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I want the old internet back, considering that history is cyclical I have high hopes that it will come back. However I subscribe to the idea that history doesn

by mrtksn 1y ago

I want the old internet back, considering that history is cyclical I have high hopes that it will come back. However I subscribe to the idea that history doesn't repeat itself but rhymes so I expect it to be amazing again in a slightly different form. Currently its infestation of for-profit content that got even worse with generative AI and curated through for-profit algorithms that drain our life for attention. However, if you pay close attention to the non-advertiser friendly content and content that AI refuses to generate(which is mostly extremist left and right BS), you will see that there's a sustainable path for content that is not discovered and created the way it is now. Yes, currently the only organic content is the extremist content. Yes, those de-platformed people actually didn't go away. They create authentic high quality Bull Shit, have audience that care and they are doing just fine. Which makes me believe that there must be a way for non-crazy, non-racist, non-extremist people for once again have authentic high quality content. Interestingly, when Erdogan of Turkey cornered the mainstream media and deplatformed the non-complying journalists those journalists also adopted new ways. For many years, the advertisement on those channels were laughing stock. It was mostly hair removal cream and ideology oriented books but they survived anyway and the Erdogan acquired media lost steam as it wasn't authentic anymore and those small channels and social media platforms became mainstream. To the point that he is now once again trying to destroy them as his media is no good to push his narrative. So yes, content is king and nature finds its way.

azemetre 1y ago
The old internet has never left, it's just the vast majority of people went to the corporatized internet instead. You can still find small communities of a few dozen or hundred people posting on forums that aren't reddit or facebook. You aren't going to find them because Google does not care about discovery they care about ads. Webrings are one trick to find your people, but it's hard and most webrings don't point to "gathering spots."
- jjulius 1y ago
  >You aren't going to find them because Google does not care about discovery they care about ads. I frequently post to two very small, hobby-specific phpBB forums with old-internet-style communities that I found by googling the hobby. The forums themselves were listed at the top of Google's results when looking for the broader hobby, and I regularly find specific posts in Google results when searching for very specific subject matter.
- insin 1y ago
  They're only going to get harder to find as they disable unauthenticated access to topics due to being swamped with thousands of LLM company scrapers, if the user-owned-and-run forum I've been a member of for more than 20 years is anything to go by.
deafpolygon 1y ago
The vast majority of the web is the small web. Modern social media platforms are not incentivized to show you them.
viccis 1y ago
>considering that history is cyclical I have high hopes that it will come back Not quite. As McLuhan said, the medium is the message. Once you get a new medium, it changes how people think and behave. Television changed how people treated entertainment forever, cars changed how transportation worked forever (I'm sure the horse industry hoped history was cyclical), etc, etc. Even within the realm of social media itself, we saw successive irreversible stages. Text content gave way to images and memes which gave way to videos which finally gave way to short term video content. They are all competing in a Darwinian struggle in the attention economy, and once they gain traction, they change how people use their devices completely.
__turbobrew__ 1y ago
Discord is pretty close to the old internet. I have lots of friends on Discord who I am quite close with but have never met in person. Discord servers are isolated and usually invite only, and generally you are not aware of what is happening in other discord servers and getting rage baited.

by mrtksn 1y ago

azemetre 1y ago

The old internet has never left, it's just the vast majority of people went to the corporatized internet instead. You can still find small communities of a few dozen or hundred people posting on forums that aren't reddit or facebook. You aren't going to find them because Google does not care about discovery they care about ads. Webrings are one trick to find your people, but it's hard and most webrings don't point to "gathering spots."

jjulius 1y ago
>You aren't going to find them because Google does not care about discovery they care about ads. I frequently post to two very small, hobby-specific phpBB forums with old-internet-style communities that I found by googling the hobby. The forums themselves were listed at the top of Google's results when looking for the broader hobby, and I regularly find specific posts in Google results when searching for very specific subject matter.
insin 1y ago
They're only going to get harder to find as they disable unauthenticated access to topics due to being swamped with thousands of LLM company scrapers, if the user-owned-and-run forum I've been a member of for more than 20 years is anything to go by.

deafpolygon 1y ago

The vast majority of the web is the small web. Modern social media platforms are not incentivized to show you them.

viccis 1y ago

>considering that history is cyclical I have high hopes that it will come back Not quite. As McLuhan said, the medium is the message. Once you get a new medium, it changes how people think and behave. Television changed how people treated entertainment forever, cars changed how transportation worked forever (I'm sure the horse industry hoped history was cyclical), etc, etc. Even within the realm of social media itself, we saw successive irreversible stages. Text content gave way to images and memes which gave way to videos which finally gave way to short term video content. They are all competing in a Darwinian struggle in the attention economy, and once they gain traction, they change how people use their devices completely.

__turbobrew__ 1y ago

Discord is pretty close to the old internet. I have lots of friends on Discord who I am quite close with but have never met in person. Discord servers are isolated and usually invite only, and generally you are not aware of what is happening in other discord servers and getting rage baited.