The End of the Internet is Here.

The Internet is becoming a less useful, less usable, and overall scarier place. Disney and Max purging their content libraries, Google and Microsoft shifting the burden of online search curation back onto the user, and Twitter and Reddit restricting their API access all mark a definitive shift in the ways we all interact with the Internet going forward... all for the worse.
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patreon: / 1c2
twitter: / 1c2yt
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chapters:
0:00 The Futurists
2:16 A Brief Retrospective
4:03 Locking Down APIs
8:34 The Culling of Content
12:31 The Death of Search
18:08 The Internet's Gatekeeper
20:03 Our Future
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Sources & Further Reading:
defector.com/the-last-page-of...
bluemountain.princeton.edu/bl...
bactra.org/T4PM/futurist-manif...
www.nytimes.com/2023/06/05/te...
time.com/6266147/internet-arc...
www.theverge.com/2023/3/20/23...
mashable.com/article/internet...
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...
www.anildash.com/2012/12/13/t...
• A Brief History of the...
www.businessinsider.com/elon-...
• Scandal and Betrayal: ...
www.nbcnews.com/business/busi...
www.vox.com/technology/2023/4...
mashable.com/article/social-m...
www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoz...
www.theguardian.com/technolog...
www.ign.com/articles/twitch-c...
arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/...
www.theverge.com/2022/6/10/23...
blog.chromium.org/2018/10/tru...
developers.google.com/search/...
www.theverge.com/2023/5/10/23...
techcrunch.com/2023/05/23/goo...
/ 1
www.pcgamer.com/more-of-the-i...
www.reuters.com/technology/tw...
/ basic-info
www.nytimes.com/2023/06/05/te...
www.cnn.com/2023/02/10/tech/t...
mashable.com/article/half-of-...
9to5mac.com/2023/05/09/twitte...
mashable.com/article/twitter-...
/ 1621179218775216130
techcrunch.com/2023/02/04/elo...
mashable.com/article/wordpres...
www.wired.com/story/twitter-d...
techcrunch.com/2023/03/29/twi...
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FA...
www.forbes.com/sites/barrycol...

[@LimeGreenTeknii]

You know something is wrong when you Google a question, the first result is a Reddit page from a subreddit that has rightfully gone dark, the next one is an article that has been paywalled off, and the third one is an article that was written by ChatGPT adorned by neural network images.

[@aiodensghost8645]

And the only useful thing is that Reddit link that's dark.

[@JDReC100]

hilarious. Sad, aweful, but still pretty hilarious

[@vargasaidan7366]

SOO many paywalls

[@Rays_Bad_Decisions]

Google is desperate to censor

[@MrChristianDT]

They've even encorporated ChatGPT into Quora now, which is even more bizarre. If no one else answers your question, let's hope it's sober enough to even follow what you asked, today. Lol

[@asmkalrizion7078]

we've reached the point of the internet where its no longer run by the hobbyists who want to keep everything up no matter what, now the internet is run by corporations who can just toss aside 20 years worth of history just because it costs a bit of money.

[@TheExileFox]

It's been like this for years tho

[@alexjustalexyt1144]

​@@TheExileFox no it hasn't

[@Toastcat890]

Who didn’t see this coming though.

[@CamelliaFlingert]

@@alexjustalexyt1144 So, industrialization and AI era doesn't look the same for you? Everything for profit no matter how many lives would be ruined

[@guymartin6514]

ASM Kalrizion "we've reached the point of the internet where its no longer run by the hobbyists who want to keep everything up no matter what, now the internet is run by corporations who can just toss aside 20 years worth of history just because it costs a bit of money" TRUE

[@Andyanddiana467]

I remember raving about the possibilities of the internet to my guitar teacher when I was a kid back in the early nineties. He scoffed, saying, “watch - once the bean counters get a hold of it, the internet will get destroyed, just like everything else they touch.” Sadly, he was right.

[@knopfir]

"bean counters"??

[@Andyanddiana467]

@@knopfir It's (admittedly archaic) American slang for accountants and executives who care only for profits.

[@randomusername1735]

Well, for now I can still find high quality guitar tutorials for free (unless you count ads), so I'll enjoy it while it lasts

[@psypokeslowduck2880]

Pretty unfortunate that nothing lasts forever, only to delay inevitable and start a new cycle of things.

[@vikingzeroone9647]

@@Andyanddiana467 It almost sounds like a slur in hilarious fashion. God, I hope you don't mind if I use it next time.

[@Aether-Entropy]

This is why you OWN things. Buy physical music, download anything that could possibly deleted.

[@RoySATX]

You don't actually own those things, and what exactly is physical music? You may purchase a plastic disk that contains a digital format of music, but you technically only own the plastic and that is debatable as well. There are fewer and fewer things you can actually own, and I mean physical, tangible items like cars and washing machines. But we keep on paying huge sums of money for them and pretending we own them. About the only thing we are allowed to buy and own is trash.

[@axeslinger94]

@@RoySATX Please don't do this, we know what they mean. We're not talking specifics of what it philosophically means to own anything, we're talking about what it means to not have history erased from whole swaths of the internet just because it's convenient to sell more ads and subscription services to people ad nauseum. Come on now!

[@knopfir]

​@@RoySATX one of the stupidest and most ignorant arguments ive ever heard. if you own a CD, you own the CD. including everything thats on it. you can legally sell it, trade it, buy it, modify it, anything your heart desires. all except infringing on copyright. thats it.

[@zahktuthalxalyrion6364]

@@RoySATX You're talking semantics. When you purchase a soundtrack by a music artist, you own that disc. There are no ifs, ands, or buts. Even if those songs vanished off all platforms, so long as you keep that CD you'd still have those songs. That's the primary point of "ownership" of music. It's the same deal as my vinyl records (except they're waveforms on a giant disc that the record needle directly plays from...). A good difference example is digital vs physical video games. If you read the info, buying digital doesn't mean you own that copy of the game. You paid for a license to play. When you purchase a physical copy of the game, you own that copy.

[@sdjhgfkshfswdfhskljh3360]

You own if you have control over it. That's it.

[@SquareWaveHeaven]

Feels like the Internet and world in general just isn't made for people anymore.

[@redbullsauberpetronas]

You reap what you sow

[@SquareWaveHeaven]

@@redbullsauberpetronas Oh yeah, now it all makes sense.

