How can we go back? We're already on the way back. It's called the Fediverse.
I help pay for my instance to operate, and it's a cost I'm happy to help shoulder.
Us instance admins appreciate it I promise
Ehhhh, the OG internet connected better because all nodes were well connected. The Fediverse is a series of single servers that can't even sync all data across themselves. It's cute, but it's post-it notes on strings atm
Yep we have different lemmy/mastodon/etc.... instances talking with one another. Anyone can set up something like activityhub. Its a fun place in my opinion!
We would be better than ever, if not for the normification.
what exactly does that mean?
It's what happened to the internet. Devices were dumbed down to make the internet accessible for everyone. Now the "normies" are also on the internet, whereas in the past they'd belittle you for spending time on the computer.
In time, the Fediverse will also be easily accessible. And where there are normies, you'll find corporate enshittification.
Edit: thanks for the downvotes because I explained the word "normification". You're overthinking this. It's a term that has been around since before Reddit became popular. It's a term that stems from 4chan. I don't like the term, I just explained it. And yes, the corpos are to blame but they couldn't do the things they do without a certain user base. And that's not your typical tech savvy user base. How is that so difficult to understand?
I'm not sure that categorizing people as "normies" is a great idea. nor is it a way to entice new people and voices to join and learn how to use the fediverse so that it can become a more reliable place.
i think blaming enshittification on "normies" is a lot easier than holding greedy corporations accountable for directly making everything worse. it's surely easier, but the real issue remains unchecked.
if anything, it's a good thing that more people are learning how much better the fediverse is. it helps the fediverse get stronger, not weaker.
"us" vs "them" is not a mindset that will produce anything except cesspools of toxicity. at least imho.
I didn't coin the term and I too believe it's a huge generalization. However, "simpler" people are more susceptible to ads. The "normies" in question are the ones that don't use adblockers, they believe ads are normal and they believe ads don't affect them. Corporations capitalize on that. Better tech education would definitely help take some power away from corporations.
Edit: even now you'll find people that use Lemmy apps that have ads. The bigger the user base, the more greedy companies will find ways of exploiting the Fediverse.
blaming enshittification on “normies”
What's really annoying is it's straight out of the corpo playbook.
"We're not responsible for ______, you are because you didn't do enough ________".
The most blatant is "global warming" and "ate too much meat/didn't recycle enough/made poor choices with your car" and so on.
It'd be nice if people would stop trying to blame the worst offenses being perpetuated on people by billionaires and their pet corporations on personal choices, because it's hot liquid bullshit.
normies
Honestly some normies would help us talk about something different than US politics, linux and being trans femboys. Honestly, we'd have some diversity in content. I'd like that.
The Fediverse is a bit more like the old USENET days in some regards, but ultimately if it ever becomes more popular the same assholes that ruin other online experiences will also wind up here.
What made the Internet more exciting 30 years ago was that it was mostly comprised of the well educated and dedicated hobbyists, who had it in their best interest to generally keep things decent. We didn’t have the uber-lock-in of a handful of massive companies running everything.
It’s all Eternal September. There’s no going back at this point — any new medium that becomes popular will attract the same forces making the current Internet worse.
Libraries should evolve to play a larger role in the internet, theyve been trying to reinvent themselves and i think this best aligns with their spiritual purpose. Some ideas:
Caretakers of digital archives.
Caretakers of relevant open source projects.
Could I get a free domain with my library card?
Could I get free api access to mapping or other localized data?
Should libraries host local fediverse instances for civic users? (think police, firefighter alert, other community related feeds)
How did we get here? Adtech, tracking, monetization.
Can we go back? By removing the ubiquitous affiliate marketing financial incentives, so no.
Yeah man. Last time YouTube was good was when people were making videos just for fun, not for clout.
Don't be silly, the proletariat just needs to unite, seize the nuclear stockpiles of at least two nations capable of destroying all life on earth in defense of the oligarchy's hoards, and then decentralize ownership of the global communication infrastructure.
Easy.
Go back to site directories.
Curate your news feed.
Stop using a single corporate search engine.
Participate in online social communities, not in social media.
can we go back
no
Yes, selfhost most essential services like mail, messengers, web search, piped frontend, vpn, and other things like gitea/forgejo and jellyfin, web 3.0 will be federated network
Isn't web 3.0 the whole crypto ntf bullshit. Maybe we skip that one and go straight to 4.0
I think in general it's supposed to be about decentralisation, but god knows scammers will hop straight onto anything with "point-oh" in the name
Creating a closed network on the Internet where any commercialization and domination are prohibited might help?
