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Nick Denton Predicts 'The Good Internet' Will Rise Again (pcworld.com)
Gawker founder Nick Denton argued today that the future will be rooted in sites like Reddit which involve their reader community -- even if there's only a handful of subtopics each user is interested in. "There's a vitality to it and there's a model for what [media] could be," he told an audience at the South by Southwest festival.
But when it comes to other social media sites, "Facebook makes me despise many of my friends and Twitter makes me hate the rest of the world," Denton said. And he attempted to address America's politically-charged atmosphere where professional news organizations struggled to pay their bills while still producing quality journalism. An anonymous reader quotes PCWorld: The internet played a huge role in this crisis, but despite it all, Denton thinks the web can be the solution to the problems it created. "On Google Hangouts chats or iMessage you can exchange quotes, links, stories, media," he said. "That's a delightful, engaging media experience. The next phase of media is going to come out of the idea of authentic, chill conversation about things that matter. Even if we're full of despair over what the internet has become, it's good to remind yourself when you're falling down some Wikipedia hole or having a great conversation with somebody online -- it's an amazing thing. In the habits that we enjoy, there are the seeds for the future. That's where the good internet will rise up again."
To show his support for news institutions, Denton has also purchased a paid subscription to the New York Times' site.
But when it comes to other social media sites, "Facebook makes me despise many of my friends and Twitter makes me hate the rest of the world," Denton said. And he attempted to address America's politically-charged atmosphere where professional news organizations struggled to pay their bills while still producing quality journalism. An anonymous reader quotes PCWorld: The internet played a huge role in this crisis, but despite it all, Denton thinks the web can be the solution to the problems it created. "On Google Hangouts chats or iMessage you can exchange quotes, links, stories, media," he said. "That's a delightful, engaging media experience. The next phase of media is going to come out of the idea of authentic, chill conversation about things that matter. Even if we're full of despair over what the internet has become, it's good to remind yourself when you're falling down some Wikipedia hole or having a great conversation with somebody online -- it's an amazing thing. In the habits that we enjoy, there are the seeds for the future. That's where the good internet will rise up again."
To show his support for news institutions, Denton has also purchased a paid subscription to the New York Times' site.
This idiot is one of the people that has made the internet so unpleasant.
More reliable than the New York Times.
I know, faint praise.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Really? Reddit, the epitome of censorship and groupthink circlejerks? Only slashdot compares to that cesspit.
And yeah, Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat all suck balls too.
assuming Chelsea doesn't run.
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You mean the one where discriminators like race, sex, country, etc didn't matter? Where free speech reigned and all that mattered was the argument made? The one that routed around censorious assholes and their insecurities?
Gawker? Nick Denton? Oh. So not 'that' internet after all.
Denton and Gawker played a crucial role in creating the divisive world that we now live in by pushing bullshit as journalism and pushing modern social justice cultism. I have no sympathy for him and I'm glad Gawker is dead.
The problem comes directly from the "pay the bills" mentality
"Pay the bills" means clicks on advertizing, which translates to grabbing eyeballs and attention using any means possible.
"Any means" has descended into outrageous and unsupportable claims intended to promote outrage or interest in the reader. Anything and everything that can make the reader outraged is fair came in the advertizing war.
It's become so obvious that there are specific memes and word phrases which are now *avoided* because of their fake usage. "...using this one weird trick", "top ten some-trivia-thing", "such-and-so you need to know", and so on.
Newspapers have always slanted the truth towards outrage and reader engagement a little, but with the feeding frenzy of internet it's now become a completely unhinged cage fight for reader attention.
Complete and total lies are now allowed, rumor and innuendo can be published without vetting for accuracy, reversal of meaning and impact is commonplace.
Many MSM articles simply report tweets that people make; and no, I'm not referring to Trump either. Some random headlines:
Many in this county are poor and sick, and they voted for Trump. What will happen to their health care?
It's way too soon to panic about Fed rate hikes
Rep. Steve King warns that 'our civilization' can't be restored with 'somebody else's babies'
Is any of this news? Which of these tells us what is happening?
Nothing about the MSM is authentic any more, and neither is twitter or facebook. Journalistic integrity and important freedoms (speech, assembly, and press) have been swept aside in the race for readership, political correctness, and promotion of one partisan side.
It's no wonder people are flocking to other sites.
Current events are far less controversial than the internet makes them out to be.
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This idiot is one of the people that has made the internet so unpleasant.
One of the perennial problems with on Slashdot is that arguments can simply attack the person making them.
The greeks noted that arguments are made from "logos", "ethos", and "pathos". "Logos" is the logical basis of your argument, "Pathos" is the emotional appeal of your argument, and "Ethos" is the character of the person making the argument.
