This also could have a positive aspect, eventually, maybe.
It could cause a revival of BBSes, Packet-Radio on CB radio/amateur radio etc.
Or give birth to new messengers only used by real people etc.

This reminds me of the mailboxes nets of the 90s, such as Fidonet, MausNet, Z-Netz (comparable to WWIV network).:
There had been a telephone line-based network that existed in parallel to the internet.

No what I can see occurring is that the Internet will fragment even further than it already has, big corporations clearly want to control it and I fully expect the free internet to slowly disappear as more and more controls and sanitization are put into place by the corporations seeking to control it and the people using it will be shit out of luck, youll get what the corps want you to have and youll like it.

Tor and the darknet will always exist but even there more and more controls are being forced upon it by the people/corporations in power .. they don't want a free internet as it provides the plebs with too much power and knowledge and far too much freedom.

So I fully expect there to be a few versions of the internet in the near future and all of them will be infested with AI and Bots and the ones not infested will be full of vapid boring clones eating social media shit for clout and licking big corpo boots for the latest money wasting bullshit thinking it makes them look cool.

Wish I could go back to the late 90s or early 2000s and just stay there ...the early Internet was so much fun.

There is a push from some US state governments for mandatory age verification. There is a push from other governments (Europe, Brazil, etc.) for other forms of censorship. There is a push from big tech for requiring a mobile phone number for everything and for "device attestation" to limit the range of acceptable device/OS/software. All of this seems to be converging on an "internet ID". What do you want to bet that, once the infrastructure is in place, the same web developers who don't hesitate to subject their users to tracking, crapchas, and cloudfart malware, will also not hesitate to require an internet ID?

the3dfxdude wrote on 2025-07-14, 02:06:

.. […]
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..

The culprit? It's likely from companies, world-wide, trying to seed their LLM. It wasn't like this more than a year ago. These are certainly not like the classic search engine bots.
..

I agree with the sentiment here actually. If the small web hosts don't take action to make themselves free of bots, they'll just give up, and I think the old way of the internet will go away. The internet will mostly be chatbots left of the largest tech companies conveying any information that exists, and a few bloated applications that are a pretend sorry example of what things were before the internet, and that is dystopian.

It is almost certain that "the internet" as we knew it is vanishing - all traffic is diverting to protected consolidated enclaves (social media....) and some larger sites (news sites, universities, big corporates, governments, places like imdb and so on). The 'wilderness' is being destroyed. It's like an exaggerated version of multiple settlements being abandoned or absorbed into big cities in the west of the US way back, but more rapid and more pronounced.

what's left in the wild now still looks plentiful - but increasingly populated by nothing but bots - so many articles, media and news just looks generated only to be read by other bots (increasingly on social media too!), search engines losing their usefulness, advertising on everything and the average person now encounters endless checks for websites (all the squares with cars.... sometimes 10, 20+ times and even then nothing) or cloudflare or other bot filters than clearly dont work, and then there is an accumulation of hostile malicious activity all time.

I feel sorry for anyone running servers now, it must be like trying to row a boat up a waterfall

I feel sorry for anyone running servers now, it must be like trying to row a boat up a waterfall

Like a personal website hosted locally on a DOS PC, C64 or a PIC Micro? 😢
Personally, I always had this on shedule as a future project..

But not all is lost, maybe. Perhaps we really see other niche networks to emerge again?
As it's usually happen in the novels about dystopian futures?

I liked Packet-Radio, for example. The DOS program "Graphic Packet" used to be cool, I heard.
It even allowed playing games, displaying pictures live when being received and so on.
Example video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5kFWvUBKqs

Edit: There's also HAMNET, a WiFi-based "internet" operated by radio amateurs.
So it's in principle possible to establish an alternative to the internet.
just needs enough dedication..
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAMNET
https://tapr.org/wp-content/uploads/DCC2014-T … MNET-DG8NGN.pdf

This worries me to no end. Look for tips on what to do in a city. Every result is a SEO ad trap listicle stating the same 'facts'. Or try to find out if a tool is any good- all you get are AI generated pages that start with an introduction of what the tool is for, and then a 'comparison' of features from the spec sheet. If you want something from a human you have to go to reddit, or youtube.

And even those platforms themselves are just trash. I used to watch a lot of youtube on my iPad, but lately all I get are these weird low-rent ads for 'trading courses' that will make you rich filmed by some dude on his phone, or the 'procrastinator vs whatever' song. It's all so icky it literally chased me away from my iPad. Just make me watch an ad for a car. Or cat food. Anything from a reputable company instead of all this scammy shit.

Of course there is still a non-platform internet out there, but if nobody can find it, what future does it have? Take Deskthority, quite an active forum a couple or years back, now its dead. Once new people stop flowing in (i.e. they go to reddit instead), posting deminishes, regulars stop hanging out and all that's left is a small group of diehards basically talking to themselves. At this point Vogons is my last forum hangout and knock-on-wood it keeps on thriving.

