Posted by Jesus Forain (other posts) on November 08, 2022 at 17:16:19 Previous Next
In Reply to: Re: A Tribute To Ken In SF posted by Hairball on October 22, 2022 at 05:17:33:
Hi,
I have the feeling that the World Wide Web is dying, killed by social networks and smartphone apps.
I have a website (about funfairs) and did the same observation: traffic has decreased since mid 2010s and I get very little participation, meanwhile Facebook groups are growing.
I also did this observation all over the Internet: personal websites doesn't exist anymore (who remembers Geocities?) and active boards in the 2000s are now inactive, have disappeared or are become a Facebook group.
People doesn't browse anymore the Web, it's not generation or age related, but when they went to the Internet for the first time. People who went to the Internet in the smartphone era doesn't browse, they just use apps and not even use a computer!
Facebook was fun in its beginnings, but took more and more room on the Internet with added features, and people deserted websites.
I was reluctant to create a Facebook account, but I did it under pressure because everyone were using FB. Things I don't like on FB are massive personal data collection and algorithms with an AI that show to you what it has decided. But the worst is the UI, which is a total mess.
It's not perfect, but there is a not so bad alternative to this: Reddit.
It looks like forums in the 2000s because it's topic related and not people related like social networks. There is no AI, more freedom, and it is auto moderated by users. There is also a very active men's long hair community, mainly pictures: https://www.reddit.com/r/FierceFlow/
I hope that one day people abandon all these apps and come back to the World Wide Web. The Web is the freedom: you own your website, you can do what you want and have yours own rules. You can even host your web server at home! My personal blog is hosted on a Raspberry Pi inside my home, so I have total control on it. The only drawback is that I live in the countryside and I can only have an ADSL connection with upload limited to 1Mb/s.