[@a.tevetoglu3366]

​​​@@SquareWaveHeaven how does it not make sence? That is basically the essence of all history lessons. It's only that you dont recapitulate that. The terms cybernetic and industrial military complex are around since both world wars. That people helped to dissolve society is a side effect of having voted entertainment over education. And what drives entertainment besides selling alcohol tobacco and guns, now the greatest killers on earth?

[@SquareWaveHeaven]

@@a.tevetoglu3366 Well now you've explained what you mean beyond a one line truism, I completely agree with you. That isn't anything to do with what I nor most people wanted, though. We don't live in a democracy, the plan moves forward however we vote with our ballots and our money. If voting could steer the course of history we wouldn't be allowed to do it. People don't want this though they do seem to be growing more complacent about it. At this stage, though, can you really blame them?

[@a.tevetoglu3366]

@@SquareWaveHeaven that is not how Martin Luther King or the anti Vietnam Movement would have stated it, nor would Eisenhower had approved such fatalism, that is why he warned all citizen. The corpocrats on the other hand count on this weakening pessimism while they are scared shitless of the idea that people could discover how they were tricked.

[@ghoulgirl99]

Can’t wait for the web to go back to small hyper specific sites to answer questions

[@tux_the_astronaut]

Ye tbh going back to being more small independent fourm based internet wouldn’t be to bad

[@KikiAelita]

Yeah, this is what I want too. The trick will just be finding them through the crap.

[@Nevirate]

It’s how the internet should’ve always been. None of these degenerate fandoms and cultures that pervert everything good and decent.

[@Its.Some.Guy.]

​@Nevirate communities based around fanatical devotion were an inevitability. It came free with our biological religious instinct.

[@Echo-gp6re]

@@Its.Some.Guy. We don't have a "religious" instinct, we do have tribal instincts though. Many humans have a need to find a community or "tribe" with which they belong, be that religion, sports, politics, internet fandoms, family, and whatever else. I just don't want someone reading your comment to get the wrong idea that religion is somehow a biological imperative, when in reality religion is just a manifestation of a baser desire.

[@CneeKrunch]

I talked about how using Google to search doesn't seem to work anymore. You try to look up almost anything specific and it will just give you trash or ads. I was called crazy and that "Its the same as its always been" This inlies the core problem. No one notices anything until its too late.

[@Fasteroid]

You're not crazy, I've noticed it too. I can't find anything anymore.

[@retrocomputing]

use alternatives, dependence on Google harms us all

[@GilboPaints]

I was trying to find what a hibachi grill is called and couldn’t get anything but pages of ads and shopping. Google is nothing but an ad now.

[@Dave102693]

It works as an dictionary now. Smh

[@TheExileFox]

What alternatives? Duckduckgo never finds stuff, Bing is really random what's left? Google can still most of the time find stuff, but it also depends on what you're looking for. This last part is very important but often missed

[@hootson5239]

Looks like we have to build our own part of the internet from scratch. Our own search engines, browsers, forum sites, information archives, everything. Just do it all over again with no incentives of profitability, just information preservation and true internet security and freedom.

[@CamelliaFlingert]

and someone will turn this into mess in the end again

[@arizenation3188]

​@CamelliaFlingert they'll have to do it a lot. Look up the incompetence of the CIA vs pirate Bay users, or just have a peek into the Linux community

[@catcatcatcatcatcatcatcatcatca]

I don’t think we need big infrastructure or the perfect, robust algorithms to do this. It’s more about everyday users committing to building their own search index, with proper categories and tags. Having the human in the loop is important, no matter how the data is in future implemented. While many concerns need more technical solutions, the only way to start is helping others to participate and find value in the currently existing alternatives.

[@MrChristianDT]

I was kind of in the mindset that there should be a main, international internet coupled with separate local internets, or something. But, I'm not sure how that could really be implemented as a separate system.

[@featherlikescartoons5098]

@@CamelliaFlingert And when that happens, We'll rebuild it again Empires fell and were rebuilt hundreds of times throughout history. Who says this internet crisis won't follow the same pattern The internet is relitivly new, so we don't have the history to back us up, but if we can rebuild the internet, *that* will become history. We already have history telling us what went wrong the first time, so we'll be able to rebuild the next one better and stronger The internet is a fantastic, world-wide experiment, possibly one of the biggest experiments humanity has ever and will ever preform. And like any good experiment, it's going to have countless trials and faliures and failures and *failures*, until one day, hopefully, we land on something that works. Or we won't. Even if there's not a perfect solution in the distant future, humanity will continue to fight for the weird, wonderful version of the internet. This generation of passionate internet users could be the first to do so It could crash and burn in a million different ways, but we still have to try

[@sean.durham999]

Once ad blockers are no longer effective I will pretty much leave the Internet and go back to reading physical books because I'm not going to be force fed a bunch of ads. I'm old enough to remember a time before the Internet and smartphones were ubiquitous part of our lives, and you know what? I was much less aggravated and stressed back then. Well, internet, it was nice knowing you. Peace.

[@DGlesterHadunkichud]

There will always be an effective ad-blocker. The real trouble will be when the people you like listening too value money over message. We are irradiated by adverts, a lot of them don't make themselves known.

[@sinzones3909]

i'm glad i've been downloading all the niche unpurchasable songs i like. if there's one thing the internet is good for, it's sharing art at least.

[@westernfxpler]

Brave Browser maybe

[@user-zezezozodarkdomains]

i'll keep downloading everything of interest i can out of internet.

[@HippieInHeart]

I mean, honestly, back then it was mostly just watching TV, which was essentially what KZbin is nowadays, in terms of how frequent and long the ads are. So, not really a lot has changed.

[@featherlikescartoons5098]

Remember "when you say something on the internet, it stays there forever"? yeah, me too

[@hydra3693]

"do not post with your real name on the internet"

[@skyjelly9790]

Yeah hopefully my old accounts from when I was 12-13 get deleted so I don't have to live with all the embarrassing shit I did.

[@bryandraughn9830]

​@@skyjelly9790 I mean, it takes a minute to learn a few things. I remember arguing with someone once.... I was a teency but out of line. 😅

[@luvsavengedsevenfold]

Pepperidge Farm remembers.

