The Gentrification of the Internet
I miss the old internet.<p>Discovery and interaction were the big thing - meeting strangers in strange places. Now, that&#x27;s basically impossible because each site that you use is designed with the goal of boxing you, keeping you where you are, talking to people who are just like you, because that apparently makes the most money. So now you&#x27;ll pretty much always be stuck in an echo chamber into which only the angriest, meanest crowds can break through.<p>You could really be anybody, try strange things and explore strange ideas - and you did it all under an alias that you could just easily abandon if you felt unsafe. No doxxing, because nobody knows your real name. Good luck pulling that off now. The logging, the real name&#x2F;email&#x2F;phone requirements, it&#x27;s just not possible anymore. The combined might of sockpuppet abuse, increasing complexity of bad actors&#x27; attacks, and the need for gathering real customers&#x27; information took that away.<p>I miss the old internet. And I don&#x27;t even know how it could have survived to the present day. It makes sense why we entered the age of surveillance capitalism. You give data, you get free stuff. It&#x27;s simple. People love free stuff, after all. But I wonder, did people even imagine that things would turn out like this? I wonder, is there some sort of an alternate future where this could be avoided? If things played out just a little differently?<p>What could save the old internet? Could it be the subscription-like model where sites you visit get a few pennies from you? Could it be keeping things decentralized, keeping the costs low enough to be manageable?<p>Or is this just it, is an internet that&#x27;s this corporate-greed fueled quest to gather more data and to show you more stuff the only way?