Technology

Saying the internet was better is a haze of nostalgia, a gross underappreciation of new technologies, and a smattering of truth.

Over 38% of the stuff I flush down the toilet is gone forever, too, and that's ok.

The early Internet was interesting only because it was new and different. Most of the stuff out there was low-quality stuff just for funsies projects. The barrier to entry is still very low. Anyone who wants to put up a website with whatever they're interested in requires no technical expertise and isn't even expensive. But you don't see a lot of that because it's not new or exciting and few people are going to waste their time on it. On the upside, you can now throw up your own federated content system with relatively little work and have a huge community for very very little. Things are gone chiefly because they weren't worth saving. Sure, there are exceptions like DPReview, but they even got a reprieve because they were worth keeping.

Before the advent of filter bubbles, the internet was a creative playground where people explored different ideas, discussed varying perspectives, and collaborated with individuals from “outgroups” – those outside their social circles who may hold opposing views.

And how did anyone find those varying perspectives? Everything was unindexed, even search engines were crap. Fark, Digg and Slashdot, link aggregators and forums are the same as they've always been. Are the majority of those conversations gone? Sure, but you can find another 25,000 of them on Reddit, x, Instagram, and Lemmy, and when those are gone, some other service will replace them.

If people are moving to algo-driven social media, it's because they perceive it as advantageous to them. I found the algo ate too much of my time and moved back to diverse and static youtube clients.

I'm still glad for online ordering, wikipedia, small digital communities, youtube, email, and lots of stuff.

The rest of it is inevitable. And it requires being able to put down the phone and step away from the keyboard.

That is what we need to be able to do.

Move away from the shiny rectangle for a bit for eye contact socializing, too.

I think monetization ruined it. There's a lot more trash to sift through.

To a large degree, the same internet that used to be, still is.

Keep in mind that in the era they are nostalgic for, the internet involved roughly 4% of the world's population. As big in the public conciousness was, it was a relatively small thing.

For example, most people see Lemmy as pretty small and much slower content coming at you than reddit. However Lemmy is still way bigger than what a mid 90s experience with the internet would be. I can still connect to play BBS Door games and there's barely anyone there, but there were barely any people there back then either. The "old" internet is still there, it's just small compared to the vast majority of the internet that came about later.

Some things are gone, but replaced. For example Geocities now has neocities, which is niche by today's standards, but wouldn't be shocked if neocities technically is bigger than geocities ever was in absolute terms.

Some things are gone and won't come back. The late 2000s saw a really nice and stable all-you-can-watch streaming experience from Netflix, and their success brought about maddening licensing deals where material randomly appears, moves, and disappears and where a lot of material demands more to "rent" than buying an actual Blu Ray disc of it would cost (have gone back to buying discs as of late because it's cheaper than streaming).

This. Lemmy is the way to go. Decentralized Communities connected via API.

I don't see many other possibilities. The system needs a "free for ever" mechanic or big money shits into everything.