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back to article Saving the internet, fake news warts and all

Remember when the internet was a thing of beauty – connecting us to long-lost friends, the innocent pleasure of buying books using “e-commerce”, of sharing photos of cats? Since then we’ve seen the election of Donald Trump as US prez, Brexit, Cambridge Analytica, trolls and fake news. The internet has evolved into something …

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  1. Version 1.0 Silver badge

    It was never a thing of beauty, it's a Fireship.

    It was convenient and, being convenient, we used it - initially for our convenience and little else - then came SPAM, and that led to ADVERTISING, and the Internet became a way to get rich by selling useless crap (including politicians) to the innocent.

    As I was browsing the Internet by St. Pauls,

    A pretty young lady grabbed me by my ... hyperlink.

    She said you look like a man of pluck,

    Why not come and ... take this brief Internet Survey...

    THE END.

    5 2 Reply
    1. DJV Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Trollface

      Re: It was never a thing of beauty, it's a Fireship.

      "the Internet became a way to get rich by selling useless crap (including politicians) to the innocent"

      You'd have to be pretty innocent to buy a polician off the Internet! Now, a "politician removal spray" - that would be worth buying if it could be proven to work!

      7 0 Reply
  2. John Lilburne

    Some mistake here ...

    ... I think you have miss spelled Dr Pangloss.

    2 0 Reply
  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Fake Tech News Website posts news about Fake News

    Ironic much?

    Perhaps get your own house in order first?

    1 10 Reply
  4. Long John Brass
    Windows

    Which internet have *YOU* been using

    Remember when the internet was a thing of beauty – connecting us to long-lost friends, the innocent pleasure of buying books using “e-commerce”, of sharing photos of cats?

    Its always been a cess-pit. Even before it was the internet! BBS and Fido net forums were filled with trolls and flame-wars galore...

    I don't know which walled flower garden happy clappy unicorn infested corner you came from, but, Where I'm from Trolls, Scams, Fake news are all *OLD* news. I have seen UseNet forums you people wouldn't believe!.

    /oldFart Icon because...

    7 0 Reply
    1. VikiAi
      Reply Icon
      Happy

      Re: Which internet have *YOU* been using

      "I have seen UseNet forums you people wouldn't believe!."

      .,.

      Fork-bombs on fire off the shoulder of Rusty n Edies.

      I watched creepers glitter in the dark near the ARPANET Gate.

      All those moments will be lost in time, like Geocities websites.

      Time to offline.

      7 0 Reply
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Which internet have *YOU* been using

        It makes me wonder what happened to the goodies provided by those sites: Rusty & Edie's, The McHenry, Event Horizons, and so on. It seems no one ever had the chance to archive them or lat least identify the source materials from which they came so they can be found again. Shame...

        1 0 Reply
  5. jake Silver badge

    "The internet has evolved into something messy, unruly, imperfect"

    Evolved my ass. That's the way we designed it.

    6 1 Reply
    1. Teiwaz
      Reply Icon

      The primary use of the internet has always for the obscure and the unacceptable to mainstream.

      Remove that (and it is being slowly eroded, stamped out and ancient creaky sites on the arcane built by hand in antique html are being quickly replaced with gleaming malls of fluff nonsense and emporiums with shiny content management systems), the life will go out of it. It'll end up just another shopping and booking 'telnet'

      The next generation to be born won't want much to do with it.

      I'm surprised the current lot that grew up with it as 'just a part of how the world works' are that interested (and if they are, it's only because of Minecraft).

      2 0 Reply
      1. jake Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        "The primary use of the internet has always for the obscure and the unacceptable to mainstream."

        No. For the first dozen or so years, the primary (and only official) use of The Internet was to research networking. During the last half of that dozen years, it gradually became a way for individual humans to share thoughts and ideas with other like-minded individuals, world-wide. It still functions in that regard, and it always will. The marketing-driven flash & glam got glued on much later, and is easily ignored by anybody with more than two brain cells to rub together.