[@jayBBvid95]

My dad let me haveva Gmail user when I was 8. I’m so glad my Google+ account got purged.

[@B4FT]

Glad I’ve started seeing more people talking about this recently. As how these companies have been acting is horrible.

[@accountnew7030]

cry about it

[@fizzle7421]

"people"

[@13RedCorpse]

I have noticed that the internet stopped being people-centered and started becoming only profit-centered about 10 years ago. When Google search results started showing me more "buy this and that" options then answers to my questions. It only got worse from that point. I can't find almost anything on google now without adding "reddit" or "stackowerflow" at the end.

[@slappy8941]

​@@accountnew7030Edgy edgelord is edgy. 😂😂😂

[@CaptainVaughn0]

@@accountnew7030 enjoy being used as a pawn by corporations then i guess

[@darkestccino5405]

1990: Web 1.0 2000: Web 2.0 2010: The great standardization of the internet Now for the 2020s, it is seeming that the internet will become fractured again. Shut into small groups like forums and servers with content doomed to be permanently lost.

[@redbullsauberpetronas]

The "standardization of the internet" is what destroyed it

[@Dave102693]

So basically the techbro wet dream aka web 3?

[@vylbird8014]

@@Dave102693 No-one even knows what web 3 was supposed to be, other than that lots of crypto-bros try to shoehorn a blockchain into it wherever they can.

[@vibrantgleam]

it would be interesting if a newer generation like me grew up where the internet was like the 90's, except, well, modern.

[@vylbird8014]

@@vibrantgleam Don't let the rose-tint get too strong. The earlier age of the internet had some things we miss, yes - but there was a lot of bad too. Moderation is a double-edged sword.

[@pierrecolin6376]

When everyone was switching to and shilling Google Chrome a decade ago, I could smell the Internet would get shittier and shittier as Google getting that much influence on the web could only lead to less privacy, more ads and getting closer to a dystopian corporatocracy. I’m surprised I was so spot on despite that I knew so little about politics. The saddest thing is it won’t get better because that’s what people want. It’s just socially accepted to view technology as a scary black box that the common of mortals should never have control over.

[@cyruswilliams2766]

I'm glad that I've used Firefox for well over 15 years now. Never did like chrome. Had a bunch of people try and convert me, but I held fast. Bonus, I have access to ublock origin, which blocks youtube ad's. For now anyways.

[@KnzoVortex]

What you are lamenting has a word: lack of class consciousness, or technically 1. awareness among the people that they have certain common interests (many of which are being found against by larger forces), 2. Awareness of their position in the economic system, and 3. the need and potential the come together and use their power to change things. In this case people lack it because they are either ignorant that the internet is becoming so corporatized or feel powerless in doing anything about it/don’t know how they might go about working to change things. The solution is that we need more people talking about how we are all being screwed in any case like this, but also what power we do hold and how we can act on changing things, aka raising class consciousness. Now you can call me a spooky Marxist for saying all this, this was one of his ideas anyways. I’m not even really the biggest Marxist personally and I feel like most of Leftism is missing a lot of stuff I’d like to see in it, but a lot of the ideas are really powerful so just take what you like. Also the most difficult thing is really bringing the ideas down to earth and translating them into actual effort and action.

[@wow-roblox8370]

@@cyruswilliams2766 it is a shame that Firefox is too far-away for most people to reasonably learn it, like switching from android to apple, it is something which may only help you a little at the start, but as time goes on it becomes harder to switch, as one of the services collapsed around you.

[@frocoshake2107]

​@@wow-roblox8370 You're acting like Firefox is some strange esoteric technology that nobody knows. It's a web browser.

[@pierrecolin6376]

@@KnzoVortex No, Marxism will not fix this issue. Nobody gives a shit about who owns the factory.

[@visclo4782]

The internet feels like the end of a long game of Monopoly

[@arctrix765]

like basically our whole society

[@wyltedleaves]

yeah that's late stage capitalism for you

[@TheAnthonyMarlowe]

Yes because chairman Mao would’ve NEVER

[@mrnelsonius5631]

So glad someone is talking about this! My mom in her 60s was asking me a few days ago: “all this music, videos, art… it could just go away some day. Is there a way to copy and preserve this stuff?” No kidding, I had to explain to my mom that any attempt to preserve digital media for the future was a crime. Very soon the internet is going to be like streaming: chopped into numerous paid “versions” of the internet with access to different parts of it.

[@PsychopathUltimate]

You're wrong about it being illegal, it's only illegal if the copyright holder prohibits it. Kevin MacLeod's music is royalty free, for example.

[@Nibiri3304]

@@PsychopathUltimate macleod in question can literally end the internet right here and now lol, we're so lucky he hasn't been converted to evil by like a sterotypical evilization ray or somethienggrgorogo

[@sdjhgfkshfswdfhskljh3360]

Proper answer: yes, it can and should be preserved.

[@victorvaz3693]

Can you preserve anything tho? Digital or Real, time always finds a way to make everything new, be it an object, a language, or an idea.

[@sdjhgfkshfswdfhskljh3360]

@@victorvaz3693 are you talking about failures of HDDs? This problem is solved by hosting data at different locations at once.

[@froggiepie]

this sucks so much. I hate it. I had a conversation with my dad the other day where he told me about the ‘shitification’ cycle, where first a company is user friendly, then once they have users they switch to being ad friendly, and once they have advertisers, they switch to being solely focused on getting money from both users and advertisers, being unfriendly to everyone but themselves. We’re in stage three rn. It sucks so much because we’ve trapped ourselves in the internet- it is so important to our daily lives and a lot of stuff couldn’t happen without it nowadays. The companies that own everything online have essentially trapped us and now they just want to get our money, and there’s basically nothing we can do about it apart from protest, and seeing how the Reddit one went, it doesn’t look like that will work very well. I’m waiting to see what new social media will pop up to try and replace all these rotting ones. But I also think places like Neocities, where you can make your own site, are so incredibly important now because the internet is losing that creativity and and freedom (or more like it is being taken from us).

[@sdjhgfkshfswdfhskljh3360]

I first discovered such cycle in MMORPGs. Now I see it everywhere.

