Re:Why isn't the internet more fun and weird?
by mirimir on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @10:17PM
(#19042000)
> Things are more weird. Where there was one weird place, there are now thousands. Even if only 1% of today’s sites are “weird” that’s bigger than all of the internet of 1995 combined. Rising tide lifts all ships.
Yes, this is the counterpoint to TFA. Sure, it's a lot harder to find "weird" stuff now. Especially because it tends to get pushed down in search results. But once you find something that's "weird" in your preferred way, there are often links to lots more of it.
Also, you'll find lots more "weird" on Tor onion sites, I2P and Freenet. There are a few reasons for that, I think. One is relative lack of censorship. Also, a lot of content is more or less standalone, generated by users using simple tools, on VPS or shared hosting. And there are constraints imposed by high latency and limited bandwidth. All of that is like the old Web.
So anyway, TFA is correct, if we're talking about the Web ("internet") as a whole. But not if we're talking about the absolute amount of “weird” content.
Yes, this is the counterpoint to TFA. Sure, it's a lot harder to find "weird" stuff now. Especially because it tends to get pushed down in search results. But once you find something that's "weird" in your preferred way, there are often links to lots more of it.
Also, you'll find lots more "weird" on Tor onion sites, I2P and Freenet. There are a few reasons for that, I think. One is relative lack of censorship. Also, a lot of content is more or less standalone, generated by users using simple tools, on VPS or shared hosting. And there are constraints imposed by high latency and limited bandwidth. All of that is like the old Web.
So anyway, TFA is correct, if we're talking about the Web ("internet") as a whole. But not if we're talking about the absolute amount of “weird” content.