Thus, here on slashdot we can't discuss constitutional abuse of Kim Dotcom because he's an asshole, we can't discuss wikileaks because Assange is an attention whore, and we can't discuss CIA snooping because Snowden is a traitor.
It's so easy to dismiss an argument out of hand just by pointing out that the person making an argument is somehow inferior.
Nick Denton is such a completely rotten individual that this is not a valid issue that nerds should discuss or post views and opinions about.
This, the man behind the abomination that was Gawker, does not understand what's really detracting from the value of the internet. It's an overload of people (like him) looking to cash in on users that has resulted in the worst elements of the internet. Honestly, who thinks pages that pull elements from 25+ different domains are going to end up being anything but garbage looking to exploit it's users?
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
And idiots like you need to realise that 96% of the worlds population are NOT US citizens and are perfectly entitled to put USA LAST.
We too can state that "no deal is better than a bad deal"
We already see this with tourist numbers to the USA plummeting.
Also at risk is $2Trillion in exports.
There is very little if anything that is made in the USA that can not be sourced elsewhere. Worse, US companies who manufacture and export will be quick to leave the USA and set up shop elsewhere to keep access to that 96%. So if anything you are looking at loosing MORE jobs.
Asia is the biggest growing market, the USA essentially a saturated one, so it far more important for firms that want customer growth to have access to Asia (60% of the world population) than the USA 4%.
There is no "rule" that says the USA must or will win. We the 96% are NOT beholden to the USA, we are not subject to US law, we can not be forced to buy US goods and products. So go for it, start a trade war, the long term looser will be the USA.
In the 1960s the USA accounted for about 60% of the entire worlds GDP, now it is 20% and falling. So keep pissing people off, keep pissing your friends off its only going to hasten the fall. Every other empire in history has fallen, the USA is not immune.
Sure loss of trade with the USA will hurt, but heres the thing, people adapt and technology allows them to adapt faster than before, so it will only be years, maybe a decade before the world is back to where it was, without the USA, mean while the USA is much much worse off.
Oh, and here is the great thing about capitalism, labour is simply another item that can be bought from multiple vendors. China has not stolen any US jobs, it just used capitalism where by it did a better job cheaper. So why you cheered on Amazon for putting bookstores out of business, the same principle applied to US jobs, manufacturers has to produce more, better, cheaper because americans voted with their wallets and demanded it. Well now you have it, those jobs left the USA and will not come back.
Demand away that stuff must be made in the USA, we the 96% will demand it is not. And we the 96% who also have 80% of the worlds GDP have more say than you do.
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#DeleteChrome
The internet is better than ever.
It is now so easy to find information on even the smallest thing it is incredible.
People whine about "fake news". Sure, there are fake news, bullshit flying around every corner, etc... But now, you can actually check things more easily than before. I realized how much bullshit I was fed decades ago and thanks to the internet, I am now able to recognize as such. The reason I believed so much bullshit is that I simply didn't have other sources. Now, with just a few Google and Wikipedia searches, you can find the answer backed by primary sources with every debatable point discussed by competent people.
Fake news and other bullshit have always existed. They are easier to identify now. I say we are going in the right direction.
The only trap that I think we must be weary about is that it is now much easier to fall into an echo chamber. However all resources to get out of it are right here, both in term of counterarguments and in ways to overcomes ones cognitive biases. I think that we'll learn and things will continue getting better.
If Slashdot was run by anybody in Europe, at least there'd be the capability to display characters other than just those under code 128 of the ASCII set.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
Doesn't seem to extend to Sir Tim Berners-Lee getting an airing on slashdot.
https://slashdot.org/popular
You nailed it. There's nothing left to add.
What "crisis"? Newspaper corporations and giant media corporations going out of business because the cost of producing and disseminating news has fallen is not a "crisis", it's a good thing. For that matter, the abolition of a profession whose main tools for money making were monopolization of information and making deals with the wealthy and powerful is also a good thing. As for Denton and Gawker, they are instances and examples of the rotten state of journalism, and they aren't even the worst.
Movies. Pizza. Microcode.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Disclaimer, I mostly read Slashdot, hardly ever Reddit... and I really do not like Nick Denton.
That said, isn't Reddit about 10x more popular (or more!) than Slashdot??
And if facebook makes him despise his "friends," that really says a lot about him and the "friendships" that he has.
Yes, it says that he actually has a diverse variety of friends. I have both conservative and liberal friends, so on Facebook I get a pretty constant stream of stuff I not only disagree with, but really kind of hate. But that's OK because I know I'm never going to agree with everything someone thinks, and despite disagreements I still value them as friends.
If you don't have a diverse variety of friends, I pity what must be a very isolated bubble, free of strife sure but also free of truly deep bonds.