The 'small internet' movement looked hopeful, but I cooled on it considerably after checking it out. No matter how useful some may be, 'neocities'-like micro webpages are basically impossible to find with a normal search engine, so they only attract traffic from within the niche. I also checked out the alternative protocols like Gopher. After a few evenings of playing with it, it sadly became clear that most 'gopherholes' consist of a hello world from 2019, and three microblogs within the span of a few months after. If no-one reads it or reacts to it, I suppose most people don't see the point.

I feel it might be naive to think we can hide from the shit. It's essentially security by obscurity. Once an alternative becomes sufficiently mainstream the slop will follow suit, if it's too small it will peter out. Please tell me I'm seeing this wrong.

Since Firefox handily disabled NoScript for me (thanks) I now browse with the Devil's script permanently disabled. Naturally an increasing number of websites simply refuse to load anything at all. I saw this comment on Slashdot, I think:

"Cloudflare just makes sure you are running JavaScript [...] to protect their clients' ad revenue. There's nothing about a stupid little check box "Yes. I'm a human." that a bot can't handle. Even a bot written in JavaScript."

Big Pink wrote on 2025-07-14, 21:40:

Since Firefox handily disabled NoScript for me (thanks) I now browse with the Devil's script permanently disabled. Naturally an increasing number of websites simply refuse to load anything at all. I saw this comment on Slashdot, I think:

"Cloudflare just makes sure you are running JavaScript [...] to protect their clients' ad revenue. There's nothing about a stupid little check box "Yes. I'm a human." that a bot can't handle. Even a bot written in JavaScript."

Cloudflare also does a user agent spoofing check ...I was running a User Agent to make Firefox look like it was Chrome to the internet and Cloudflare pretty much told me to fuck off till I disabled that extension by refusing to pass their bot checks.

There's nothing about a stupid little check box "Yes. I'm a human." that a bot can't handle. Even a bot written in JavaScript."

I'm speaking under correction here, but I think clicking the box itself isn't the actual test.
The real test is checking for the mouse movement and the user's browser history. Ahem. 😉
Because, a real user moves the mouse cursor in a natural way.
A bot moves the mouse cursor in a very robotic way, very straightforward.

Jo22 wrote on 2025-07-15, 04:50:

I'm speaking under correction here, but I think clicking the box itself isn't the actual test. The real test is checking for the […]
Show full quote

There's nothing about a stupid little check box "Yes. I'm a human." that a bot can't handle. Even a bot written in JavaScript."

I'm speaking under correction here, but I think clicking the box itself isn't the actual test.
The real test is checking for the mouse movement and the user's browser history. Ahem. 😉
Because, a real user moves the mouse cursor in a natural way.
A bot moves the mouse cursor in a very robotic way, very straightforward.

This is correct, these check boxes are not the test, its everything you are doing before you click the box that matters.

Also captcha's are useless against bots, they can complete them as easy as a human can however like the check box its watching you before you even begin the puzzle.

you are always being watched by the browser, ALWAYS ..mahhaahahahha

no seriously, its watching.

Anyone see a parallel to the collapse of Usenet being overwhelmed with spam and flamewars/trolling?

UCyborg wrote on 2025-07-13, 14:13:

Not as bad on Edge, but still a long time... […]
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Not as bad on Edge, but still a long time...

And the worst thing is that retarded picture of a girl with hydrocephalus and exophthalmos 🤣

Blavius wrote on 2025-07-14, 20:00:

Of course there is still a non-platform internet out there, but if nobody can find it, what future does it have? Take Deskthority, quite an active forum a couple or years back, now its dead. Once new people stop flowing in (i.e. they go to reddit instead), posting deminishes, regulars stop hanging out and all that's left is a small group of diehards basically talking to themselves. At this point Vogons is my last forum hangout and knock-on-wood it keeps on thriving.

The 'small internet' movement looked hopeful, but I cooled on it considerably after checking it out. No matter how useful some may be, 'neocities'-like micro webpages are basically impossible to find with a normal search engine, so they only attract traffic from within the niche. I also checked out the alternative protocols like Gopher. After a few evenings of playing with it, it sadly became clear that most 'gopherholes' consist of a hello world from 2019, and three microblogs within the span of a few months after. If no-one reads it or reacts to it, I suppose most people don't see the point.

I feel it might be naive to think we can hide from the shit. It's essentially security by obscurity. Once an alternative becomes sufficiently mainstream the slop will follow suit, if it's too small it will peter out. Please tell me I'm seeing this wrong.

I think you are seeing it right, just look at what gets the clicks within platforms - the most popular videos on youtube, the most 'viral' stuff on tiktok, facebook,insta etc - look at what the masses drift towards and you know that there is no "resistance" at all; no amount of small internet movements, neocities, "slow living", "i quit using a smart phone" and all that amounts anything more than a grain of sand against an avalanche. And what about those people who won't change their habits, they're not accommodated and no one will really listen to the reasons, just write them off as 'weird' or 'old' and wait till they die off.

