>Indeed, it is doubtful that these mega-sized websites were intended by the original architects of the www. More likely, they may have imagined the web as a who

>Indeed, it is doubtful that these mega-sized websites were intended by the original architects of the www. More likely, they may have imagined the web as a whole would grow (scale) as more people gained internet access. This, I think, is roughly true but the issue is nuanced. The history of the web can be characterized by ever-decreasing barriers to entry. At first you needed a physical host and apache. Then, you could have a shared host and put html files in your user directory. Then, you could run wordpress. Then, you could sign up for myspace and never have to run anything. The 'like' is the smallest unit of content that can be captured by such systems. TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, wikipedia, etc are what you get from this evolution. The unexpected downside is that with reduced friction to content-creation, the content has become quite awful. In part because people are awful, but also because of money and how effective it is to hire people to say things using these systems. If the friction to create content remained high, it may have been a "better" internet in some measures. It would certainly be a much smaller one. Who knows how it will turn out? I suspect that AI will have a significant impact on all these systems, to wit, injecting massive amounts of noise that will reduce their utility significantly, if not to zero. No empire lasts forever.