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.
Cuckerberg
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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.
It's not social media per se. It's capitalism. The Internet was this vast frontier, where you could meet anyone. Little communities formed, we all just talked, and self-regulated any bad behavior. It was a gift economy, we all freely shared knowledge, files, culture.
In the past 20 or so years, economies of scale took over. Corporations bought up the server space and aggressively shut down small communities. Community is discouraged, keep scrolling and click on the ads! Marketing killed 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.
I'm not old enough to have known the old internet, but the photo- and video-based social media never felt attractive to me. The only social media that I used was Reddit, but now I'm here. I appreciate the genuine people speaking their own mind for the sake of speaking around here, instead of the vapid, superficial and clout-chasing ""people"" (read: [fascist] bots) of other websites.
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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 on last edited by [email protected]I’ve known Lemmy for a few hours and I feel like I’m back in the early spirit of the internet.
Welcome
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.
This a very interesting metaphor, real spot on.
But I would say a lot of that rural Internet has not disappeared, not yet. It's still there, very much alive. People are simply not visiting it anymore. They don't dare go outside the pretty walled-gardens they're used to.
But those people wanting to stay parked in their corporate-owned gardens, or silos, doesn't make that small and more humane web go away. And would they chose to, they could still come visit it freely, they could still easily interact with their creators. They could even create and tend to their very own part of it, making that small Web a richer place.
They just don't do it. Most of the time because they can't be bothered with doing the actual work, or because they're afraid to try and to fail. They want to be fed easy to eat content, not learn to cook it themselves.
They want the a Web that is like those shitty fast-food serving standardized and over-processed industrial food. Something ready to eat that is barely food at all but that will stuff their belly and, more importantly, that will never surprise them. Alas, this food is as much a poison for their head as it is for their body. They will realize that too late. It probably already is.
Too bad, because the alternative is still a thing, not that far away.
The small web is still a thing. Many blogs still exist that only share content their author sincerely care about or is interested in, that are ads and tracking free, that respect their readers... But the majority of people have quit visiting them, they simply don't go outside of, say, YT, X, Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, TikTok or whatever where they can all stay together parked like the cattle they have not yet realized they have become.
Back to your original metaphor. Digital rurality is still there and many could easily own a small part of it and make it exwactly like they want it to be, and be happy with it. But they prefer staying in the large over-crowed cities, in small overpriced apartments like most their friends are doing.
Lemmy is a great alternative to reddit but it could relatively easily become another silos—just plural and not corporate-owned but silos nonetheless. It's up to us to keep it open to the alternatives. I mean, sometimes I feel sad to see little posts & comments inviting people to go read/watch something they liked that is not already hosted on some corporate-owned platform. Heck, sharing personal content feels so much like a lost cause to me that I seldom share a link to my own blog posts: why bother? I also publish a lot less often than I used to, here again: why bother?
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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.
More so, Internet has destroyed the spirit of conversation. When I was younger, people found me charming and intelligent when first meeting me after talking for a bit. Now, they can quickly "google" what I say and quickly learn that I am an ass, bullshitting and exaggerating what I don't know, but making it up to keep the conversation interesting.
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Social media, at it's heart, is inevitable. We will always find a way to share pictures, information, videos, etc. with each other. It's such basic functionality when you really think about it. We're social creatures and this is the most important thing we would do with technology.
The issue is specifically with platforms; how they consolidate power and who owns them.
I don't know what to do about it, it's one of the biggest problems we are going to continue to face in our time. I can't really armchair solutions for it now, but I think it's of the utmost importance that we recognize it and discuss it.
Social media is not inherently bad, it's the platforms.
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What was the state of the internet in 1994 that it would cause such resentiment?
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Eternal September refers to September 1993, when a popular internet service provider (AOL) provided easy access to Usenet for its users, which immediately threatened the existing culture and lowered the quality of discourse.
Before this, September was only a temporary problem as a new batch of college freshman would arrive and be unaccustomed to the place.
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What was the state of the internet in 1994 that it would cause such resentiment?
wrote on last edited by [email protected]"A cultural phenomenon during a period beginning around late 1993 and early 1994, when Internet service providers began offering Usenet access to many new users."
"The flood of new and generally inexperienced Internet users directed to Usenet by commercial ISPs in 1993 and subsequent years swamped the existing culture of those forums and their ability to self-moderate and enforce existing norms. AOL began their Usenet gateway service in March 1994, leading to a constant stream of new users.
Hence, from the early Usenet community point of view, the influx of new users that began in September 1993 appeared to be endless."
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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.
There are still smaller communities out there. It can be discussed that Lemmy is a small community itself.
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Not social media per sé, but definitely "the algorithm" that was introduced around ~2014 and has been tweaked by the likes of Cambridge Analytica to now provide us with endless ragebait.
MySpace was social media and had none of the toxicity.
MySpace was social media and had none of the toxicity.
Usenet was Social Media and it had allllll the toxicity.
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Social media back then was making stuff you thought was cool and having friends and other weirdos across the Internet also enjoying the same things as you.
Social media today is juicing the algorithm to generate the most views, regardless of whether you like the content you're producing or not.