[@trolledfrog6789]

There is only 2 genders

[@sinzones3909]

agree with all of this. this video reminded me that i should finish my neocities site. sucks how deep we are in the cycle, but eventually we'll be at stage 1 again and the internet will rise to be better again, i hope

[@KyriosHeptagrammaton]

That's why even when people yell and rave about Rumble or UBlock or Firefox I view them with caution. Any place with devoted fanatics is going to be able to take advantage of them eventually.

[@HippieInHeart]

Protesting does work very well, but it does also involve a mental strenght that few - if any - actually posess. If you are on Reddit, for example, the best way to protest would be to simply delete your account and never look at anything on that website again. There's absolutely nothing that Reddit leadership or anyone else could do to prevent you from doing that. Of course, it only works out if enough people end up doing that, but this is not a good excuse. Someone has to start, and if you're the one who starts, you no longer need to worry about anything. You did your part, now it's up to others to do theirs, and wether or not they do it, along with any consequences, is entirely their problem and doesn't need to concern you anymore. It is the same with other websites like KZbin. You want to protest against KZbin and all the shady shit that Google's doing with this website? Just delete your account, never visit this website ever again. This is where the mental strength thing comes in. You see that I am still here, despite being greatly dissatisfied with Google and how they handle things on KZbin. It is probably similar for you and many others, who *know* that the only right decision would be to leave but still can't do it. The corporations also know that most of us are - tbh - weak af, and that is why they are so confident. We can complain and cry and moan about everything that's wrong 24 / 7 for years or even decades, but at the end of the day, we'll still be here, and us being here is the only thing they'll ever give a shit about. Doesn't matter to them wether or not we actually enjoy being here as long as we still continue to choose to be here.

[@akteno2796]

I hope the internet archive has a backup they can send to someone who just doesn't give a f about legal stuff and sets it up again as The Archive of everything or something like that.

[@plebisMaximus]

You can't really just not care about the law, you can't really just ignore a lawsuit.

[@ok-tr1nw]

Unless you are a british royal who is a creep

[@nottheboc1498]

​@@plebisMaximus piracy websites don't really care about the law either

[@laxesthecorgi9824]

Russians: Let us introduce ourselves.

[@mayconlcruz]

@@nottheboc1498 "There is no crime if you don't get caught."

[@theceohq]

The reality is that we're at the end of the "free lunch"-business cycle. Tech has been flooded with investor money for almost 2 decades now. This enabled tech companies to reel in millions of users, with little to no regard to sustainable business models. With consolidated customer bases and squashed or acquired competitors it's easy to see why tech companies are now walling up.

[@MichelleHell]

You're getting at investment capital, which I believe to be a massive problem. It's a form of indebtness, a rented exchange. The rented exchange is a conflicting exchange between classes of property owners. The point of free exchange was to be one and done, to get away from the perpetual indebted exchange of the rentier economy.

[@mykaruest3620]

The thing is, how is it going to work out with angry users that expect from 2 decades for everything to be free? People are just going to pirate and find work arounds for inconveniences tbh

[@theceohq]

​@@mykaruest3620 My guess is those companies will A/B-test the prices to keep just enough good little customers around and remain in business. Personally, I believe we greatly over-estimate customer agency, and under-estimate customer complacency. Only time will tell.

[@tux_the_astronaut]

We now have an entire generation of people who have grown up on a internet that wasn’t financially viable and bow we are starting to see it fall

[@auraguard0212]

Well, they never made much money outside of ads, which are essentially speculative investments from other companies. And now that ads are dying, the last of the "investor" money is drying up, and the companies have to try other methods.

[@samexahr3326]

If Socal medias purge inactive accounts, we could not only lose internet history. We could also lose many real world history sources. We live in the internet age, so the most accessible digital sources will be on the internet. I love studying local history for example. I know there is footage of buildings/places which don't exist anymore or are at least very different.

[@artem.boldariev]

That is called "digital amnesia" - look it up.

[@Gassy1337]

We're gonna be forced to learn a whole new set of skills to handle problems we would normally "google" OR we'll be forced into setting up our own decentralized web. Can you imagine the Dark Web of all places becoming the new internet for the people? No rules, no limmits, but all the danger your could imagine.

[@rioliega]

Honestly, it seems like a better idea than trying to scroll for hours to get past all of the ads on google.

[@JH-pe3ro]

"Lunarpunk and the Dark Side of the Cycle" helped inspire me to start working on some decentralized solutions myself. Some of the origins of Bitcoin lie in Hashcash, which was intended to prevent spam by adding a computational cost to send messages. The rebuttal to "why do things with crypto that you can do faster with a database" basically comes down to that - the quality of the result is, in fact, important enough to be paid for. Crypto isn't the only tool to use, but I think it will be important in what's coming.

[@overyourheadunderyournose]

Get the people entirely hooked and dependent on Google, then snatch it away. Oops, a bunch of lost, scared little children. Now let's control them.

[@gambyt5952]

Honestly I’ve used TOR in the past and I’ve found myself using it again. I could deal with ads I could deal with content becoming stale or I could deal with paid subscriptions but all three mixed on basically every platform now is just awful. You want me to pay for barely tolerable content and watch ads too? No ty.

[@Spicylolipop]

I’ve gotten to the point where when I want to learn about something i just get a book. You used to be able to google anything, then it was youtube, and then it was TikTok. Now everything is an ad.

[@mallninja9805]

"The future of twitter is becoming more and more hostile" - I mean, that sums up the trajectory of the entire internet for at least the last 5 years. So it's hardly surprising it's ramping up.

[@redbullsauberpetronas]

Twitter was already hostile for years lol, nothing really changed under Elon

[@KindlyKalen]

True, it’s harder and harder for us LGBTQ people to survive, emphasis on the TQ

[@user-yb1ki1pj8c]

​@@KindlyKalensome people say Musk changed twitter for good, its a lie, Musk just made twitter even more political

[@DarkFaken]

This is most definitely the end of the useful internet. In the early days of search engines, no one fully understood the internet, it was just some "thing", anyone old enough will remember the days that people would say "I don't really think this internet thing will really be a thing" Back then people making search engines and websites were doing it out of passion and fun and they were allowed to because what they were doing was not tangible. Now we live in a world where everything on the internet has some inherent value, Web pages, blogs posts, videos, ads, user data. The idea is that all of that can be monetised and extracted. The really sad part about it all is that Mozilla is standing there on its own fighting against much of this, however if people continue to go with Chromium based browsers, there will become a point that Google can design it so that developers are pushed towards building content better based around serving the technologies that Chromium based browsers, especially now that Microsoft has moved Edge over to Chromium. I really admire Mozilla but on their own they don't stand a chance, Google and Microsoft will eventually make them a thing of the past if they get their way because serving advertising is way too profitable to allow an independent browser to exist.

