Could be. The baffling thing is there doesn't seem to be much consideration by those community leaders for how different these mediums are. It would be like if HN converted overnight into an IRC server or mailing list. Those formats just don't make any sense given the context.
I dunno, people complain about maintaining a forum software stack, so maybe that's where this stems from. Could be a market worth trying to capture, a 5 minute deploy that truly requires no maintenance ever. And if you want it private, just set the robots meta to noindex, problem solved.
I signed up for the Premium trial. The day before the trial expired, I cancelled and deleted my card info. This was weeks ago, and I still haven't seen a single ad ever since. There are ads in the home feed, but none in the video streams themselves. I'm not using an ad blocker.
I also suspect this. We'll find out decades from now.
Like woops, we shouldn't have put lead in gasoline, even though we knew it was hazardous. Or sorry for putting flame retardant chemicals in all of your furniture and bedding, that gradually absorb into you.
It wouldn't surprise me if micro plastics and forever chemicals etc have worked their way into everything.
The latest crop of "metaverses" are almost all intertwined with blockchain. It's about buying into the metaverse, buy your plot of land, buy your sneakers, buy your new hairstyle, buy your emote laugh animation. Every possible interaction is monetized. It's baffling, like why would anyone want to spend time in a dystopian capitalism simulator.
VRChat seems to embrace the pure spirit of the thing, from what I can tell as an outsider. People are free to express themselves and be creative, making their own avatars and worlds from scratch if they want. It seems like a wacky hangout space, the whole point is to not have constraints. Trying to turn it into anything beyond that seems like it would fail.
But then again, I also don't understand why people drop thousands of dollars on Fortnite skins. I don't feel out of touch with tech, but this I simply do not get, at all.
> The latest crop of "metaverses" are almost all intertwined with blockchain.
Most of the hyped "blockchain" metaverses never went live. All hype and NFT sales, no 3D metaverse at all. Of the few that did go live, Decentraland has 111 users in world right now,[1], Somnium Space has about 1 (yes, one)[2]. Sandbox doesn't have a public counter, but one source says 616 users in Q4 2022.[3] There are people just selling parcels on maps, such as Upland.
Otherside, the world from Bored Ape Yacht Club, has run two live demos for a few hours each, but they're just demos of Improbable's technology with some of their game art.
There was supposed to be a third demo in Q2 2023. We're coming up on the end of Q2 2023.
They raised US$400 million selling land, and the SEC is investigating.
Reality: blockchain based metaverses did not happen.
Agreed, we need to get back to independent forums.
And there are better techniques to sustain them now, compared to back then. They don't need to be plastered with banner ads.
- Annual donations with Stripe checkout, etc
- Job boards
- If you have a product/service, host a community that caters to your general industry! For instance, if you sell film editing software, host a forum for hobbyist and professional editors, and don't make it specific to your software. You'll make conversions over time, and it's win-win for everyone. HN is essentially a form of this.
Also, "microwave safe" does not mean it's safe for people... it only means the container won't melt in the microwave. If you're going to reheat leftovers, definitely don't keep it inside a plastic container.
I also switched to glass containers and stainless steel everything, about 20 years ago, out of distrust for reasons like in this article.
Honestly it's probably better for the web if it reverts back to the model of smaller independent forums. HN is a good example of a healthy small/medium sized community.
I would say the 'social media era' of the history of the web has concluded in failure. When you consolidate everyone onto a singular platform, it creates a weird unhealthy community dynamic, and the business incentives do not align at all with users.
I dunno, people complain about maintaining a forum software stack, so maybe that's where this stems from. Could be a market worth trying to capture, a 5 minute deploy that truly requires no maintenance ever. And if you want it private, just set the robots meta to noindex, problem solved.