Social media back then were also referred to as social NETWORKS. A network implies collaboration and interactivity, media are more linear, having a sender and a recipient.
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"A cultural phenomenon during a period beginning around late 1993 and early 1994, when Internet service providers began offering Usenet access to many new users."
"The flood of new and generally inexperienced Internet users directed to Usenet by commercial ISPs in 1993 and subsequent years swamped the existing culture of those forums and their ability to self-moderate and enforce existing norms. AOL began their Usenet gateway service in March 1994, leading to a constant stream of new users.
Hence, from the early Usenet community point of view, the influx of new users that began in September 1993 appeared to be endless."
I think that you left out the part that explains why it's called September. Every year, when first-year university students got their hands on the internet for the first time, they would rampage through the noble message boards with their barbarian netiquetteless ways. Many dreaded the annual influx of newbies, and their worst nightmares were finally realized when the internet was opened up to the greater public.
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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.
Whenever I get overwhelmed by the modern web, I go to http://wiby.me/ and click "surprise me..."
It's a search engine that only spits out "real" webpages that were made by people like you and me. Very refreshing.
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I agree the internet feels a lot different than the eqrly 2000s, but breaking down what's different I can't pin anything concrete down.
There's pretty much no fundamental differences between how social media was and how it is now. People talk, share interests, get in arguments. What we feel is nostalgia for a wild west internet with less people and rules that will never exist again.
More people use the internet now so more people participate in the conversation. That's how it will be for the rest of human history probably.
but breaking down what’s different I can’t pin anything concrete down.
One big difference is scale. The 2000s Internet was primarily centered around single(ish) interest forums with relatively low user counts. The entire Lemmy-verse, which is itself quite tiny in 2025, is still WAY larger than nearly any of the 2000s era forums ever were.
Another other big difference is why the user base is online. The majority of them aren't participating to discuss a shared interest anymore, they are doing it for general entertainment or to earn money.
Those two things explain nearly all of the change. Way more users congregated into a handful of websites with many of them, including the sites, attempting to get rich doing it.
The 2000s web was a much smaller number of users spread across a zillion websites / forums with nearly all of the users and site operators doing it without money as a motivator.
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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.
Yes. I'm a big fan of lemmy. I hope peertube gets going I feel it will be like the original YouTube
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It's not social media per se. It's capitalism. The Internet was this vast frontier, where you could meet anyone. Little communities formed, we all just talked, and self-regulated any bad behavior. It was a gift economy, we all freely shared knowledge, files, culture.
In the past 20 or so years, economies of scale took over. Corporations bought up the server space and aggressively shut down small communities. Community is discouraged, keep scrolling and click on the ads! Marketing killed the internet.
Came here to say exactly this. Capitalism breeds consumerism - and consumerism destroys everything.
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Whenever I get overwhelmed by the modern web, I go to http://wiby.me/ and click "surprise me..."
It's a search engine that only spits out "real" webpages that were made by people like you and me. Very refreshing.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Thank you for sharing. It's painful to realize in hindsight that those websites were peak internet.
They lack polish, but they were all a labour of love. No enshittification, no selling things, no corporate influence, no shit posting.
Everything had a purpose, every post took effort, and it was all about sharing experiences or knowledge.
I really miss that internet.
EDIT: correcting gibberish 🤭
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My reflection on that period would lead me to suggest it was the mass "normie" invasion of nerd-space and the promotion of low-effort participation. I don't remember anything specific about that particular timeframe, though.
The internet was better when it wasn't big enough to be worth monetizing. And the signal to noise ratio has generally grown exponentially with participation. Which makes sense if you think about it.
My reflection on that period would lead me to suggest it was the mass “normie” invasion of nerd-space and the promotion of low-effort participation. I don’t remember anything specific about that particular timeframe, though.
So ultimately the sentiment has never changed?
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Not the only one, but it's the walled garden platform approach.
The idea (from around 2010ish) was that every platform is an app and every app is everything. A company buys up other smaller companies until you have a payment system, a marketplace, a VOIP system, advertising, job posting boards, 4 different waya to share media, etc. etc.
While the tech world sold this as, and actually viewed this as, some organic online super village, it wasn't. It was a series of shit stripmalls adjacent to a Walmart in a shitberg town on a big freeway linking other shiberg towns with Walmarts. Sterile, restrictive, one size fits all dipshits kind of garbage. There's a kind of person that thrives in the parking lots of Walmarts and stripmalls in shitberg towns, and they thrive on social media, too.
Lemmy reminds me more of early internet as well, but also refined by the common language of those platforms as a common starting point. It's a niche, and it's not for everyone. But it is for you, welcome.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]There's a kind of person that thrives in the parking lots of Walmarts and stripmalls in shitberg towns, and they thrive on social media, too.
Well put. I'm old school Tripod days (if anyone remembers what that was). I've seen social media go from "A/S/L?" to "like & subscribe" and everything in between. It was never that clean, and the lot lizards were always lurking.
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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.
What “represented the internet” in your opinion?
“Small communities” still exist all over the internet, in far greater numbers than before. They exist on the giant social media platforms too. Discord, WhatsApp, facebook, reddit, etc all have millions of “small communities” on them.
