Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web (2017)
I really like it when people try to give practical advice after describing problems. Agree with most of what&#x27;s written in the post. But I&#x27;d like to discuss one part of it:<p>&gt; [...] the major websites of today&#x27;s web are not built for the visitor, but as means of using her.<p>To me, here lies a key point that both the writer and many commenters here in HN seemed to miss in 2017. What&#x27;s written here is just a <i>consequence</i>, and the post goes on to develop it through all its length... but why did the dynamics change in that way? What&#x27;s the underlying reason for the shift?<p>Some comments here in HN mentioned it: internet becoming a marketplace. With both its good and bad side-effects. It&#x27;s an extremely complex issue, but money does completely shape dynamics of current society, and therefore internet too, and it leaves us <i>without spaces that aren&#x27;t conditioned by it</i>. At small scale it doesn&#x27;t seem a big problem, or we rationalize it because everyone needs money to survive... But it really shapes the world, and we can&#x27;t simply ignore the ugly sides of it and pretend we can solve it without ever involving the discussion about money and the dynamics it generates.<p>The &quot;magic&quot; the post talks about only needs three ingredients: human curiosity, time (to develop that curiosity), and spaces (to host those humans and their time). Human curiosity and creativity will always exist as long as we don&#x27;t go extinct. About time... well, we can satisfy our basic needs more efficiently than ever... and yet, ironically, we are using the newly freed time to create &quot;more competitive&quot; products that focus on enslaving the potential of our fellow human beings through infinite-scroll addiction, fear of missing out, instant gratification, attention grabbing and other kinds of biases and &quot;bugs&quot; in the human system. And finally spaces. Well, nothing left. If the only accessible spaces require money or work-to-generate-money, you close the circle and can&#x27;t scape the landscape and conditioning I was describing. Even if there are some spaces left, they tend to fell into oblivion against the competition. Too hard to escape, too easy to rationalize.<p>And honestly, I don&#x27;t think there&#x27;s any game-changer discussion about morality standards here. Morals must play a very important part in getting us to start a change (and by us I mean the kind of people that&#x27;s most directly involved in tech, like this HN crowd), but as long as we don&#x27;t try to really disrupt at least some of the dynamics generated by money-profit-survival-motivations, I&#x27;m somewhat skeptical we will be able to move the needle, because efforts will be eaten by the competition even if we never wanted to play under those rules. Let&#x27;s hope I&#x27;m mistaken and it&#x27;s easier to solve.