Im old enough to have been in the computing industry since before the internet existed and over the years have watched as the Internet grew into something truly amazing and fun to use and then watched with horror as it became corporatized by the conglomerates to sell shite to the people using it.

The real internet died back in 2010 and got eaten by money and greed to become what we have now.

Its not going to get any better either.

-If I could go back to 2010 computing and just stay there, I would.

2010 is the magic-killing year for so many reasons. There should be a paper written about it.

Internet isn't a world of PCs and servers any more. Most of the connections come from consumer devices. And the vast majority of Internet-client applications is there (smartphones)

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-06-16, 12:13:

Im old enough to have been in the computing industry since before the internet existed and over the years have watched as the In […]
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Im old enough to have been in the computing industry since before the internet existed and over the years have watched as the Internet grew into something truly amazing and fun to use and then watched with horror as it became corporatized by the conglomerates to sell shite to the people using it.

The real internet died back in 2010 and got eaten by money and greed to become what we have now.

Its not going to get any better either.

-If I could go back to 2010 computing and just stay there, I would.

This sums up my feelings quite nicely.

I miss the pre-2010 Internet. My favorite time would likely be the 90's internet, but I agree, it was around 2010 when "quality" of content really started to decline, at least in my humble opinion. Now, it's full of cookie-cutter and AI created pages that all look and feel the same. So many sites feel "sanitized", devoid of any personality. That's one of the main reasons my silly little blog (link in my signature) looks the way it does. It's my way of itching the nostalgia part of my brain the misses those days, back then we still called it the World Wide Web.

I miss the simplicity of it all.
A simple password was all the security you needed. MFA while needed does sacrifice convenance.

Web pages were easy to navigate, eg.
Wanted the address or phone number, every page had a simple "contact us" section.
Nice clear driver download section on hardware/software sites.
Pages didn't hide the bloody scroll bars!

all this has been sacrificed for "style" as well as generic guides that don't even apply to the selected product or questions no one is asking. eg "Can my computer run Windows 11" when you hardware from 1999 selected

What I don't miss.
Plugins like Java, Flash,
Slow internet. I'm talking dial up, early ADSL speeds where even basic pages took ages.

.

Glad to know I'm not the only one who has thought the internet has been tanking in recent years.

Social media has also taken a lot of life out of forums (Vogons excluded 😏), a lot of people discussing their Bosch dishwashers or favorite hiking adventures all just post in social media groups now. Good luck finding any post in those that wasn't made in the last week.

I remember back before 2010 how much more I'd end up in places like overclockers club whereas unless I went there myself I doubt a search engine would direct me to a thread on the site.

Glad Protoweb exists really let's me just sit down with my retro PCs and feel like I'm exploring the internet like old times.

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-06-16, 12:13:

The real internet died back in 2010 and got eaten by money and greed to become what we have now.

Around then three things were happening in concert

global economic crisis
growing dominance of smart phones as means to access internet
growing dominance of social media as primary online destination

hence we had

risk averse corporate dominance
slow decline of the 'web browser'
slow decline of the 'web site' as we knew it

when we say the internet got worse i always think we kind of mean it got smaller relative to social media behind closed walls

Dan9550 wrote on 2025-06-17, 05:53:

Social media has also taken a lot of life out of forums (Vogons excluded 😏), a lot of people discussing their Bosch dishwashers or favorite hiking adventures all just post in social media groups now. Good luck finding any post in those that wasn't made in the last week.

exactly, "content" doesn't last any more and is out of reach of increasingly poor search engines.

Instead its scoured and 'learned' by competing LLMs given access and regurgitated through a singular interactive interface, the future is nearly here 🙁

gerry wrote on 2025-06-17, 07:04:

Around then three things were happening in concert […]
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Trashbytes wrote on 2025-06-16, 12:13:

The real internet died back in 2010 and got eaten by money and greed to become what we have now.

Around then three things were happening in concert

global economic crisis
growing dominance of smart phones as means to access internet
growing dominance of social media as primary online destination

hence we had

risk averse corporate dominance
slow decline of the 'web browser'
slow decline of the 'web site' as we knew it

when we say the internet got worse i always think we kind of mean it got smaller relative to social media behind closed walls

Dan9550 wrote on 2025-06-17, 05:53:

Social media has also taken a lot of life out of forums (Vogons excluded 😏), a lot of people discussing their Bosch dishwashers or favorite hiking adventures all just post in social media groups now. Good luck finding any post in those that wasn't made in the last week.

exactly, "content" doesn't last any more and is out of reach of increasingly poor search engines.

Instead its scoured and 'learned' by competing LLMs given access and regurgitated through a singular interactive interface, the future is nearly here 🙁

Its not just social media its 30 second shorts/videos by tiktok/youtube destroying the attention span of people and feeding their dopamine addiction to the point very few people want to participate in forums and discussion boards due to lack of instant gratification. (Its also not many of the ADD addled people have the patience to be involved in discussions)