I’m a Zoomer, born and raised in the digital age. I remember a time when the internet wasn’t the corporate, ad-filled bore that it is today. YouTube used to be a place for fun videos, Twitter used to be funny, adults didn’t know what a Facebook was yet, and Snapchat was just starting. Now, the internet of the past, web 2.0, is finished.
These days, it feels like the internet is more for corporations instead of a wondrous place where people all over the world can meet, collaborate, and create.
Facebook is now Meta and is actively ruining the concept of what the metaverse should be and what people want from it (because they suck). Twitter is a Nazi safe-haven ran by a boring billionaire. Reddit is selling out for an IPO.
It’s not just the social media sites that are dying because they are overrun with hatred vitriol, bigotry, and ads. Even searching for the news pops up the same newsgroups: MSN, CNN, The Guardian, Reuters, NBC News, Yahoo news.
These days, it feels like the internet is more for corporations instead of a wondrous place where people all over the world can meet, collaborate, and create.
Google search is pretty much pointless, having the first page show sponsored sites, ads, and irrelevant results for your searches. Even trying to maneuver around keywords and specific terms, it’s hard to find niche sites these days, independent sites, blogs, or anything from years ago. If your site hasn’t mastered SEO outreach, your chances of showing up in a Google search are zero to none. And I’m mostly speaking to the void because I doubt this post will pop up in a Google search.
The internet is now a place of ads, ads, ads, hatred, ads, racism, more ads, and irrelevant content that people didn’t ask for. I guess I never realized how corporatized the internet became until it was too late. Sites like the Wayback machine preserve a web 2.0 that no longer exists.
The internet in the United States is also just another example of how our country is failing, especially our digital communication channels. It’s outrageous that bored billionaires can buy our public communications, destroy them, and play around with them however they feel. It seems these days not much is made for the common man anymore.
Twitter wasn’t perfect, but the suppression of voices and a communication platform where people can mobilize and organize, will have far-reaching implications down the line. Capitalism is giving us crappier crap and charging more for it. Just another sad sign of collapse.
For now, I’ve switched my browser to Firefox and might change my search engine back to Duckduckgo and might even boot up the Tor network in search of the people’s internet.
Check out my latest post: Hunger: An Artistic Depiction of the Oakland Police Department.