this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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The internet has become soulless and i hate it (tim.kicker.dev)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/technology
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[–] [email protected] 110 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I think we're all a bit disillusioned with it now. I feel like on the 2000's era internet we all were showing up bright eyed and optimistic about the possibilities. We lived in a world without the internet and having it felt like a superpower. But in the 2010's and especially around 2016, the misinformation pump got turned on hard and we saw the internet bring some truly sinister real world events to fruition. SEO started getting used more and more through the 2010's. Social media companies started finding nasty ways to profit off of us by being more selective in what we see. And now this has been the year of enshittification with big companies finally making moves that actively worsen our experiences in order to cash in on a lot of investment money that never turned into anything real. Basically I think what happened is a mixture of people becoming more cynical and the internet becoming over-automated and now this year businesses finally realizing that potential profit is worthless without acting on it.

With all that said though, the Fediverse feels like our chance to finally fight back. Lemmy still only has around 60k monthly active users. We need to try to bring that number up.

[–] Olap 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Why bring it up? More people rarely add more value past N. I suppose the better question is what is N? I'm loving lemmy right now, do we really need the cesspit that was large subreddits?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Well, for context, Mastodon has around 1.5 million monthly active users. Twitter/Reddit are around 450 million monthly active users. You can enjoy Lemmy's small size but also see that at 60k monthly active users it hasn't even reached a size comparable to many other famous small sized forums. I don't know what N is. I personally think the Fediverse should be the replacement for corporate social media and that social media can be essential in how information spreads through society. It can decide elections. It can shift society's views on issues. I think it does us a disservice to go the hipster route and cling to our small niche thing and resist growth. The beauty of Lemmy is that there will always be small communities regardless. Anyone who wants a small community need only defederate from the big servers and stick to a small, niche server.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Why 2016 specifically? was there a significant event that happened in that year?

[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yes, it all started with a gorilla named "Harambe"...

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

sheds a single tear as I unzip my trousers

[–] SupraMario 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Trump is what they're pointing out, but I think they're forgetting all the prior years of complete false information during bush and Obama. This isn't something just recently popping up, it's been going on for a while now, Trump just made it a lot louder.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Sure, it was there before Trump. It technically can be traced all the way back to Reagan and the Religious Right movement. We saw it pop up its ugly head from time to time. Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, the Tea Party movement, and so on. But Trump gave it new life. He redefined the movement into something so much newer and more sinister. To some degree they unshackled themselves from any illusion of actual well-intentioned religion. But most importantly for this conversation, 2016 was the year that they started actually using the internet as a recruitment tool. The alt right went mainstream. I grew up in rural Wisconsin and it's the year that half the people I knew on social media went rabid conspiracy theory bleeding red Republican. As someone else pointed out, it's the year that Cambridge Analytica started harvesting data from people on Facebook to use for political campaigning. 2016 was an explosion of what was there before that culminated in the election of Trump. And that's the year that I really felt the greatest shift in discourse on the internet. The spectacle of 2016 turned everything towards news on social media and away from personal connections.

[–] Dewded 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Cambridge Analytica scandal maybe?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

is that the one related to trump as well?

[–] Dewded 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah. They ran a social media influencing campaign based data aggregated from approx 270 million people. It's debated on the degree of influence this data had.

One thing is certain though. Around 800 000 people had surrendered their data (admittedly through a seemingly benign Facebook app) to an app posing as just one of your usual fun personality quizzes. This data opened the floodgates through association to about 269 million other people due to the way FB APIs were set up.

This data was then used to create psych profiles that got utilized for targeted advertising.

Two of the biggest campaigns that used this data were Trump 2016 and the Brexit referendum.

[–] GustavoM 2 points 1 year ago

So you are proposing we "fight back" by bringing more users, including the ones who are denigrating the internet.

Something something "pot called the kettle black".

[–] jesterraiin 36 points 1 year ago (4 children)

The internet has become soulless and i hate it

It didn't. It's more alive than ever.

