The web is a ghetto

You ever ask yourself, fellow HNer, why people use apps on their phones instead of websites? No? I’ll tell you anyway, because the web is a ghetto.

In a word, ads. There’s too many of them. The web actually works very poorly without them. Try online shopping with ads blocked, it’s impossible. So I’m sure between affiliate links and articles full of ads, somewhere in there people realized instagram is bad, sure but at least the ads are predictable and not jumping up and down on the screen asking them to install apps or consent to cookies.

We did this to ourselves. In our never ending quest to turn eyeballs into cash, we’ve turned what was probably the best software platform ever invented into a ghetto. And that is where it will stay as it occupies a smaller and smaller slice of people’s software lives. We’ll be telling our kids about a crazy experiment that took off and then died with the rise of smartphones, watches and AR sunglasses.

So long web and thanks for all the fish 🐟 🐠