‘The Internet Is Broken’: @ev Is Trying to Salvage It (Published 2017)
nytimes.com
‘The Internet Is Broken’: @ev Is Trying to Salvage It (Published 2017)
The other obvious problem with today’s internet is the economic structure. Chris Anderson wrote a famous essay called “The Long Tail” back in 2004 that predicted the internet would make media businesses less hit-driven and improve the economics for niche creative people. He was right in one sense: the internet created many more niche communities an... See more
Chris Dixon • Words With Web 3’s King: An Interview With Chris Dixon
From a business perspective, this centralization was a natural extension of the early internet — people were getting more connected, so just connect them even more . Why have everyone make their own websites when everyone’s homepage could just be their Facebook page? Why try to track people down in IRC chat rooms when you could just talk to
... See moreNoah Smith • The Internet Wants to Be Fragmented
Then in the 2010s, the internet changed. It wasn’t just the smartphone, though that did enable it. What changed is that internet interaction increasingly started to revolve around a small number of extremely centralized social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, and later Instagram.
Noah Smith • The Internet Wants to Be Fragmented
“The internet, as we have known it, has evolved from a quaint, quirky place to a social utopia, and then to an algorithmic reality. In this reality, the primary task of these platforms is not about idealism or even entertainment — it is about extracting as much revenue as possible from human vanity, avarice, and narcissism.”