Idk if this is the right community for this conversation, but it’s been on my mind and I want to share it with someone.
In the 00’s every new thing we heard about the internet was exciting. There were new protocols, new ways to communicate, new ways to share files, new ways to find each other. Every time we heard anything new about the internet, it was always progress.
That lasted into the early teens and then things started changing. Things started stagnating. Now we’re well into the phase where every new piece of news we hear is negative. New legislations, new privacy intrusions, new restrictions, new technologies to lock content away and keep us from sharing, or seeing the content we were looking for. New ways to force ads.
At one point the Internet was my most favorite thing in the world. Now I don’t know if I even like it anymore. I certainly don’t look forward to hearing news about it. It’s sad, man. We’ve lost a lot. The mega corps took the internet from us, changed it from a million small sites that people created because they had big ideas, or were passionate about small ones, and turned it into a few enormous sites with no new ideas, no passion, just an insatiable desire for money.
We’re at the end of an era, and unlike the last 20 years of progress, I don’t think most of us will like what the next era brings.
Not sure the mega corps have it all, there are still small sites that people run, I my self run some stuff. My lemme instance for 1.
The way I see it, is the mega corps have the budget to make hosting with them cheaper that running at home.
What I meant is that they killed the ways we used to communicate (blogs, forums, etc.) by consolidating everything into a few sites, and then after ensuring the deaths of those platforms, started squeezing the new consolidated platforms for everything they’re worth. Yes, people chose to move to the new platforms, and slowly abandoned the old ones, but this has been a very engineered outcome. This is always where they hoped the road would lead. They offered the bait, and then sprung the trap.
They only killed the old tach off cuz the masses moved in, in the early days (think dialup) you had only the tech savvy online. You had to wait for everything, email, blogs, news the lot. Then the alway on internet landed and all that stopped, now you can reach anyone anywhere. all the non-tech savvy joined and the mega corps saw the rich gold mine.
The real issue is the lack of tech savvy people making small sites, the mega corps have the platforms and thats where everyone went. Its cheap and easy to be on a mega platform then to run your own site, anyone who does run a site will not see much traffic as its hidden by the big names
I totally agree with you here. Now it feels like bots (AI) making content for bots (crawlers) and the only thing we a getting programmed to use is Google, where your question is answered without the need to even visit the website it took the data from.
It’s just boring and I’m a website developer 🤷♂️
Google has been trying very hard, for a very long time, to be the only destination on the internet. They want all the traffic. They started with site summaries at the top of the search page, then they moved to AMP, where they’re in charge of serving the content that others create, now they even show Reddit chains on their home page, and who knows what they have planned next. By serving content that other people created they get to serve their ads and keep 100% of the revenue, rather than sharing a pittance with some small AdSense publisher. They announced to the world that their values had changed when they changed their motto from Don’t Be Evil, and they’re certainly ignoring it now.
Well. Those corporations took their money and threw it in. Basically fusions of different services. Besides that you have a lot of clickbaits and cheap stuff like dropshops and so on.
You gotta be very picky on what services you use. Lemmy f.e. is amazing for me. It does not feel like someone wants to get money off me.
The internet basically became what the analog world was before and it’s anything else than amazing.
Edit: in short terms: Capitalism took the internet from the people.
Edit: in short terms: Capitalism took the internet from the people.
Well said. The Internet was certainly a lot more fun before anyone figured out how to make money on it. But it’s insane that these companies make more money now than even the largest giants did when I was a kid, and it’s still not enough for them. I’m just flabbergasted by their insatiable desire. They could keep a good product and still pull insane profits, but they’re willing to burn it all down for another percentage point on their quarterly return. I guess that’s a change to the world in general now too. There used to be a common wisdom that if you built a great product, and made your customers happy, you’d be successful. The prevailing attitude now is that the success that comes from that isn’t enough anymore. You need to make the worst product that you’re still able to sell, and then make sure you sell it to the same people multiple times. It’s gross.
It’s the cancer that capitalism truly is. If you’re not growing, you’re failing and enshittification is an inevitable late stage consequence of capitalism.
It’s just pump and dump.
enshittification is an inevitable late stage consequence
Maybe, but I don’t think it is. Enshittification is a direct result of our tax policy that encourages cashing out, only looks at the short term, and requires constant growth.
There was a time when companies built a reputation and held onto it for a hundred years. We could go back to that.
Tax the rich.
What they do is the essence of capitalism. More growth. More profits. Enough, or the same as last year, is not sufficient. It must be more, the numbers must go up. And any publicly traded company is legally bound to pursue gains for its shareholders, they actually cannot stop. What makes a corporation is the same thing that makes them hellbent on yet another fraction of a percentage in profits.
The whole system is utterly ridiculous and fundamentally incompatible with reality, once you actually think about these things. A system demanding infinite growth in a finite world.
Yup. Wikipedia is a good example for an instance that solely exists to support people.
There are plenty sites of this. Take a look at some websites that are teaching you skills without asking for money and so on.
That’s how I remember the internet. Sharing knowledge. Of course bigger sites need to make ends meet somehow and that fine with me. But as you already said - more more more.
I’d say that the old Internet is still there. It’s just sharing space with the much bigger, much more mainstream, capitalist juggernaut now, with limited overlap.
Other than online shopping, my Internet use hasn’t changed all that much since 2008, other than having to add a bunch of anti-tracking stuff to my web browser.
You need to make the worst product that you’re still able to sell, and then make sure you sell it to the same people multiple times.
This is a lovely summary of modern capitalism. The carnival barkers would have you still believe that excellence rises to the top, but it doesn’t. What wins is the appearance of excellence, as a facade for the least effort possible, like you said.
Share markets created this perverse incentive that rewards businesses for appearing successful even if they produce fuck all. I’m thinking of Jack Welch era GE or today’s preeminent carbon credit trading firm, Tesla Motors.
It reminds me of the feedback loop engulfing the major LLMs as they consume more and more of their own content and start outputting lower and lower quality: the original goal of rewarding the best is long lost, replaced by making line go up at all costs.
Currently use the internet for Steam, Lemmy and streaming I cut down from Gigabit to 12mbps because I just don’t use it any more.
Capitalism ruins everything. Even if you can argue it’s what made it.