A return to less centralized web publishing would also be bad for the many creators who lack the technical expertise or interest to jump through all the hoops required for building and hosting your own website. Maybe this seems like a pretty small friction to the median HN user, but I don't think it's true for creators in general, as evidenced by the enormous increase in both the number and sophistication of online creators over the past couple of decades.
Is that increase worth traumatizing moderators? I have no idea. But I frequently see this sentiment on HN about the old internet being better, framed as criticism of big internet companies, when it really seems to be at least in part criticism of how the median internet user has changed -- and the solution, coincidentally, would at least partially reverse that change.
Introducing a free unlimited hosting service where you could only upload pictures, text or video. There’s a public page to see that content among adds and links to you friends free hosting service pages. TOS is a give-give: you give them the right to extract all the aggregated stat they want and display the adds, they give you the service for free so you own you content (and are legally responsible of it)
Is that increase worth traumatizing moderators? I have no idea. But I frequently see this sentiment on HN about the old internet being better, framed as criticism of big internet companies, when it really seems to be at least in part criticism of how the median internet user has changed -- and the solution, coincidentally, would at least partially reverse that change.