>>26838

Old man alert but the Internet has been getting more and more boring as it's become more and more centralized and thereby censored.

When I first started using the internet we used to joke that the next generation would be the first to only know the internet as a Web Browser (and never see FTP/finger/gopher/telnet/NNTP etc). Now it's more like the last few generations only know the internet as a bunch of apps on their mobile phone.

"The Internet", for most people boils down to news sites, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram and, for us, a minor image board for tea, toast, and shed enthusiasts.

Anyway, to stop moaning and actually answer your question I use the internet primarily for work. Both to log into remote servers over a vpn and to perform research for my projects. I also steal a LOT of python code and stackoverflow. I have no shame.

Outside of work I have an instagram, I use spotify and youtube for music (mainly on my phone). I also use youtube to subscribe to some specific channels that involve martial arts that I practice and I also have subscriptions to some very specific martial arts websites.

Does Netflix count as internet use? I feel like it should.

>>26838
>>26840

Oh and pornography, obviously.

The old man at >>26840 is right. It used to be more interesting.

IRC, BBS, even regular forums for specialist subjects used to be what I'd spend most of my time doing, there was even a local forum that was surprisingly active, and also Totse was a big one.

Now, it's easier and quicker to just go on reddit. But on there, or the surviving specialist forums, there's not much in the way of discussion. If you ask a question you'll be told to use the search function or fuck off, and since most of those posters have been there for a decade or more, you'll never really find fresh conversation.

My time on the internet now is lurking here, researching work stuff, watching youtube, wanking, and playing online multiplayer games, in roughly that order.

You used to just be able to go somewhere like bored.com and find loads of stuff to do.

>>26842

> Now, it's easier and quicker to just go on reddit. But on there, or the surviving specialist forums, there's not much in the way of discussion.

This is definitely true. Most of reddit is just a group hug / circle jerk of people saying "I know I'll get downvoted for this [says something that everyone is obviously going to upvote]", bad puns, and quoting song lyrics in a series of replies. It's basically all the worst things about the internet stuck into a quarantine zone.

There are some interesting subreddits, in that you can read what other people have posted and learn something, but these self same subreddits generally aren't useful because the high traffic means that your post or question is likely going to get ignored.

Basically I miss Usenet and I wish it would come back. There are still some telnet/ssh BBS systems around but the communities there are far more insular and elitist than anything you'll find on even the worst subreddit.

I use 4chan mostly, but most of it is shit nowadays. /pol/ has infected pretty much every board, and I can't discuss video games or TV/film without being bombarded with threads about how Game X is shit because it has a female protagonist or Movie Y is degenerate for showing a black man with a white woman. The only board I can tolerate is the alternative sports (ie wrestling) one, because it's mostly shitposting without any of the alt-right influence.

>>26844
/asp/, /sp/ and /fit/ are the only good boards, i suspect because the people who use them aren't 15 pretending to be 18 and are self-aware enough to make fun of the thing they're interested in.

I browse FB insofar as what I've been tagged in, browse here, I browse the above, I spelunk in TOR occasionally, youtube channels like The Jimquisition and LinusTechTips, Kiwifarms and the freemasonry subreddit. The latter has an IRC with lots of IT blokes who are a rite laff and they introduced me to a few podcasts I now subscribe to.

Oh, and I suppose my IPTV subscription for Sports and my PS4 and my Switch would count as "Internet" too.

I watch hardly any porn these days, because the anti-porn movement on /fit/ has got under my skin, and the stuff I do watch is almost exclusively softcore.

>>26838
I wish I knew. Far too much of my time is completely unaccounted for, sitting behind this computer screen. Drowning in wikipedia articles and pointless arguments on the other place, I guess.

>>26840
I feel like the negative impact of censorship is overstated. Much worse are the dynamics behind centralised communities and the way that creates a monoculture. It fascinates me reading about (or just watching) old TV shows and having them come up with entertaining euphemisms or long-winded insults, and I'm certain it's not because they were better writers, but because if they just called a twat a twat the BBC wouldn't run their show. I get the impression in a system like that, censorship encourages creative quality.

