If you've ever found yourself missing the "good old days" of the #web, what is it that you miss? (Interpret "it" broadly: specific websites? types of activities? feelings? etc.) And approximately when were those good old days?
No wrong answers — I'm working on an article and wanted to get some outside thoughts.
@molly0xfff where to start? The late 80's till about 2010 were the best. Especially when - no google, no algorithms, no ads, no social media (lots of communications through blogs), few agendas, little misinformation, no monetisation, few creepy people/scams/phishing/hacking etc etc. No influencers.
@molly0xfff belated reply; (signed on in 1994, had a website ever since) - I'm feeling less and less of that feeling lately. Personal websites seem to be on the rebound and I think that is what I like most about the open web. ActivityPub, decentralization, open protocols... I'm glad these are part of the daily conversation again. But when I did miss the good old days, this is what I missed.
@molly0xfff the time i miss was pre-advertising and pre-algorithm. communities were small. people had their own websites that they might have hand coded. in any case, sites were much much simpler and more usable. and i miss the optimism of those days.
@molly0xfff
Mostly being a world without significant commercial interests and especially no lumped distribution: I would browser online listings/catalogs (!) like early Yahoo and find new niche topics like SIRDS and end at dozens exotic top level domains hosting website crafted by individuals. I'd explore well sorted and structured FTP Listings and find interesting new free software to copy on floppy disk for taking home. Later Tucows did that. Alravista, keyword, link, read: No ads,banners,etc
@molly0xfff i miss the days when Google search worked. When you could find anything online and if you couldn’t you’d ask others, apologising that your Google-fu wasn’t working that day.
I think that all stopped when Google decided they had to “beat” other companies. First Apple, then Facebook, the Microsoft…
@molly0xfff how personal it was. modern web is 90% websites hosted by corporations with little personalization, most websites are something like [company].com which is just sleek informational content. on websites like YouTube where you have a personal public account, you get some degree of control, but everybody's account looks more or less the same. This lack of individuality combined with HEAVY commodification (ads on every single damn page!!) just makes browsing the modern web feel like a chore.. site builders like wix and squarespace make this even worse as what was previously a chance at personal expression (building your own personal or business site) has become yet another centralised service.
@molly0xfff I am not missing stuff, I am annoyed by stuff which is too much.
Too much advertisements.
Too many popups.
Too many proprietary big corporations.
@molly0xfff I think fondly of the time I was a member of a local BBS. I had not met anyone in person. I was rather new, a few months, to the site.
One day my hard drive crashed. Within two days other members of the BBS had fixed me up and I was off and running again. It was an amazing experience that brought me to tears.
@molly0xfff I think your survey questions used the word “net” and not “web”, which changes my thoughts dramatically. There was a “good old days” before the web. There was also a good old web!
@molly0xfff Proper many-to-many threaded conversations on mailing lists that I could participate in, but also be caught up with at the end of every day.
RSS feed full of webcomics.
... I think that's what I miss, but I'm not sure I'd participate in them anymore. I never did figure out the best way to "sync" my reading "context" with my phone for either.
Before folks worried about cyberstalking (stalking but with bits). Hackers stealing your money. Identity thieves. Surveillance. Naughty bits. Being caught seeing naughty bits. Privacy to chat with friends without conversations being public. Disinformation. Advertising. Internet/social addiction. Cyberwarfare. Election interference. Ransomware. I experience today's #web through insecurity and anxiety and ad overload. I miss the awkward relatively quiet net of olde.
old-school forums. so much knowledge on a singular topic, all distilled into one place, with the experts on hand, because that was the place to talk about your interest.
IRC when it was simply "mIRC" to the unwashed masses. Laggy servers and netsplits. ahh. the nostalgia.
advertising; pop-under ads were not nearly as bad as we thought they were in the early 2000's. advertising got so, so much worse.
@molly0xfff Just the idea that you could work without the feeling that someone is looking over your shoulder. Also that the browser did not assume to own the computer.