Technology

Humanity may never see anything like the 90s-2000s era again. That was a distinct milieu of nearly unbound creation and discovery. Not only did corporations remained skeptical of the internet. People were highly averse to being manipulated because the internet was untrustworthy. Paradoxically that's what made the internet trustworthy. Once trust was established of course. It was a perfect mix of factors that made it a unique period in history.

I feel like there has been waves of losses.

• Web 2.0 upgrades made everyone feel like they had to have a shiny polished site. We lost a lot of fun amateurs.

Once apps started getting pushed websites started to get abandoned/empty. everything from shopping to small games. I shouldn't need an app for the coffee shop.

Bots and bad search operators made looking and finding a chore.

Insta killed blogs, suddenly everyone wanted a insta or YT brand rather than a blog/rss

• Everything became sponsored =- say i wanted to find out how to polish my boots, the first 3 pages and everything everywhere suddenly tries to sell me boots.

This is why i no longer enjoy the internet. I know i sound old man yelling at cloud.

How does he create these cool pictures?

The internet isn’t the internet anymore. It’s walled off, corporatized, and exclusionary.

The internet used to be for people.

Now it’s for profit.

IDK what. Internet and people are usually shallow. Internet is shallow since like 2005 when it became more widespread and accessible. Sometimes I find myself raising autistic kids on it.

There was that video game Prey. Where the people had their stuff outsourced to flying toaster AI robots called operators. So they can be present patiently and persistent everywhere. You could have like a doctor flying toaster. I want that. I have seen how limited are human doctors under these current circumstances of being in an overly monetized system.

Also human connections are important, but they are usually flawed and backfire.

Not like that people are wrong, they just suffer from this fetal alcohol syndrome and pregnant smoking related innate oxygen deprivation and stuff like that.

I've actually started to enjoy internet more recently. I went back to IRC, found a nice network with a wholesome community which is growing all the time. Recently added a phpbb based forum, which is not very active yet but thats more because its fairly new. Lots of self hosting enthusiasts there, I've learned a bunch. Spent the last few weeks setting up Jellyfin and Navidrome for my dad to use, so he doesnt have to deal with repeats on the Telly or pay for stupid subscriptions. I did the navidrome with a old laptop, I put in a headless Debian and use it through SSH on my Fedora. A year ago I barely knew how to do "sudo apt install", without this community I wouldnt have been able to do any of it. For the first time in 15 years, I'm enjoying my time online. Like properly enjoying.

So its not about internet being ruined, its about finding that spot that you can enjoy. Let people rot their brains in tiktak and facetagram, you find yourself a nice community of like minded people. It takes some effort, but the communities are there. And if they are not, make one yourself.

2nd to last paragraph:

And this isn’t some anti-AI screed — I’m all-in on agentic software engineering!

Maybe all this bullshit is a needed step to bring back old internet

We need forums back.. the fediverse is a good start in my book.

Learning about the world through 500-character snippets, or 30-second videos, is not a serious way to engage with knowledge.

Just don't consume it. Same for blogs.

It's like junk food. It's not going away, so just don't consume it.

I've long thought that we need a web 3.0 that uses a different protocol entirely and is techie and difficult like getting on bbs'es was in the 80s . For a good 20 years until that one gets enshitified too we have another chance.

The internet is in small communities we shitpost in along the way

I hope that we’ll collectively decide that it’s rude to pass off LLM writing as your own, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

We won’t unless we stop the source perpetuating this “culture.”

Big Tech.

Unfortunately, they kinda have a grip on everyone’s information sphere, so I think our chances are low :(

It's a good post, I agree with it. And I guess The Pale is a good description of what we are noticing.

I got to experience the internet before it became like this, so at least I have memories of greatness. But the desire for great profits ruins everything. Not only the internet but the world.

Greed for excessive amounts of money is the root of evil, the bible got that right. But humans are not aware enough to see a future where greed is not the driving force of society.

The undernet is growing as the overnet is bloated and dying of it's own poison.

Everything gets enshittified - Capitalised, and nothing good ever comes out of those leeches and parasites.

The Capitalist religion crushed a new global, free and open digital community landscape. Say loud and proud: 'thank you Capitalist believer', for how it looks and works today..

Not a bad post and has some good points but I think they're reacting to broader social changes. Not just the Internet. That mentioned co-workers, and that to me indicates a broader issue.

I don't know who are they, but they could just curate their online experience by looking for something that is actually organic and genuine, and drop their anchors on that.

Can we make a new internet?

There's part of me that thinks this is pure nostalgia bait - we grew up on the internet, we're middle-aged now, everything was better when we were young, shake fist at cloud.

OTOH, author isn't wrong. The mainstream net genuinely ain't what she used to be. The exact blame for that I don't know and it doesn't matter - we're in the shit now.

That's why niche sites like Lemmy, small web, RSS feeds etc are still so valuable. They're messy and human, like things used to be (tm). The trouble is finding them.

What I notice most is that I don't really search anymore; I use the internet like an appliance. "Want info about A, go to X. Want info about B, go to Y".

It's all horribly efficient. In fact, in a recent !privacy comment (on best search engines) I basically said "I don't really search any more. Search is shit. I use these tools instead"

https://aussie.zone/comment/24223554

So the author's point about use of AI tools is worth chewing on (what with Lemmy being famously anti-AI). I think we're now at the point where AI-assisted tools - self-hosted for me, thanks - are the best way to find those rabbit holes worth exploring. Even a small llm (Gemma-4-e4b) tied into good MCP tools can produce a really good "super Google, without the spam, find me X".

In fact, one of the main reasons I self host (yes, mine's solar powered) is that specifically.

https://aussie.zone/comment/24336560

OTOH, you could always mirror your own internet. With black jack. And hookers.

https://aussie.zone/comment/24257247

Ultimately though, I think smaller, more curated space (yes, like Lemmy and yes, please stop trying to turn it into the next Reddit) are going to be the last bastions of the old internet.

Try to look at it as the chapter of the internet as we know it is over. I feel the same way as this author but I hold out hope innovation will happen.

Someone will fill the void. How and when it happens remains to be seen. There was a time not too long ago when it was unfathomable for people to have computers in their pocket.

The simpsons will probably predict it.

I only enjoy very specific hobby subs\forums. Beyond that you can't find anything because all the search engines rank to by ads. Looking for a real review is a joke, its all AI\bogus.

YT is getting worse w/ all the AI slop. I just stick to my channels that again are hobby/interests I have that haven't gone AI (yet).

I haven't been on FB for over 10 years, no IG, no tic flop, or other social media because its a nightmare.