What has the internet become?

Years ago the internet was filled with an incredible assortment of small pages maintained by dedicated people. The BBS was common, people had conversations, and ads and censorship were few and far between.

But things changed, a lot.

The internet itself has changed.

AOL, GeoCities, Yahoo, Ask, Britannica, untold numbers of BBS, IRC, and instant messengers were everywhere. But, over time a consoldation happened. In the mid-2000's we saw the rise of yahoo! and Google, GeoCities disappeared, myspace came along, an Amazon entered the limelight.

Suddenly, the vast library of webrings, specialized websites, and personally maintained webpages began to fade away to nothing. When facebook and YouTube came along, they quickly stole the show and became the top visited websites. Now the majority of the internet feels small, constricted by several major corporations Alphabet (youtube, google, waze, nest, fitbit), Meta (facebook, Instagram), Amazon (amazon, twitch), and Microsoft (msn, linkdin, bing).

Top of the charts for the newly condensed internet are youtube, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. According to Pew research the majority of individuals in the USA frequent Youtube and Facebook the most use. These websites are generally designed to drive ad-revenue and rely on the content created by users for most of what's found on them.

But the rest of the internet is something entirely different, it's a web of illusion and deceit designed to keep us trapped in a loop of scrolling and clicking through content that just feels, "off" in a lot of cases. Then there's the verifiably fake side of everything, Click farms, bot nets, automated systems, AI generated content, deepfakes, fake debates with bots, fake comments, and fake engagement. The numbers vary, but estimates frequently indicate over half of all traffic on the internet is now non-human.

It's been dismissed over and over by media and reporters, but the Dead Internet Theory is very plausible.

What is the dead internet theory? It is a conspiracy theory (lol) that claims that most of the content on the internet today is generated by artificial intelligence, and not by real people. The theory argues that the internet "died" around 2016 or 2017, when bot activity and algorithmic curation became dominant, reducing human interaction and creativity. The theory is based on anecdotal evidence, such as repetitive tweets, suspicious YouTube views, and low-quality websites.

It's hard to find proof that the internet is dead or that AI has taken over, mostly because it's the same articles and posts over and over. Sometimes I wonder if I believe in it because of some sense of nostalgia, or if I'm tired of the condensed and corralled nature of how the internet feels these days.

I'm happy to discover the BBS systems are still around, at least here there's some real people to interact with.

I'll close with a haiku by GPT-4.

The web is alive
But we only see shadows
Of what once was real

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 2022/07/15 (Linux/64)
* Origin: thE qUAntUm wOrmhOlE, rAmsgAtE, uK. bbs.erb.pw (700:100/37)

The normie internet is now a big ad. interaction is only permitted in specific approved channels. there is no fun there.

thankfully we still have bbses.

Osito

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: 2o fOr beeRS bbS >> 20ForBeers.com:1337 (700:100/71)

On 16 May 2023, nethius said the following...

What has the internet become?

Years ago the internet was filled with an incredible assortment of small pages maintained by dedicated people. The BBS was common, people had conversations, and ads and censorship were few and far between.

Some of the earlier style internet remains, but it is cloaked by the monetarized internet.

Some that went away deserved to suffer data-death, as while we romanticized the great stuff, we did have to wallow in the muck between islands of sanity.

Some lingers on (The Well, as an example) and have become hopeless echo-chambers of teh very worst of its past.

Between Bots and Trolls content suffers.

Yet there are some stawarts that keep to the faith.

Interestingly in the timeframe you mention my long running blog (about 17 years now) saw a sudden drop in traffic as things were steered to monetarized alterntives.

--- Steve K9ZW via SPOT BBS

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 2022/07/15 (Linux/64)
* Origin: SPOT BBS / k9zw (700:100/69)

Youre right about the monetization and general adcentric nature of the internet now.

if we look closely at how its designed, its convoluted and hard to find content without getting sucked into endless ads. a great example of this is anytime you need a recipe, theres pages of search engine optimization and ads before the recipe.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 2022/07/15 (Linux/64)
* Origin: thE qUAntUm wOrmhOlE, rAmsgAtE, uK. bbs.erb.pw (700:100/37)

Everything needs to make money somehow. Subscription services didn't work unless it was games or shows. Ads won that battle. Similar to TV Ads pay for the content you saw.

The advertising is more aggressive and there is more intrusion about data collection than ever.

Stop using Windows they are the worst right now

|23|04Dr|16|12Claw
|16|14Sysop |12Noverdu |14BBS |20|15Radio|10@|14HTTP://Noverdu.com:88
|16|10 Standard ports for SSH/Telnet |04 WEB|14@|12HTTP://noverdu.com:808 |20|15Global Chat, Global Messaging and Games! |16|10Ditch the Unsocial Media

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Noverdu BBS (700:100/84)

On 16 May 2023, k9zw said the following...

Some of the earlier style internet remains, but it is cloaked by the monetarized internet.

