Not that it was some sanctuary of intelectualism but it’s certainly gotten worse since everyone got on social media. A lot of slop and low Iq content and don’t even get started on kids doomscrolling on tiktok instead of playing outside
Not that it was some sanctuary of intelectualism but it’s certainly gotten worse since everyone got on social media. A lot of slop and low Iq content and don’t even get started on kids doomscrolling on tiktok instead of playing outside
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Or…Hear me out here…
We just properly educate young people on what the differences between information, propaganda, and entertainment are, and stop trying to mix the three together into some hodgepodge of nonsense?
Why should we “gatekeep” the internet instead of taking responsibility for it and educating people properly on it?
That is what is wonderful about the internet – you can create your own shared space.
The September that Never Ended
In 1993/1994 Internet service providers started offering Usenet access to their customers. Prior to this, Usenet tended to only see influxes of new users in September, when college freshmen got access to college computer networks and discovered Usenet’s wide range of discussion forums. Now there was a continuous stream of new users swamping discussion forums.
Many long-time Usenet users saw this as the end of Usenet’s culture, as Usenet’s culture of self-moderation wasn’t able adapt well to this change.
Usenet, by the way, was established in 1980.
No, gatekeeping will lock out people who have good but unpopular ideas. I don’t like the spread of misinformation, but exactly what comprises misinformation is too subjective to gatekeep.
I think we should gatekeep people who wants to gatekeep.
My observation is essentially the opposite.
I’m 45 and have been on some form of the internet since I was 14. In the early days of online chat and message boards there really wasn’t much moderation. These sites might moderate content to prevent flame wars but there was little to no viewpoint moderation. People internalized concepts like “don’t feed the trolls” to ignore posts that bothered them, and things stayed generally on topic and civil.
The problem with social media isn’t a lack of gate keeping it is the excessive levels of gatekeeping, curation, and bubbling based on viewpoint. Many people on social media are, for lack of a better term, insecure bitches who can’t handle that other people think differently from them. They not only think that everyone thinks like them, they think that any different belief is fundamentally evil.
The way you write both in this post and the comments suggests to me that you would not be allowed on the internet if we were gatekeeping for intelligence reasons.
Ironic.
Just make people navigate the internet with MS-DOS
How would It would ever become a “sanctuary of intellectualism” if it was gate kept?
Those two things just don’t work together. The whole “intellectualism” part comes from the fact that the internet encapsulates EVERYONE’s ideas in one way or another. You just lessen the point or the internet if you take that away.
I agree. I remember 15 years ago when “memes” made sense. Now it’s full of ebonics and nonsensical and oversexualized ten year old boy jokes.
i dont think it would have worked. you cant gatekeep anything.
On a somewhat related note, there are still some bulletin boards that still exist and are accessible via the internet (usually telnet). For those unfamiliar, bulletin boards (or BBSes, bulletin board systems) were small online dialup systems that were popular before the internet was popular, and basically anyone with a computer in their home could run one. There are very few today compared to their height in the early 90s, but I think the discussions, games, etc. on them are relatively free of the spam and other stuff you typically see on social media these days.
If you don’t like the internet nowadays you can always stop paying for it.