It's just you visiting wrong places, not paying attention to the correct ratio of negative and positive content.

[–] canthidium 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think this is true to an extent. The internet is still filled with magical things, but no one can deny that a huge portion is just ad-filled garbage at this point. Most everything "mainstream" is designed to manipulate us and suck us dry. I still say the internet is both the greatest and worst invention of all time.

[–] jesterraiin 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Adblocker do great job at filtering out the majority of ads. Resign from social sites (or their parts) that drown in toxicity (anything dealing with "news" is usually the 1st place to avoid) and it's going to improve your online experience.

I still say the internet is both the greatest and worst invention of all time.

I'd argue that there are better contenders, but this is a discussion for entirely different community. 😜

[–] canthidium 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Adblocker do great job at filtering out the majority of ads.

Oh believe me, I've been running UBlock Origin for a long time. When I use a computer without it, I'm just amazed at the amount of ads nowadays

I’d argue that there are better contenders, but this is a discussion for entirely different community. 😜

Oh of course, little bit of hyperbole in my statement, but I definitely believe the internet has been a gift and a curse for society.

Yeah, I was born in the early 80s and grew up watching the internet grow, so I know how to navigate for the best experience for me. But I don't think it can be denied that the vast majority of people don't and fall right into the toxicity most of the time. And the effect it's had on sociaty is hard to ignore.

[–] jesterraiin 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So that'd be the gist of it, and the suggestion to everyone who perceives the Internet as a souless place: "learn how to use the tool that is the Internet correctly, so it won't misfire on you". I don't think there's any flaw in this approach.

[–] canthidium 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I agree there's no flaw in the approach but like anything most people won't learn. People can't be bothered by and large.

[–] jesterraiin 0 points 1 year ago

Since I'm even older than you, allow me...

"KIDS THESE DAYS..." 😆

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

It didn’t. It’s more alive than ever.

The web as a whole is more alive than ever, but many of those old school places aren't. They still exist, but most of the userbase doesn't.

I have some hobbies, which used to have a thriving online communities on forums and blogs. For the average internet user, that wanted to read up about such hobbies, they would gravitate towards those forums or blogs. This has fundamentally changed with the popularity of sites such as reddit, facebook, youtube & discord. The conversations that were had on the forums moved to the above platforms and as such a lot of the deeper nuances of conversation were lost.

A specific hobby of mine had a dozen active forums to read. Now all but one are mostly dead. The only one in my native language is also gone. My country's native communities moved to facebook, which is now only used for announcements and some simple questions being asked again and again.

There has been a complete reversal of internet discourse on many topics. Instead it's (again) back to having discussions with your friend group and building up connections locally.

[–] MossBear 1 points 1 year ago

It's not a simple thing, but the solution to is to do yourself what you wish existed. I'm shifting away from social media to my own site that I can personalize as I want. It feels nice.

[–] jesterraiin 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

At the same time, one of MY hobbies is blooming. There are thousands of sites dedicated to it, new productes emerge on daily basis, there are tools, communities, the interaction I couldn't dream about back in 80s or 90s. I can enjoy it with people from all the world, I can add to it and see other fans commenting on it. It grows, it becomes better with each new year.

I guess it begs for the question, whether the subjective choice of a hobby is enough to judge by as vast medium as the Internet...

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I suppose it cannot. I guess my views are largely based on my own experiences.

I would still like to bring up another online activity, which is gaming. That has surely seen a huge change in culture and how the most popular games are played. 15 years ago one could show up on a public server, and after a while get to know the regulars. That served as a good stepping stone to creating online relationships.

With the advent of matchmaking, such interaction is no longer the norm. As such one has to go through the effort of finding communities, that they might want to be a part of.

[–] jesterraiin 1 points 1 year ago

Back in the days games were meant to serve for long. These days, new titles appear all the time and often disappear before they can mature enough. It limits the possibility to build a healthy, long-term fanbase/society and/or maintain equaly lengthy relationships.

