When I was growing up the internet was a place to be liberated from the world say what you want to say, be whoever you want and form genuine communities with shared interests. Now the internet feels like a tool to enslave the mind with identity echo chambers and any deviation leads you to being banned and blocked shunned and silenced within a void that is inescapable. Novel unique websites coded manually by hobbyists running servers for free in the commons allowing people access to the free flow of information under the banner of “information should be free” has largely gone away with corpratisation. I miss the days when the internet was populated largely by nerds aiming to make a better world not this controlled censored hell hole of profiteering.
I miss it too, and even more now that I got reminded how awesome it can be to talk like this without a big american corp in the middle.
I feel like big tech has killed the fun very much. Before you had individuals building web sites, and you felt happy to see new creative sites. People didn’t create them for money but to show off their skills and create fun and useful sites.
Now the web is turning into cable TV as the corps have completely destroyed it with ads. I think we need web sites and services where ads are banned and where people create things for fun.
The fediverse can help with this since many small servers allow people to share the load and the cost.
Yeah, I went on funnyjunk the other day after reminding myself and it was dry and humourless back in the day it was a barrel of laughs.