The emergence of social media has destroyed all the small communities to standardize communication and information.
It’s a bit of a digital version of rural exodus. And since 2017/2018, I’ve noticed that everything that, in my opinion, represented the internet has disappeared.
I’ve known Lemmy for a few hours and I feel like I’m back in the early spirit of the internet.
Some of my best memories online are in golden era Tumblr, which was a pretty big social media. So I don’t think social media, per se, is the issue.
The feeling you’re talking about pretty much always happens when you find a small community. Like when you move to a small town and life just somehow feels more personal. Those are still around, they just aren’t well known (but they never really were). I mean it’s like there are a lot of very large cities today but small towns are still there too.
I feel like it’s a mix of quite a few things, social media is DEFINITELY a big part of the problem but the monetisation of EVERYTHING is the main problem.
When the Internet was becoming more mainstream around the world (late 90s) most people who put content on there didn’t do it for money, they did it just to share knowledge/thoughts or just be part of a small niche community.
This meant while there was less content it was more meaningful, and it got to the point quickly as it didn’t need to show you ads etc.
Recipie sites show this perfectly, people used to just post family recipes in cooking forums, now it’s all personal blogs riddled with ads splattered between the person’s life story and multiple requests to subscribe to related guff.
Ultimately the goal of the Internet shifted from “sharing knowledge/communicating” to “show as many ads as possible”. This makes 90% of each site filler to stop you getting to the 10% too quickly, so you get snagged on ads etc.
This is why AI is great for companies, they can put in the important 10% and have it make up the 90%, but it’s just adding more noise to the Internet.
Also pair this problem with search engines that now take advantage of the noise to provide “summary” blurbs which mean you don’t even visit the sites directly so they don’t get the revenue, the search engines do, I think there is a term for this “one click results” or something.
Its such a shame, I loved the Internet from like 1995-2005, you could search for something and get really good information and facts on the subject quickly. Now the same sort of things are lost amongst the filler sites that just aggregate information and regurgitate it as their own, or just out uninformed opinions (maybe even AI results) as content as if it’s from experts etc.
I could go on for ages on the subject as there are so many facets to the problem but I can’t see any real solutions, it’s just a midden heap.
So I will preface my comment with the fact that I hate Internet ads and do everything within my power to block and/or avoid them. Aside from being annoying they’re a blatant security and malware risk, and I avoid them for that reason alone.
That being said, hosting websites gets pretty expensive pretty fast when lots of people come to your site, especially with the advent of much higher bandwidth media that goes along with better quality images and video.
In my opinion the fact that the majority of people just have an expectation that everything online should be free is THE problem. I was there when the Internet was free and open and without ads. That was the culture, and the root of the issue we have today is that that culture is the foundation of the general expectation that it should continue to be so.
But that’s not sustainable with the costs involved in hosting today. Shit costs money yo, why should other people bear that so you can search for recipes for free without it being annoying for you?
The fact that nobody is willing to pay for content via subscriptions or paid apps is literally why the ad-based model is the overwhelming majority of the Internet, and apps, and why data collection/sales is so rampant.
Web development and running a webpage is not easy. Even for those that are skilled enough that it’s easy for them, it takes a ton of time. Usually multiple people’s time for any site with enough visitors to make it a good site. App development is hard and takes a skill set that requires a lot of training or time investment to learn. Why should all that go for free for you?
Until people are willing to pay for content they find valuable the Internet will be a hell hole ridden with ads. YouTube ads are awful, but do you have any idea how much it costs to run YouTube? You think someone should just absorb that out of the goodness of their hearts? Ridiculous.
The goal of the Internet is still to share information and communicate, but all the hardware and bandwidth and time costs real dollars, and the only way for most sites to recoup that is via ads because people just won’t pay anything if given an option, they’ll just go to another site that has free content, because there’s SO MUCH stuff that you can generally find what you want, for free with ads, somewhere else.
There’s only two possible solutions that I see:
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everyone starts being willing to pay for content they find valuable. I don’t see this happening. There’s too many people that share your opinion without taking into account what it costs to actually run a modern website.
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some complicated type of system that directly pays websites for use, based off of usage from people. I think this is almost too complicated to implement that it’s likely impossible with today’s Internet. If we want to also maintain privacy/anonymity when surfing I can’t see how this can ever work - so unless we have some future system where people are uniquely identifiable on the Internet, and then some additional system that somehow “fairly” compensates websites for traffic from users, this won’t happen. It would need to involve ISPs, their customers, and web site owners in some coordinated payment system to work.