>>26846

>Much worse are the dynamics behind centralised communities and the way that creates a monoculture.

It's astonishing just how quickly Marshall McLuhan's ideas have disappeared from mainstream discourse.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_Media

Nothing really, I just burn time. Hopefully I'll die soon.

>>26848
THE DREAM.

>>26846
>I get the impression in a system like that, censorship encourages creative quality

I think the issue is a lack of creativity full stop. Everything is about instant gratuity. It's about making snappy statements that look pithy at face value but completely lack substance. It's about sharing image macros that greatly oversimplify an issue. It's about vacuous clickbait to draw people in. It's all about the pursuit of likes or ad revenue. Nuance is almost entirely dead.

today i used the internet to send the job center this xmas card picture is dole office. yes the internet is shite now.

(A good day to you Sir!)

>>26851 Prince charles would hate that building

>>26852

Prince Charles has fucking awful taste.

>>26853

Truth

>>26854 Very true dumping this for that

Configuring distribution, aggregation and core nodes mostly. Making it work, to speak tersely. Wait, you're about leisure, aren't you?
Like what you do mostly minus news. Add a few IRC chats which for some reason remain active to this day.
> All of the other forums I used to visit have either died or
...corrupted to the point of disgust or were flooded by waves of clueless berks and died shortly thereafter.
Sometimes I burn an hour or two looking what the young lads do on the Net these days.

In general, at some point of time I tried to cut the majority of the useless faff in my life. That included mindless web browsing.
Add that it all became less interesting as more and more government busy-bodies introduce censorship, block lists and data retention.

There's and old city forum that used to be the forefront of the online life of the place I live but faded into obscurity as the Net connection became faster, globalised and social networks stepped in. I visit it from time to time, reading old topics. I'm unsure if I'm nostalgic about it or the time when I was younger.

>>26845
> because the anti-porn movement on /fit/ has got under my skin, and the stuff I do watch is almost exclusively softcore.
What?

I tried joining a facebook group for one of my interests lately. I'm on an IRC revolving around the same thing and it's nice there, I thought they might be similar. Turns out it's nothing but people with severe mental issues doing the sort of horrendous trolling drama you'd get somewhere like 888chan back in the day; just group harassing and demonising other people with similar mental issues. Fuck that noise.

You lads are all talking about alive IRCs, what ones are you talking about?! The only ones with even more than a few lines a day are linux help rooms, which, while useful, is hardly scintillating.

I'm still sad that ours is barren.

>>26859

We should probably get a Discord TBH, no cunt uses IRC any more.

>>26860
Why would a dead Discord be better than a dead IRC channel?

>>26856
>...corrupted to the point of disgust or were flooded by waves of clueless berks and died shortly thereafter.

The worst experience I've had of a forum going completely tits up was the moderators deciding that kids might visit and use them so everything in the public forums had to be child friendly; no swearing or discussion of anything they felt was be inappropriate. The level of activity was completely decimated.

>>26860
I don't hold out high hopes many will make the switch but here's one if you want to give it a go: https://discord.gg/ssjUpBZ

Discord is up, it appears there are now 4 of us. Anyway, if you have rare and spicy .gs images we could add as emotes post them in the channel or in the thread and we'll add them.

>>26864

I have joined, don't make me regret it

>>26864
>if you have rare and spicy .gs images we could add as emotes
That's a yikes from me, dawg.

(A good day to you Sir!)

>>26860

Fuck discord and all centralised services.

>>26868
Said a user of a centralised service.

>>26868

Make people go back to irc then pal.

>>26869

HTTP is not a centralized service you snivelling inchworm.

>26871
I'm confused. If britfags isn't centralised because it's HTTP based why is Discord's browser client centralised?

>>26871
Jesus wept.

>>26868

I'm curious as to why you're so against a centralised chat service, particularly on a room that is open to anyone with access to this site anyway. It can't be a privacy concern as anyone could join the channel either way.

