a thing i have found younger researchers of the late 90s internet don't really appreciate is the number of ephemeral websites made by literal children.
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a thing i have found younger researchers of the late 90s internet don't really appreciate is the number of ephemeral websites made by literal children. i was 12/13/14 making websites on freehosts for fun and i knew easily a dozen other people my age doing the same. the person who hosted the forum i was part of in high school started it at 15 on a server under his bed. there was no concept of age verification. if you had an internet connection and lax parental supervision you were good to go.
(this post is not about the utterly inane age verification laws nor is it about porn. it is about the very often ignored contributions of young people to culture.)
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a thing i have found younger researchers of the late 90s internet don't really appreciate is the number of ephemeral websites made by literal children. i was 12/13/14 making websites on freehosts for fun and i knew easily a dozen other people my age doing the same. the person who hosted the forum i was part of in high school started it at 15 on a server under his bed. there was no concept of age verification. if you had an internet connection and lax parental supervision you were good to go.
(this post is not about the utterly inane age verification laws nor is it about porn. it is about the very often ignored contributions of young people to culture.)
there is little or no evidence because we were kids. i would make things for a day and delete them. i wasn't saving stuff, and neither was anyone else
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there is little or no evidence because we were kids. i would make things for a day and delete them. i wasn't saving stuff, and neither was anyone else
but, when you have only ever known an internet that requires a credit card verification for nearly every action that isn't on a social media site, it's easy to presume children didn't have access
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but, when you have only ever known an internet that requires a credit card verification for nearly every action that isn't on a social media site, it's easy to presume children didn't have access
even researchers my own age who were either not prolifically online or who had better supervised childhoods seem to not comprehend this part of the history. i rarely see mention of the ways children used the web that aren't about sites aimed at and made for children. we were not all using those sites...
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but, when you have only ever known an internet that requires a credit card verification for nearly every action that isn't on a social media site, it's easy to presume children didn't have access
@rose_alibi there were several cases here in the UK of children being sent credit cards just for filling out a form, and the card companies not checking...
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@rose_alibi there were several cases here in the UK of children being sent credit cards just for filling out a form, and the card companies not checking...
@fcbsd yeah but you didn't need a credit card to do anything unless you were purchasing something. free hosting on angelfire and geocities didn't require a card
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@fcbsd yeah but you didn't need a credit card to do anything unless you were purchasing something. free hosting on angelfire and geocities didn't require a card
@rose_alibi even though I was an adult during that time I remember trying lots of things and never having to use a credit card or even prove who I was, and if a site was asking for CC verification I used think it was dodgy
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even researchers my own age who were either not prolifically online or who had better supervised childhoods seem to not comprehend this part of the history. i rarely see mention of the ways children used the web that aren't about sites aimed at and made for children. we were not all using those sites...
@rose_alibi I was about 14 when we got web access at home, and I don't think I ever hung out at, and hardly ever even visited, a site specifically made for kids until I did a site design research project in my late twenties.
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@rose_alibi I was about 14 when we got web access at home, and I don't think I ever hung out at, and hardly ever even visited, a site specifically made for kids until I did a site design research project in my late twenties.
@rose_alibi but I did build some angelfire and geocities sites
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@rose_alibi I was about 14 when we got web access at home, and I don't think I ever hung out at, and hardly ever even visited, a site specifically made for kids until I did a site design research project in my late twenties.
@Mabande yup. the kids sites were incredibly unappealing to a preteen/teen
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even researchers my own age who were either not prolifically online or who had better supervised childhoods seem to not comprehend this part of the history. i rarely see mention of the ways children used the web that aren't about sites aimed at and made for children. we were not all using those sites...
Here's a website started by a teenager in the 90's that's still around, because no one has bothered to delete it. His parents didn't mind, though.
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a thing i have found younger researchers of the late 90s internet don't really appreciate is the number of ephemeral websites made by literal children. i was 12/13/14 making websites on freehosts for fun and i knew easily a dozen other people my age doing the same. the person who hosted the forum i was part of in high school started it at 15 on a server under his bed. there was no concept of age verification. if you had an internet connection and lax parental supervision you were good to go.
(this post is not about the utterly inane age verification laws nor is it about porn. it is about the very often ignored contributions of young people to culture.)
@rose_alibi I like to refer to these folk as "Generation Lissa".
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@rose_alibi I like to refer to these folk as "Generation Lissa".
@moxie lissa?
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@moxie lissa?
@rose_alibi lissaexplains.com. Where a lot of us went to learn how to code once we made it past the WYSIWYG editors.
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@rose_alibi lissaexplains.com. Where a lot of us went to learn how to code once we made it past the WYSIWYG editors.
@moxie oh i learned just by looking at source code
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@moxie oh i learned just by looking at source code
@rose_alibi I did that too, but I always remember Lissa being credited all over the websites I visited so she feels representative of that era for me.
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@moxie oh i learned just by looking at source code
@moxie oh i see. looking at wiki, lissaexplains was made a year after i started building sites. i didn't see a wysiwyg til much later
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@moxie oh i see. looking at wiki, lissaexplains was made a year after i started building sites. i didn't see a wysiwyg til much later
@rose_alibi That's actually a way better place to start. I started in '97, and relied WAY too much on WYSIWYG for the first year or so. I wish I found coding first!
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@rose_alibi That's actually a way better place to start. I started in '97, and relied WAY too much on WYSIWYG for the first year or so. I wish I found coding first!
@moxie it's funny what just a 1 or 2 year difference can make in terms of exposure. i remember my first experience of the wysiwyg being very frustrating because it felt so limiting
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@moxie it's funny what just a 1 or 2 year difference can make in terms of exposure. i remember my first experience of the wysiwyg being very frustrating because it felt so limiting
@rose_alibi same! proliferation of wysiwyg web editors actively turned me off webdev. it's why there's a big gap in my website building experience between the geocities/angelfire/spree/lycos era and the neocities/nekoweb era. if I don't have a way to drop into raw html it's just a blogging platform to me (à la wordpress)