I see things like 'don't kill games' or 'buy physical media' and i agree but the masses don't - everything will be streamed, everything will be rented, everything will be behind big platforms - it's happening already. there might be a little bit of room for a few counter trends here and there, lets hope so, but they wont build up to much

as for the few surviving forums/communities, lets hope they hang on. Some time ago i made a thread about dying forums ( the signs that a forum is dying ) but now i'd have to add other factors like being flooded with genai 'content', and that goes for all non-platform internet and a huge amount of platform content too

Jo22 wrote on 2025-07-15, 04:50:

I'm speaking under correction here, but I think clicking the box itself isn't the actual test. The real test is checking for the […]
Show full quote

There's nothing about a stupid little check box "Yes. I'm a human." that a bot can't handle. Even a bot written in JavaScript."

I'm speaking under correction here, but I think clicking the box itself isn't the actual test.
The real test is checking for the mouse movement and the user's browser history. Ahem. 😉
Because, a real user moves the mouse cursor in a natural way.
A bot moves the mouse cursor in a very robotic way, very straightforward.

what about touch screen/tablet users?

There are more bots than people online...

roytam1 wrote on 2025-07-17, 08:21:

Jo22 wrote on 2025-07-15, 04:50:

I'm speaking under correction here, but I think clicking the box itself isn't the actual test. The real test is checking for the […]
Show full quote

There's nothing about a stupid little check box "Yes. I'm a human." that a bot can't handle. Even a bot written in JavaScript."

I'm speaking under correction here, but I think clicking the box itself isn't the actual test.
The real test is checking for the mouse movement and the user's browser history. Ahem. 😉
Because, a real user moves the mouse cursor in a natural way.
A bot moves the mouse cursor in a very robotic way, very straightforward.

what about touch screen/tablet users?

Cameras, Microphones, hall and gyro sensors in the tablets/phone . .trust me its always watching and listening and it can tell when a human is using it, they have more than enough data to tell the difference.

lolo799 wrote on 2025-07-17, 10:17:

There are more bots than people online...

what was happening in Janurary for this place to have that many online ....cant be that many bots . .can it.

Possibly the big snow storm in the US keeping ppl indoors, but why so many on Vogons specifically I can't guess.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_ … /2025_January_5

btw. just checked, 14 bots vs 11 ppl online just now.

I don't think I can say anything that hasn't been said here already, but I agree, the internet is in poor shape. Some people are chronically online, others are trying to abandon it entirely. The main thing I don't like about the idea of abandoning the internet is that the internet is an extremely fast way to get information out about anything. I know that a lot of people say that the 90's and 2000's were good times, but how much in the dark were you about world events, dark and gritty business that occurs around you regularly? Likely far less, ignorance is bliss. So many people being connected allows for a lot of this bad stuff to be in a spotlight, for the better in terms of you can point it out and do something about it, but for the worse in terms of it's bad and now it will take effort to fix. I don't think the human mind was meant to see so much bad stuff at one time, we only knew of us and ours for the longest time, anyone outside of the village didn't exist for what it's worth.

I like the IDEA that people are atomizing on the internet, small forums popping up, BBSs, smaller communities forming, people with similar interests coming together. If the communities are founded on interests, then you'll get a diversity of thoughts even if the interest is the same. Alternatively, if the community is formed around a way of thinking, you get a diversity of interests. Is it better to respect peoples individual interests but all think along similar lines, or is it better to be interested in something together but have more dynamic thought processes? Perhaps both if possible.

I'm rambling a bit. But I'd personally like people to go back to smaller, tighter communities while maintaining broad communication and dissemination of information. I like being able to google something about Linux and quickly finding an answer, even if the problem is highly specialized, but social media is a blight.

Im going to be honest here, I was far happier before I had access to all the evil shit occurring around me both locally or internationally, knowing that its occuring doesn't make my day any better and really if it was actually important enough the News would report it, so I was never out of the loop.

I was awake here in Australia when the Gulf war started and it was live on TV as it occurred, same with 9/11, I watched that happen live, I still cannot forget that and I wish I had just turned the TV off. The amount of horrible crap on the net after that happened makes me believe the Internet isn't any worse now than it was then for garbage hateful hurtful content.

Having fast easy access to information is a two edged sword, it cuts in both directions and knowing is not always better, sometimes ignorance is bliss and I wish I could forget everything I saw on 9/11 that was reported live on both TV and the Net.

I liked BBS systems and something similar but local only to where I live would be nice, if I wanted to know anything from around the world well the Internet would still be there.

-edit, I'm old enough to remember before the internet existed .. hell even before its predecessor existed and .. life was better then even if there was no instant access to knowledge ..I remember having an encyclopedia set with thesaurus and dictionary, used to read that all the time.

Also I want the old TV back where you had your two of three national tv stations and perhaps a few local tv stations and that was your lot, VHS too. sigh life was fun Before shitty cable and streaming service killed off blockbuster, I remember going tot he local store to hire movies and games ...would love to do that now and have a fun time hanging out with the family. Its not the same now with how instant access gives you a library of titles so large you spend more time looking for something to watch than actually watching.