Something like Tor/freenet/I2P, but less shady (I know it’s not meant to be like this), open and accessible to anyone.
Edit: I remembered about gemini protocol, where you get
lightweight online space where documents are just documents, in the interests of every reader's privacy, attention and bandwidth
Perfect for the new better internet, huh?
For Android/iOS users, there’s a client called Lagrange on F-droid and Testflight
Back in the days of the wild frontier things were chaotic, anarchic, violent, and unconstrained.
Then came the churches, then came the schools
Then came the lawyers, then came the rules
Then came the trains and the trucks with their loads
And the dirty old track was the Telegraph Road
And now we're all fenced in, regulated, allowed to wander only in approved lanes... oh, wait, sorry, we're talking about the internet, not real life!
Not sure this has been said yet, but Neocities is a pretty great throwback to GeoCities and the early 2000's web.
All a bunch of small, handcrafted websites and personal blogs by individuals and small groups.
Exploring feels like I remember back in the early 2000's as a teen. Crazy and weird sites, hidden links and easter eggs, ARGs, random annon comments you can post to a wall, .gifs all over, pixel art, hacker manifestos, links to other similar sites, etc.
The Fediverse is pretty great too.
I wish there were more site directories curated by communities, that would reduce my reliance on search engines for sure. RSS is great, I've been using that to help build my personal content feed.
Capitalism. No.
The Fediverse is as close as I've gotten to Internet the way it used to be, and I donate to the instances I use in order to keep it that way. I wish everyone would.
Someone showed me this and it's the closest I've seen to the way the internet used to be lol
Shows a different site every click
I totally agree. Corporate interests and rampant consumerism have ruined the majority of the internet.
Glad we still have refuges like lemmy though to take solace in. Proportionally we're a smaller part, but absolutely I'd say we're about the same or larger than in the 2000s.
New rule: programmatic advertising is illegal
This. Lemmy is the way to go. Decentralized Communities connected via API.
I don't see many other possibilities. The system needs a "free for ever" mechanic or big money shits into everything.
I think monetization ruined it. There's a lot more trash to sift through.
How did we get here
Money!
can we go back?
No!
To a large degree, the same internet that used to be, still is.
Keep in mind that in the era they are nostalgic for, the internet involved roughly 4% of the world's population. As big in the public conciousness was, it was a relatively small thing.
For example, most people see Lemmy as pretty small and much slower content coming at you than reddit. However Lemmy is still way bigger than what a mid 90s experience with the internet would be. I can still connect to play BBS Door games and there's barely anyone there, but there were barely any people there back then either. The "old" internet is still there, it's just small compared to the vast majority of the internet that came about later.
Some things are gone, but replaced. For example Geocities now has neocities, which is niche by today's standards, but wouldn't be shocked if neocities technically is bigger than geocities ever was in absolute terms.
Some things are gone and won't come back. The late 2000s saw a really nice and stable all-you-can-watch streaming experience from Netflix, and their success brought about maddening licensing deals where material randomly appears, moves, and disappears and where a lot of material demands more to "rent" than buying an actual Blu Ray disc of it would cost (have gone back to buying discs as of late because it's cheaper than streaming).
True. Heck, even ol' Slashdot is still kicking around and I think it was the first website discussion board I'd encountered (or maybe that was Fark? which is also kicking around still!)
Well, actually:
When Online Content Disappears
"38% of webpages that existed in 2013 are no longer accessible a decade later"
Since when internet usage became wide spread enough that it could be used to make billions and/or promote political propaganda (which really ties back to again making money in most cases).
Anything that becomes used by a reasonable fraction of the whole world will be in the target of governments, venture capitalists (i.e individuals seeking for en masse manipulation). There is no way to prevent this as long as both exist.
Creating a lot of small communities rather than one large community is a good incentive but I think it fails to completely address this issue as long as they are interconnected in some way.
Quality through obfuscation... make it harder to use. If the dimwits can't figure out how to use it...
Free hosting, for everyone, without ads.
Ut-oh.
(But seriously, while it wasn't free, having an account with an ISP used to come with 10 MB of personal webspace without ads or anything. That's something you never really see these days.)
Archive the entire thing and start over.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
