The Public Interest Internet
berjon.com
berjon.com
Do you have mechanisms to play legal/jurisdiction arbitrage?
What happens if a bunch of government/special interest groups declare your garden illegal?
We are only as good as what is allowed.
This and the following image have a misguided understanding of the market. We know how this situation plays out because we ran exactly that experiment in the 2000s with Firefox and IE6. Those market share numbers are contingent on Google doing the best possible job as curators insofar as the userbase can tell.
If there are browser features that users want (like tabs) or web standards that enable Cool New Stuff (like modern JS) then users will go out of their way to install browsers that support them. Firefox got all the way to around 20-30% of the market before MS's control of the web collapsed and we entered the current era.
The "problem" that competitors of Google face is that Google is a rather competent steward of web standards. Their browser engine is hard to compete with because it is very good, their web standards are hard to compete with because they are largely appropriate.
Although I stand by a prediction I have that the next wave will be when a Brave-like model takes hold and the price of browsing the web drops from free to negative. With crypto we are surely getting to spitting distance of advertisers paying users directly to look at ads instead of paying Google to organise the web such that users look at ads.
The prerequisite of this is that such a web browser exists, which is not a given. I'd sacrifice an arm for a web browser that has non-disappearing natively themed scroll bars since due to accessibility issues I struggle with scroll wheels.
This is not a big technical ask, yet to date, the only one I've found that offers this is Falkon, which unfortunately stuck on an old version of qt's webkit port meaning a bunch of websites break with it.
You have a lot of choices but almost all of them are the same, or suck; or both.
Doesn't Firefox work at this?
1.Go to about:preferences or open the Firefox preferences via the UI
2.Scroll down until you get to a section titled "Browsing", or search for "scroll"
3.Check the setting "Always show scrollbars"
ref: https://superuser.com/questions/1720362/firefox-scroll-bar-d...
Go Marginalia!
widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.size.override 20
widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.style 4
widget.gtk.overlay-scrollbars.enabled false
scrollbar, scrollbar button, scrollbar slider {
-GtkScrollbar-has-backward-stepper: true;
-GtkScrollbar-has-secondary-forward-stepper: true;
-GtkScrollbar-has-forward-stepper: true;
min-width: 20px;
min-height: 20px;
border-radius: 0;
}
Like Windows XP?
ref: https://www.simplehelp.net/2009/08/04/how-to-enlarge-or-shri...
Pretty sure that tabs were introduced by a software developer without any prior request from any user.
Same goes for "Cool Stuff". Few users even know what JS means, except that if they do not use it or disable it, they will constantly be met with pages instructing them, even commanding them, to enable it or use a browser that supports it. These were introduced by software developers on their own initiative. Users will go out of their way to try to make stuff work. If a page instructs them to install some software, then, generally, they will follow the instructioins.
Once users become familiar with something then they will expect it. That is quite different from users asking for something that does not exist. (Usually such requests for features are never filled as they would go against advertisers' interests in web browsers. Users want a web free of ads. Software developers depend on a web full ads. In this regard, users do not get what they want. Software developers do.)
Users have little control over web browsers. Software developers at the advertising companies, e.g., Google, and their business partners, e.g. Mozilla, have the control. The companies serve their own interests and the interests of their customers who purchase online advertising service. Those customers are advertisers, not users.
For example, browsers like Firefox and Chrome have at times hidden the full URL from the user in the address bar. No user ever requested that. Nor were any users asked if they wanted it. Chrome introduced a feature called FLoC. No user ever requested that. Nor was any user asked if they wanted it. The list of "features" like this is ridiculously long.
Users do not get features because they "want" them. They get the features that software developers decide to give them, without prior consultation.
Whether they want the features or not, they generally are stuck with them.
I'm sure many, many features were introduced by software developers without any prior request from users. Users then selected what software to use based on which of those features they like the best.
This is how most product design works -- features are developed prior to being marketed, and users subsequently validate them or not -- which is analogous to how new biological phenotypes develop from random genetic mutations prior to being filtered through selection pressures.
> Few users even know what JS means, except that if they do not use it or disable it, they will constantly be met with pages instructing them, even commanding them, to enable it or use a browser that supports it. These were introduced by software developers on their own initiative.
And then users validated those introductions of new features and they became standard. This happened with JavaScript, because JavaScript enabled websites to do things users wanted to do. Conversely, the market didn't largely validate Web VBScript, Java applets, and a wide variety of other now-forgotten solutions for adding dynamic content to websites.
