An end of a chapter

bikegremlin

After about a decade of creating mostly technical stuff (cycling and IT primarily), I published an article (and a video) about what I believe is the death of the open Internet - and why I'm gradually pulling back from publishing.

A personal reflection and a bit of analysis (retrospective?) of how things have changed.

Might resonate with some here.

Article: What killed the open Internet?

Video version:

skhron

@bikegremlin said: After about a decade of creating mostly technical stuff (cycling and IT primarily), I published an article (and a video) about what I believe is the death of the open Internet - and why I'm gradually pulling back from publishing.

What will you focus on instead?

AuroraZero

@bikegremlin said:
After about a decade of creating mostly technical stuff (cycling and IT primarily), I published an article (and a video) about what I believe is the death of the open Internet - and why I'm gradually pulling back from publishing.

A personal reflection and a bit of analysis (retrospective?) of how things have changed.

Might resonate with some here.

Article: What killed the open Internet?

Video version:

Come on man we got to keep the good fight going!!! Can't give up so easily, we are the weird and ostracized. We must come together and take what is ours from the normies!!!

bikegremlin

@skhron said:

@bikegremlin said: After about a decade of creating mostly technical stuff (cycling and IT primarily), I published an article (and a video) about what I believe is the death of the open Internet - and why I'm gradually pulling back from publishing.

What will you focus on instead?

That is a good question.

I think that idle time is very important for creativity (and health for that matter - not just for VPSs LOL ). So I am not worried about focusing on anything if nothing catches my focus.

In fact, I am activelly trying to reduce my focus. Started with streamlining my publishing to one language only (or mostly) - English. But also reduce it as much as possible.

skhron

@bikegremlin said:

@skhron said:

@bikegremlin said: After about a decade of creating mostly technical stuff (cycling and IT primarily), I published an article (and a video) about what I believe is the death of the open Internet - and why I'm gradually pulling back from publishing.

What will you focus on instead?

That is a good question.

I think that idle time is very important for creativity (and health for that matter - not just for VPSs LOL ). So I am not worried about focusing on anything if nothing catches my focus.

In fact, I am activelly trying to reduce my focus. Started with streamlining my publishing to one language only (or mostly) - English. But also reduce it as much as possible.

Good luck on your endeavor!

_MS_

Bittersweet to know that it's happening to others as well.

Ympker

Good luck on whatever road you set out on

c1vhosting

Chievo

Damn sorry to hearing that

bikegremlin

@Chievo said:
Damn sorry to hearing that

Everything has its pros and its cons.

It might turn out to be a net zero or even a net positive.
Not highly likely, but not impossible.

Either way, it should at least leave some room for other fun stuff...

Chievo

@bikegremlin said:

@Chievo said:
Damn sorry to hearing that

Everything has its pros and its cons.

It might turn out to be a net zero or even a net positive.
Not highly likely, but not impossible.

Either way, it should at least leave some room for other fun stuff...

Yeah more free time to dedicate to family and friends ! Anyway I am pretty sure that you would have find a nice hobby. What about pádel ???? May be next Djoko pádel vic

havoc

That sucks

Put plans to make a blog on hold because it just feels a bit it would be speaking into the void. I noticed in my own browsing I'm either asking an LLM or googling and often the AI summary on top has the key fact I'm looking for so no need to click through.

Though I'm more inclined to blame the commercial imperative to build closed gardens more than AI on balance. Us posting on a forum...normal people don't do that. They post on one of the walled gardens. FB, Insta, Tiktok etc.

And even on places like hn an ever increasing number of links just go to paywalled places.

My take-away is to build more and browse less. There are a couple of things I want to learn & build just for myself so that'll keep me busy

vyas

Best wishes mate,
Best to leave when (Still) at the top !
Take a break, start afresh.
Chick Gremlin maybe....

dfroe

Sad to read what you have written. But it is full of truth. As someone who grew up with newsgroups, personal websites and the beautiful idea of an open decentralized internet (and a certain level of enthusiasm towards IT and bicycles), I see so much value of the internet losing since everythings concentrates on the algorithms of the big companies pushing people to only consume the results of their algorithms. I hope you will find a suitable platform to continue sharing your valued knowledge.

somik

It's still better then getting into a lawsuite for some comment you made!

