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Well, the old internet was much about communities and enthusiasm. And these communities were diverse. It was feasible to operate your own blog server, where ori

Well, the old internet was much about communities and enthusiasm. And these communities were diverse. It was feasible to operate your own blog server, where original content was published. You either knew your communities through hear-say or search engines (read "The" search engine) found them. For a long time advertisement or the "attention economy" was not a thing. Nowadays original content is hard to find and very much concentrated: Reddit, Stackoverflow. As search engines no longer seem to find relevant content from sites which do not pay add fees, there is no traffic to these sites. In a sense money made the internet thrive and ruined a lot at the same time.

nuccy 5y ago
For me the enthusiasm part was very important in car DIY forums, communities of which nowadays moved not even to facebook groups but to messengers. Which in a first glance sounds great, since you can be assisted in real time. But in reality what was created in messengers remains there never being indexed by search engines so the knowledge cannot be shared with non-members.
yvdriess 5y ago
Old internet is where entering the name of a product would yield reviews or discussions about the product. New internet is where any useful information about said product gets buried in marketplaces and producer pages, following half a dozen paid-for ads.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
  Old Internet was where the primary content was content. Ads appeared as a curiosity in 1994 but didn't start taking over until around '96, which is when the ad networks started to become more industrialised with tracking and ROI metrics (of a sort). New Internet is where the primary content is ads and behaviour mod. Virtually all big-reach content is only there to make the ads and behaviour mod work. And of course the goal of Meta is to personalise ad delivery even further and make it even more intrusive and impossible to ignore. This isn't just a technical difference. There's a huge difference in culture and motivation. Old Internet was about exploration, play, and sometimes debate. New Internet is about exploitation, driven by psychological and emotional manipulation.

nuccy 5y ago

For me the enthusiasm part was very important in car DIY forums, communities of which nowadays moved not even to facebook groups but to messengers. Which in a first glance sounds great, since you can be assisted in real time. But in reality what was created in messengers remains there never being indexed by search engines so the knowledge cannot be shared with non-members.

yvdriess 5y ago

Old internet is where entering the name of a product would yield reviews or discussions about the product. New internet is where any useful information about said product gets buried in marketplaces and producer pages, following half a dozen paid-for ads.

TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
Old Internet was where the primary content was content. Ads appeared as a curiosity in 1994 but didn't start taking over until around '96, which is when the ad networks started to become more industrialised with tracking and ROI metrics (of a sort). New Internet is where the primary content is ads and behaviour mod. Virtually all big-reach content is only there to make the ads and behaviour mod work. And of course the goal of Meta is to personalise ad delivery even further and make it even more intrusive and impossible to ignore. This isn't just a technical difference. There's a huge difference in culture and motivation. Old Internet was about exploration, play, and sometimes debate. New Internet is about exploitation, driven by psychological and emotional manipulation.