I like the way you put that, "cloaked by the monetarized internet." It puts into words concisely how I feel about it.

It's funny, I've dropped a lot of my social media, and am working on dropping more, and I don't even miss it. Even mastodon, which I've long recommended as an alternative, got to the point where I just couldn't bother, and suddenly I realized I'd gone two months without even opening the app.

Here on the quiet part of the 'net conversations are bite-sized and yet more meaningful and human-connected than the normie net.

GreenLFC º e> greenleaderfanclub@protonmail.com
Infosec / Ham / Retro º masto> GLFC@mstdn.starnix.network
Avoids Politics on BBS º gem> gemini.greenleader.xyz

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: 2o fOr beeRS bbS >> 20ForBeers.com:1337 (700:100/71)

If you want to avoid the mainstream Internet there are a few ways:
- Use wiby.me to find personal sites and webrings (They still exist)
- Use gopher/gemini to discover personal phlogs and capsules
- RSS feeds
- Usenet (There are quite a few active groups under comp.*)
- IRC servers
- Shared unix machines (e.g. sdf.org)
- BBSes Of course :)
- oldavista.com This is the best way to search and access the old net
- Mailing lists
- Web forums, especially the obscure ones
- Peertube

There might be other ways, but I think the list above is enough to get started. I haven't really tried mastodon, so I didn't include it in my list.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 2022/07/15 (Linux/64)
* Origin: SPOT BBS / k9zw (700:100/69)

- IRC servers

i've been trying to get on an good irc server, but i get only so far and give up. i dont know what im doing. and all the help sites dont make sense or work.

Osito

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: 2o fOr beeRS bbS >> 20ForBeers.com:1337 (700:100/71)

Stop using Windows they are the worst right now
DrClaw

Quite right there, M$ is not good.
-wf

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 2022/07/15 (Linux/64)
* Origin: thE qUAntUm wOrmhOlE, rAmsgAtE, uK. bbs.erb.pw (700:100/37)

i've been trying to get on an good irc server, but i get only so far and give up. i dont know what im doing. and all the help sites dont make
sense or work.

irc.libera.chat and snoonet.org are pretty good.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 2022/07/15 (Linux/64)
* Origin: SPOT BBS / k9zw (700:100/69)

osito,
check out "Freenode" ... they've got THE IRC network that works with the open-source software community. If there was ever a group of people that could help newbies Freenode would be that.

Cheers!
-warmfuzzy

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 2022/07/15 (Linux/64)
* Origin: thE qUAntUm wOrmhOlE, rAmsgAtE, uK. bbs.erb.pw (700:100/37)

The normie internet is now a big ad. interaction is only permitted in specific approved channels. there is no fun there.

thankfully we still have bbses.

That's one way of looking at it. But then what is Internet, just endless network of cables that allow all the communication technologically, still driven by TCP/IP like in ARPANET times.

What you all refer to is that subset of internet that took over the majority of attention, which is the WEB. Experienced for decades defined by the concept of a browser, with rich UX capabilities that our terminals (think desktop computers) are capable of.. but still just one procol and a tech stack that dominated the apps and online services.

BBSes are not even a WEB, but still the internet. We're niche here and unfortunately that is to stay, because the UX and general adoption of the web can be only conquered by native applications in the mobile space.

Mobile space is interesting to assess as most of the internet traffic is mobile. Mobile world can be divided into two chunks by dominant platforms:
- IOS which is closed platform to develop and publish
- Android which is semi-open platform to develop and publish

Both accept the web in almost unlimited way, as long as the devices can simply run it.

Internet is at large dead outside the web and mobile space and online games.

Now what we're complaining here is that there is consolidation of traffic focused on major websites and vendors who stand behind them.

That's true, but this is nothing new.. this is like in retail space you have big shopping malls and small shops. sooner or laters smaller shops encounter a heavy competition and unless they are heavily specialized in an unique way or most likely, offer premium customer service to their niche and local customer base, they die.

Same with all the websites originally mentioned in this post.
Is it bad.. well if you're looking for niche topics that are easily findable and not easy to publish in the "shopping mall" concept of the web, yeah.. at least challenging.

I dare to say it's OK, because after 3 decades of the Web I see signals that people experienced in this "shop floor plan" are mature enough to start searching elsewhere as well, and if they do, they find themselves in the criteria not connected with the masses. Masses will always exist, but what creates a feeling of individuality in minds of people who don't want to be just plain consumers, is that adventure related to research and every niche found is a culmination of that discovery called "self identification".

You won't win with FB,Amazon as individual.. but history shows that shopping malls just show up and die like any other shop... why to bother. keep searching for your niches, keep creating them.. comparing to running a regular store.. it's freaking cheap these days.

-h1

... Xerox Alto was the thing. Anything after we use is just a mere copy.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: 2o fOr beeRS bbS >> 20ForBeers.com:1337 (700:100/71)