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5 votes
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US ultrarunner Camille Herron involved in Wikipedia controversy
19 votes -
Data finds US Republican areas search more frequently for transgender porn
41 votes -
Starlink is increasingly interfering with astronomy, scientists say
30 votes -
The confessions of Marcus Hutchins, the hacker who saved the internet (2020)
38 votes -
The Net is a forest. It has fires. (2013)
14 votes -
Google will now link to The Internet Archive to add more context to Search results
37 votes -
Google loses €2.4bn EU antitrust case for favouring its own shopping service
33 votes -
What the death of Cohost tells me about my future on the internet
Cohost.org, an independent social media blogging platform, will be shutting down as early as next month. A lot of users are talking about how their time on Cohost changed the way they think about...
Cohost.org, an independent social media blogging platform, will be shutting down as early as next month. A lot of users are talking about how their time on Cohost changed the way they think about what an experience in an online community can be like in the modern age of the internet. People saying that they'd rather move forward with spending more time offline and with their hobbies than chasing the next social media site after Cohost's closure. I tend to agree.
After checking an old forum recently that I used to frequent in the heyday of internet forums, I found it filled with racist fear-mongering that is left unmoderated after the driving force of the community passed away half a decade ago. I wonder how much of the spirit of the old web we can realistically rekindle. If you're on Tildes, you probably know everything about the faults of giant social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or Reddit. Heck, the poor quality the YouTube comments section was a meme when YouTube was new. It was never good on those sites. Just tolerable and everybody was there so you kind of had no choice. Now, many of those platforms are self-imploding.
Cohost, like Tildes, created an atmosphere where you didn't feel like you were committing a moral wrongdoing by not immediately spewing scalding hot takes about current events, drama and conflicts. You were encouraged to write text that wasn't throwaway garbage. You could have meaningful conversations about issues and find an audience. Cohost was not without its flaws. People of colour in particular recently shared experiences of racist harassment on the site that was purely handled by moderation. But overall the takes I'm reading now is that most people will be able to look back on their time on Cohost fondly. I've seen people calling it "the Dreamcast of websites".
Cohost was a social media site that was a joy to visit for me and didn't put me on an edge by interacting with it. I could write posts, long-form posts without pressure to hit out another one-line zinger while a topic "is still relevant". I didn't see endless chains of subtweets that deliberately avoided explicitly mentioning the drama they were commenting on, lest the hate mob find their comment. I didn't get into that kind of unnerving cycle of "I don't know what this post is about, but the infrastructure of this social network suggests it's a moral failure to not chime in on the topic de jour, so I better get going and scan vile tweets for an hour to find out what's going on".
And before you say that this is only a Twitter problem, I have had pretty much exactly the same experiences on Mastodon and especially Bluesky. I feel the same in over-crowded Discord servers where it's very difficult to keep track of what's been talked about and what the current topic of discussion is. I feel the same on the few active forums that still exist, like resetera, where there's just posts upon posts that you're kind of expected to read before you chime in into a thread.
So where to go from here? I'm thinking about setting up my own proper blog, maybe hosted on an own website. That way I can continue to create long form posts about topics I want to. And bring back a little more of the spirit of the old internet. Cohost is dead, but there's no going back to me to doomscrolling. Today I set my phone to aggressively limit my daily usage of Reddit & Mastodon. I said the following when Twitter crashed and burned, but this time I'm not desperate, but genuine when I say: It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.
30 votes -
The Internet Archive lost their latest appeal. Here’s what that means for you.
27 votes -
After seeing Wi-Fi network named “STINKY,” Navy found hidden Starlink dish on US warship
63 votes -
Russian dark web marketplace admins indicted after arrest in Miami
8 votes -
Is Google doing its darndest to squeeze out Firefox or other browsers?
A question for the more tech-savvy here. I seem to recall an article about Google trying to eliminate competition by making it so that searches or other content would work well on Chrome but not...
A question for the more tech-savvy here.
I seem to recall an article about Google trying to eliminate competition by making it so that searches or other content would work well on Chrome but not on Firefox. I think I also heard they both run on Chromium, so the engine under the end is the same? I don't fully remember.
