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The way most people act on internet has changed dramatically. Web users are usually consumers, and web "creators" are often standard sellers. People got used to

The way most people act on internet has changed dramatically. Web users are usually consumers, and web "creators" are often standard sellers. People got used to the fact the sites are there to attract them in a race for attention. An anecdotal evidence: circa 2000, I published an old French dictionary. I received thousands of emails about it during the first years. Some people just asked about a word, or send their thanks, or noticed some kind of error. Nowadays, the number of visits hasn't changed, but almost nobody sends email. I probably wouldn't answer them anyway. I believe this is an side-effect of a larger change. Maybe writing email is now a harder task. Maybe people aren't used to non-promotion sites outside Wikipedia.

neilalexander 7y ago
In the past it was much easier to attribute a website to a single person or a small group of people, and maybe they were able to publish contact details like email addresses without fear of them being harvested and spammed. Websites didn't really have comments sections so often so the reliable method for feedback was email. Maybe email was also a lot less tedious back then - it strikes me that these days the main purposes of email accounts are to allow registration with other online services and to hold the huge amount of spam that usually happens as a result of registering for online services. I don't know many people my age (Gen-Y) who would even dream of using their personal email accounts to actually communicate with actual people outside of places where it is strictly required (like applying for jobs), even less so their friends. They're too used to services run by corporate giants (like FAANG) and are being trained to interact in very specific ways, e.g. in direct messages in apps, in the comments sections or through "Like" and "reactions" buttons.

neilalexander 7y ago

In the past it was much easier to attribute a website to a single person or a small group of people, and maybe they were able to publish contact details like email addresses without fear of them being harvested and spammed. Websites didn't really have comments sections so often so the reliable method for feedback was email. Maybe email was also a lot less tedious back then - it strikes me that these days the main purposes of email accounts are to allow registration with other online services and to hold the huge amount of spam that usually happens as a result of registering for online services. I don't know many people my age (Gen-Y) who would even dream of using their personal email accounts to actually communicate with actual people outside of places where it is strictly required (like applying for jobs), even less so their friends. They're too used to services run by corporate giants (like FAANG) and are being trained to interact in very specific ways, e.g. in direct messages in apps, in the comments sections or through "Like" and "reactions" buttons.