.

Its incredible hustle now.

I dont know if amazon turned shit or I have more money then time to be dealing with it.

> Now you need a corner shop

Problem with this analogy is: corner shops suck. They have poor selection, prices and service. If just one of these three fundamentals is poor, you have a reason to go elsewhere.

It does seem inevitable the corner shop gets replaced by the supermarket, especially as travel time is not an issue - how many corner shops survive with a supermarket next door?

Maybe what we need is a range of small hipster specialty shops and cafés etc.

> Ctrl-F Lemmy

Lemmy is the current thing if you want to compete with big platforms like Reddit and host it on your own: Fediverse is the "network of corner shops".

The wider internet is pretty dead to me - is it much more than a bunch of corporate shop fronts? It's largely become TV, or the mall. You have to work hard to get something that's interesting. And credit to hacker news, this is still one of the places where real people share interesting information.

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