> Software developers at the advertising companies, e.g., Google, and their business partners, e.g. Mozilla, have the control.
No, that's very, very incorrect. Vendors can only introduce products and features -- whether or not they stick around and develop further is up to the market, via the complex interplay of end users and site authors.
It was entirely consumer self-direction, as neither browser was preinstalled by default on any platform, and all usage of either was initiated by a deliberate end-user choice.
"Aggressive marketing" indeed only has its effect through "consumer self-direction" as its whole purpose is to persuade end users to make a purposeful decision.
FF looked like a Windows 98 settings menu by comparison. Tiny, fiddly, cramped controls.
It would seem to suggest the exact opposite, since the "monopoly" (sic; actually dominance in a competitive space) you are referring to is the product entirely of user adoption at scale.
Who would take that deal? Getting paid $.02 in some cryptocurrency to look at an ad? So that I can then maybe spend more money on the product being advertised? Why would I ever agree to that? It's a bad deal for me. Why would the ad agency do that? It's a bad deal for them versus paying for captive eyeballs.
You can spend it on anything you like, actually.
You're already looking at the ad. $0.02 > $0.00, so the situation is a strict improvement.
I am happy to pay money to remove ads, but it would take a lot more money paid to me to add them in! Certainly not an amount that would be worth advertisers to pay me.
But in practice we know there is large group of people working to fund the internet, and I reckon the fair split might turn out to be that all of them (ad viewer, ad placer and content provider) get a slice instead of just the last 2. Think of it as the ad viewer's subsidy for supporting people who use ad blockers.
Can you elaborate on what you mean when you say "good" and "appropriate"? Good for whom? Appropriate why?
You could have said the same about IE during most of the time it lead, with the exact same rationale.
The state has significant advantages when competing against private market actors because it can sustainably fund public goods, due to the fact that its vast tax collection apparatus can capture a much higher proportion of the value generated by public goods than private actors can.
An adequately funded public good has several advantages over private goods:
* Wide public buy-in: Due to the absence of barriers to contribution, such as secret code or restrictive licensing requirements for modifications.
* Generally favorable public perceptions: Public goods often enjoy more trust and support.
If the state provides a compelling option, it can naturally attract users, and without having to impose mandates on existing market options.
This is greatly preferrable to the regulatory approach, which can have unintended consequences that slow innovation and reduce market options. For example, if regulations impose heavy compliance burdens on tech companies, they would divert resources to legal and administrative expenses, leading to less resources for R&D.
Regulatory regimentation to ostensibly achieve some public policy goal, can also prevent companies from experimenting with new ideas and approaches, which ultimately slows the industry's rate of progress.
So by having the state compete rather than regulate coercively, we get the benefits of market-driven innovation while also testing the potential of public goods to provide superior value than what market-provisioned goods can.
Such state-funded public options can also be used to non-coercively bolster open standards, by giving then the critical mass of adoption needed to become market standards.
An open source codebase allowing anyone to set up their own mail server would be the public good in that domain.
A table that gives examples of private vs public goods:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goods#Goods_classified_by_excl...
Public goods:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good_(economics)
For more complex goods, involving management of platforms, I think the only type of public good that could compete with proprietary offerings is the software that allows people to form a decentralized consensus and run applications on top of it, e.g. blockchain node software and smart contract code, respectively.
imho search engines affect page contents, and 'style' of the web. They define what is visible, and what is not, what is acceptable, and what is not. According to the chart Google controls 91% of that pie.
I do feel that most of what is wrong with the Internet is because of ads. The next thing is that corporations and governments use it to wield, exert power. The next thing is that contemporary search fails spectacularly at "discovery". When have you found 'a new blog' via google search? When did you find a new 'music band' using google search? When did you found fun web radio station? Google is answer machine. It is not a good place to find new things. It is not a good place to find retro things.
As a thought example lets think that alternative is possible. Let's say someone creates "a new search" that is successful, and makes Internet fun again. The corporations can sniff the trends and will move their presence to that space. Governments will also move there. They will make the pressure again on the "new successful search engine" to bend it to their rule. They will force their willpower eventually. They will perform enshittification again.
One way to break this trend is to have Internet federated, but this road is not funded enough. Why would anybody invest in hosting parts of the Internet? I was thinking about government funding for such projects, but I would be really surprised if that road resulted in anything good.