[@42seven]

well mozilla could get cut off any day now, a lot of their funding comes from putting google as the default search engine

[@truegamer_007]

@@42seven It's in Google's interest to allow them to exist. Without Mozilla, every Browser would be Chromium based and Google would get hit with anti-trust lawsuits in every country.

[@doomsdayrabbit4398]

​@@truegamer_007 It's really unfortunate that we've let enforcement of our antitrust legislation fall so far that "precedent" is now to ignore the blatantly anti-human actions of these profit-seeking leeches who already have all the money.

[@milesdavis2353]

DuckDuckGo browser? That might be built on top of Firefox though.

[@42seven]

@@milesdavis2353 duckduckgo was shown to be given data to microsoft literally the only browser i know of that google is lynx, which can't be used with 90% of the internet

[@whitefang1657]

The section on SEO is so relatable. It's so difficult to find information on the internet now, all the main results are just meaningless fluff that list the same keywords in a different order. I've been doing a lot of research for university assignments recently and it has really highlighted the depth of the depravity of SEO.

[@mcbill7352]

you need to use boolean strings to find specific stuff for academic work

[@esotericmissionary]

Sadly, nobody expected the internet to become so lame so fast. "Thanks, 2010s," I say with supreme sarcasm.

[@skyjelly9790]

Finally someone who understands the 2010s were the worst decade in human history.

[@esotericmissionary]

@@skyjelly9790 I wouldn't call it "the worst decade ...," only that it -- meaning the corporations -- ruined plenty of what was already working perfectly.

[@johnchedsey1306]

Having been active on the internet since the 90s, there is a part of me that is fine with social media sites devouring themselves. And my response is not to go find a replacement, but instead go hop into the car and drive out to some beautiful spot in nature* * the irony is that I'm using a mixture of two mapping apps to find beautiful spots in nature.

[@runakovacs4759]

Nature does not have my spanish, russian, scottish, german friends. It only has Hungarians, and I rather not deal with Hungarians any more than neccessary.

[@eekee6034]

I use a mixture of two mapping apps to find beautiful spots in nature too! XD But getting out there isn't enough. My brain just won't deal with all the stimulation of the outside world very much. It's bad enough watching videos. I need plain text chat to survive.

[@Kulkasterbang]

What apps?

[@johnchedsey1306]

@@Kulkasterbang Google maps and Gaia GPS.

[@absurdsarchive]

This is the consequence of a centralized internet, of depending on only the biggest sites. They waited for people to become comfortable and for their services to become "essential". Now they're free to do whatever they want, if we're lucky internet will adjust again back to smaller sites and less centralized services but at this point it's not certain. What is certain is that this profit driven internet will never be the same again.

[@madden8021]

Discord also has the same thing of "If you haven't used your account within two years then it's automatically deleted", so that means all of the past chats you had with your friend are gone which is insane.

[@redgreen2453]

I’ve always felt the history of the internet strongly paralleled to the history of the American “Wild West” and, yeah, feels like 1895 these days. We were lucky to be here for it

[@alessandrobaggi6129]

Then i just hope i won't be here anymore when we'll have the equivalent of nowadays... 😬

[@cewla3348]

oof, imagine the 13 y/os who just got onto the internet and google is bad, reddit is actively hurting itself, twitter is political, tumblr is mainly shitposting or trying to make you happy, deviantart is art, and nothing is what they need from it.

[@Funkiy]

That’s exactly how I’ve been looking at it. Hackers, pirates, and dissidents are like the modern day cowboys.

[@redgreen2453]

@@alessandrobaggi6129 honestly I’m not even into nowadays nowadays

[@Falanx316]

@@redgreen2453I can’t wait for the internet red dead redemption

[@iloNiki2078]

We need a resurgence of the open internet with unique websites. Especially now that federated platforms are a lot more well known.

[@WordUnheard]

I hate this. I'm terminal, and was supposed to have died in 2020. Although I'm still here, my brain tumor will eventually begin to grow and spread. My daughter is young, and I would love for her to have access to my accounts in ten years when she's 18. Most of the sites probably won't even exist by then. And the ones that will still exist will probably remove all comments and remove the ability to leave any new comments at once. Looking at you, KZbin. I still don't see what the point of removing the ability to dislike a video was.

[@emil_lorin]

„the internet doesn’t forget“. it absolutely does, the companies will just delete it

[@geempleej8990]

X corp sounds like the most dystopian tech company I’ve ever heard. Who came up with that name?

[@Kwijibob]

Probably its Gen X ceo Elon Musk. We like to name things X. X-box, X Games, X-Men, etc

[@Dave102693]

@@Kwijibobspace x

[@doctorhealsgood5456]

Guess we are going project moon now

[@patch-fm]

@@doctorhealsgood5456 Better hope we're not in the backstreets blub

[@williamshakemilk2192]

Wait til you hear about blackrock.

[@anubhavkumarc]

Sometimes I feel like the entire world is going in the worst direction possible, humanity is slowly writing the civilisation's end and that's what we've been witnessing.

[@ESMART-Electronics]

Jesus Christ is coming soon after all

[@KH-gp5uf]

Or maybe we will talk to each other in person again. Friendship will go back to normal, no more MGTOW or dark feminine energy will exist. We will build 3rd places again that aren’t filled with tech forcing unnatural engagement. Just maybe? But I’m also an optimist.

[@johner3364]

Yeah we either live in a simulation or God is punishing us. There's really no other option

[@artem.boldariev]

Kali Yuga seems as real as it has never been.

[@minixlemonade2335]

@@KH-gp5uf This guy gets it

[@E.C.GoMusicandMore]

This is why we should build the internet around collaborative websites, like the various wikis. But, that will only kick the can down the road, the only way to remove predatory tactics & companies is to remove the profit motive.

[@sdjhgfkshfswdfhskljh3360]

If free solution is better than paid one, commerce disappears automatically.