As for the censorship, it doesn't make sense for platforms to direct traffic away from their own to another private platform. The longer a user stays on the platform, the more ads they are fed, the more the platform makes. So it was bound to happen the moment someone decided to PAY the platform for just showing ads to user...

Best wishes on your next project

bikegremlin

@dfroe said:
Sad to read what you have written. But it is full of truth. As someone who grew up with newsgroups, personal websites and the beautiful idea of an open decentralized internet (and a certain level of enthusiasm towards IT and bicycles), I see so much value of the internet losing since everythings concentrates on the algorithms of the big companies pushing people to only consume the results of their algorithms. I hope you will find a suitable platform to continue sharing your valued knowledge.

Thanks.

Note that I still have the platforms:

• WordPress websites for articles (bikegremlin.com and subdomains per topic).
• YouTube for videos (and Rumble as a backup video storage if YouTube deletes me for whatever reason).
• XenForo forum for answering questions and writing shorter stuff (and LES to a smaller degree - apart from my own, it's now the forum I'm practically only active in).
• Obsidian vault for the personal knowledge base and drafts.

That still hasn't gone away. I will just limit the amount of publishing to one language mostly (hardly any bilingual publishind in my native too moving on), and probably limit the total amount of publishing (if switching to one language only doesn't free up enough time and energy for all the other stuff I want to do).

P.S.
The overview of my existing stuff (basically a public knowledge base):

https://www.bikegremlin.com/start-here/

In Serbocroatian, almost all in parallel:

https://www.bikegremlin.com/start-here-rs/

Ympker

@vyas said:
Best wishes mate,
Best to leave when (Still) at the top !
Take a break, start afresh.
Chick Gremlin maybe....

This thread reminded me of an ebook I wanted to read called NRI . Reviews said it reads like a diary from someone we may know, so I'm kinda inclined

wankel

High time for a return of vetted webrings!

They were valuable for finding useful sites when the web was much smaller. Even though the masses flock to the few walled gardens, the total amount of small dedicated sites must have grown when compared to the past.

Maybe something backed by the Fediverse?

caracal

I hope [and wish] there'd be enough people who don't want to read AI garbage and eventually an well-vetted/selected ecosystem of writing reemerges.

This post is not AI generated, I think.

All the best with anything else you do, bikey!

havoc

@wankel said:
High time for a return of vetted webrings!

They were valuable for finding useful sites when the web was much smaller. Even though the masses flock to the few walled gardens, the total amount of small dedicated sites must have grown when compared to the past.

Maybe something backed by the Fediverse?

Kagi search has a small-web search feature which is basically a webrings-like content but in centralised curated format by them

root

Congratulations @bikegremlin for the work done so far. I understand your frustration, and I wish you luck in your future projects or works.

root

Hmm... come to think of it, maybe we could brainstorm this one. Maybe we could host a search engine using an open-source software, powered by the community, where legit websites are manually added by visitors (or registered members), and manually approved for crawling by staff. In this way I guess corporations can simply be filtered and declined from indexing, without any prioritisation, while also declining websites using AI. If a domain changes ownership and website switches to AI and automated engagement, a complaint mechanism can be used to identify it for removal.

I don't know, just throwing this out there for brainstorming, since this clearly is a human issue which can only be fixed by humans.

bikegremlin

@root said:
Hmm... come to think of it, maybe we could brainstorm this one. Maybe we could host a search engine using an open-source software, powered by the community, where legit websites are manually added by visitors (or registered members), and manually approved for crawling by staff. In this way I guess corporations can simply be filtered and declined from indexing, without any prioritisation, while also declining websites using AI. If a domain changes ownership and website switches to AI and automated engagement, a complaint mechanism can be used to identify it for removal.

I don't know, just throwing this out there for brainstorming, since this clearly is a human issue which can only be fixed by humans.

