I feel like there has been waves of losses.

• Web 2.0 upgrades made everyone feel like they had to have a shiny polished site. We lost a lot of fun amateurs.

Once apps started getting pushed websites started to get abandoned/empty. everything from shopping to small games. I shouldn't need an app for the coffee shop.

Bots and bad search operators made looking and finding a chore.

Insta killed blogs, suddenly everyone wanted a insta or YT brand rather than a blog/rss

• Everything became sponsored =- say i wanted to find out how to polish my boots, the first 3 pages and everything everywhere suddenly tries to sell me boots.

This is why i no longer enjoy the internet. I know i sound old man yelling at cloud.

2nd to last paragraph:

And this isn’t some anti-AI screed — I’m all-in on agentic software engineering!

The internet is in small communities we shitpost in along the way

The internet isn’t the internet anymore. It’s walled off, corporatized, and exclusionary.

The internet used to be for people.

Now it’s for profit.

Learning about the world through 500-character snippets, or 30-second videos, is not a serious way to engage with knowledge.

Just don't consume it. Same for blogs.

It's like junk food. It's not going away, so just don't consume it.

The undernet is growing as the overnet is bloated and dying of it's own poison.

Everything gets enshittified - Capitalised, and nothing good ever comes out of those leeches and parasites.

The Capitalist religion crushed a new global, free and open digital community landscape. Say loud and proud: 'thank you Capitalist believer', for how it looks and works today..

Humanity may never see anything like the 90s-2000s era again. That was a distinct milieu of nearly unbound creation and discovery. Not only did corporations remained skeptical of the internet. People were highly averse to being manipulated because the internet was untrustworthy. Paradoxically that's what made the internet trustworthy. Once trust was established of course. It was a perfect mix of factors that made it a unique period in history.

Maybe all this bullshit is a needed step to bring back old internet

We need forums back.. the fediverse is a good start in my book.

I only enjoy very specific hobby subs\forums. Beyond that you can't find anything because all the search engines rank to by ads. Looking for a real review is a joke, its all AI\bogus.

YT is getting worse w/ all the AI slop. I just stick to my channels that again are hobby/interests I have that haven't gone AI (yet).

I haven't been on FB for over 10 years, no IG, no tic flop, or other social media because its a nightmare.

Can we make a new internet?

I hope that we’ll collectively decide that it’s rude to pass off LLM writing as your own, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

We won’t unless we stop the source perpetuating this “culture.”

Big Tech.

Unfortunately, they kinda have a grip on everyone’s information sphere, so I think our chances are low :(

It's a good post, I agree with it. And I guess The Pale is a good description of what we are noticing.

I got to experience the internet before it became like this, so at least I have memories of greatness. But the desire for great profits ruins everything. Not only the internet but the world.

Greed for excessive amounts of money is the root of evil, the bible got that right. But humans are not aware enough to see a future where greed is not the driving force of society.

The only thing that feels akin to early internet to me is the chat in video games. I miss being able to moderate things with my own brain thx.

Me either. Feels weird to be complaining about it on the internet though. It's almost like the solution is self-evident. Oh, well. It'll come to me.

I've long thought that we need a web 3.0 that uses a different protocol entirely and is techie and difficult like getting on bbs'es was in the 80s . For a good 20 years until that one gets enshitified too we have another chance.

I don't know who are they, but they could just curate their online experience by looking for something that is actually organic and genuine, and drop their anchors on that.

Same... I tried Kagi small web which kinda promised to fix it but so far every page is a hyper-focused version of everything I hate. It somehow made it even worse.

I think it can't really solve the problem because the people that want that tight nit free and open. Internet are already retreating from engaging with whatever this is.

People have repeatedly called things "Web 3.0" but I think we've legitimately made it finally and I hate it.