[@Stashix]

This may all end up being a positive development. IMO by far the biggest threat to the Internet has been the wholesale consolidation of traffic in the hands of sites run by massive corporations. If their greed makes them eat themselves why stop them?

[@propheinx2250]

Never interrupt your enemy while they're making a mistake.

[@Bruce_Games]

issue is thats not what happens this argument has been made for many company's the issue is once there the only big option what are you gonna do spend 10$ extra for a better product look for hours for the hidden product most people wont most people will live with it and even if we go to the hidden forums or what ever the normal people will stay at the surface your work will stay at the surface everyone outside of the community that looks for the small pockets will be at the surface

[@heartnsoulintodeglocc9975]

​@@Bruce_Games???????

[@Bruce_Games]

@@heartnsoulintodeglocc9975 i rabled sorry it was like 3am

[@ceinwenchandler4716]

Because the cleanup afterwards will hurt - and not just the companies. But you're right, in the long run, a purge could be for the best. It's like surgery. It sucks, but it lead to things getting better.

[@0memega]

Don't forget about conpanies taking things away, or limiting the main functions of older programs in order to point users towards their newer programs. I feel as if google's reverse image search has going noticably dumber over the last few months, most likely in an effort to push google lens. At this point it feels like their downgrading things just to sell it back months if not weeks down the line and it's frustrating.

[@Dave102693]

Google lens is horrible lol

[@TheExileFox]

I hate Google Lens. It's so bad that even Bing Images looks good by comparison

[@overyourheadunderyournose]

Lens and image searches have both turned into garbage. I used to use it daily when vetting women to see if they're real or a bot/spam mostly and as of late the results are terrible. I also tried it for a skin rash recently and it wasn't able to key in to the same rash but I feel like it used to be able to do that.

[@johnchedsey1306]

@@overyourheadunderyournose yandex's reverse image search is far more useful at the moment. As a photographer who sometimes places ads to hire models, i have to sift through a bunch of scammers/fakes. Yandex has proven its value tenfold over google.

[@4GdaTim]

microsoft has a really good example in this too windows 7 was like, one of the best os out there, almost no bloatware apps, fluent, beautiful design, and fast... fast as hell. then we came to windows 10, something really close to 7, but definitely worse because of random bs apps. today we're at windows 11, the worst of all. what microsoft will do to both windows 7 and 10? discontinue them because of "need to transition to a newer version" (actually, windows 7 is already discontinued i think) not only that: in windows 11, you surely can improve it alot, but compared to doing it to windows 7, its far worse windows 12 is coming soon too. welp guys... when the windows im using rn (10) starts being discontinued or when i get a new pc, ill definitely go slapping some linux thing in there

[@izzy4492]

very important for everybody to get external hard drives and start downloading and saving anything you find interesting you see online, be it movies, books, music, videos, game roms, magazine scans, whatever. who knows if that stuff wont just be wiped out off the web in a couple years or be put behind a very expensive paywall

[@DanteLikesRock]

this.

[@eleghari]

Realized this back in 2001 and have been practicing it since (and keeping backups of my backups) 😁

[@roblesize]

Down With Greed, Down With Corruption. Hold everyone accountable. These greedy evil people have damned humanity for their own greed, Corporations, Pharmacies, Governments, Pure Evil

[@slappy8941]

How do we identify who needs to be held accountable, and who is going to hold them accountable and in what way? The only power that we little people have is in the boycott and revolution.

[@Luke-eq5kx]

Down with capitalism

[@endlord_1.185]

@@slappy8941 Strength in numbers. If the public is truly unified in their outrage, no individual or corporation will be able to stop the riots, unless demands are satisfied. Of course, uniting the public is easier said than done.

[@spencerwarren8302]

@@Luke-eq5kx capitalism isn't the problem, the unregulated corporations are. In their attempts to dissuade the public from hating them they tell you it's the system that must be torn down, not the abusers of that system. We need the government to do their damned job and stop those greedy corporations from ruining the quality of life of the citizens, but everyone in government is either ignorant or willfully ignorant of the problems these corps are causing the everyman. The EU is doing their part, using law to force Apple to put the objectively superior usb c port on their phones. As well as other such laws. We need more lawmakers to care more for the people, and be willing to take a hard stance against the greed of the companies.

[@cewla3348]

@@endlord_1.185 but how do we identify who to punish? i'm not against eating the rich fuck them all power to the proletariate, but, aside from the tredecillionaires, who do we attack? All this energy has to go somewhere, and like a prince rupert's drop, hitting the wrong nerve might cause it to explode.

[@vidcas1711]

9:04 If the deletion of Google accounts do end up including inactive KZbin accounts, there’ll be a great hollowing out of classic KZbin videos. I urge everyone to start downloading their favorite videos. I’m definitely starting to consider it, because I’ve already lost track of some of my favorite old KZbin videos.

[@zdiddy456]

I would love some sort of browser extension that downloads any videos you watch that are posted by older/inactive accounts that way as a community, it will be a lot easier to find old youtube videos.

[@MichelleHell]

I did that way back in 2006 when KZbin first came out. Although, we have to accept the limited hard disk space available for increasing sums of data that need to be stored. Storage has a physical limitation, so I always anticipated old parts of the internet would be replaced with new data. Of course we can keep manufacturing disk space, but data also gets bigger and bigger.

[@Dave102693]

@@MichelleHellcompress them to rar files then

[@redbullsauberpetronas]

They've already deleted thousand upon thousands of classic videos and you people are the ones who cheered it on

[@Arlington_Menendez]

@@redbullsauberpetronas I noticed what you said because there was a couple of music videos that I listened too and in a week or a month, they were gone.

[@overyourheadunderyournose]

We made it work via the underground in the 90s and we can do it again. This process of killing the internet started in about 2010. But lately, the bots and simulated content is bonkers. That's one whole topic you didn't cover. The social engineering and social manipulation that will take place is incredible. Remember, they closed all the libraries, you can't even go brick and mortar to get original knowledge anymore, they can start re-writing entire blocks of history in another generation or two.

[@sdjhgfkshfswdfhskljh3360]

Most important books are still available in decentralized networks. No one have ability to destroy them yet.