Is it really that much better that a chat server is ran in someone's shed, or do you just not like the hassle of remembering what your email address is for the sign in screen?

>>26873
>>26874
>>26874

Let me expound a bit so you lads can catch up on your internet know-how while I get some kip in.

HTTP, IRC, NNTP etc are all open source protocols, publicly available via various RFCs.

That means that if every company on earth decided to pull IRC tomorrow, I would still be able to code my own IRC software and other people would be able to build and run my code and suddenly we'd have our own IRC network (and the whole process would probably take something like a week if I used something like python for a version 0.1).

If Reddit, Google Groups, Skype, Discord, etc go down, good luck trying to replicate their protocols and making a half way decent working client.

I still remember the god-awful attempts of the libmarple/Pidgin team to try to deal with ICQ/MSN/Yahoo chat protocols.

>>26873
> I'm confused. If britfags isn't centralised because it's HTTP based why is Discord's browser client centralised?

Because I could replicate .gs in 15 minutes tomorrow, hangover and all. See above for why I couldn't replicate Discord if it disappeared.

>>26874
For you, my son.

>>26875

Really that's a personal decision, lad. Either you want some kind of effort towards a decentalized platform and freedom of speech or you don't. I'm not going to be successful in convincing you either way.

>>26876
>freedom of speech
You're just as free to say whatever you like on the .gs discord server as you would be here or on IRC, unless I'm missing something.

>>26876

>Either you want some kind of effort towards a decentalized platform and freedom of speech or you don't.

Get over yourself you knobend, we're talking about a chat application, and specifically in the context of talking to fellow shed enthusiasts. If we were talking about using it for secure work communications, or coordinating a rebellion, or even just maintaining communications in the face of corporate takeover, then you'd have a great point. But we're talking about using it to have a natter. If it disappears tomorrow, who cares.

If you want to fight the good fight, then work out a way to get people to use IRC instead of these feature rich and integrated solutions. There's been more activity on this brand new .gs discord than there has been in months of .gs irc, so good luck.

>>26877
I find it very hard to believe that the IRC mods enforce Discord's terms of service and community guidelines.

>>26877

He's saying that at any time Big Discord could cut off your communications and you'd not have any way to combat that. I think he might be taking a gaming-focused chat app a bit too seriously though.

>>26879

The IRC mods ban you if they feel like it, at least Discord has a structure.

>>26881
>The Company reserves the right to remove and permanently delete Your Content from the Service with or without notice for any reason or no reason.

>>26882

Oh, so it's the same then.

>>26881
U wot?

There hasn't been a ban placed on IRC for nearly 3 years and before that only three in the space of 6-7 years.

>>26882
The content in question being smokester emotes.

Diddums.

>>26884

I'm not moaning about IRC bans you moron, I'm pointing out there's no "free speech" guarantee on IRC unless it's your own server.

>>26886
Even then, who uses their own server these days? Hackers on toast? Most people use Rizon or Snoonet, who also have terms of service.

>>26887
britfa.gs

>>26888
Yeah, but we have a competent admin in purps to run it. Still, you're taking for granted that his unsigned ssl cert is secure and taking it for granted when you use this site that Amazon aren't using our posting habits to sell tat to us, as we're hosted on their servers.

>>26889
Amazon makes more money selling servers. It's preposterous to suggest they'd seriously jeopardise their cloud business to bolster their eCommerce sales.

>>26890

Why aren't you able to distinguish between hypothetical scenarios in aid of a discussion about a general concept, and a literal accusation?

>>26876

That's you, that is.

>>26891
So am I unwise for taking it for granted or not?

>>26892
I wasted 2:09 listening to what he had to say only to learn from the video description that the point of the video has nothing to do with what he's saying.

Why did I just read all of that?

Discord fascinates me. Every discord channel seems to have essentially the same discord culture. Even my private chat with a friend who goes back long before Discord was a thing has kind of drifted in that direction, even though we'd never act like that outside Discord.

