I remember this. Wish I'd kept my little piece of history. Written at a time when people were still optimistic and hopeful about tech.
What we're seeing in tech today feels like it started in the 80's, and before that point computers, etc. were viewed by some as the downfall of humankind and by others the saviour.
A lot of the 90s nostalgia is just the same rose-tinted glasses as all generations experience, but I think in this one dimension it truly felt a lot better back then.
If you want to criticize specific companies - yeah. But I literally do not understand what people are talking about when employing the usual "Social media was a mistake" type stuff
Without that, to pay for social media, the options would have been paid apps, which would never have had the escape velocity to be what current social media is today
For people profiting from that economy, of course. For everyone else? Not at all.
> what current social media is today
...the social media of today is undesirable. People would absolutely pay for social media if the product was good enough. In fact, I believe we're heading towards that future[1].
"Free" search exists. However, so does paid[2].
The idea that companies need hyper growth, "escape velocity," or whatever to succeed is outdated.
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[2]: https://kagi.com
How else can such a site exist, grow to such scale, and not fall over if it doesn't make money?
> People would absolutely pay for social media if the product was good enough. In fact, I believe we're heading towards that future[1].
People won't do this. A very very small percentage of people will do this. Time and time again that's been proven to be true. Which is fine, but the globally connected social media could never have existed by charging every person on Earth.
Mark my words, paid search will not overtake free search. The people who value paid social media over free social media enough to actually pay are always going to be a very small minority (albeit well represented in this forum)
taps the sign
The idea that companies need hyper growth, "escape velocity," or whatever to succeed is outdated.
> paid search will not overtake free search
There is space for paid and free to coexist. It's not a zero-sum game.
One of the big selling points of Bluesky right now is that it does not do this and that is why it feels so much like 2010-era Twitter.
1) The Stream (timeline, whatever you want to call it). Instead of static single "pages" that linked to each other as separate entities with their own internal logic, everything became one flow, and more importantly "impermanent" (e.g. the way we think of "content" is no longer about an archive or repository of things, but rather, moment to moment). A reverse chronological sorting isn't bad in itself. Even the old long form setups like blogging and livejournal etc all supported this method of viewing content - but add in the following issues for a perfect storm.
2) Limited text length (blame Twitter and Facebook, and item 3). By limiting the length of text we create another "short attention span" mindset. Twitter, by it's origin, did have a specific need for short text due to its SMS origin. W/FB - the old 420 char entries was limit to what one can say and encourages short, quick, non-discursive entries. This may have been prudent both to reduce data retention costs and keep people "engaged" (though I don't think the side-effects of this were intentional at first)... This helps to feed the short dopamine burst/feedback. Neither of these were intended for deep discourse.
3) iPhone (and Android; But, frankly it was the iPhone that really got the phone and modern style of apps/ecosystem to where we are now). Having a smaller screen that was "always on" helped to push short text & images instead of longform content, plus the instant feedback loop, wherever you were.
4) "Always On" internet via small devices vs "Log In" standalone bulky systems. Instead of coming home to a computer as a separate space that you had to intentionally log into (in dial up days; or at least turn on in cable/fiber days), we no longer had to set aside a sort of "sacred place". The space no longer being localized, it was everywhere. While this is part of item 3, the form factor of 4 meant that longer form content is still easy to produce whereas with the form factor of 3 means interaction is limited and more difficult to use due to the limitations of onscreen text/keyboards (though advances made it easier, it's still not the same as sitting down and writing a big ass blog post).
4) The death of "blogging"/Google Reader. While blogs exist and come and go in fashion, Google killing reader really was a sort of deathknell. This was more due to the rise of "social media" though, not a precursor. But it helped to cement that long-form content was "dead". Blogs still exist, but aren't near as popular.
5) Images and Embedding/Walled Gardens: The removal of easy interactivity between platforms locking people in to the systems. While in some ways this is a nice convenience (take a URL and past into FB and BAM there's the image all formatted nicely (usually)) - unlike say Livejournal where you still had to type in the img src tags (or use the visual editor that would pop up a window for you to paste the url, that would, after saving/posting the page, would render the image). Sharing memes and other content with a "share" button meant you no longer had to create the content, you could just share what someone else said if you thought it was funny, were angry about it, etc. Meme replication become much less intellectual and lazy. "Engagement" didn't come to mean actual long thoughtful replies, but just an emotive "click" on an emoji to signal ones preferences towards said content. No need to discuss. Sure the option to do so was there, but who has the time when the internet is always on and there's always more content.
6) "The Algorithm" - that which keeps the "engagement" happening and as fast and deep as possible. Just one more click. One more hit of interaction. Keep the people "engaged" as long as possible on a platform.
Of course, long form still exists, and forums like HN allows for a better more thoughtful input on these things. But HN isn't really "social media".
I'd consider blogs and similar forms a proto-social-media (or, with livejournal, honestly I'd consider it the original social media, but without all the algorithmic bullshit that let you organically find people with similar interests).
Finally - I think the drive of FB to have everyone put everyone they know IRL and the ease of "add all your friends from your contacts" makes that also much easier. By adding IRL people, it changes the dynamic. When a lot of us came online, we were looking for an escape FROM the people IRL. We wanted a new space, away from "out there". Eternal September, the normies invaded. They were everywhere, and at all times. And people add them because it's rude not to. And the escape that the online world provided with similar minded people you were hoping to find was reduced back to the friction of "the real world" and the same fights. Note that alone isn't bad in itself. A bubble is also a bad thing.