Again, I don't like Denton and can't even see being friends with him. But I think what he is saying is absolutely correct.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The flaw with your rant is that you someone suffer from the delusion that the rest of the world wants free trade while the US becomes protectionist. In fact, the frustration of Americans with the rest of the world is that it is horribly protectionist, xenophobic, and nationalist, whether it's the EU, China, or Japan. The US is the reason there is the level of free trade, free movement, and prosperity that we have in the world today.
If the US demands that "stuff must be made in the USA", it simply starts acting like all the other nations in the world are already acting. That should scare you. But if you think that this will lead to a flowering of free trade among other countries, you are completely out of touch with reality.
We were always assholes, now shut up asshole, if you dont like a site don't go to it, that fucking simple
I believe rants like this give ammunition to the "America Firsters".
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
sites like Reddit which involve their reader community
The future isn't with narrative-controlled places like Reddit.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
The USA has NEVER been about free trade.
It has always had import tariffs and massive subsidies, especially in the agricultural sector.
In fact the USA has been loosing when it comes to the WTO when it comes to protectionist policies.
Funny...the lDIOT who was feeding false information, stealing videos etc, is NOW concerned about the "good" internet?
And yet, those import tariffs and massive subsidies were less massive than those of most other nations.
That's funny. Who do you think made GATT/WTO happen? Who exactly do you think had the commitment to free markets and free trade? German ex-Nazis? French farmers? The Supreme Soviet? New Zealand sheep? Get a clue.
I question what he means by "the good Internet" if it's going to be brought about by reddit, Google Hangouts, and iMessage. Maybe I'm just being an old fogey, but to me, when you say, "The good Internet will rise again," my mind jumps to a time of text-only email, Usenet, and IRC. Basically, a time when people were trying to create and use open protocols so that anyone could run a server, instead of a bunch of proprietary "social networking" sites and services controlling your experience.
It may seem like I'm changing the subject, but to me, it's highly relevant to what he's talking about. A lot of the prior civility came from people forming their own communities on services that they were able to run themselves. One services like Facebook and Twitter, those platforms control the experience, control which posts you see and what order they're displayed in, and make decisions based on increasing engagement in order to sell advertising. The services that he cites (reddit, iMessage, Hangouts) have something in common with the old-style Internet in that they allow you to form your own communities and control your own engagement with them. One of the big differences, however, is that when you can control the service, you can keep it that way. You're reliant on Apple, Conde Nast, and Google to keep iMessage, reddit, and Hangouts in their current format, and I wouldn't bet on them being the same in 5 years. However, you're able to set up your own email, IRC, or Usenet server, and nobody can really force you to turn it into something you don't want.
Now I'm not saying that we should all be using IRC and Usenet. Technology progresses, and we're always finding better ways of doing things. My point is, we shouldn't be relying on closed, proprietary, ad-supported apps and websites. We need new open protocols. In the same way that anyone can set up their own email service or even build their own email client and server software, we need to enable people to set up their own texting, IM, VoIP, video conferencing, social networking, and forum services. And I don't just mean, "You should be able to set up your own Slack clone," which you obviously can, but you should be able to build a Slack clone and set up a competing Slack service that then allows you to communicate with Slack users. And Facebook users. And Google users. Because they should all use the same protocol.
vOn Google Hangouts chats or iMessage you can exchange quotes, links, stories, media," he said. "That's a delightful, engaging media experience..."
Or a great way to create a media echo chamber. You know, kind of like my aunt Facebook.
The next phase of media is going to come out of the idea of authentic, chill conversation about things that matter.
Maybe its just me, but the only time I've ever had "authentic, chill conversation" on hot button items are when you have personal links to an individual to know that they are human even if you disagree with them on politics. Even then, that backstop might not be sufficient. There is no alternate vision laid out here for how the Internet can be great again. Instead, this sounds like just empty hope that the current situation is merely a temporary byproduct of a weird political time and that everything will just magically go back to normal.
...but don't let Nick Denton distract you from the fact that in 1998, The Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell In A Cell, and plummeted 16 ft through an announcer's table
You want to make the Internet 'good' again? First make the 'monetization' of the users illegal; no more collection of user data to sell to marketers (or give to the government surveillance junkies). That's the easy part. The next part is nigh-unto impossible: make people be as nice to each other as if they were face-to-face. Not going to happen. Really, the only way the Internet is good for anything at this point, is if you use it in a read-only manner: use it for information (from credible sources) and maybe for person-to-person communication (via email or direct chat). Shopping, banking, paying your bills, interacting with government agencies? Sure, but until Item #1 is taken care of (data collection is illegal) you're at risk of being snooped on, 'collected', 'surveilled', and 'monetized' for someone elses' benefit. Sadly, I think the 'golden age' of the Internet is long gone and won't be coming back. Dark web, maybe? Set up your own sub-Internet? Maybe. For the average person that's beyond their capability though.