What are some of the rules about the Internet that were taught to you but are now completely ignored?
What are some of the rules about the Internet that were taught to you but are now completely ignored?
For me, it was that the Internet never forgets and that you should never enter your real name. In my opinion, both of these rules are now completely ignored.
Don’t pick up the phone if someone is online… I’m old
You come from a nice family. My family disconnected each other all the time
I used to get hella annoyed that my mom would be online all afternoon so I would pick up the phone and blow into it for a few seconds until I heard AOL man say "Goodbye."
That, together with: I’m online, watch out for the ca… “No carrier”
I'm not that old but was dealing with that in the mid-2000s before my parents finally switched.
Don't feed the trolls.
Of course nowadays its nearly impossible to tell whos spouting racial slurs to get folks mad and whos doing it because they're just an asshole.
Don't feed the AI
More recently, this behaviour is known as "driving engagement"
I remember when it was just funny edgy humor that was clearly satirical for the most part because a lot of us were just dumb kids. It was abrasive and stupid but you had this feeling everyone was in on the joke.
But bizarre satire has turned to deeply held conviction.
I'm not just sad that the mean spirited trolling persists, but that it's gotten more sincere and often must be taken seriously. :(
When it comes to slurs and other discriminatory I don't really see a difference.
When you share something cool, link back to the original creator or where you found it from.
I’d argue this is the opposite of what was asked.
In the early days, no one would post sources or attribute “stuff” to anyone. We’d all just share what we thought were cool pictures.
Now, everyone gets mad when you dont post the name of the artist and their socials.
What people are really mad about us the fact that artists are (and always have been) starving. We throw so much food away, let the artists cook for fucks sake.
This might be more of a blogosphere-era thing I guess. Even when most people blogging did it for pleasure rather than work, it was always considered polite to "hat tip" (h/t) the source of a given link, if you happened to find it on someone else's site.
I would posit a big part of this is because early-net days were primarily for just socializing and sharing cool stuff (heck yeah, I miss it.) Artists probably didn't make a majority of their living through the 'net. If something was shared it was likely just "I think this is cool, folks!"
Nowadays, to say the Internet is heavily commercialized would be a massive understatement. Every little interaction is monetized. Many people make their entire living through e-commerce. It's just how things went.
Meanwhile you have a billion faceless sandfleas with repost-botfarms trying to hustle cash with the stupidest methods possible.
You'll see entire channels where animations or paintings or whatever are circulated on socials like youtube, twitter, or tiktok with the artist tag conveniently cropped out (if there was one).
Some are outright stealing the work for profit (selling tshirts or something), while others are just using it to farm clicks, which is also a route to profit.
The artist who made the work is cheated, perhaps unaware, as some click-grifter gets all the attention. And that sucks. :( As an artist myself, I try to make sure I share the sources for stuff now, because recognition is a form of thanks, at the very least.
I miss the sharing internet...the attention economy has basically turned the internet into a sociological illustration of "The paperclip apocalypse". :(
Social media killed online aliases and I have a hard time deciding if we're all worse for it.
Instinctively I still stick by that, though, as you can tell by my anonymous profile with no bio, but when I volunteer any amount of personal info these days people are often confused that I'm not sharing openly who I am or where I'm from. Every time someone does that it weirds me out because in the 90s telling (and asking) people those things would have been such a suspicious, sketchy move.
Shit, I provide every single service with randomly generated data, unless legally required. Just doing my part to pollute the training data.
Every time someone does that it weirds me out because in the 90s telling (and asking) people those things would have been such a suspicious, sketchy move.
And now it's come 180 in that some see it as a red flag if you don't give up that information. I had someone on a different social media site accuse me of being a bot because I wouldn't give up the specific town I'm from. I've seen it happen to others too. It is both fascinating and insane how viewpoints have changed regarding identifying yourself online.
Not only telling your real name, you weren't supposed to tell your real birthday, give away your phone number or where you lived, even just saying the city was a bit much. So filling in those things like on Facebook or LinkedIn feels very wrong but it would be even more wrong to have fake info there. So my new rule is, only add ppl I know irl to places I use my real info and everything else can I add anyone to.
