Am I the only one who thinks social media has destroyed the spirit of the internet?
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The emergence of social media has destroyed all the small communities to standardize communication and information.
It's a bit of a digital version of rural exodus. And since 2017/2018, I've noticed that everything that, in my opinion, represented the internet has disappeared.
I've known Lemmy for a few hours and I feel like I'm back in the early spirit of the internet.
wrote last edited by [email protected]The feeling you're talking about pretty much always happens when you find a small community. Like when you move to a small town and life just somehow feels more personal. Those are still around, they just aren't well known (but they never really were). I mean it's like there are a lot of very large cities today but small towns are still there too.
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The emergence of social media has destroyed all the small communities to standardize communication and information.
It's a bit of a digital version of rural exodus. And since 2017/2018, I've noticed that everything that, in my opinion, represented the internet has disappeared.
I've known Lemmy for a few hours and I feel like I'm back in the early spirit of the internet.
Some of my best memories online are in golden era Tumblr, which was a pretty big social media. So I don't think social media, per se, is the issue.
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I feel like it's a mix of quite a few things, social media is DEFINITELY a big part of the problem but the monetisation of EVERYTHING is the main problem.
When the Internet was becoming more mainstream around the world (late 90s) most people who put content on there didn't do it for money, they did it just to share knowledge/thoughts or just be part of a small niche community.
This meant while there was less content it was more meaningful, and it got to the point quickly as it didn't need to show you ads etc.
Recipie sites show this perfectly, people used to just post family recipes in cooking forums, now it's all personal blogs riddled with ads splattered between the person's life story and multiple requests to subscribe to related guff.
Ultimately the goal of the Internet shifted from "sharing knowledge/communicating" to "show as many ads as possible". This makes 90% of each site filler to stop you getting to the 10% too quickly, so you get snagged on ads etc.
This is why AI is great for companies, they can put in the important 10% and have it make up the 90%, but it's just adding more noise to the Internet.
Also pair this problem with search engines that now take advantage of the noise to provide "summary" blurbs which mean you don't even visit the sites directly so they don't get the revenue, the search engines do, I think there is a term for this "one click results" or something.
Its such a shame, I loved the Internet from like 1995-2005, you could search for something and get really good information and facts on the subject quickly. Now the same sort of things are lost amongst the filler sites that just aggregate information and regurgitate it as their own, or just out uninformed opinions (maybe even AI results) as content as if it's from experts etc.
I could go on for ages on the subject as there are so many facets to the problem but I can't see any real solutions, it's just a midden heap.
wrote last edited by [email protected]So I will preface my comment with the fact that I hate Internet ads and do everything within my power to block and/or avoid them. Aside from being annoying they're a blatant security and malware risk, and I avoid them for that reason alone.
That being said, hosting websites gets pretty expensive pretty fast when lots of people come to your site, especially with the advent of much higher bandwidth media that goes along with better quality images and video.
In my opinion the fact that the majority of people just have an expectation that everything online should be free is THE problem. I was there when the Internet was free and open and without ads. That was the culture, and the root of the issue we have today is that that culture is the foundation of the general expectation that it should continue to be so.
But that's not sustainable with the costs involved in hosting today. Shit costs money yo, why should other people bear that so you can search for recipes for free without it being annoying for you?
The fact that nobody is willing to pay for content via subscriptions or paid apps is literally why the ad-based model is the overwhelming majority of the Internet, and apps, and why data collection/sales is so rampant.
Web development and running a webpage is not easy. Even for those that are skilled enough that it's easy for them, it takes a ton of time. Usually multiple people's time for any site with enough visitors to make it a good site. App development is hard and takes a skill set that requires a lot of training or time investment to learn. Why should all that go for free for you?
Until people are willing to pay for content they find valuable the Internet will be a hell hole ridden with ads. YouTube ads are awful, but do you have any idea how much it costs to run YouTube? You think someone should just absorb that out of the goodness of their hearts? Ridiculous.
The goal of the Internet is still to share information and communicate, but all the hardware and bandwidth and time costs real dollars, and the only way for most sites to recoup that is via ads because people just won't pay anything if given an option, they'll just go to another site that has free content, because there's SO MUCH stuff that you can generally find what you want, for free with ads, somewhere else.
There's only two possible solutions that I see:
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everyone starts being willing to pay for content they find valuable. I don't see this happening. There's too many people that share your opinion without taking into account what it costs to actually run a modern website.
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some complicated type of system that directly pays websites for use, based off of usage from people. I think this is almost too complicated to implement that it's likely impossible with today's Internet. If we want to also maintain privacy/anonymity when surfing I can't see how this can ever work - so unless we have some future system where people are uniquely identifiable on the Internet, and then some additional system that somehow "fairly" compensates websites for traffic from users, this won't happen. It would need to involve ISPs, their customers, and web site owners in some coordinated payment system to work.
