Forums / Discussion / General

235,087 total conversations in 7,816 threads

+ New Thread


Internet 2000-s was better than Internet 2010s?

Last posted Nov 09, 2021 at 07:26PM EST. Added Oct 20, 2021 at 07:31AM EDT
14 posts from 13 users

Ozzzim wrote:

Blame the social media

Social media have enabled idiots and other unsavory types to have a louder voice than they're supposed to, and the increasing automation of telecoms (hello, bots) have made it even easier for people to literally fabricate opinions and voices for nefarious ends

Yeah, true.
I'd say 2007-2012 was peak greatness for the Internet. Maybe 2013, but 2014 started going down hill then 2017 when all the Tumblr SJWs migrated to a platform with a much wider demographic, including celebrities.

Rylade475 wrote:

Yeah, true.
I'd say 2007-2012 was peak greatness for the Internet. Maybe 2013, but 2014 started going down hill then 2017 when all the Tumblr SJWs migrated to a platform with a much wider demographic, including celebrities.

Twitter is a big factor, but I'll like to point out I think it really went bad when politicians started using it. Now there's a bunch of news articles about what someone said on Twitter.

2015-2017 was the time when a lot of "Big Tech" got rich and got more commercialized.

I'd say yes. Granted one could argue things like rose tinted glasses and nostalgia making it look better and one can argue that back then you had people that were shitty towards certain individuals if you looked at individuals deemed "lolcows" such as Chris-Chan and sites like 4Chan if one considered boards such as \pol\ and \b\ but even those aside, the internet of the 2000's would no doubt look better in that it was the new frontier from the 90's finding its place once it became more accessible. Only problems back that could be of concern for people was things like spyware and things like chatrooms being grounds for predators but even then, 2000's internet was better in some sense before we had "Big Tech" getting rich and commercialized as it does things like selling your info.

Once upon a time, you could browse an innumerable amount of websites with distinct niches and cultivate a community confined within said websites. Now, the same couple of websites are used 24/7 and communities are constantly bleeding into each other. The smartphones made them ever more accessible so all bets were off with regards to user standards.

Online Privacy is an Oxymoron

Everything about you can be found online. Your home location, property deeds, past employment, phone number, age, etc. Getting it off is a pain in the ass as well. Data brokerage sites make it purposefully difficult and painstakingly slow to get rid of ONE individual. And guess what? More sites will pop up and you'll have to do it all over again. It's a game of battle royale wack a mole.

Privacy Laws And You

There is no standardized federal data privacy law in the United States. According to the International Association of Privacy Professionals, only 3 states have consumer data privacy laws. You might not get the option to view, delete, or opt out of data collection from websites at all outside these 3.


The Sad State of Mobile Browsing

Smartphones paved the way for easy and efficient web-browsing but the website themselves have gotten harder and worse to navigate. It feels now you have to scroll more and more just to get to the content you want to see on news sites. Imagine reading a newspaper but every few sentences advertising for a product interrupts the structuring.

How many times have you been pestered by websites to use their app? How many times have been FORCED to use their apps? Advertising overload, auto-playing videos and too many overlays are a plague. Reddit, Instagram, Tik-Tok come to mind.

The Tik-Tok Effect

Tik-Tok's Formula must be replicated by every major social media website. Reddit, Snapchat, YouTube, Instagram, all fall victim to this and they lose what made these platforms unique in the first place.

A paradox that I propose is ruining everything:

1. you have never been less anonymous on the internet. Strike out your name from all your internet profiles and the internet as a whole can easily reconstruct who you actually are from your footprint. All this data is used to cater to you, nudging you into safe spaces and echo chambers.

2. who you are has never mattered less on the internet than now. Having or being part of an internet community used to require a measure of expertise or effort. We're talking about the age of forums, MIRC, hosted servers in games, WoW without dungeon finder, etc. This means that there was social cost to being a shitheel. You deny the holocaust on someone's server and your name gets spread to a blacklist. Now, for the vast majority of your interactions on the internet, you can guarantee you will never see these people again regardless of the context.

So at the same time faulty AI pushes you towards radicalization because it's profitable, you have no motivation to treat other people… like people.

Or, if you want to be spicy the Marxist interpretation of the situation is the internet went to shit as soon as everything was exposed to the profit motivation leading to the nightmare hellscape where you are commodified at rest as much as you are working.

Skeletor-sm

This thread is closed to new posts.

Old threads normally auto-close after 30 days of inactivity.

Why don't you start a new thread instead?

Greetings! You must login or signup first!