Ugh, the world of "branded people." Everything is like "Add a picture of yourself, or you won't seem trustworthy!"
Yeesh. Some artists and such can make it using a pseudonym, but it's rare in more professional circles...but now if you hope to be taken seriously as a professional, you're expected to put your real super genuine self out there.
...and we get news stories of people being harassed and doxxed literally to death. It's crazy...
When reading a long text, disconnect from the internet as soon as it has loaded so you don't pay for the time you spend reading.
Don't share your personal information online.
Yeah that's definitely not being followed anymore.
(Except other dogs, and we meet every night on irc:#awoo)
Me too, thanks.
This shit's still true. I bet you're taking me seriously as you read this and everything.
"Don't believe everything you read on the internet." -Abraham Lincoln
Social media, a gorilla getting shot, two US elections, and GenAI later, we have completely fallen off this one simple rule.
Don't give your credit card details over the internet.
Nowadays people have them saved in their damn browser for convenience.
I remember being taught in school to apply source criticism, and that seems to have largely died as a concept.
This was back in the early 2000s...
You should use the Internet to get info out of it, not put your info there. If you do want to put info, it should never be traceable to you.
I just don’t get why people want so much of their life online…
It went from "don't post pictures of yourself or your real name online because you might get strangers' attention" to everyone trying to be their own version of a Max Headroom talking head to try to get the attention of all the strangers. Selfies, video selfies, talking head videos, reaction videos... all garbage.
Sometimes they do serve a purpose. While I don’t see the point of a “reactions” only YouTube channel since they get repetitive. Sometimes you wonder how people took a certain episode of your childhood anime or some episode with an interesting plot line like the red wedding. With that said, channels with no commentary and all “uh hu” or “that’s right” as the most useful additions from the “hosts” are trash.
Don't top post.
twitter built itself on doing this the most nonsensical and annoying way possible.
I’ve never used Twitter and every time I see a post with like… the original comment in the middle, a reply on top, and a reply again? On bottom? I’m like what the fuck is even how
Especially with quote retweets that are screenshots of threads with the quote retweets itself having a thread.
Breaking the rules to demonstrate how this looks dumb
Don't top post.
Gmail is super annoying at this, there is no way to automatically turn this off. I just have to delete the ellipsis every damn time
I like to think I'm reasonably intelligent but whatever the heck Gmail does with its reply "conversation" order absolutely bamboozles me. It decides to just hide messages in the middle seemingly at random too, and gives them all reply buttons.
Agh!
.. except when it's a forwarded convo and then it's okay, as per 1855.
And then when is a conversation NOT a comment or update to something you've forwarded back? The answer is never.
So it's all good.
Ew. Who does that?
The same people who carelessly hit "reply all", I imagine. Lol
Came here to say that. It actually predates common internet usage - Fidonet was a much bigger thing through the 80s and early 90s than emails, and BBS forums used it to distribute messages.
Properly quote only what you are replying to. Quote a line, reply to it. Repeat on multiple points.
Then wait a few days for a reply, of course, unless they were dialling into the same BBS.
Now we have boards like this that do a pretty good job about displaying context and quoting is less needed.
Basic forum etiquette. It's horrifying at work seeing teams "teams" (forums) used like chats, all the cross-posting and thread necromancy, people completely unable to keep topics confined to the appropriate sub-forum, etc
thread necromancy
AKA "discussing something with new information more than 31 seconds after people got bored of it"
Don't talk to strangers.
Searching things is easy so don't post something without checking it. People now don't make the slightest effort to verify a rumor or conspiracy crap.
and, conversely, posting things you have "verified"
"You're wrong! I was able to prove it with a quick Google!"
Your knowledge coming from a 'quick google' isn't the flex you think it is. Most things that can be proven with a quick google are false.
Ah, defending no research. Gotcha
On the Internet I grew up on, pretty much anything was ok except to discuss (or even speculate about) the real-world identities of users who didn't very openly disclose them.
Now many people think the latter is ok.
The same people who warned us about the dangers of the internet and not to believe everything, are now the ones readily falling for and spreading conspiracies and lies from social media.
It's tragic.
I suspect now it was never about "don't believe everything", it's just been "believe what I believe". Which I suppose follows Nietzsche's thought on the transition from religion to ideology.