I'm normally a big free software, open protocol kind of guy but Discord displacing IRC pleased me. In more recent years, every IRC channel I'd visit would be a cliqueish shithole with 3 posts per day and my patience for that kind of thing has worn thin. With Discord I could probably join a knitting enthusiast channel and be shitposting about people who buy overpriced artisan wool like a local in 25 minutes. The loss of cultural diversity may be a downside, but frankly it was dead the minute new blood stopped flowing in. Discord merely affirmed the new status quo.

>>26896
>Every discord channel seems to have essentially the same discord culture.
I can't say that's been my experience. I'm in a number of discords that are all quite unique to themselves. I have had to actively seek them out however and they're all noticeably slower than your average shitcord.

>>26859
The one I'm still visiting was originally a New Year Eve celebration channel for those who for whatever reason happened to be at home at that odd moment of time. It almost died after about a fortnight, with only 3 or 4 lads remaining there. We started to chat about unrelated topics and eventually formed some sort of a weird online friendship that has been lasting for about 11 years for now.
At various points of time other folks joined, left but the core group still remains pretty much the same.

It's mildly dreadful to look back and realise that eleven years ago means 2007 and not 1997.

Of other channels, 420chan's IRC remains rather active.

>>26862
Happened to one forum I frequented as well. There was a lassmod, a stay-at-home housewife AFAIR who had ample amounts of time to keep the thing clean of spam. She never specialised in what the forum used to be about, being more like a janitor, but a decent person overall who never interfered with the forum's operation.
Sadly it all went tits up after she had a kid and decided to pour her maternal instincts not only on the poor little bugger but on the forum as well. It didn't end well.

>>26877
As far as I'm aware, Discord are involved in some dubious data-mining practices. I don't have links at me right now so feel free to consider this a brain fart.
That's about the only thing I have against Discord besides the fact that I dislike Electron. There's a plugin for my favourite [0] IM client anyway so if I ever decide to use it, I'll make do with the plugin.

[0] Or rather, the least shite one.

>>26890
Not really.

So is this Discord thing like Slack for people too poor to get into Slack?

>>26899

I don't think it's anything to do with how poor you are, slack is aimed at professionals while discord is aimed at games. The latter has a pricing scheme but it's optional and is for daft things like emojis.

>>26899

Different products, different markets, different focus. Slack is an excellent business communications tool and has a lot of features that Discord lacks. Discord is an excellent chat tool for gamers and has a lot of features that Slack lacks.

>>26898
>Happened to one forum I frequented as well. There was a lassmod...

The forum I used to frequent going tits up coincided with a 'full-time mum' being made head moderator.

>>26902
I swear a real way to test a person is to give them a small amount of power on the internet and see what they do with it.

>>26904

That's true outside of the internet, too, but you're right.

I do think on a forum, there's a tendency for it to snowball as people will start making posts like "ponyfan69 is a tyrant!#$#" and in response they'll get even more ban happy when they feel backed into a corner. I think it's why anonymous moderating ends up much more reliable.

>>26865

I regret it.

>>26916
What happened?

>>26916
>>26918
Ah, nevermind. I see the problem. Weaponised autism. "Lets make a Discord!" [set invisible, never use Discord through fear of socialising]

>>26919

There's more bots on the server than people, I'm not surprised nobody is talking. Also you're only assuming everyone is appearing offline. Perhaps they're actually offline.

>>26920
>Perhaps they're actually offline.
This is .gs, they're almost certainly not actually offline.

>>26920
What's the difference if they don't interact?

>>26922

The difference is that if they're actually offline then they aren't able to interact, you nubbin.

I think we just don't have enough people to sustain conversation on here AND a discord. I reckon you need at least ten people to sustain an IRC/chat community, and even with the duck hunt bots and whatever we don't have ten.

>>26920
Bots are tools, I'm not seeing your point. The ones there are for (in theory) linking new threads made from here via RSS *cough*purps*cough*, letting you search for youtube videos, imgur images, etc, using keywords and a daft duckhunt game with it's own channel no one has interacted with yet.

