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Comment by pmlnr | Hacker News Reader

> What are incentives for the average person? Their logic seems straightforward: they want to be where their friends are at

This is some sort of absolute, fundamental difference between the early web and now, at least how I experienced it as a teen in the late 90s in Hungary. Back then I made a site, because you wanted to make something of my own, in my style, as I wanted. There was nobody else online from my friends, and I made new friends online. I actually found my age people on ICQ, within the same subculture.

This "oh my friends are there" approach is what destroys everything. More precisely the people who can't decide for themselves.

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Then do you think that the average person's disinterest in moving to different platforms is a bad thing? How does this affect the ideal version of the web it seems like you're advocating for?

Those users indeed don't matter. The problem is the cool kids are on Twitter & co as well these days. Because that's where they have the most reach. Almost everyone on social media cares about reach, there isn't much of a point to posting things that no one reads.

The old web was a very different place, it wasn't as centralized and there were significantly fewer people around. There were specific forums that you'd go to for specific topics. Say you were interested in West African dances - there was usually the one forum where all the West African dance nerds hung out. At most a couple of different ones. And they were very small communities. If there were issues with the admins or moderation users could and did do mass walk-outs and create a new place.

> Back then I made a site, because you wanted to make something of my own, in my style, as I wanted

You were the minority. Most people don't know or want to make anything of their own, and they don't have style. They just follow others, and whatever others follow, hence the internet (and the world) now.

That's kind of the same thing though - the people you wanted to interact with were there. They just were a different cohort than what you might find on something like Instagram today.

There wasn't anyone there.

I made a site, I put it out there, because as a 14 year old, it was fantastic I could make completely mine and nobody else's at all. That was the drive.

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