[@overyourheadunderyournose]

@@sdjhgfkshfswdfhskljh3360 the fact that they're digital leaves them vulnerable to manipulation though. Revisionist history is mainly how they deceive e everyone.

[@jackalenterprisesofohio]

They closed libraries? The library in the town I live is still open, and so is the one in the "city" I work in.

[@overyourheadunderyournose]

@@jackalenterprisesofohio most of the libraries that were closed during covid NEVER ve eopened or where they did it's own evry very limited hours.

[@oceanexblve884]

This was their intention

[@mistavoid]

I say we need open source browsers and even open source community owned websites even if it doesn't sound feasible now we gotta find a way to keep them out or at the very least limit their scope

[@Dave102693]

And open source hardware

[@TheExileFox]

So, Firefox... (technically chromium is open source too, but it's too close to Chrome)

[@arctic_line]

Open source simply isn't enough. Chromium (the foundation of most of the most used browsers) is open source, but that simply isn't enough at this point. What we need is nearly all software to be libre, and connected by a libre internet. It sounds like a gigantic shift, but at the very least it's becoming the reality of things slowly but surely...

[@abdillahahmad7025]

Preach

[@casualamber]

@@TheExileFoxwithout chromium. Firefox is not exactly open source anymore. Google has a grip on FireFox…

[@maxwellli7057]

The saddest thing is watching the old optimism for the internet die. You see it everywhere, like Vsauce's old "Do Online Now Guys!" series, all now replaced.

[@KyriosHeptagrammaton]

Used to be a site for anything, and now there's just Facebook, Reddit, KZbin, and Twitter.

[@KindlyKalen]

@@KyriosHeptagrammatonthere’s 4chan, but it’s popularity is withered and faded away. It’s one of the only remnants of the Wild West era of the internet.

[@tensorflaw]

I thought it was a mistake that Firefox stood alone in not adopting a Chromium base. Boy was I wrong. Firefox is once again king

[@ninja011]

Welcome to the Cyberpunk future. Writers and Artists tried to warn us, and we did not listen, and now its too late. To fix the broken world today now needs us to pull it all up by the roots, and replant new health plants to preserve what we can.

[@kid14346]

When I was a kid I was told, "If you post something online, it will be there forever!" Now that I am an adult I am sitting here staring at how much of the internet is just lost forever now...

[@KindlyKalen]

Lost media like “Ulterior Motives” and The Original Jeff the Killer Image seem to be lost forever so yeah…

[@Snozfoolery]

If youtube of all places is looking like the best of the worst, then you know something's fucked

[@ms1-Alex]

Another point is that the web is becoming more and more “Hyper Polite” The NSFW is disappearing anywhere, The web and the world is going to became like KZbin kids, Hyper positive ultra coloured silly and Boring

[@sdjhgfkshfswdfhskljh3360]

Also encouraging lies. Hyper polite lies.

[@thecompareablezombie]

This is worrisome, I assume the dark web will still be around? Have not gone there.

[@goodboi6329]

​@@thecompareablezombie probably

[@eleghari]

"Hyper Polite" = Woke

[@JcoleMc]

​@@thecompareablezombie The dark web is the true internet if you imgaine Google as a gaint space station then the dark web would be the rest of the universe outside

[@Biotear]

It is, and yet, perhaps this will be the beginning of a new golden age as well. We must ensure these companies fall, no matter what it takes. We can bring back the beautiful era of the internet that made it so great, but to do that, we cannot bow down. You may be outnumbered, but a cornered animal is the most dangerous.

[@sinzones3909]

we aren't outnumbered if we all reject this bullshit together. it's just hard rallying up numbers and courage.

[@ESMART-Electronics]

@@sinzones3909 the issue is that people either want this, or are oblivious to it. if it were possible to get everyone and their grandma to even put a second thought into this issue something could change, but otherwise no. the slumbering masses dont care

[@johner3364]

Nah it's over. Either this keeps getting worse or the internet collapses and does not come back.

[@Biotear]

@@johner3364 Maybe, but I will die fighting for what I believe in.

[@Biotear]

@@ESMART-Electronics We will bring back that greatness, even if we must do so through iron and blood.

[@lenargilmanov7893]

I hope we'll see the collapse of all these services like Google, Twitter, etc. that are thought to be be "too big to fail".

[@arctrix765]

but the data has to be saves somehow somewhere

[@SuperFlashDriver]

From whom I've talked to on Bitchute back in 2018, someone that used to upload CBS weather clips online is one of the anonymous groups dedicated to downloading everything into hard drives, then shipping them off into underground vaults to archive them incase if say an EMP or an internet wipeout/blackout occurs in the near future. Thank god they're doing the work they can to archive as much as possible.

[@DGlesterHadunkichud]

@@SuperFlashDriver I promise you this isn't true and you're a bonafide idiot for even thinking that it could be.

[@DGlesterHadunkichud]

@@SuperFlashDriver I just can't get over how radically stupid you must be. It's really driving me crazy honestly

[@the-shut-in-yt-watcher]

@@SuperFlashDriver Godspeed to those people. I know petabytes of data in an incredibly difficult endeavor to take on, but at least doing something to save precious data, including stuff that doesn't exist in the real world anymore is at least somewhat comforting to know. Btw, mind dropping a link to them?

[@quinns3072]

This is a good video. I think you make great points. The useful internet is noticeably dying, KZbin being a unique exception, in my opinion. And that is not to say I think KZbin will neccesarily stay safe. I hate what the AI bots are doing to the internet. We've barely gotten started and the spam and bullshit has amped up to insane levels already. I hate the idea of AI for many reasons but killing open discourse on the global scale for individuals is going to be up there near the top. I really wish people would stop and collectively have the serious conversation: Do we want this shit in our lives? Who is this technology going to ultimately benefit? (spoiler, not you.) People don't understand that we do have voices and collectively we can slow the speed of bullshit entering our lives. If we don't do shit until everything has already been done, going backwards will be far too difficult or potentially impossible. This is really scary stuff. It's like people don't care. Most people seem to understand the implications well enough, but are just apathetic to what will go down and how it will change all of our lives, and very quickly at that.

