Absolutely. The "old web" was perhaps a bit on the (visually) ugly side, but we were free. Not much corporate going on, but much exploring the seemingly infinite possibilities together, as free users. Sure, there were some small online shops for hobbyists and special interest stuff, but they always were - in my experience - firmly connected to if not operated and driven by that community. It is hard to describe - it simply was great. The final frontier, so it seemed. Connect to freaks like yourself all over the world, or explore new exiting topics, music, cultures. Learn a ton of stuff for free. Really connect.
But then capitalism crept in - I cannot even draw a clear line when that all happened (Can someone here help me out here?) and as we all know now they built their monopolies and now the web is made up of those "five corporate websites showing screenshots of the other four" or how that famous quote went. I really think and hope the fediverse is a opportunity to rebuild a better, user-centered web.
That being said, is there a kind of implementation of the fediverse for / with projects like peer-to-peer hypermedia protocol (e.g. IPFS) and/or the onion web? (or perhaps that's material for another discussion/thread, eh?)
Aaand yet another good reason to switch over to the fediverse / lemmy. Is reddit on a greed run or something?
IPO, API for 3rdparty-apps costs millions of $ a year, now laying off 5% of their workforce?
They really do want to tell twitter to "hold my beer", or what's the plan here? Driving away those users who generate acceptable content leaving only right wing, incel and redpill - as seen on twitter?
Do they even realize that without user-generated (!) content and readers interested in said content and the community behind it, reddit will be worth jack? Can't replace those with AI, can you? I just don't get it.