• 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍
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    22 hours ago

    The web, “as intended,” worked for several years with utterly no ad content. And when ads did start coming along, they were largely innocuous; little things in side bars, not obnoxious full-page videos that are rarely dismissible.

    Anyone who tries to sell you on the idea that the web was designed for commerce or as a way to distribute anything other than information is a lying fucker.

    • nfh@lemmy.world
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      16 hours ago

      I knew about ad blockers before I started using one. Small sidebar or header ads weren’t really enough to convince me I needed one.

      Now the Internet has so many popups, ads, aggressive video players, requests to accept cookies, all because some people figured out how to make websites more profitable by making them worse. It’s sad, really. The Internet of old was great.

    • Katana314@lemmy.world
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      22 hours ago

      Don’t know if that’s true. People invested in it as a bubble - knowing that someday the companies running sites within them would be worth trillions. And they were right (though not about which ones would be worth that)

      I remember seeing a lot of dinky banner ads back in the day.

      • But it is true. Luckily, Tim Berners Lee, the guy who invented the WWW, is still alive, and has posted his opinions about the state of the web.

        His intention, the purpose for which he created the web, was not commerce and ads.

    • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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      22 hours ago

      Is your point that technology should never be used for anything other than what it was originally designed for? If that’s the case then please stop using TCP/IP for anything other than advancing US military weapons research.

      • 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍
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        3 hours ago

        My point was that the comment I was replying to implied that the web was created so that people could monetize content. That was not the reason why the web was created.

        If I create a whingdoodle that provides people with free electricity, and you find a way to murder cities with it, then you can’t claim it’s “functioning as intended.” I didn’t intend for it to do that; you found a way to pervert it. Now, Billy found a way to prevent you from murdering him with your weaponized wingdoodle, and you argue that he shouldn’t, because the wingdoodle is “functioning as intended.” I’m calling bullshit on that. That was my point.

        • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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          4 minutes ago

          There’s http response code 402 (payment required) which comes before even 404 (page not found). Indicates to me that people were thinking about using the web for commerce even before they thought about people putting in a wrong URL.

        • tomalley8342@lemmy.world
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          2 hours ago

          When he said “the system”, he probably meant the system of ad funded services, not the system of the World Wide Web, the HTML markup language, the URL system, and HTTP as envisioned by Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (born 8 June 1955),[1].

        • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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          5 hours ago

          I did in the past. But now my internet connection involves co-ax cable. So please send all replies in an analog video form, since that’s what that cable was designed for.