Not to sound too preachy but to me your comment comes off as super entitled.
I pay for apps that I think are valuable, even ones with no cost like Signal. Because I value what they provide. I subscribe to sites that I find valuable enough to do so when it’s an option. I abhor data collection and ads and I fight them without prejudice. But even I don’t think I pay enough directly to offset how much I cost providers, I’m sure I don’t, but that’s mostly laziness because it’s a pain to pay every site directly so I donate to the ones I really appreciate and use heavily. If I could pay my ISP for my link and then have a direct credit system that throws dollars and cents directly into website coffers as I use them, that would be great - but I don’t want to give up my privacy either, so… Yeah.
Long story short, ad-based content is going nowhere until there’s a fundamental shift in either people or how the Internet operates.
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I have been here for a few months and Lemmy is gonna disappoint you too, my friend.
You’re not alone at all. The old Internet died the day Facebook became the dominant social media app and gave the corpo their first real foothold into the digital sphere since the Dot Com Bust. It’s not a space for free expression and information sharing anymore. Now it’s all fucking ads, slop, and grifting.
Pretty much but don’t let that stop you from posting in other place. I try to make habit of posting in game forums of games I’m playing in. Sometime they have decent off-topic section where you can talk about other stuff. Only normies stick to social medias, us nerds stick to real internet.
Yup. It discouraged people from being anonymous and made stupid website accounts be extremely valuable to people.
So it’s not about having a conversation with people it’s about saying the right things so your account becomes more popular. You don’t want to change your opinion on anything because people are following your account because they liked the thing you’ve said in the past. A stupid website account is a major part of your identity and your past opinions are also part of your identity.
So something that might’ve been just some weird phase in a small part of your life becomes a calcified part of your identity. The stupid shit you said in the past is part of who you are forever.
There’s pressure to get out your opinion to get out your “hot take” before everyone else, so that you’ll get all of the attention instead of someone else who got their hot take before you did. Hot takes are obviously going to be poorly thought out and people in a rush to get them out are easily manipulated. Then they get calcified and it results in people on willing to die on some dumb hill.
Because of all of this, people got dumbed done to the point where social media is basically just prison rules now. Gotta join some gang to survive, the gangs are determined by ethno-religious identity and survival is all about making your gang stronger than the other gangs. It would be funny if this nonsense didn’t leak into reality, but since a lot of people’s social media identity is a major part of their real life identity, all of the internet nonsense impacts the real world.
Social media is the front of the house.
What destroyed the internet are the cabal of Corporations monetizing every interaction and directing flows from the back of the house.
Unfettered Capitalism killed the internet experience.
I just gotta say, I felt that switch too around that time. 2016-2019ish. Something about how Instagram moved away from encouraging posts of your life to family//friends for pushing an influencer/celebrity sphere. People stopped sharing their lives, ordinary content wasn’t ranked as high. And then the other social platforms copied it
I think it’s way earlier than that. Early Facebook was horrible. But everyone bought into it.
The early years of Facebook as a teenager were great for me! No advertisements, just friends and friends of friends posting updates about their thoughts, activities, and photos. Somewhere in my college years (2011-15) it definitely got worse but not to a degree I’d call ‘bad’. Not disagreeing or anything, just sharing!
Community has been replaced by the trough.
Is that an Animal Farm quote?
You are not
We could go back to the old internet any time we wanted, but people have been supping on the convenience aspect of having everything bundled into easy-to-digest “apps” that they would have to deprogram themselves first and come to understand that finding shit on the old internet used to take work. Small wonder that people hear that X (formerly Twitter) is going to be the “everything app” and like the idea of that. I personally find it horrifying how many people are glued to social media, and meanwhile I’ve never had a Facebook account, never had Twitter, never had TikTok, and I’m still doing just fine.
We let corporations get their sticky fingers on everything, so now everything has to be profitable or it isn’t worth anybody’s time. Even YouTube videos are now all about maximizing engagement, interaction, and viewer retention so that the uploader can collect a paycheck from Google. I don’t give a fuck about whatever excuses they use to justify it, people still made great quality content before YouTube partnered with people for revenue sharing.
If TOR wasn’t so godawfully slow, I’d be using TOR and visiting .onion sites for everything. It perfectly recreates that “old internet” feeling of web design that has function over form and small communities built around niche topics.
What would speed up Tor?
It’s slow by design, for better encryption. Faster fibreoptic cables maybe? A faster speed of light might help?