Never click an ad
It's easy for people to understand with banner ads but sponsored links seem to trip them up.
Internet is a proper noun and should always be capitalized.
Well, if The Hawk says it’s all right…
THE Internet is a proper noun.
AN internet is an network of networks and is just a thing; like an intranet is.
This is the pedantry I came here for!
I never knew this until I realized my phone capitalizes it automatically.
Don't meet people from online.
Don't get into stranger's cars, and don't give out your real name or number or address on the internet.
Now you do most of these things when you call an uber. 😅
Technically so did you when calling a cab. Name, number and location
Sure, but there's no verification when calling a cab so you can use an alias if you want.
As in real life, it's pretty sound advice to ignore, block or otherwise disengage from trolls and other forms of belligerents. Even in the '90s when I first started using the internet, the phrase of the day was "don't feed the trolls". But people just can't help themselves. They will even reply saying "I know you're a troll, but...".
The Steam forums are a great example, where every other thread is a fake "is this game woke??" screed. The fact that you can be rewarded for being a cunt there with jesters (which translate into points that can be spent to buy profile items) just makes it a thousand times worse. You get 'paid' to be a troll on Steam. It's insanity.
The only anti-troll weapon that works or is needed is oblivion. Let their steaming turd of a post curdle in solitude. Don't even downvote it. Being downvoted is a victory for them, an acknowledgement that they exist and that they've gotten your attention and that they've annoyed you. Shadowban them from your mind. Block them so that no future posts of theirs will infect your screen. Report them so mods can remove/ban them. Just don't engage directly with the post or the user. Don't say "blocked and reported" in the troll's thread/post. Just do it silently.
Ive blocked so many award baiters on steam, when an update for one of the bigger games comes out the first few comment pages are filled with "you've blocked this user. If you've blocked enough of them the comments get usable again.
This is how I felt about online gameplay too. Someone being a turd? Block em. I still had some GREAT interactions with random players.
But nowadays every online game is dead silent. People are scared of toxicity so they're all sequestered in separate discord servers. Might as well be playing with bots. =\
...Pretty sick of Discord. Lol.
Don't Feed the trolls
Read -> Comprehend -> Post
Stay anonymous
Play Team Fortress on weekends. It's cheaper.
Make sure you use the right type of search engine for the type of information you want.
Don't believe everything you see. Actually I was taught that about TV, but for some reason the old folks forgot about it being applicable everywhere in life, not just on TV. They also forget about it on TV too.
Don't be a dick.
Bottom-posting eMails and Usenet posts.
Fuck you, Microsoft. Bottom-posting replies is the correct way to reply.
Is bottom-posting some kind of kink I'm not aware of?
Maybe it's in the following example, or the inverse?
Citation
Reply to citation
Bottom posting has the same issues as top posting. Inline is the correct way.
German here, I remember teaching people email etiquette and reminding them: “No TOFU” (Text Oben, Full quote Unten).
Means sth like “text above, full quote below”
Quote above, reply below was the eMail and Usenet standard from the 70s until Microsoft introduced Outlook, and more importantly, bundled Outlook Express with Windows in the mid to late 90s. Those were the first products that automatically top-posted by default, and especially on Usenet, you could almost always correctly identify an Outlook Express n00b by virtue of them top-posting.
Most of them. Don't believe everything you see, don't give out personal information or real-life pictures... the usual.
only 1 hour a day! And if you accidentally click on a wrong link, the hackers can backtrace you or send the internet police.
Oh you dun goof'd now!
1.0 ratio is the low bar, leech
There always have been the nick picks. But now sometimes there is barely any connection between the post and the comments. Like two people with multiple strokes distributed between them having an angry teams call.
*nit picks
Never disclose any real personal info.
Nothing that happens on the internet matters.
I mean... I feel like this could still apply 😅
Stick with the gopher protocol, http is too poorly implemented.
the rule should be that you don't use your name until you're like 35 and understand how to use it properly
Inline replies. Fucking top posting is for the birds.
The first rule of usenet.
Boomers are still alive, so literally all of the rules ever as fast as possible.
Special standout for "dont believe everything you read" - "Well fuck you Ill believe everything without thought"
All of them.