I feel "the internet" is too fundamental of a concept to even be evaluated under positives or negatives. (Human interface) machines talking to each other globally? That's a main driver in our world going forward. We're not gonna decide "that's bad for us we're not gonna do it anymore" like we did with CFCs.

I'm gonna put it like this:
the spoken word -> the written word -> the mass reproduceable written word -> the mass reproduceable written word, everywhere, always

For me, the biggest win of the internet is that it democratized the media landscape. Anyone can make anything and then distribute it directly, without needing to go through a publisher. The result is that very personal, very niche products are allowed to exist in a way that they wouldn't otherwise.

I'd say it's definitely been a benefit overall, but you can't force people to use it in that way that's good for them or society at large. The internet has been great at allowing abnormal people to find kinship with others and allows subcultures to proliferate more than they could before which is a huge net gain.
I feel confident saying social media and has been more harmful than beneficial after the introduction of algorithms and other nefarious methods that prioritizes outrage and tribalism to increase engagement which increases their advertising revenue. Its tendrils extended outward and alongside clickbait news/youtube/etc it's made people far more aggressive than they should be.

What is beneficial to society is extremely subjective and the impact of something as ubiquitous as the internet is too varied to fully analyze. Many important historical events, which have led to what we consider better societies, have been sparked by people generating outrage to fuel violence and hatred. From that point of view, maybe the internet making it easy to find counterpoints and adding additional layers between receiving the message and organizing to act on it has damaged society's ability to enact radical change for the better.

>>115660
Which has also led to the commercialization of every niche available. Markets that are too small or too unsavory for publishers will be targeted and filled by individuals who care more about potential profit than artistic expression.

>>115663
But online kinship also reduces the incentive to find it in real life. Why engage with the mainstream when you can easily connect with your subculture in an environment that encourages you to remain, and become even more, abnormal? I'd hardly consider hikkiNEETs a great boon for society. And then there are the subcultures that politicize their abnormality.

It's up to the parents to monitor electronics access and encourage hobbies so their children don't waste their developmental years watching Cory In the House reruns. I don't feel happier now that I have unrestricted access as an adult.

The answer cannot be positive because smartphones ruined pretty much everything and even affect people who don't use them. There is no public benefit from people using their phones in public, for chatting on the phone, for watching videos, playing games, or scanning a receipt with a grocery store app, filming incidents instead of intervening in a just manner, ruining search engine results with the filth which is unsensual one-liners made for superficial reactions.

All technologies are bad because they empower the establishment more than the public. The internet is no exception.

>>115670
But without technology you just have feudalism which enables the establishment even more

>>115666
Smartphones have probably been an overall negative when it comes to social situations since it seems like people are far less interested in interacting with other people these days, but I feel like an old man when I say it. It would be really great if people used them more as handheld computers to enhance their life instead of a way to make small chat endlessly while ignoring the people around them. I wonder if the LLM "AI" stuff will make this worse once it becomes established enough (if it's allowed to).

>>115672
A feudal establishment is significantly weaker than a centralized bureaucracy. Why do you think they all switched over?

>>115673
I felt disappointed when I had IRL conversations with various persons who then google what I had just said so they can acknowledge the stuff I said is probably true. How is this not rude? Or another situation, my relative called me a certain word(I consider it a bland way to categorize people) and out of good will, I made the impression not to know that word, then that person decided to show me the wiki entry to that word on his phone, then I made the impression the letter font is too tiny to read and there are complex greek words in the explanation he doesn't understand either. It makes me lose my trust in people when I see there's no commitment to their words.

>>115676
It could be rude but it would work, otherwise the person would either ignore what you said because they don't believe it or they would have to look it up when they get home to make sure it's accurate.
I have relatives that often make bold claims and I just tell them I'll look into it later(sometimes I do and yes, they are bold claims that are usually false or taken out of context).

>>115676
You sound like an insufferable twat and that word is probably imminently accurate to have been worth the effort of explaining it to you.

Search engines (which are absolutely useless now) do ruin a lot of pub conversations though

>>115678
What's with the aggression? Nothing said was worth attacking him over. Take it easy.

It used to be really good, but I feel the way search engines have degraded to the point where the "dead internet theory" is becoming true. AI generated articles and websites have taken over most search engines and most are worthless and has resulted in most users either going to social media or alternate protocols. I'm not even gonna go into the societal rammifications it has and will continue to have

>>115660
>that it democratized the media landscape
This wasnt a good thing. It has enabled a lot of unqualifed, very dumb and or very malicious people to speak from positions of authority.