But where I'm going with this: I'm noticing lately that certain websites or searches won't work well with Firefox, but when i switch to Chrome, they go off without a hitch. I admit that this often involves personal information being entered (side note- I even had one incident where it didn't work on laptop and had to resort to my phone instead to get it to work). The problem is... I HATE using Chrome. There are some issues with Firefox occasionally, but I'm going to use FF about 90% of the time. And I think I heard that people are becoming more aware of how much of a bastard Chrome is... so is Chrome fighting back dirty to force people to come back over? Or could it possibly be some completely unrelated issue?
47 votes -
Internet Archive loses appeal in Hachette v. Internet Archive
69 votes -
End of the road: An AnandTech farewell
53 votes -
Dawn of a new era in Search: Balancing innovation, competition, and public good
23 votes -
IKEA is trialling its own second-hand online marketplace so that customers can sell to each other, rather than relying on buy-and-sell websites like eBay or Gumtree
42 votes -
Chinese government hackers penetrate US internet providers to spy
17 votes -
“Disenshittify or die” a rant about the history of tech, how it is bad and how it might get better
122 votes -
Google must destroy $5 billion worth of user data illegally collected in Incognito Mode
55 votes -
FauxRPC: Easily turn protobufs into fake gRPC, gRPC-Web, Connect, and REST services
5 votes -
US FTC bans fake online reviews, inflated social media influence; rule takes effect in October
52 votes -
Redbox | Bankrupt
4 votes -
Sustainability of FOSS: The Next Generation Internet ecosystem
14 votes -
Susan Wojcicki, former YouTube CEO, dies at 56
15 votes -
Been considering cutting down on YouTube
I find myself scrolling through YT hoping to see something to play in the background, occasionally checking things like TechLinked or MichaelMJD with occasional PointCrow and Dougdoug. But really...
I find myself scrolling through YT hoping to see something to play in the background, occasionally checking things like TechLinked or MichaelMJD with occasional PointCrow and Dougdoug. But really just wasting time doing nothing, just scrolling.
So I want to cut it off but I want to fill in that time with something else.
Anyone else has tried to cut off YT(Or at least minimize) YT from their life? I’m probably using YT the wrong way.
I would like some RSS feeds or podcast to make me go on YT less. Or thoughts/opinions/experiences from other people that used to have YT on almost all the time but minimized the time on YT.31 votes -
HTTP/1.0 From Scratch
4 votes -
Google and Meta struck secret ads deal to target teenagers
61 votes -
What websites do you visit for your niche interests?
These could be blogs, forums, any online space where you visit semi-frequently at least. Here are some based off my interests: A Year in the Country - Blog on folk horror music Gwern.net - blog...
These could be blogs, forums, any online space where you visit semi-frequently at least.
Here are some based off my interests:
A Year in the Country - Blog on folk horror music
60 votes -
The fall of the mainstream media: New elites
5 votes -
Some subreddits could be paywalled, hints Reddit CEO
64 votes -
Google violated antitrust laws in online search, US judge rules
47 votes -
iOS 18 adds new "Distraction Control" feature for Safari, similar to temporary element blocking with uBlock Origin
11 votes -
AI music generator Suno admits it was trained on ‘essentially all music files on the internet’
39 votes -
Google Chrome warns uBlock Origin may soon be disabled
82 votes -
GameStop kills Game Informer magazine and takes website offline
11 votes -
PSA: Internet Archive “glitch” deletes years of user data and accounts
34 votes -
Websites are blocking the wrong AI scrapers (Because AI companies keep making new ones)
18 votes -
Doomscrolling evokes existential anxiety and fosters pessimism about human nature? Evidence from Iran and the United States.
22 votes -
Girl, so confusing: Will the “Brat” memes help or hurt Kamala Harris?
22 votes -
FOSS funding vanishes from EU's 2025 Horizon program plans. Elimination of most Next Generation Internet funding 'incomprehensible,' says OW2 CEO Pierre-Yves Gibello.
28 votes -
Despite its founding promise to be ad-free, the Baldur's Gate 3 fan wiki is going to put up ads, because its creator thinks he can make a lot of money
47 votes -
What GoFundMe conceals: The campaigns that fail
17 votes