But that's video-gaming problem, that only seeps into the medium that is the Internet, much like the state of the modern politics, or moviemaking. The Internet is influenced by it, but is not responsible for it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think you are confusing soulless with dead. It's more alive than ever yes but it has become monotonous. The original feeling of individuality of websites has been reduced to the monotonity you see when you visit different websites. For example, Twitter, Reddit, Instagram or even their federated alternatives like Mastodon and Lemmy (I haven't used Pixelfed) are designed in a similar way to that users feel familiar and don't get turned off from using the website. This is just one example I can think of now.

[–] jesterraiin 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think you are confusing soulless with dead.

I'm not. By "alive" I mean that from where I sit, the Internet is a vast, colorful tapestry. There's plenty of individuality, diversity and originality in it. It's just that it's not given to you on a silver platter.

Imagine being a person living in a skyscraper, rarely leaving it because all the things you require are situated on one of lower floors. What isn't there, you order to be brought to you, conveniently. So you complain that the world became souless, monotone, repetitive, not like in the old days, when you were living in suburbs and had to travel on your own to find the service needed.

I'm not living in such a skyscraper.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Maybe I need to expand the pool of sites I frequent. Any recommendations?

[–] jesterraiin 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

1st of all, if you're into politics and can't resign from it, replace the sites you know, with those that deliver news in as neutral tone as possible, with as little toxic inclusions as possible. AXIOS is one.

2ndly, use Feed Reader like INOREADER and consider sbscribing to one of its non-free plans to get the tools that filter out news by keywords, phrases or similar variables.

3rdly, prioritize what you actually need, instead of stuff that might be "somewhat" relevant to your interests. For example, if you have some good, reliable source of news/content on video games, then skip the rest - they tend to cover same games in similar time span, so you won't miss much when you reduce your feed from 10 to a single site.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I don't follow politics but yes I do use a RSS reader. Also you suggested US centric stuff and I don't live there.

But yeah I get your point

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Lemmy has pretty much of a soul, same for other fediverse platforms.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm new around here but i like the atmosphere a lot. I created my account after posting this article.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Welcome!

[–] jesterraiin -3 points 1 year ago

OP is biased and is visiting wrong places. That's all...

[–] GustavoM 21 points 1 year ago

A-bleeping-men. The "unspoken rule" of the internet is "Follow the trends and what the majority is saying. Because if you are not, then please fuck off.". Its all about self-validation for the sake of (everything) nowadays. Even if it means screaming at randoms for minor/futile reasons.

*sigh. Back in my days, it was all about trash talking with randoms and enjoying the company of said randoms -- and we loved every second of it. It was a little, happy place pretty much.

Nowadays its a "depression center" of sorts where everything is wrong and nothing is right.

[–] randon31415 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Inflation went up, interest rates went up, venture capital money dried up (and Russia/ China pulled out of crypto/risky investments). All the “market capture” corps turned off the free use lures and started to monetize their users at the same time. There are smaller startups that still have free use lures, but which will be big next is a toss-up.

[–] PeterPoopshit 7 points 1 year ago

I wish all the rich people would go fuck off to doing whatever they were doing before ruining computers for everyone.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

I don't remember that time for regular websites, but do remember it for YouTube before it became a place that started aggressively shifting towards promoting creators who were sharing for the purposes of monetizing. Hard to find videos that fill the old vibe unless you use something like block tube next so the popular channels aren't pushing down the visibility of those type of uploads.

I guess Twitter is that way too where it started shifting into a corporate and influencer platform to advertise stuff to people as the user base exploded.

Fediverse fills the old vibe though of people just sharing because they feel like it as opposed to an expectation of like, subscribe, ring the notification bell, visit my merch store in my profile, and check out my patreon. And I see you read my comment but haven't subscribed. So please do as you drink and enjoy the refreshing taste of power aid as it cools you off on a hot summer day.

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