I will make more articles and videos on this topic - and why I am convinced it would be a futile endeavour (not 100% sure about that spelling LOL).

root

@bikegremlin said:

@root said:
Hmm... come to think of it, maybe we could brainstorm this one. Maybe we could host a search engine using an open-source software, powered by the community, where legit websites are manually added by visitors (or registered members), and manually approved for crawling by staff. In this way I guess corporations can simply be filtered and declined from indexing, without any prioritisation, while also declining websites using AI. If a domain changes ownership and website switches to AI and automated engagement, a complaint mechanism can be used to identify it for removal.

I don't know, just throwing this out there for brainstorming, since this clearly is a human issue which can only be fixed by humans.

I will make more articles and videos on this topic - and why I am convinced it would be a futile endeavour (not 100% sure about that spelling LOL).

I don't want you to make more articles if it is futile, since that will only end up making you depressed precisely due to lack of purpose. What I tried to say is that you identified a valid problem. We (humans) need to counter that. Maybe we can brainstorm a solution and implement it using this community. AI is changing the internet as we speak into monkeying without depth and this will only end up destroying any quality of human input.

bikegremlin

@root said:

@bikegremlin said:

@root said:
Hmm... come to think of it, maybe we could brainstorm this one. Maybe we could host a search engine using an open-source software, powered by the community, where legit websites are manually added by visitors (or registered members), and manually approved for crawling by staff. In this way I guess corporations can simply be filtered and declined from indexing, without any prioritisation, while also declining websites using AI. If a domain changes ownership and website switches to AI and automated engagement, a complaint mechanism can be used to identify it for removal.

I don't know, just throwing this out there for brainstorming, since this clearly is a human issue which can only be fixed by humans.

I will make more articles and videos on this topic - and why I am convinced it would be a futile endeavour (not 100% sure about that spelling LOL).

I don't want you to make more articles if it is futile, since that will only end up making you depressed precisely due to lack of purpose. What I tried to say is that you identified a valid problem. We (humans) need to counter that. Maybe we can brainstorm a solution and implement it using this community. AI is changing the internet as we speak into monkeying without depth and this will only end up destroying any quality of human input.

I don't think it should make me more depressed than rain falling when I wish to ride.
It is a problem, a downside, and I will either stop or adjust.
At this time, I chose to adjust:
Practically stopped writing bilingualy, and reduced the publishing to what I really feel like putting on paper (in that case it is no extra work to publish it, even if it is for a couple of more people "only").

The part about making a new search engine is the really futile part, as far as I can see (could be wrong).
People no longer read - only social networks, and answers from the AI (it has begun even on Google in the US AFAIK).

Search engines, including Google are dead - and even Google practically admits it by forcing its "AI."

Again, I could be and wish to be wrong.

vyas

@bikegremlin said:

I will make more articles and videos on this topic - and why I am convinced it would be a futile endeavour (not 100% sure about that spelling LOL).

@AlwaysSkint to the rescue

@bikegremlin said:

Search engines, including Google are dead - and even Google practically admits it by forcing its "AI."

Again, I could be and wish to be wrong.

Perplexity has something called as "Pages" or something similar. You can post some of your posts there, ask the AI to "update/ refresh" the content, and publish it on an open / public link. You will get some views, feature in Perplexity results on say, Serbia in Rain and bicycling, or chickgremlin...

Great use case for you to start creating your own content + AI curation - as an experiment...this will be a dynamic page- I think it updates as you add more content unlike *GPT - where a public link becomes static for the public interface the moment you publish it.

vyas

< glitch in the matrix edition

AlwaysSkint

@vyas said: endeavour (not 100% sure about that spelling LOL).

Perfect and not unusual from our Gremlin.

root

So... The end is nigh!

terrorgen

@root said:
Hmm... come to think of it, maybe we could brainstorm this one. Maybe we could host a search engine using an open-source software, powered by the community, where legit websites are manually added by visitors (or registered members), and manually approved for crawling by staff. In this way I guess corporations can simply be filtered and declined from indexing, without any prioritisation, while also declining websites using AI. If a domain changes ownership and website switches to AI and automated engagement, a complaint mechanism can be used to identify it for removal.

I don't know, just throwing this out there for brainstorming, since this clearly is a human issue which can only be fixed by humans.

Did you just describe Yahoo! in their early days?

bikegremlin

@root said:
So... The end is nigh!

I am afraid so - don't see a reasonably probable way for it to tone down or revert.