More begnignly with entertainment, well, everyone thinks they can podcast even if they have no idea what it's gonna be about and manage to use both a radio voice and many verbal crutches at the same time. Its not even just Ben from Swindon doing it in has garage, every celebrity who has no business doing a podcast like the Osbournes do one not even knowing what they're gonna talk about

There's also the topic of it making porn instantly accesible and free, but I dont know if thats in the scope of this thread

>>115684
I'll take the garbage if it means I have more choice in what I consume. I don't have to consume the crap if I don't want to, after all

I think a lot of my view on this sort of thing came from my experiences with the internet growing up. When I was young, a lot of what I wanted from media either didn't exist in traditional media, or wasn't available within the purview of smalltown suburban America. When I really figured out how to use the internet, it felt like a veil had been lifted and I could finally find what I was looking for, even if it wasn't exactly as polished as a mainstream corporate product would be.

The internet has been a net boon for me because I hate going out and socializing, and none of my interests align much with anyone I know in person. >>115663 is right in that. But I don't really care about the harmful effects social media has had because I don't care for the world outside the forums for loli anime princesses that we use to talk about fun otaku stuff. The only way to improve things would be a mass exodus of normal people away from the web to let us have tea and chat in peace.

>>115654
>as such many rely on small feeds to get their information that motivates them most emotionally. This stewing of outrage culture seems like it's lead to perpetuating and even stoking more violence and hatred.
This is only the case in the modern internet post-smartphone/Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/social-media. It wasn't always this way.
I think the internet was shaping up to be a positive force in general until the system got a hold of it and turned it into the current hellscape. Whether that was the intention from the start or seizing on a window of opportunity is debatable.
But you can ask any ebic oldfig and they would say something along the same lines. You have to remember that prior to the internet, there was no internet. You needed to get information from other sources like books, newspapers, TV, magazines, and libraries. So your information access was extremely limited and filtered through all these sources' biases. For example, a news station may report the news but they will only broadcast what the owner wants people to hear, and the owner almost certainly has no real commitment to the truth and they'll make sure their station tows the party line for their self-interest. The internet is the same except because of the extremely low bar of entry pretty much anybody can broadcast their message so you get information sources from people who actually are committed to the truth. This is why the original slogan for YouTube was "Broadcast Yourself", an example of the general ethos of the era. Whether this was snake oil or genuine is another matter, however they were following the current at the time.
This isn't mentioning the communication potential. Before you were lucky to find someone to talk about niche subjects like anime, now you can with many people from the whole world.
Touching on the YouTube slogan again, I think this is one of the key points that differentiates that era from the current one, which is self-expression. Back then everything centered around self-expression, everyone from individuals to giant corporations were encouraged to have an individual presence on the net. They needed to be individual too, you tried to stand out from the rest with creativity. You could see it in everything from games to websites to art.

Basically old internet was good for society, new internet is bad for society. Why? Because all the bad stuff (personalization, ads, tracking, outrage culture, social media, n*rmals) didn't exist back then, or didn't exist in the way it does now.

>>134969
I think a lot of it just comes down to money. To stay with the youtube example, there's still many people expressing themselves on youtube and "only" getting a few hundred views after years. They're posting the same way people did back in the day, but they're not getting millions of views, endorsements and algorithmic blessings. In essence, they're not getting paid. They're certainly not going to become well known, but they have an audience and are sharing their knowledge or experience with others. Youtube to its credit has also at least seemed to start purposely recommending channels with low views, so that's kind of nice.
It's just weird to me that people feel like failures if they're not getting millions of views or reactions. I understand that it would be great if everyone could simply make a living off of internet stuff, but the price paid is far too steep.

>>134970
>people feel like failures if they're not getting millions of views or reactions
audience dysphoria

>>121420
no we're freaks because we stay inside all day when prior to the 90s you were forced to go outside and find things to do like if my dad was born today he would 100% be one of us a loser with no gf or real life outside of the computer

maybe you're content with that but most anons are miserable internet addicts

>>121420
You'd probably have the same interests as the people around you if not for the internet. Remember I used to be a norm playing with the neighbors kid, going out with friends, the whole nine, before I don't know what happened and now I'm here.