That is why I created an offline cache of the Internet [1]. I do not need to host it, yet anybody can use it. I can easily find "amiga" related domains, and start my search using just this.
Do not provide web apps. Provide data. Provide files. Provide something that works off-line. "File over app".
I'm in.
We don't currently have a select group of people who share a vision of "common good" making decisions for us, and yet things keep improving. So I'd advocate we stick with what we know is working, rather than the above surrendering of autonomy in exchange for the promise of some utopia..
> yet things keep improving
I mean, that's just obviously not true.
I do have a feeling we're not talking about the same thing here, so could you clarify how it's "obviously not true" that things have been/are improving?
I think we'd maybe both agree that Google and Facebook ushering in "absolute surveillance" probably came about from a single-minded view of "common good" within those companies - aka an example of a group of people aligned on a common good leading to things going poorly.
But it's silly to think that some other group with a different (but also single-minded) definition of common good is going to somehow fix all the problems and not cause new, potentially worse, problems. That's what I was attempting to get at with my initial comment.
Given that we weren't even really talking about the same thing from the start, and that I don't care enough to continue, I'm gonna opt out from this convo. Have a nice day though.
Most people have an unfortunate tendency to project their own values and preferences onto the world at large, and fail to recognize when they cross the boundary out of their own spaces and into other people's.
Recognizing this means advancing solutions that primarily aim to minimize conflict among many parties, each pursuing their own particular concept of the good within their own boundaries, and avoiding trying to universalize any singular set of terminal values.
Attempting to pursue solutions that depend on everyone agreeing on the same set of terminal values will always fail, and will often generate intense conflict that escalates well beyond the bounds of the original question and causes a great deal of collateral damage.
Yes, that's called compromise. It's basically one of the foundations of society and civilization. It's not a blocker for public-interest projects.
That's not what I'm saying, in fact 'perfect utopian' projects are exactly what I'm expressing skepticism towards. The problems we have with the internet are mostly just symptoms of deeper societal issues, and they arent infrastructure problems that can be easily fixed like a road or bridge with some massive spending bill. If the US actually enforced anti-trust laws and broke up the tech cartels it would solve a whole lot of problems with the internet, but I doubt that idea would get much traction with whoever ends up on the 'new internet committee'. And I dont see it as a lack of idealism, its just plain pragmatism
realism
Far from being the opposite of idealism, this approach is in fact the only one by which high ideals can be approximated in reality.
> You seem to be complaining that something is impossible because it can't be implemented in a perfect utopian way.
Quite to the contrary, the complaint is not merely that the pursuit of these goals would fall short of perfection, but rather that the consequences would largely be the inverse of the intentions.
In essence, idealism is its own opposite -- if you're looking for a single word to describe this critique, some good options might be "correctness", "efficacy", and "reasonableness".
What if the interested party is clever and defines "in my favor" to be equal to "the common good"? ;)
Societies are not monolithic blobs with a singular "common good" -- they're complex networks of relations among different people with fundamentally varying worldviews and value systems. Making public-interests projects work entails respecting pluralism and individual autonomy. There's no alternative: projects that depend on conformity will inevitably fail.
And back then nobody really thought all that mich about financing, so these spaces weren't about extracting user data or shaping their opinions. The algorithms were simplistic as hell and the timelines still deserved that name.
The state runs libraries not just to give people access to books, but also because they are social community spaces. Why not provide something like that, just online. Something that doesn't need to make money, but provide a service that people can trust in a different way that a corporation.
A good start would be to demand that internet infrastructure operators do just that - and nothing more.
Internet providers do just that one job: Routing IP. No peeking into my packages please.
Strengthening and regulating the underlying world-wide infrastructure: undersea cables, transcontinental fiber networks - with oversight that prevents any org (public or private) from intercepting traffic would go a long way to protect the Public Interest.
Alas, a pipe dream.
Or "tube" dream as it were.
It would be nice for me, if someone reads an article I wrote and they give me ¤0.01 ¤0.001 or something. (Given that a lot of countries, people make vastly less money than others what constitutes a "micro"payment.
That would of course mean that transactions were either utterly inexpensive or free.
We would have a ubiquitous, distributed, untraceable", distributed means of conducting international transactions.
I think we have all the technical issues solved.
but
No Western government will ever allow it. (Nor most other governments). Since it would rob them of a lot of power, and we would hear: "Terrorism, child pornography, bypass economic sanctions, election manipulation, disinformation" etc etc. The usual stuff.
(Even though all of that is going on already....