EU wants power to fine behavioural data bad boys and the ad men aren't happy The EU has proposed only incremental changes to data protection law in Europe, but their significance lies in a new ability to fine digital services – including the giant platforms – for privacy breaches. The law covers the consent users give to the acquisition and processing of behavioural data. This is considered valuable by …
there was no advertising, no porn and no fake news. I had access to information I needed and connected with people that really did share good ideas and saw what a boon the connected world could be. Now I hardly spend any time online, visit only a few sites and fear for the future of what was an amazing idea.
The whole connected world has taken a fearful turn for the worse (iot, so much malware and crime, bullshit from politicians, twitterers that seem to think the world revolves around them et.c et.c)
Perhaps the net has dumbed us so much that as a species we are already accelerating down the path to extinction.
When was this semi-utopian time?! The no advertising I can believe, provided you were on ArpaNet, or maybe a University computer; but porn-free? I believe the second text file sent between users was an ASCII art nude. And as long as there has been gossip, rumors, or "What I did over the weekend" there has been "fake news".
Admitedly, The Eternal September has made all of the bullshit so much more, and so much worse. I also fear for the future of the human race.
"When was this semi-utopian time?! "
I don't think it ever existed, or if it did it had the half-life of a transactinide element.
I first went on-line while at University, in the early 80s. Porn was a thing back then, just not a commercial thing and not images, words. One of the prolific internet "erotic" writers from way back then is still going, I see with a blog and a kickstarter project to publish porn adult fiction etc.
Did you ever hear of a thing called USENET?
And yes, it did have a porn news group. (pics and some low res movies.)
As to spam... you can thank Cantor-Siegel for the first spam of a newsgroup.
Of course this was all before the whole websites thing.
The " good internet "(TM) is still out there. It's just getting exponentially more difficult to find in the noise.
Actually the decent parts of the net tend to be unattractive to the idiots and advertisers, so tend to be quieter places. I for one am thrilled that so much of academia is now freely available to anyone. The sooner we teach kids that they need to be seeking understanding rather than "knowledge" the better.
Where it gets difficult is when I want something like product info. Phoning a manufacturer, getting the right department, finding someone, anyone, who knows anything about the product ... persuading them to send me the data ... getting data for a completely different thing ... rinse and repeat.
Now can just get online and search the manufacturer's website ... at least that's the theory.
Now if we could horribly poison the whale-song and joystick brigade, make the use of Flash and all it's bastard children a capital offence ...
Make the website as ugly as you like - just make it easily readable, fast, logical and easy to follow.
Oh and NO ADS - even for your own stuff. If the site's any good I'll look for myself. I know what I need, YOU DON'T.
/End Rant
"...no porn..."
Hahahahahahaha... oh wait, you're serious! Let me laugh harder: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
I still have a bunch of 256-colour GIFs complete with the stamped-on BBS telephone numbers and "scanned by" notes that did the rounds when the internet was still nowhere in sight. You know, nostalgic reasons...
Isn't that the same for pretty much every good idea?
Starts off full of promise with a small community dedicated to the 'idea' then others start to see how they can make money, then people invest like morons because they don't want to miss out before crash and the real exploitation comes out.
"they have the cosy feeling the whole internet is tailored for them, the search results and ads skewed in the favour of their hobbies and interests."
But do they? Or do they think it's a bit weird having ads for whatever one-off purchase they just made repeatedly stuck in front of them?
> In a statement, the Internet Advertising Bureau said the "the future of the web as we know it" was in "danger".
Thank god for that! Good news! The current web is a cesspit of spying, tracking, and "walled gardens", not to mention being shoved crappy ads all day long, to the point we have an arms race between people forcing ads down our throats and people developing software to strip those same ads out.
The sheer waste of human resources in this arms race, not to mention the money, bandwidth, computing power, etc... is staggering.
If the IABs "future of the web" is threatened, then we should all rejoice! I doubt the average internet users idea for the "future of the web" matches what the IAB plan. May we live to see the day when the online advertisers are finally driven out, because with it most of the parasitic parts of the web will go as well.
I remember the web like "Alien Doctor 1.1" said above, when it was more academic in nature, rather than obsessed with screwing people (and I am not referring to the porn there, there was plenty of that on the net for as long as I remember). I don't see a problem going back to those times.
Advertisements keep most of the web toll-free, so I think they are a necessary evil.
What with which I will never put up is the ad that is a scam or an outright hacking attempt. I want my ads to be reduced to text only, or maybe include one non-moving image, and all ads should be curated for proper links, no disguised or obscure references.
Ads that have no code attached, no moving GIFs, no flashing text, no IP slurping and no telemetry are the only things I will accept to see.
I'm not holding my breath for it, but I'm glad to see that some legal framework is getting set up to deal with the worst of it.
In a statement, the Internet Advertising Bureau said the "the future of the web as we know it" was in "danger".
---The current web is a cesspit of spying, tracking, and "walled gardens", not to mention being shoved crappy ads all day long, to the point we have an arms race between people forcing ads down our throats and people developing software to strip those same ads out.
Right? He says that like it's a bad thing.
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