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I think the internet has been "political" for longer than that. The development of blogging systems like Movable Type and then Wordpress in the early millennium

I think the internet has been "political" for longer than that. The development of blogging systems like Movable Type and then Wordpress in the early millennium gave rise to some extremely popular and vigorous blogs like Little Green Footballs. Some of these got so much traffic that suddenly their proprietors could live off the money earned just by casually sharing their political views (thanks to some affiliate links here and there). The big political change of more recent years, I would say, is political discussion overflowing expressly political fora and contaminating pretty much everywhere because of how social media functions. A band or author will share some entirely innocuous, non-political post on their social media pages, but the comment threads below them can easily descend into a shitshow of partisan quarreling.

pacala 8y ago
We could blissfully ignore that Little Green Footballs / Daily Kos / etc. ever existed and go on with our lives. Enter Facebook / Twitter and their hunger for "engagement" and all of a sudden inflammatory political rants pop in everyone's news feed multiple times a day. Advertisers are happy, technocrats are happy, people are connected, what's not to love?
AmericanChopper 8y ago
>I think the internet has been "political" for longer than that. I would agree with that. Freedom of expression seemed to be a foundational value of the internet when I was growing up, but perhaps that was a less political idea back then. Nowadays, the top comment in this thread is lamenting that we have allowed people who don’t have ‘the correct values’ to participate in the internet.
pasabagi 8y ago
I think the west has grown more political, to be honest. Until the last few years, the choices in basically every developed country has been between 'red neoliberal' and 'blue neoliberal'. Predictably, voters were bored. Recently, there have started to be genuinely different options on the ballot sheet, on both ends of the spectrum.
syshum 8y ago
That is the raise of Social Media Internet == Good for Humanity Social Media == Bad for Humanity that is my opinion, since the raise of platforms like facebook and twitter that is when things IMO really started to descend. Of course I am open to the possibility that social media is not the cause and it would have happened regardless but...

pacala 8y ago

We could blissfully ignore that Little Green Footballs / Daily Kos / etc. ever existed and go on with our lives. Enter Facebook / Twitter and their hunger for "engagement" and all of a sudden inflammatory political rants pop in everyone's news feed multiple times a day. Advertisers are happy, technocrats are happy, people are connected, what's not to love?

AmericanChopper 8y ago

>I think the internet has been "political" for longer than that. I would agree with that. Freedom of expression seemed to be a foundational value of the internet when I was growing up, but perhaps that was a less political idea back then. Nowadays, the top comment in this thread is lamenting that we have allowed people who don’t have ‘the correct values’ to participate in the internet.

pasabagi 8y ago

I think the west has grown more political, to be honest. Until the last few years, the choices in basically every developed country has been between 'red neoliberal' and 'blue neoliberal'. Predictably, voters were bored. Recently, there have started to be genuinely different options on the ballot sheet, on both ends of the spectrum.

syshum 8y ago

That is the raise of Social Media Internet == Good for Humanity Social Media == Bad for Humanity that is my opinion, since the raise of platforms like facebook and twitter that is when things IMO really started to descend. Of course I am open to the possibility that social media is not the cause and it would have happened regardless but...