But further: 7) Ideological Techno-utopianism that doesn't take into account all the corporate power behind the algorithms, the data sharing, and the means of keeping engagement (by rage-baiting, bad-faith-actors, etc...) I used to be one of them, I used to crow about JPB's "Declaration of Cyberspace Independence" in the 90s. Even until maybe 2015 I had hopes. But slowly I began to realize these architectures amplify the worst tendencies of social interaction, purposefully or not. My point with the 90s utopianism is that this Red Book reads like it's 20 years out of date, even by the time it was written, but maybe not. Maybe it just took time for the iPhonization/SocialMedia effects to take root and alter society on the level it has.
"Convenience is the enemy". I don't know the answer, frankly. I know there are a lot of people who try to bring back "the old days" with things like indieweb movement and small shell accounts for kids to try out what the old dial up world was like, and people get interested, but the mass pull of the large places is too great. The power of having an audience (which is the magic of social media - that stream makes it EASY for everyone to just dip their foot in and out whenever they want another nibble from the Dopefish^TM on their feet). There's the tipping point where everyone's friends finally jump ship, this happened with Livejournal and Myspace over to Facebook. Or now Twitter/X to Bluesky. Early adopters watch as the masses come to their little place, sometimes they are happy about it, but other times they see what they thought of as "their" space now invaded by an outside culture. Bluesky probably not so much since it's still quite like Twitter, and most of the people coming in are from Twitter, but for other places there are cultural shifts. Another big change I can think of is how Reddit went from a pretty technical place early on to one full of lazy bro joking when Digg users migrated en masse, and the vibe shifted radically even though Reddit was more bountiful with content.
Some of this will always be a tradeoff (it's called Eternal September for a reason after all), but some of this are design choices. I wish I could say that those designing these things honestly have the best interest of society at heart, but after watching enshittification play out the past decade+ it really feels like good intentions don't mean shit and a lot of hard work needs to go into making a productive place.
It helps when engaged community members are helping run things (whether good reddit mods, or mods on metafilter, or people like dang here on hackernews). Free for all media isn't bad, and I'm not saying every site needs to have mods, etc... But... It does seem like people who have an intentional community and a vibe they are trying to retain can help inculcate a better social atmosphere than shoving everyone into a clowncar walled garden and expecting civil society (especially when algorithms feed on making those dopamine hits for engagement).
In the old days, you were small groups exploring the uncharted. You were in the minority because you were part of a group of pioneers, and I think there was a sense of optimism and excitement around that. I think a lot of the magic is gone precisely because tech is now ubiquitous and mainstream.
I can't help but wonder if it's my nostalgia as well, but I feel like 1995 - 2005 was the golden decade. It was at the point that technology was actually good enough to enable a lot of stuff (broadband, large storage media, etc), but it was still enough in its embryonic state that the novelty was still there.
P.S. Your JPB quote from 1992 reminded me of Stuart Brand in 1985:
> "Computers suppress our animal presence. When you communicate through a computer, you communicate like an angel."
Google's culture is hire 15 geniuses from the Ivy League with 130+ IQ and make them fight with a 40 minute C++ build and a balky Kubernetes culture because "we only hire the best"; YouTube and the advertising system are a money printing machine, the team works for 3.5 years at something that get canceled at the last minute.
Facebook is much more oriented towards greasing the skids with the goal that a fresher developer would be able to push a change to a shared development system the first day on the job.
Look at React vs Flutter.
Like Microsoft, Google is thrashing around looking for "the next big thing", sometimes like a mindless beast. I've met person after person who told me that they went there because they believed they could make an impact and came to the conclusion within a year that they couldn't make any impact at all.
Facebook on the other hand is still run by the founder and it is pushing hard to develop a technology that he believes in even if the rest of us don't. It's a riskier strategy than Microsoft or Google who are likely to stumble on another multibillion dollar business despite themselves.
I have mixed feelings about marketing to the enterprise market. On one hand you can build some large and interesting things that deliver a lot of value, particularly in the semi-custom area. For many reasons I can understand the viewpoint of a salesman on commission. On the other hand I was really depressed after I'd talked with about 20 vendors in the "enterprise search" space and found that none of them particularly cared about search relevance and didn't regularly do evaluation work unless they were participating in TREC to gain industry visibility. Sometimes enterprise products have a lack of refinement or even basic quality compared to consumer products.
If I was going to get back into business development I'd do it with a keen understanding that getting the politics right and the software wrong is better than the reverse when it comes to making a living. I think I'd find myself hard to motivate in that situation.
I think Microsoft's end user area where they are the most pathological now is XBOX, Game Pass and all thought. Looking from the outside it looks like Dr. Evil has decided to buy the whole game industry to put it out of business and force people to pick up another hobby.
The idea was you make the change, take a screenshot of the result on your dev instance, get it stamped by your “mentor” and then abandon it. AFAIK this had been going on for a while before I got there.
Fast forward a few months and I see a sev pop up. “Default text on www.facebook.com search bar says ‘I am a search bar!’”
FWIW I’ve noticed with some confusion that over the past years HN has become more cynical and pessimistic towards tech.
I do think that HN has gone from indie entrepreneur/ real startups to Big Tech and then back again over the time I've been hanging out here.