>>134982
>>134984
you merely adopted the dark
i was born in it, molded by it

>>134970
>Youtube to its credit has also at least seemed to start purposely recommending channels with low views,
Almost all the super-low-viewcount videos I get recommended are blatantly pandering to the algorithm so it feels more like a way to grow up more farmers of meaningless drivel than a way to actually encourage the kind of content you're talking about.

>>134969
I wouldn't say it's bad for society based on that, since it's just a new form of the behavior already present in the other media forms you mentioned. If it's just a new skin for the same old tricks then it's not a negative for society, it's neutral. The only bad of it is that the potential for good failed to beat the system.

>>134982
>>134984
Otaku culture predates the internet and Otaku like tendencies go even further back.

I myself actually grew up in quite a spartan family without the internet, anime or a video game console(not even a Gameboy though I borrowed one from my cousin for a bit). I was just bored alot but I still struggled to actually socialise with people and didn't really share their interests.
I remember thinking as a kid that the reason I struggled with other people was because I didn't have a console or watch the latest movies or have the current hip toys so I could not engage with them but as I got older and actually acquired my own source of income and so could buy what ever I wanted I realised this was not true. I just fundamentaly was different than they are.

>>134984
Nah it's not just about interests. I started playing video games quite early on and there were other kids at school who played the same games as me, but I never felt that I fit in with anyone until I started using the internet.

I luv my puter friends.

>>134998
>I just fundamentaly was different than they are.
>>134998
>I never felt that I fit in with anyone until I started using the internet.
Yep.
If I grew up in 1900 then I'd have found some, I dunno, woodworking job or something, while trying to avoid people and also reading whatever printed material I could find.

>>134984
I did have a group of friends back in high school that I still see from time to time, but really we were never really that aligned in our hobbies. I would mostly just be good at talking to them and having a shared associate in my brother that would keep us around. Even before I joined any internet communities or talking at all online I was gravitating towards anime and manga in my free time despite nobody else around me being that interested.

Something interesting that I thought was worth mentioning but maybe not worth making a thread for so I will post about it here.

South Australia passed a ban on Social media for people under 16, the federal government has observed that and is working to implement such a ban nationwide. On top of that this then sets an example for nations all over the world and once social media companies implement this for Australia they would already have the abilities in place to implement it world wide. That's actually why Steam refunds games, Australian law mandates that if a customer deems a product to be defective they can get a refund, so Steam had to implement a refund policy to comply with that. So it's quite possible this will spread to numerous countries.
It will be interesting to see what affect this has, but one affect I can see it having it that it will mean that all adults are going to have to provide ID to social media platforms to be able to use them. That creates a host of interesting possible impacts(good and bad) all on it's own.

But regardless, this means kids are going to go back to socialising like they did before I guess.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-08/how-the-age-minimum-for-social-media-will-work/104571790

Ohh, and I should also post this from the article.

>Obvious ones like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat and X would all be captured, and Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said on Thursday that "YouTube would likely fall within that definition as well".

>The definition may also capture gaming platforms such as Roblox and chat platforms such as Reddit or Discord, plus many smaller players.

We should not think this isn't going to affect us because we don't have Facebook. Most of us probably use Youtube. Maybe Kissu would even be impacted...

>>135013
I think laws like this would be good if they had an explicit idea of what 'social media' was. Because if you can narrow it down to stuff like facebook/twitter/tiktok, then I think it's a net benefit to society and also quite useful for the world. On the other hand if you start to require it for any platform that has social interaction then it's going to be a nightmare for internet freedom and anonymity. If it's the former, then I think that a widespread adoption of such policies could lead to potentially killing off the grip social media has on everything and slowly start to allow outside forums to flourish.

>>135014
Ah, looks like it could be the latter. That'd suck then.

the nightmarish surveilance state of australia

>>135016
Maybe? But then again if it only applies to those under 16, then is it really a bad thing they can't go trawling on chans? 16 is also a good point for freedoms in general since that's where a lot of other things are allowed.
Like >>135015 says, it depends on what they define "social media" as, if it's everything that allows you to connect to another person over internet then that is the whole internet. The sensible thing is to block what we think of when we hear social media, i.e. the usual suspects. I'd actually include 4chan in that too since getting dragged into endless arguments is neither a good spend of your time nor is miring yourself in a cesspool healthy for mental development. This is all "theory" since there's no way to actually enforce it without getting invasive. It's also down to the parents to know what their child is putting in their head and guide them appropriately, which requires them to raise their children.