There have been 3 users who've entered then immediately left... presumably, because it's dead and everyone is appearing offline. 2 posts were made today from people appearing offline, so that isn't a theory, and the two who are online are me and another who is set to DND.

Fantastic server we have going here.

Audible mirth. The lad whose bright idea this was to begin with has now left the channel in the huff, not before posting while appearing offline to half-heartedly justify appearing offline.

Never change .gs.

It's absolutely hilarious to me that even a completely failed attempt at replicating the IRC has already lead to drama.

I just wanted to talk about Come Dine with Me again with andro

Ok, this is now a gay erp server. Hit me up.

>>26924
No, I left because half of the reported membership were actually bots.

>>26931
Is that why you also deleted your discord account? Bit extreme...

>>26931

Surely you could have just deleted them all as admin?

>>26931
And yet, by all accounts, you created the server to talk to people and then did what with the people who were there? Appeared offline and didn't post.

>>26932
I don't think "Deleted User" means they deleted their own account. The only times I've seen that it's been because discord itself deleted them for some reason.

>>26935
The plot thickens.

>>26932 >>26933 >>26934
I don't even. You've noticed it makes no sense at all for my reply to come from the admin. Why can't you pursue that line of reasoning just a little bit further?

>>26937
You replied as if to directly address something, in a post which mentioned 3 seperate instances of something happening and which was almost immeadiatlely followed by the revelation that the admin had a teary and fled.

So, maybe something along the lines of "I can only speak for myself, but I joined and then left because..." rather than how you worded it, which made it seem like you were replying to the other post with a bizarre justification for your behavious and linked the wrong one, would have been less confusing.

>>26938

It's still a lot of our fault for not reading the post number he replied to, mind.

>>26938
Not him, but something something anonymous imageboard.

Fucking hell, lads. We should just stop trying to interact with each other. Look what happens when we do.

>>26941
We're .gs users, and therefore hardwired for cunt-offs.

>>26941

If only we had some sort of website we could post in, to talk to each other anonymously. That would solve a lot of our problems.

>>26943
Talking to each other is the source of all our problems.

OP here again. I've tried getting into Reddit but it's not really for me. I'm now at a loss as to what to try next.

Bloody hell. By the sounds of it I didn't miss much on that discord you tried to set up. I was just scared you'd all take the piss out of me for having a furfag display picture and I can't be arsed making separate accounts for shit like that.

>>27435

I tried that too about 6 months ago. It's a matter of finding the best subreddits for your worldview, not necessarily interests. Say you like knitting- You can't just join r/knitting, there's liberal knitting, conservative knitting, intersectional knitting, class reductionist knitting, trotsky knitting, and so on. You will be outed as an enemy infiltrator the moment you try make a joke on the wrong one.

After that the most fun you can have is seeing how controversial of a post you can make but still get upvoted. I'm pretty sure that's the main objective of Reddit.

>>27436
Yeah I thought I'd join a few smaller subreddits I have quite a bit of specialist knowledge in, but it's largely a mixture of people asking the most basic questions that are covered in the stickies/sidebar and people with a little bit of knowledge giving woefully misinformed answers.

In the end I realised I was only using it to watch videos of animals, car crashes and people getting hurt or fighting which you can find easily enough elsewhere.

>>26842
>If you ask a question you'll be told to use the search function or fuck off, and since most of those posters have been there for a decade or more, you'll never really find fresh conversation.
To be honest that's how i feel about this place, sometimes.

>>27438

If the archive was open and we had a search function that'd be about right.

>>27436
It's really active, no one gives a fuck about your profile picture you spacker.

I've recently started visiting a forum I was quite active in from 2006 until I got bored of it c. 2013. It's like fucking groundhog day and I'm glad I left. I never thought I'd particularly grown up and matured but going back there has really shown me that I've moved on with my life since then.

>>27672
Wow, okay, rude.

>>27673

Guess he out grew us and took up watching Rick and Morty.

>>27673>>27674
Considering I check Carol Vorderman's Twitter account on an almost daily basis, with the sole intention of posting any pictures of her on /iq/, I don't think I'm going to outgrow this place any time soon.