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None of that happened in 2007. I'm not even saying the Internet didn't change, but you are both at least three years too early to make it ground zero for the ov

None of that happened in 2007. I'm not even saying the Internet didn't change, but you are both at least three years too early to make it ground zero for the overall societal change like seen in OP's data. I would even say it's the opposite the 2000s had a lot of vigilantism and political activism that started on the net. Key examples include WikiLeaks, the Pirate Party movement in Europe, and everything surrounding torrents. BarCamps and LAN parties grew exponentially. Most corporations hadn't started enshittification yet. Fringe sites still had hosters. 4chan launched, and Anonymous played games. This was the height of the blogosphere, the Creative Commons movement launched, and RSS was omnipresent. For the normal user, the Internet was probably the freest at the time. I don't know why you wanted to ignore that time and replace it with something that followed years later just to ramble on a forum...

pas 1y ago
I don't think 2007 was special, it's the usual gradual change (but likely a lot of logistic S-curves summed), but IMHO the change did happen around then. And usually we see the highpoints of certain processes, like the skyscrapers that top out just before the market crash. (And rarely we hear about the unfinished ones, especially the ones left in drawers.) With the Internet it feels that we had it in its romantic form in books and movies, then as it really arrived it turned into this really boring aspect of our lives, that nevertheless eat up all the better ones. (And we move less, eat worse, ruminate more on what we said and sent, worry about what we read and received.) ... Normal users joined Facebook not Google Reader. That's the whole point. (They have phones and Twitter and other bad hyper-palatable addictive platforms and whatever garbage apps their store gave them.)

pas 1y ago

I don't think 2007 was special, it's the usual gradual change (but likely a lot of logistic S-curves summed), but IMHO the change did happen around then. And usually we see the highpoints of certain processes, like the skyscrapers that top out just before the market crash. (And rarely we hear about the unfinished ones, especially the ones left in drawers.) With the Internet it feels that we had it in its romantic form in books and movies, then as it really arrived it turned into this really boring aspect of our lives, that nevertheless eat up all the better ones. (And we move less, eat worse, ruminate more on what we said and sent, worry about what we read and received.) ... Normal users joined Facebook not Google Reader. That's the whole point. (They have phones and Twitter and other bad hyper-palatable addictive platforms and whatever garbage apps their store gave them.)