Or we could just take away smartphones from kids instead of putting restrictions on internet freedom for the rest of us because people are too retarded to realize that giving kids the 24/7 access to social media they have right now is bad?

>>135019
no can do everyone has to have a phone nowadays that's how it works

>>135020
Then we can give them flip phones so their helicopter parents still have access to them. It worked well enough for me.

>>135019
But then how will we track our kids and sell things to them?

>>135021
Was just about to say this. Flip phones are great since it still allows easy communication with important people like family and friends, but prevents the other problems by being incapable.
Unfortunately, getting a flip phone is tricky since stores don't carry them, and new flip phones just have internet access anyway which defeats the purpose. Also not to be confused with "flip phones" which are just smart phones you can bend in half.

>>135018
If it impacted 4chan then it would have to impact kissu and every other imageboard as well, because they are functionally the same.

I think parents have an important role of course but it's not all down to the parent. The problem with social media and the internet in general is that it's impossible for a parent to monitor everything that a child does, sees and interacts with on a website and it's impossible for a parent to warn a child about literally every hypothetical problem they could ever come across on social media. Most parents themselves don't even know these things, most parents would not be able to warn their children about some random nut job conspiracy theory for example because they would never have heard of it. Plus of course there are a lot of bad parents to begin with and they are never going to protect their kids from social media anyway.

>>135019
That would work in an ideal world but there are too many bad parents these days and this is made worse by the increase in divorcee rates. I have an uncle who would talk about how bad social media and phones are and he would say that many people who work in tech don't let their children have access to smartphones or social media, then after he breaks up with his partner he gives his two sons smartphones(one of them was 5 at the time) and ironically it's his former partner that has a problem with kids having phones and so the kids have to hide the fact that they have them from her.

Ideals and good parenting go out of the window in situations like this I feel, as it becomes a battle of winning the affection of your child and by giving them a phone you become the cool parent and you also have a way to contact them while they are with the other parent.

>>135024
I think you may be overstating the impact it would have. For the immediate term, how many users do we have that are both 15 and under and are Australian? If we assume it was everyone 15 and under precluded from using kissu and other chans, how much has it really done?
Technically you have to be 18 and older to use these sites but that's never stopped anyone, and if you're already here chances are you have enough internet knowhow to bypass a filter.

>>135025
It's not something that would impact just those under 16. Youtube already has a system in place where users in some countries have to prove that they are over 18 to watch certain content, they have to do this by showing ID to Youtube. It's quite likely that this will be the system that's used, so every Australian would have to provide ID to use anything that is deemed to be social media.

I don't know how that would work on 4chan or kissu but in the worst case it would mean that to post you would need to create some kind of profile and provide ID for it.

It's also likely that this isn't going to be confined to just Australia. Other nations are watching this.

Something else to think about regarding areas outside of Australia and also the use of VPNs.

The government would know that there will be people who will use VPNs to bypass this, it could also argue that it's within the ability of a company like Youtube to prevent this, it could argue that Youtube could make IDs mandatory for all accounts thus preventing the use of VPNs to bypass this.

I think Australia is too small on it's own to demand that, it would probably be better for Youtube to stop operating in Australia rather than make such a huge change. But if the EU were to implement similar laws and made the same demands? That very well could force a company like Youtube to implement mandatory IDs.
Though even if the EU did adopt such laws I still think it is unlikely that they would try to force Youtube to do something like this, but it is possible.

>>135028
And then Google and Meta follow the lead of piracy sites and move all their servers to eastern Europe while the west builds its own great firewall. Sounds like fun.

I still hate the EU for ruining nearly every website with their dumb cookies popups.
Russia never did anything like that to the internet.

>>135113
Websites ruin themselves with their dumb cookies

>>135114
Anon is right, it made the web worse.
Now they secretly track us anyways while pretending not to, but we also have to deal with annoying popups.

>>135113
The worst part is 90% of them aren't even compliant and still break the law they're pretending to follow. You are required to make an incredibly easy to click reject all without having to open any extra menus or click anything extra and the agree button should not use dark patterns to make you think it's the reject button. Regardless, pretty much all websites force you to go through an annoying process so you're more likely to just press click agree to not get incredibly frustrated by a slow declining process. This is knowingly not following the EU regulations on how the banner is required to be and they may as well just not do it at all.

>>135116
I'm not terribly bothered by it, I have never ever found a worthwhile website behind a dark pattern banner. So if I see one at this point I just don't use the website.