Comment by circadian | Hacker News Reader

Comment by circadian | Hacker News Reader

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I had a massive "discussion" (argument) with a friend the other day, they were convinced that the internet is just a place full of trolling and nasty commentary and social media was the thing likely to ruin things for our children. My position was that if you spend your life looking at X, Facebook or whatever then, sure, it can seem a bit of a hellish landscape, but the Internet is and can be so much more than that.

This article is perhaps one of the finest examples of this and I applaud you massively for writing the site, looking at how people used it and then taking the time to share the experience.

It's made me really happy reading it and I'll be sharing it lots. A wonderful experiment, well played and much respect. :)

While you're right that the Internet contains a lot of wonder and exploration, the vast majority of people (and kids) will not interact much with that part of the Internet, if at all. Additionally, social media platforms have collapsed what would have been standalone, somewhat magical experiences into their own uniform platforms. I've heard someone say that kids today tend to think in terms of "apps" and not "websites", because rather than having everything scattered across a lot of small, independently maintained, websites, there are instead a few web apps that contain 99% of what you want to get at.

That means that if you really want to "surf" the web these days you have to dig deep and avoid getting sucked into a social media platform. And when you do dig deep there's not that much out there, because the people who would be maintaining their own web page now just have a facebook page for their business and a twitter account for their personal posts.

I was about to comment something similar but you said it so well - this is the internet at it's best, bringing people together to have fun in interesting ways. I remember when it was all like this, but you can still stumble across little moments like this

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