Not to sound too preachy but to me your comment comes off as super entitled.
I pay for apps that I think are valuable, even ones with no cost like Signal. Because I value what they provide. I subscribe to sites that I find valuable enough to do so when it's an option. I abhor data collection and ads and I fight them without prejudice. But even I don't think I pay enough directly to offset how much I cost providers, I'm sure I don't, but that's mostly laziness because it's a pain to pay every site directly so I donate to the ones I really appreciate and use heavily. If I could pay my ISP for my link and then have a direct credit system that throws dollars and cents directly into website coffers as I use them, that would be great - but I don't want to give up my privacy either, so.... Yeah.
Long story short, ad-based content is going nowhere until there's a fundamental shift in either people or how the Internet operates.
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I would not consider Lemmy social media. Forums are few and far between, IRC is barely still kicking and Usenet (as it was) simply doesn't exist.
I was curious about Usenet awhile ago, was it still linked computers mirroring information like the old days? No, it more or less simply linked usenet providers at this point.
IRC is as active as it has always been. It was never a high throughput system, you can barely keep track of more than 5 people talking.
Forums are still kicking as well, you have car owner forums for basically any make and model, Hobby Forums, specialist Forums (house building kitchen or gardening just to name a few I consulted recently).
Yeah, they don't have the scale of Facebook, they never had.
And lemmy, reddit, Mastodon and Co are very much social media. What are they if not?
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IRC is as active as it has always been. It was never a high throughput system, you can barely keep track of more than 5 people talking.
Forums are still kicking as well, you have car owner forums for basically any make and model, Hobby Forums, specialist Forums (house building kitchen or gardening just to name a few I consulted recently).
Yeah, they don't have the scale of Facebook, they never had.
And lemmy, reddit, Mastodon and Co are very much social media. What are they if not?
wrote last edited by [email protected]Lemmy isn't social. It's just forums aggregated. One could use it as a social app, and some people do, but it really is not necessary or even really welcomed.
I have seen estimates of a reduction of 50 to 75 percent in the number of forums over the last 15 years. There are certainly a lot less. People go to reddit or discord these days.
Same with IRC but the decline is even higher.
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Lemmy isn't social. It's just forums aggregated. One could use it as a social app, and some people do, but it really is not necessary or even really welcomed.
I have seen estimates of a reduction of 50 to 75 percent in the number of forums over the last 15 years. There are certainly a lot less. People go to reddit or discord these days.
Same with IRC but the decline is even higher.
I'd love to see the methodology for those estimates, because I see more every year, not less. IRC stays flat.
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I'd love to see the methodology for those estimates, because I see more every year, not less. IRC stays flat.
Go look at the major irc chat hosts. Add up daily users. Then compare that number to the estimated users in 2005-10.
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The emergence of social media has destroyed all the small communities to standardize communication and information.
It's a bit of a digital version of rural exodus. And since 2017/2018, I've noticed that everything that, in my opinion, represented the internet has disappeared.
I've known Lemmy for a few hours and I feel like I'm back in the early spirit of the internet.
I do agree, but indirectly, cause social media isn't inherently bad; It has been manipulated and exploited by oligarchs into weapons for information scraping and data theft. Zuck... Musk... Don't let them slink away into the shadow and blame the tech. There was a time when social media was mostly enriching and had a potential for community building, and they took that from us to profit massively. The internet is dying, and it's those psychotic freaks that have done it.
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I have been here for a few months and Lemmy is gonna disappoint you too, my friend.
Depends what communities you frequent, I think. I'm still drinking from the "all/hot" firehose presently, but I see myself spending more time in the smaller communities as lemmy overall get bigger and more mainstream.
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Pretty much but don't let that stop you from posting in other place. I try to make habit of posting in game forums of games I'm playing in. Sometime they have decent off-topic section where you can talk about other stuff. Only normies stick to social medias, us nerds stick to real internet.
Hell yeah forums
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The emergence of social media has destroyed all the small communities to standardize communication and information.
It's a bit of a digital version of rural exodus. And since 2017/2018, I've noticed that everything that, in my opinion, represented the internet has disappeared.
I've known Lemmy for a few hours and I feel like I'm back in the early spirit of the internet.
Welcome.
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The emergence of social media has destroyed all the small communities to standardize communication and information.
It's a bit of a digital version of rural exodus. And since 2017/2018, I've noticed that everything that, in my opinion, represented the internet has disappeared.
I've known Lemmy for a few hours and I feel like I'm back in the early spirit of the internet.
YUP! This is exactly why I'm so passionate about it. Awfulness still happens, but it feels organic like the original days of the web.
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i think the difference is that before the internet was a social mesh of countless websites.
while today it's just a handful of social media sites.
yhea, it's capitalism, but social media is the main tool capitalism used.
Yes, but in order to properly learn our lesson to prevent this from happening again, we need to call out the root of the problem instead of/in addition to the tools or symptoms.