        4 1 Reply
        1. Charles 9
          Reply Icon

          Not really. It's hard to ignore something that blares in your face at top volume. Survival instinct kicks in at that point.

          0 0 Reply
          1. jake Silver badge
            Reply Icon

            Chuck, I clearly said "with more than two brain cells to rub together". Nothing blares in my face at top volume unless I allow it. It's my computer, I decide what it is used for. If the marketing departments of the world and their sycophants/hangers-on don't like that concept, they can invent another Internet to go play on. This one is mine, and they can't have it.

            2 1 Reply
            1. Anonymous Coward
              Reply Icon
              Anonymous Coward

              No, it's THEIR Internet, as they paid for it, including the trunk bandwidth (through peer agreements and so on), and if YOU don't like it, then Stop the Internet, because you're getting off here. It's back to the junk mail and prank calls for you...

              0 1 Reply
              1. jake Silver badge
                Reply Icon

                They have your number, don't they? Here's a little free insight ... I pay for my end of the link. You pay for your end of the link. They pay theirs. We pay ours.

                But there is no "they pay mine". That's all Holland & tulips & the mid-1630s. My screen, my rules. Make it profitable for me to see marketing crap, and I'll allow you to use my fully paid for link, my pixels, my CPU, my memory, my disk and my electricity. Maybe.

                Judging by my spam filter logs, junk email never went anywhere, not that my users and I ever see any of it. Or did you mean snailmail? That hasn't gone away, either (not that it has anything to do with TehIntraWebTubes). And the number of junk telephone calls is an order of magnitude higher than it was a couple decades ago (You said "prank" ... is that what you call all those junk calls from the sub-continent? They might be pranks, because those ass-clowns can't be serious ... but again, that has nothing to do with TehIntraWebTubes).

                No, I'm not getting off the Internet. I helped build it, I know what it's for, and they can't have it. (Apologies to Russ for the paraphrase.)

                1 1 Reply
  6. steward
    FAIL

    At £72.68

    for the Kindle edition, more for hardcover, I don't think I'll be picking up this tome anytime soom.

    1 0 Reply
  7. DCFusor

    Let the fakes discredit themselves

    It doesn't work that well - people have all kinds of cognitive biases and WILL confirm their preconceived notions, but martyring them is far less effective yet, it only gives ammunition to the "true believers".

    The thing is, the eventual fail when too many believe lies and too many take advantage of that till it causes a collapse or revolution is kinda painful too. And it takes too long to discover which was actually fake, pretty often - false flags can run a loooong time. But trying to fix human nature via tech has a really really bad track record all its own.

    Most people suffer from at least a few of these most of the time, and given human nature looking out for #1, other people take advantage of them via this. Even once you understand, it's hard to avoid.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias

    Who watches the watchers? Even if you had a pure heart, are you qualified by knowing all truth?

    2 0 Reply
  8. itzman

    The internet will force a change in consciousness.

    No longer will there be One True Message, controlled by the establishment media.

    There are many messages, and for the first time ever, people will have to decide who to believe.

    And that includes the writer of this article, who sdeems to already be involved in rejecting that with which he does not agree.

    1 0 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The internet will force a change in consciousness.

      There still is the One True Message, only in many tongues, as noted by the big media companies gobbling up all the smaller ones.

      0 1 Reply
  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "The Internet" is discussed....

    .....as though it was a single, easily identifiable object. Say like my red VW Golf, or the chair I'm sitting in.

    *

    In fact, what most users of the phrase "the internet" actually mean is "the collection of applications using the internet as a network".

    *

    And some of these applications (e.g. the web site called Facebook) look like anarchy.

    Some are reasonably useful (like Wikipedia).

    Some are useful but essentially invisible (like VOIP).

    And there are some connected sites which don't appear in DNS (the so called dark web).

    *

    So, in common use, there is no such single thing as "the internet".....apart from it's use as a wide area network....not what most people mean!

    2 0 Reply

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