alt Hacker NewsThe internet that I knew and grew up with is dead and has been that way for a while. To me the downfall started when everything online became a financial pursuit in some shape or form. However, even then, it was possible to find pockets of genuine creativity and discussion. The advent of LLMs was the final blow, and the reason is exactly the fact that one can't assume authenticity in anything these days.
Yes proof-of-identity and authorship would help, however that comes with the extremely perverse side effect of invasive identity verification. Sadly zero knowledge proofs for that are still brittle and not well developed. Hopefully something like that is able to materialize without being the privacy nightmare that is the myriad identity verification mechanisms currently mandated by several governments.
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I can clearly remember the 90ies, when it wasnt usual to "be always online", mainly due to limited connections & providers and huge costs in our regions. I can also remember they years when I didnt had "a somewhat permanent" internet connection at home and when I had to pick up my computer, drive it to a friend and connect there to do some downloads :-D
I miss the old forums esp., nowadays everybody posts on LinkedIn and its the "main online place to be"
I don't think the only way is the ID verification. That's what the spying side pushes as a narrative, but there are ways to validate each other without global registries and any government connections.
Web-Of-Trust was a good idea with poor implementation way ahead of its time. Closed communities work pretty well and seem to be almost unaffected.
So yes, the public internet is dead but I believe that it will be solved with some sort of reputational/vouch systems and invite-only groups where you have to contribute to be accepted and have an incentive to protect that seat instead of posting slop/spam/other agenda to be banned.
I'm always so disappointed when I see a "Pricing" link on "Show HN" projects. Open source and giving things away was always the most cool/radical part of the web for me.
> Yes proof-of-identity and authorship would help, however that comes with the extremely perverse side effect of invasive identity verification
It doesn't help because there's a powerful incentive for people to, frankly, lie. HN is chock-full of obviously AI-generated articles where the authors, caught red-handed, insist it's not their hand. They want the best of both worlds: all the recognition, the reach, and the opportunities that come with being seen as an online authority, but none of the actual effort that you can now simulate with an LLM.
Real ID makes the stakes a bit more tangible - "if you die online, you die in real life" - except with eight billion people on the planet, there's an inexhaustible supply of people who will create accounts for you for a sweet $100.
I saw it phrased like, "it used to be a library, now it is a store."
Same here, first time on the Web 1995, a few BBS access before it.
For hobby projects coding with LLMs feels like fast food.
When someone posts a project with AI collaboration, I know from my own work, that they only commissioned the project to agents, just like we commission someone else to deliver a house, a painting, a ready made piece of furniture, whatever.
The magic of side projects is lost.