People’s/companies’ own websites aren’t commons. The protocols that make up the web itself haven’t degraded through use; this is no more a tragedy of the commons than if every shop in your town made you wait a few seconds before you could go inside.
There’s no need to be so rude. I’m not being obtuse; I understand their point, I just disagree with it.
The internet itself is not degraded by some major news sites being slow. Their misuse of their part of the internet doesn’t affect it overall, thus it is not tragedy of the commons. Most of the websites I use on a day to day basis (GitHub, Stack Exchange, HN, most smaller blogs that I find through HN, etc.) do not have this problem. The experience of those sites isn’t made worse by other companies’ sites being bad so, again, it’s not a tragedy of the commons.
The internet as experienced by the average human is a poorer experience because of the advertising and spyware/tracking.
This is almost universally true, even if small areas have been fenced off. The fact that you can limit your use of the internet to HN and a few other sites is in fact a luxury.
I think his point is that the protocols are the internet.
I mean, the "internet" is just the word we give to the interconnected network of computers spanning the globe. It doesn't exist as a thing per se, but as an idea. The internet can never be slow. Your connection to a certain site can be slow. Whether that site is a particular web page or the internet service provider's router that provides you with access to the greater network.
In this case the internet is the sum of the online services people interact with.
Most websites are using advertising and spyware-like tracking, to the point that it can be said that interacting with the internet will be a poor experience without an ad blocker. There will always be the odd oasis website, but the internet has been completely swallowed by spyvertising.
No, they’re completely not. Trends are not a shared resource such that a few people misusing it harms that resource for everyone. Something being common doesn’t make it a commons. Any website can choose not to do these things - just look at HN. They’re not a necessary shared resource, in the same way that all Baltic countries must fish from the same sea.