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I do agree, but indirectly, cause social media isn't inherently bad; It has been manipulated and exploited by oligarchs into weapons for information scraping and data theft. Zuck... Musk... Don't let them slink away into the shadow and blame the tech. There was a time when social media was mostly enriching and had a potential for community building, and they took that from us to profit massively. The internet is dying, and it's those psychotic freaks that have done it.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Yes. It is dying because it was murdered.
There's a bloody facebook wrapped in palantir sitting on the table.
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Yes, but in order to properly learn our lesson to prevent this from happening again, we need to call out the root of the problem instead of/in addition to the tools or symptoms.
i think even without capitalism, social media works better on scale (even federated social media, does so but decentralised). you will join the bigger systems, and those systems are more likely to grow if they are bigger...
they will be much less toxic without capitalism though
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i think even without capitalism, social media works better on scale (even federated social media, does so but decentralised). you will join the bigger systems, and those systems are more likely to grow if they are bigger...
they will be much less toxic without capitalism though
The "bigger systems" pre-corporate internet (and somewhat in the transition) were sometimes fairly large forums dedicated to one niche (sometimes multiple, but in the same general field). Once Reddit specifically came along after YouTube/Google laid the groundwork for the corporatization of the Internet, it centralized basically every forum to one website. Now even today, forums still exist, but it's nowhere near what they once were.
That's also not to mention sites like Geocities allowing basically everyone to have their own website (which of course, is another version of centralization, but with much more control given to its users).
And it's not like corporations didn't try to take control of the internet before 2005/2006. Just look at AOL in the 90s for a prime example, along with Flash, ActiveX/Internet Explorer, Quicktime/Realplayer browser plugins for video, etc.
Without capitalism, we would still see the internet grow, as even in the late 90s, it felt as if you were being left behind in society if you didn't have an internet connection, but the way in which it grew would look much more akin to how it looked in the 90s and early 2000s.
The internet sure was far from perfect back then, but it was ours'.
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The emergence of social media has destroyed all the small communities to standardize communication and information.
It's a bit of a digital version of rural exodus. And since 2017/2018, I've noticed that everything that, in my opinion, represented the internet has disappeared.
I've known Lemmy for a few hours and I feel like I'm back in the early spirit of the internet.
All technology becomes degraded over time. Enshittification is real.
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The "bigger systems" pre-corporate internet (and somewhat in the transition) were sometimes fairly large forums dedicated to one niche (sometimes multiple, but in the same general field). Once Reddit specifically came along after YouTube/Google laid the groundwork for the corporatization of the Internet, it centralized basically every forum to one website. Now even today, forums still exist, but it's nowhere near what they once were.
That's also not to mention sites like Geocities allowing basically everyone to have their own website (which of course, is another version of centralization, but with much more control given to its users).
And it's not like corporations didn't try to take control of the internet before 2005/2006. Just look at AOL in the 90s for a prime example, along with Flash, ActiveX/Internet Explorer, Quicktime/Realplayer browser plugins for video, etc.
Without capitalism, we would still see the internet grow, as even in the late 90s, it felt as if you were being left behind in society if you didn't have an internet connection, but the way in which it grew would look much more akin to how it looked in the 90s and early 2000s.
The internet sure was far from perfect back then, but it was ours'.
I do miss that early internet, it was more discovery and exploration and much less doomscrolling.
and I agree that corporations destroyed it.
i realised that the response StumbleUpon cannot exist nowadays,is because internet is just a handful of sites rather than countless small ones. God StumbleUpon was superior to wherever we have now
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The emergence of social media has destroyed all the small communities to standardize communication and information.
It's a bit of a digital version of rural exodus. And since 2017/2018, I've noticed that everything that, in my opinion, represented the internet has disappeared.
I've known Lemmy for a few hours and I feel like I'm back in the early spirit of the internet.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Not really, no. Social Medias can and will exist at any scale, some more or less harmful than others. For example, even Lemmy is filled with people spreading propaganda for foreign dictatorships.
We should take the good with the bad and takes steps to protect our own rights and privacy while helping others do the same. Just as people did during the dawn of the internet, when scams we easily recognize today were unknown dangers before.
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The emergence of social media has destroyed all the small communities to standardize communication and information.
It's a bit of a digital version of rural exodus. And since 2017/2018, I've noticed that everything that, in my opinion, represented the internet has disappeared.
I've known Lemmy for a few hours and I feel like I'm back in the early spirit of the internet.
Thanks to Lemmy and Linux I’ve been enjoying the internet in much the same way for some time now.
I even use a desktop PC on a daily basis and it just feels right.
Well, it’s desktop PC but I have the main monitor on an arm so that it can hover over my lap while on the couch. I’m a middle aged dad and my family likes to hang out in the same room together, so it is much more practically usable for me as a couchtop.
