Oh my sweet summer child, Facebook has always been part of the new Internet.

The Internet has existed since the 1960s. At the time, it was a distributed network for storing documents. Email was invented as a way to send a file from one person to another, but people quickly realised it was more useful for asynchronous conversation. Usenet and IRC later arose, also as communication tools. The WWW began in 1993 at CERN as a way to store files and make them easily viewable by anybody.

Most of that was before my time, but I’m old enough to remember when the web was new. Email had existed for ages, but had only been used by American universities and DARPA. For most people, it was a brand new, futuristic communication system. People had actual personal conversations over email. We developed genuine friendships with people all over the world. Entire new types of jokes were formed.

On the WWW, which is what most people mean when they say Internet, HTML was a much smaller, simpler language. There was no PHP, no JavaScript, not even CSS. There were no rules, conventions, or expectations, and scant documentation; we were all making it up as we went along, and if you saw something cool on another site, you pressed Ctrl+u to view the source code and figure out how they did it.

Websites at the time were gloriously hideous. Objectively modern websites look better, but there was a craftsmanship in ye olden dayes. Nowadays, websites are built with CSS frameworks, which means they all look the same.

But the web was also distributed back then. Now, as someone put it, we have four huge websites, each full of screencaos if the other three. Back then, we talked to each other on forums, over email, in IRC channels and newsgroups. Those all still exist, but people have gradually abandoned them in favour of social media

But social media is crucially different from the old ways. Forums are built around threads; accounts exist, but the basic unit of interaction is the conversation.

The basic unit if social media is the account. You don’t follow conversations, you follow people. As such. there is an inherent push towards cultivating a persona and performing for an audience above having a genuine discussion. Sure, there were a few people who used Usenet that way (Kibo comes to mind), but social media encourages everybody to be Kibo.

And as others have said, SEO also devastated the web. SEO is as old as search engines. Used benignly, it’s simply a way to ensure people looking for information your site provides land on your site. But it turns out that it’s a deal with the devil in which the devil doesn’t even fabe to sign a contract or provide any services. Google, through its algorithms, decides what web pages people can find. Big sites spend money hiring people to make webpages with no intention of showcasing expertise, but in showing up on the first page if a Google search. Small sites run by enthusiasts are crowded out.

This was probably inevitable, but it’s still unfortunate.

Still, there are alternative search engines that focus on the small web and replicate the early days of searching. I use Mojeek and Marginalia; only if (as frequently happens) they don’t turn up useful results, I resort to DuckDuckGo.

People were here for two things primarily:

1. For entertainment, and they found that online
2. To share in their passions with others. (And porn)

It wasn’t about money. Nobody wanted to be a “streamer” or an “influencer”, they just liked X and wanted to go online and participate in X. People shared memes because they liked memes, or the website/community they shared them on, not because it brings you to their page where they can sell you something.

People made flash games because they loved gaming and wanted to create something and share it. People made blogs and vlogs just to share what they’re up to. People made tutorials and guides because they were good at something and wanted to help others. Sure, many websites had to do things like run ads to pay the bills but it didn’t feel like every step you took you were bombarded by someone trying to make money.

When we say ‘old Internet’, we mean ‘before most people could get on the Internet’. Sorry to say it, but it was people that ruined the Internet. Just people.

You could feel people’s passions, nerd wars over hot and unsanctioned takes on different forums and various jokes that were just blast to experience or see taking form. There were situations when you pressed F5 and got another page of comments to read. Yes, there was trolling and rage baiting even then.

Nowadays you have Discord channels that are just waiting for some official announcement that creates some traffic and then goes back to low traffic mode. In an age where you don’t need a CRT monitor or wait in line for a public access to the internet to check the replays you have this low activity.

There wasn’t that much cultivated passivity that you’ll find in modern spaces, referring to various algorithms in Reels that keep you passive and engaged.

Money wasn’t the main driving factor, it’s honestly no coincidence that the most helpful guide you might find in the flood of bloated articles will feel like it was made in the 90s - 2010, likely it was.

I feel there’s something to this, more chaotic and unsanctioned views combined with general curiosity vs modern and carefully cultivated official outlets to the point our own reactions feels curated to fit the official framing. Sure there were “venerable ones” but the discussion didn’t relay on them to carry the discussion or generate content.

I remember the tail end of the old internet. And no, it was not my MySpace or Reddit. It was forums and it was personal websites. I wouldn’t say it’s better per se but it was definitely more fun. There was no money in the internet and so there was no incentive to market anything. People just did what they wanted. Even companies mainly just had fun stuff on their websites.

On the other hand, damn was it hard to find literally anything. The only way to find new things was through word of mouth.

My view is that SEO ruined the Internet. Once search results became a thing people gamified it just pushed actually good content out of reach.

Problems of the past could be dealt with, e.g. pop-up ads could be defeated with a pop-up blocker. But you cannot “defeat” not being able to find valuable content in the first place.

And today, with LLMs, it’s actually just outright impossible to search for new things without having a preconception of what your actual destination is.

the old internet was better

there was no security and Reddit, Facebook, and MySpace were the best

Oh sweet child, when we say the internet before times, we’re talking about WAY before that bullshit

The internet as it exists today is primarily made for advertising things to you, gathering data to use in advertising things to you, and trying to trick you into advertising things to other people

The internet used to be a library. You could visit where and when you want, browsing information relatively undisturbed.

Now; every corner of the internet is trying to sell you something, with many of them stealing your information in an attempt to leverage it against you to coerce or even force you to pay up.

I miss when an adblocker was a foreign concept, because it used to be a solution in search of a problem. Now ads are so invasive and overwhelming that browsing without blocking them is unbearable - if you can even browse without having to signup and subscribe to yet another ‘service’.

The Internet is shit right now for 1000 reasons. The Internet of the Facebook/Twitter era was shit for 500 reasons and these 500 persist into the current 1000 reasons. The Internet of the MySpace era was shit for 250 reasons, but we were glad to see USENET dying. The Internet of the USENET era was shit for 125 reasons, all of them USENET.

2026: What you want doesn’t exist or has been removed. You adjust your expectations of what is available and move on with your life as everything converges onto the same sterile crap.

2006: What you want doesn’t exist or has been removed. Person in their house: “Fuck you. I’ll do it myself. And better.” And that person was right and they did.

Still happens now… sometimes… but it used to be EVERY SINGLE DAY. We used to OWN the internet. Now we’re renters and we have landlords.

If we could only go back to where it was just Reddit, Facebook and MySpace, then things would be fine.

That wasn’t the old internet. That was web 2.0. The old internet was before corporate social media.

Before reddit/Facebook/MySpace there were personal websites through geocities. Then came ytmnd.

At a certain point there were still videos, but it was QuickTime and realplayer and “buffering” was an annoyance.

Flash player came out and allowed for a renaissance of creative games and movies.

We had all the building blocks for creative expression, with none of the garbage that started growing with digg/reddit.

Back in the day, people went to the internet to interact with other people.

At this point, almost all sites have been set up to get money out of people.

I miss visiting 3dfiles.com where every day there would be the latest shareware games, tech demos, graphics drivers and screensavers available to download. No bloated reviews or sponsored content, just actual cool software that would put your computer’s hardware to use in a fun way.