I started a serious answer and then read the last part. Well played.
The small communities are still there, you just don’t visit them because you are on social media (like lemmy). Forums are still there. IRC is still there. Hell, even BBS and Usenet is still there if you really want to go that way.
I would not consider Lemmy social media. Forums are few and far between, IRC is barely still kicking and Usenet (as it was) simply doesn’t exist.
I was curious about Usenet awhile ago, was it still linked computers mirroring information like the old days? No, it more or less simply linked usenet providers at this point.
IRC is as active as it has always been. It was never a high throughput system, you can barely keep track of more than 5 people talking.
Forums are still kicking as well, you have car owner forums for basically any make and model, Hobby Forums, specialist Forums (house building kitchen or gardening just to name a few I consulted recently).
Yeah, they don’t have the scale of Facebook, they never had.
And lemmy, reddit, Mastodon and Co are very much social media. What are they if not?
Yeah but honestly who uses Usenet anymore if not to download binaries.
Approximately the same amount of people as 30 years ago. It’s only that now they are a tiny part of the internet, dwarved by TikTok and Facebook.
What is UseNet ?
Internet history. An old protocol originally for discussion, nowadays also to sail the seven seas, if you know what I mean. It predates the web by more than a decade.
Also you could go to a niche technical forum and find some of the planet’s bes specialists of the material. For computing, you’d often see the people that built everything (from software to hardware). It was truly a world forum at a level that things like Twitter never got close to.
In its Facebook and onward phase, yes I agree. Prior to that we had this wonderful site called Livejournal where you could privately blog to a select group of friends, and it was the absolute best way to brain dump, have people give you real advice, and make the best online friends. Yes it had much controversy when it was bought by a Russian company, I can point you to a podcast if you want more detail on that, and certainly there was drama sometimes, but I would give a lot to just talk to my friends as a group that way again and really know each other deeply that way again, and other than the odd very ignorable ad, you weren’t forced to be part of an algorithm or AI horseshit or fake news or verified accounts or any of that garbage. You could buy a permanent account for 100 dollars for the added features, but that was basically started to keep the site running after it took off. It really was beautiful and helpful and loving and felt organic and true for that time.
Have you ever noticed how hard it is for novels or TV or any other fictional platform to include anything about smartphones or using social media? When it is mentioned it feels very awkward and forced into the narrative.
Only a fool or a 12 year old would think otherwise. Back in the late ‘90’s, the web had a great sense of community. On forums, IRC, places like Cybertown, etc. You had smaller communities where you could reasonably know most users. They had a human scale; like a friendly neighbourhood.
Modern social media is definitely terrible. It happened because we were too welcoming. Back in those days, the web was a nerd domain. We all shared the same sort of interests and optimism for the future of the web. You had to BE a nerd to get online. To WANT to be online.
But now that it’s too easy for everyone to get on, the idiots have taken over. We really should kick everyone off the web who can’t name at least three characters from either Star Wars or Star Trek.
“The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth — whether it’s scientific truth, or historical truth, or personal truth! It is the guiding principle on which Starfleet is based.”
“We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.” — Jean-Luc Picard
Some of the basic tenants of Star Trek society are inclusion and shared progress. Elitism and exclusion are how we got to the mess we find ourselves in.
A better lesson is responsibility for the “nerds.” You all sold your talents and abilities to salespeople and conmen instead of seeing the value in yourself. Then, you got manipulated into building a dystopian technology that entraps the common people instead of liberating them.
They needed guidance and you gave them your insecurity instead. The evil desires the technology as it is does not have the intellect to manufacture it. That requires complicit “nerds.”
So you have to found Starfleet and hire the nerds yourself. They won’t organize on their own.
Elitism and exclusion are how we got to the mess we find ourselves in.
And that’s why I would not let Lemmy users run society. The userbase here is people who like the idea of left-populism, but hate the population.
Star Wars or Star Trek.
This is what the sociologists call “eurocentrism”
We’ll also welcome our Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica brethren, obviously :D
Just out of curiosity, what would the Star Trek equivalent be outside of eurocentric experience?
Three Body Problem?
Dragon Ball
I honestly don’t know, the world is so diverse.
As for India, it could be quotes from the freedom fighters (maybe too historic) or one of the few early 2000s TV shows which used to be in the collective consciousness, before the nation descended into artistic illiteracy and degeneracy and hate.
I am on the fediverse, yes I am allowed to have inflammatory opinions
John Munch
