undefined | Better HN

0 pointsKarrot_Kream3y ago0 comments

> I mean if modern tech people had their way, the web would have never been anything but a bare data API on a blockchain, and no one without at least a bachelors' degree in CS or engineering would even know about it. And oh yeah, you'd need a license to publish anything.

They're looking for a technical solution to a social problem. They miss the Web as a space for people only like themselves. Having to share the web with normies who don't create out of _love_ or don't spend hours researching a small change like they want everyone to means folks different from them end up inhabiting the web. It's thinly veiled gatekeeping, a desire to make the web a space where only folks like them would inhabit.

0 comments

_Algernon_3y ago

No its not. I just want to read text based content without downloading google analytics + 20 other trackers, 5 java script libraries, 7 frameworks of some kind and 20 ads. It's inefficient. It drives obsolescence of hardware long before it is unusable (second only to gaming, but at least gaming has a user driven motivation, not abuse by tech megacorps).

Assigning a gatekeeping motivation to it is a nice strawman, but luckily not based in reality

zzo38computer3y ago

> I just want to read text based content without downloading google analytics + 20 other trackers, 5 java script libraries, 7 frameworks of some kind and 20 ads. It's inefficient.

I agree. I have JavaScripts disabled, but it may still try to download CSS, pictures, and other stuff, and might try to hide the document, etc.

Karrot_KreamOP3y ago

Then don't? If you want to recreate Gemini on the web, just use curl to download assets and consume them that way. This doesn't seem to be about you or the GP specifically consuming the Web this way, this seems like people who want to create a _network_ of other people who consume the Web this way, which is essentially the same as gatekeeping.

mattcwilson3y ago

Not sure if either or both of you are lumping the article author in as “modern tech people.”

From the article:

> I think this combination would bring speed back, in a huge way. You could get a page on the screen in a fraction of the time of the web. The memory consumption could be tiny. It would be incredibly accessible, by default. You could make great-looking default stylesheets and share alternative user stylesheets. With dramatically limited scope, you could port it to all kinds of devices.

> And, maybe most importantly, what would website editing tools look like? They could be way simpler.

And:

> There are a lot of other ways to look at and solve this problem. I think it is a problem, for everyone except Google. The idea of a web browser being something we can comprehend, of a web page being something that more people can make, feels exciting to me.

zelphirkalt3y ago

On the other hand one should see, how the masses of normies, uneducated about how even a single web page works, keep consuming the wrong stuff, creating huge incentive for companies to ruin the web we have/had for the for the people, who value consent and freedom. Normies just keep consuming and enjoying away their own freedom and the freedom of others, by giving power in terms of money to the wrong people. We have seen it again and again with companies like FB, Netflix, Google and so on, which create a dystopia of not being in control, what is done with your data and spying on us everywhere we go on the Internet. The normies, who consume without worrying are empowering them.

So yes, it is some gate keeping, but maybe that gate keeping is justified, in order to protect our freedom.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse