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I thought similar. To me what Buzzfeed are calling the "old Internet" here is something I very much remember bemoaning as the "new Internet" in which dedicated

I thought similar. To me what Buzzfeed are calling the "old Internet" here is something I very much remember bemoaning as the "new Internet" in which dedicated protocols such as NNTP and IRC got displaced by brattish commercial upstarts whose web-based versions had 10% of the quality-of-life features and about 5% of the community etiquette. However they displaced everything that came before them because you could embed images, have an animated avatar and (most importantly) not have to delve into the world of finding a client of choice and connecting it to your ISP's news servers. What I find myself missing more than anything else is that news server was something you paid for, either as part of an ISP package, as a dedicated service or your university tuition fees. The commercial model was purely the provision of that resource - not selling your data, nor being a vector for targeted political ads. There was no incentive to make the basic mechanics of discussion worse or promote flame wars in the name of "engagement" or "monetisation", and while I'm sure the smaller community size played a part things seemed to bump along with a far greater degree of civility and allowance for misunderstanding.

flir 7y ago
You've put your finger on something important - innovation moved from collaborative protocols to antagonistic web sites, and we're all the poorer for it.
- rasengan 7y ago
  Exactly. The protocol era was hijacked for profit. I believe that incentivized, decentralized protocols are the evolution of all of this and will bring the protocol era back AND properly incentivizes participants.
  - api 7y ago
    I hope so, but if you mean cryptocurrency wake me up when there is more to it than speculation and gambling. Other than the "wire transfer" classic use case for Bitcoin I see nothing new that anyone is actually using that is not one of those two things.
    - bravoetch 7y ago
      Cryptocurrency is freedom from intermediary interference. That's not a big deal in the US, but in some countries people can't even have bank accounts.
      - nonamenoslogan 7y ago
        Hahaha, you keep telling yourself that. Some countries don't even have reliable network/power/etc and don't say "oh you can trade bitcoin with paper," because that's just stupid.
        SturgeonsLaw 7y ago
        Sure, but there are enough countries out there that fall into both the "reliable enough connectivity" and "government control of money" parts of the Venn diagram that this is still valid. And the world is only getting more electrified and connected as the years go on.
    - ChristianBundy 7y ago
      Protocols like Secure Scuttlebutt provide decentralization without any cryptocurrencies or global blockchains. It's a bit of a wild west, but I don't think that's a bad thing.
    - nipponese 7y ago
      Decentralized lending via Ethereum smart contracts is now a real thing. Check out this out in a dApp browser like Coinbase Wallet: https://app.compound.finance/ https://app.compound.finance/ I’m current earning 3.5% apr by lending out USDC (Coinbase’s stablecoin) via dApp. EDIT: I guess I am being downvoted because people think this is spam? I only have a disincentive for people to use this dApp: as more liquidity gets added to the pool, my payout interest rate goes down.
      - Can_Not 7y ago
        To be fair, "I give out vague loans in internet money" doesn't naturally default itself to being a good thing, and namedropping "smart contracts" and assuming that means anything aside from spam&scam technobabble to people outside of the ethereum is a bit of a miss on your part.
api 7y ago
You're forgetting spam. Spam destroyed all those first generation federated systems. IRC survived because it was too niche for spammers to target much but spam is the primary thing that killed Usenet and email as a truly open system. The closed systems were better able to fight spam because they could easily ban people and IPs. On a deeper level spam, "brattish" commercial sites, etc. all come from when money got involved. The old Internet was mostly noncommercial. Money changes everything. Even on the new sites I saw a massive shift when e.g. it became possible to monetize YouTube videos. All the sudden everything became about engagement and controversy and got big and divisive and dumb and flashy. Ultimately we must adapt or perish. There is no going back. I think all new systems must be designed with the trial by fire of spam and other profit motivated attacks in mind from the start.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  Unfortunately, the "old" internet involved a lot of trust. Once sufficient numbers of untrustworthy players enter the system, you have to figure out how to protect yourself from spam and malware, and for most people that means using locked down systems such as iOS and services that verify identity via phone numbers and whatnot.
- takeda 7y ago
  IRC has mechanisms that make dealing with spam easy. Usenet on the other hand required cooperation from all providers. Actually I blame Google for killing Usenet. They used Microsoft's EEE (Embrace, Extend, Extinguish). They acquired DejaNews, renamed it to Google Groups, provided a gateway that allowed everyone to use Usenet. This introduced a lot of spam to the network, but whenever someone reported it, they did nothing. Eventually they introduced their internal groups, and shifted search in a way that it got hard to use Google Groups for searching Usenet posts. They did similar thing with XMPP (Jabber). When they introduced Google Talk, their service was interconnected with the other XMPP servers. Once it got popular they discontinued it and introduced Hangouts (then later iterations) Hangouts was still connected people could see each other being present people on Hangouts could message anyone, but people on other XMPP couldn't message people on Hangouts. It didn't even show an error. This made many users switch to Hangouts to continue taking with their friends. They attempted to do the same thing with email, but were less successful (since many big companies are also providing the service), this was done through introducing various anti spam measures. You now have to jump through various hoops (SPF, DKIM, RBAC) to have your service still reach Google uses. It didn't matter that I used the same IP and domain for 15 years never had spam sent from it, but suddenly my emails started being silently classified as spam without any warning.
shadowgovt 7y ago
There was also a lack of incentive to tamp down on flame wars or care about a "quality level" of content when advertisers aren't paying for engaging content. The SNR on old USENET and IRC was pretty low.
StevePerkins 7y ago
I started college, and discovered the Internet, in fall of 1993. An epoch infamously known as "Eternal September" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September). The old-timers on Usenet and IRC at the time thought that me and my classmates were idiots. That we killed the "old Internet". From my perspective though, the "old Internet" died when Deja News sold out to Google. When phpBB forums started replacing Usenet, and ICQ or other chat apps started replacing IRC. From the perspective of those newbies, the "old Internet" died when phpBB forums were replaced by LiveJournal pages and blog comment sections. When ICQ fragmented into AOL, Yahoo, and MSN instant messengers. Those people saw the "old Internet" die when pages and blogs coalesced into early social media. Those people saw the "old Internet" die when social media took on its contemporary shape (e.g. YouTube videos becoming more professional and SEO-oriented, clickbait, photo and video-based social media surpassing text-based social media). This article is just some person at Buzzfeed, writing a eulogy for the "old Internet" as understood by the generation of people who have jobs at Buzzfeed.
- IIAOPSW 7y ago
  The internet is dead. Long live the internet. I don't know if I agree with your unstated premise that none of these iterations are inherently better or worse than what came before or what will come after. I think there has been a phase change from participation to consumption. The internet has become TV for most users. Not just in the sense of the viewer passively watching, but in the sense of the content itself being highly centralized. There's no more "you" in youtube. The main content feed is high production costs and celebrities, not random clever people.
  - grogenaut 7y ago
    99% of what I watch on YouTube is how to videos by people with about 20 total videos. The biggest one I watch is Colin furze and that's about 3x a year when it shows up here. He's like 2000x the size of my next watch. I will say a lot of stuff is much better produced these days. Proliferation of good cameras and editing software and even the big producers using smash cuts makes that so.
  - 7y ago
u801e 7y ago
> What I find myself missing more than anything else is that news server was something you paid for, either as part of an ISP package, as a dedicated service or your university tuition fees. For what it's worth, there are still commercial newsproviders out there you can pay for. There are also free ones as well. Unfortunately, the all the newsgroups I participated in as recently as 5 years ago are pretty much dead.

flir 7y ago

You've put your finger on something important - innovation moved from collaborative protocols to antagonistic web sites, and we're all the poorer for it.

rasengan 7y ago
Exactly. The protocol era was hijacked for profit. I believe that incentivized, decentralized protocols are the evolution of all of this and will bring the protocol era back AND properly incentivizes participants.
- api 7y ago
  I hope so, but if you mean cryptocurrency wake me up when there is more to it than speculation and gambling. Other than the "wire transfer" classic use case for Bitcoin I see nothing new that anyone is actually using that is not one of those two things.
  - bravoetch 7y ago
    Cryptocurrency is freedom from intermediary interference. That's not a big deal in the US, but in some countries people can't even have bank accounts.
    - nonamenoslogan 7y ago
      Hahaha, you keep telling yourself that. Some countries don't even have reliable network/power/etc and don't say "oh you can trade bitcoin with paper," because that's just stupid.
      - SturgeonsLaw 7y ago
        Sure, but there are enough countries out there that fall into both the "reliable enough connectivity" and "government control of money" parts of the Venn diagram that this is still valid. And the world is only getting more electrified and connected as the years go on.
  - ChristianBundy 7y ago
    Protocols like Secure Scuttlebutt provide decentralization without any cryptocurrencies or global blockchains. It's a bit of a wild west, but I don't think that's a bad thing.
  - nipponese 7y ago
    Decentralized lending via Ethereum smart contracts is now a real thing. Check out this out in a dApp browser like Coinbase Wallet: https://app.compound.finance/ https://app.compound.finance/ I’m current earning 3.5% apr by lending out USDC (Coinbase’s stablecoin) via dApp. EDIT: I guess I am being downvoted because people think this is spam? I only have a disincentive for people to use this dApp: as more liquidity gets added to the pool, my payout interest rate goes down.
    - Can_Not 7y ago
      To be fair, "I give out vague loans in internet money" doesn't naturally default itself to being a good thing, and namedropping "smart contracts" and assuming that means anything aside from spam&scam technobabble to people outside of the ethereum is a bit of a miss on your part.

api 7y ago

You're forgetting spam. Spam destroyed all those first generation federated systems. IRC survived because it was too niche for spammers to target much but spam is the primary thing that killed Usenet and email as a truly open system. The closed systems were better able to fight spam because they could easily ban people and IPs. On a deeper level spam, "brattish" commercial sites, etc. all come from when money got involved. The old Internet was mostly noncommercial. Money changes everything. Even on the new sites I saw a massive shift when e.g. it became possible to monetize YouTube videos. All the sudden everything became about engagement and controversy and got big and divisive and dumb and flashy. Ultimately we must adapt or perish. There is no going back. I think all new systems must be designed with the trial by fire of spam and other profit motivated attacks in mind from the start.

lotsofpulp 7y ago
Unfortunately, the "old" internet involved a lot of trust. Once sufficient numbers of untrustworthy players enter the system, you have to figure out how to protect yourself from spam and malware, and for most people that means using locked down systems such as iOS and services that verify identity via phone numbers and whatnot.
takeda 7y ago
IRC has mechanisms that make dealing with spam easy. Usenet on the other hand required cooperation from all providers. Actually I blame Google for killing Usenet. They used Microsoft's EEE (Embrace, Extend, Extinguish). They acquired DejaNews, renamed it to Google Groups, provided a gateway that allowed everyone to use Usenet. This introduced a lot of spam to the network, but whenever someone reported it, they did nothing. Eventually they introduced their internal groups, and shifted search in a way that it got hard to use Google Groups for searching Usenet posts. They did similar thing with XMPP (Jabber). When they introduced Google Talk, their service was interconnected with the other XMPP servers. Once it got popular they discontinued it and introduced Hangouts (then later iterations) Hangouts was still connected people could see each other being present people on Hangouts could message anyone, but people on other XMPP couldn't message people on Hangouts. It didn't even show an error. This made many users switch to Hangouts to continue taking with their friends. They attempted to do the same thing with email, but were less successful (since many big companies are also providing the service), this was done through introducing various anti spam measures. You now have to jump through various hoops (SPF, DKIM, RBAC) to have your service still reach Google uses. It didn't matter that I used the same IP and domain for 15 years never had spam sent from it, but suddenly my emails started being silently classified as spam without any warning.

shadowgovt 7y ago

There was also a lack of incentive to tamp down on flame wars or care about a "quality level" of content when advertisers aren't paying for engaging content. The SNR on old USENET and IRC was pretty low.

StevePerkins 7y ago

I started college, and discovered the Internet, in fall of 1993. An epoch infamously known as "Eternal September" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September). The old-timers on Usenet and IRC at the time thought that me and my classmates were idiots. That we killed the "old Internet". From my perspective though, the "old Internet" died when Deja News sold out to Google. When phpBB forums started replacing Usenet, and ICQ or other chat apps started replacing IRC. From the perspective of those newbies, the "old Internet" died when phpBB forums were replaced by LiveJournal pages and blog comment sections. When ICQ fragmented into AOL, Yahoo, and MSN instant messengers. Those people saw the "old Internet" die when pages and blogs coalesced into early social media. Those people saw the "old Internet" die when social media took on its contemporary shape (e.g. YouTube videos becoming more professional and SEO-oriented, clickbait, photo and video-based social media surpassing text-based social media). This article is just some person at Buzzfeed, writing a eulogy for the "old Internet" as understood by the generation of people who have jobs at Buzzfeed.

IIAOPSW 7y ago
The internet is dead. Long live the internet. I don't know if I agree with your unstated premise that none of these iterations are inherently better or worse than what came before or what will come after. I think there has been a phase change from participation to consumption. The internet has become TV for most users. Not just in the sense of the viewer passively watching, but in the sense of the content itself being highly centralized. There's no more "you" in youtube. The main content feed is high production costs and celebrities, not random clever people.
- grogenaut 7y ago
  99% of what I watch on YouTube is how to videos by people with about 20 total videos. The biggest one I watch is Colin furze and that's about 3x a year when it shows up here. He's like 2000x the size of my next watch. I will say a lot of stuff is much better produced these days. Proliferation of good cameras and editing software and even the big producers using smash cuts makes that so.
- 7y ago

u801e 7y ago

> What I find myself missing more than anything else is that news server was something you paid for, either as part of an ISP package, as a dedicated service or your university tuition fees. For what it's worth, there are still commercial newsproviders out there you can pay for. There are also free ones as well. Unfortunately, the all the newsgroups I participated in as recently as 5 years ago are pretty much dead.