It’ll still ‘evolve,’ just not in a pro-user way.
I’m seeing an incredible turn towards the kind of organic platforms of the 1.0 web world. They may never hit the same level of popularity as the commercial platforms like Facebook and Twitter did, but these new platforms like Lemmy, Mastodon, and others are letting us build a new space.
Probably the best part is that so much of it is built on FOSS meaning that the monetization and enshitification by investors will have a much harder time taking root.
Yeah but the beautiful thing about the fediverse is that instance admins can just be like “lol no, fuck you” and defederate, and moreover coordinate to blacklist anything affiliated with Meta et al.
And then there’s people like me who, as a result of the election, have started to think about how they could go work for tech in the context of some sort of fifth-column effort, because I fucking HATE the amount of societal damage these hypercapitalist megacorps are doing. But of course I would only do that in Minecraft.
I’m starting to feel like the Cyberpunk 2077 version of the internet is not too far-fetched. It’s split into 2 parts:
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The “old net” - This has been completely overrun by AI programs that are so fast and powerful they almost immediately compromise any non-AI powered system that connects to it.
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The “net” - Blocked off from the old net by the “Blackwall” (a big firewall that keeps all AI out) is basically your standard internet that humans use via cybernetic implants.
I honestly could see AI basically filling the internet with so much garbage and malware that it becomes completely unusable. This is already starting to happen. However, if we create a new one with just human-controlled computers, I don’t see how we could stop people from just connecting AI to that one.
I don’t see how we could stop people from just connecting AI to that
In lore, Netwatch handled that. If you mess around with an AI they come shoot you in the head and pour water on its power supply.
See the enshitified hotspots as fly traps for the limp minded. An authentic, simple, commerce free web is still out there, one just needs to look outside of the drivel served up on page one of mainstream search engines
No, the platforms are enshittifiying, but the underlying nuts and bolts of the internet are still there untouched and so far every attempt by big tech to enshittifiy/proprietarize those has thus far failed
The search engines don’t do what they used to do. New sites cannot gain traction without million dollar advertising budgets.