[@fusionspace175]

I just don't care what gets lost, if the end result is digital consciousness existing in virtual universes, a fully automated work force, expansion into space, and bionics that can improve the body to superhuman degrees. That's the future our technology promises us, and I'll give up any amount of humanity to get there. It is going to get worse before it gets better, but I think on a long enough timeline it is inevitable. Clinging to the past is only going to hamper progress and your own ability to adapt and survive.

[@izzyj.1079]

@@fusionspace175 We can have both, it's just not profitable enough for the owner class

[@JDReC100]

"This is really scary stuff. It's like people don't care. Most people seem to understand the implications well enough, but are just apathetic to what will go down and how it will change all of our lives, and very quickly at that." while i believe people not careing is true to some extend, i think the bigger picture is WHY people dont care. personally, i think that can be largely boiled down to 2 things (outside of genuine apathy and self centeredness): tiredness and overstimulation. with all the buzwords, bad news, and advertizments the average person gets on a daily basis, the human mind (consuiously and subconsciuosly) wasnt meant to handle all of this. theres a point where a person just goes into autopilot whether they realize or not, and overtime this overstimulation just becomes draining. im sure there many people who are aware of whats going on, but dont have the energy to delve deeper into this, or need to prioritize moreso with whats going on in thier lives (bills, food, family, jobs, ect.). the best we can do is spread the word, but not to condem others for not immediately acting (and yes i notice my the bad grammar, too tired to fix it)

[@PurpleTurtle7288]

Agree with what you say. Although, even youtube is not very useful now. Search is completely useless and suggestions only ever propose videos that I have already seen or videos unrelated to the one I am watching. I miss the youtube of 2008-2014

[@cewla3348]

ugh, i hate what the world did to AI. Tools that can be used to change the world, save lives, spread true, reliable, information was turned into propaganda, life destroying, spam-making machines.

[@reynoldfroese8439]

It's a simple fact that the economic system we live under forces those with meaningful aspirations into the service of those who ruthlessly pursue profit. All of humanity's wisdom, creativity, and passion is subjugated by greed. We need to collectively recognize the flaws in our systems and cultures in order to build something better.

[@rioliega]

YES. please. Our flaws lie within ourselves - information shouldn't be driven by greed.

[@skyjelly9790]

The flaws in our cultures? Can we start with all the pepes and wojaks and dumb politics and redditoids and their delusional self-loathing manchild nonsense?

[@dardarfisher]

It’s weird to have grow up with the internet and seen all the change. Feels a bit like the mom n pop corner store is turning into a 711.

[@lovelydolltime8006]

It's crazy how fast the world seems to change. It seems like it changes faster than we can comprehend it.

[@Jules_Pew]

There needs to be a library of the internet like the British Library. Save all the pages and convert to pdf format. I used to admin a large forum, saw the writing on the wall, and saved a big chunk of it. It can be done if people have the will and the time. It's a huge task, but if want to save the information, it has to be done.

[@SocietalDefibrilation]

The Way Back Machine

[@Jules_Pew]

@@SocietalDefibrilation It only gives a snapshot, not a total backup.

[@whodis4097]

I know Kiwifarms users are rather thorough about archiving stuff on their site. As controversial as the site is, it shows that it can be done. The site has been banned from The Way Back Machine since a while back though, so there is that.

[@Bruh-zx2mc]

@@Jules_Pew Tf are you on about? Wayback does a total backup.

[@Jules_Pew]

@@Bruh-zx2mc You're lucky if you get 2 pages of a thread in a forum. No it doesn't.

[@deohere7647]

The internet, social media, and many other things should be classified as utilities. Profit should not define us, and should not be the greatest good.

[@Blowhard]

I have been talking about this for at least 8 years and everyone has been calling me a crazy nihilist.

[@eekee6034]

I should have been talking about it and doing things about it for a lot more than 8 years, but I didn't. Oh well.

[@veto_5762]

I miss the days where the internet was about finding cool webpages you find on an afternoon while researching things; forums, web archives, personal blogs, websites hosting tools for random things, etc... some of those things are still around but they have become harder to find on the ocean of paywalled websites, streched articles full of ads and random social media posts The thing that made the internet felt more genuine than other forms of media was it's decentralized nature, as most as it is handy to have anything we would want to check in a few websites, it also made the internet and it's content more centralized and thus easier to influence and control, making easier for corporations to control these spaces freely. Ngl the "death internet" theory always sounded a bit too ridiculous to me, but i cannot say they aren't wrong to think that...

[@scasny]

The internet is the same its just mostly filled with garbage and money making schemes, i am not surprised were the internet is but how long it take to get there. I think most of it was the shareholders, ceo and executives have mostly no idea and what porential and risk internet have. As in all booming enterprise it first skyrocket, oversaturate the market and deflate. And bigger the company bigger the fall. If the current trends make fiscal sense it will continue, on this front is partially our fault also because if no one use it they will not make more.

[@doublesushi5990]

agreed. I miss SEARCHING for something and not getting directed to something TOTALLY unrelated. "for you" "others liked" "you might like" "try this" etc..

[@bruh-ek1tv]

"Quick, squeeze out every last bit of money while everything collapses" Hmm seems familiar, can't put my finger on it.

[@Contemplatium]

The deletion of stuff uploaded to the internet is a loss to mankind.

[@annehoskins5795]

I grew up with television in the 1960's. Where I lived, we could get all the regular TV shows with rabbit ears and two channels. Then sometime in the 1970's, cable TV was introduced. This meant that if you wanted to get all your favourite shows, you would have to pay a monthly cable fee. If you did not subscribe to cable TV, your viewing choices were limited. In many cases when people get attached to a "free" service, businesses make you start paying. Back in the day many people could not afford to pay the monthly fee. It seems from this video, I will have to start paying to go to my favourite sites and apps. I am now in my 60's and because of my interest in many subjects and thirst for knowledge, the internet has opened up a whole new world for me. Before the internet, I was an avid reader. Books seem to be on the way out. Most business now has to be one done on the internet instead of in person. At this rate, many people will not be able to afford to function in this world.

[@Riu-bw4bl]

Idk I don’t think it’s just nostalgia anymore. It seems like EVERYTHING has either gotten worse in quality or function or some kinda twisted weird greed is ruining everything. It’s like being hit at every turn. All the things you loved and though were enjoyable? Not anymore? A future that seemed exciting or at least optimistic? That’s actually laughable. Idk man. Everything’s going to sh*t.

[@Otherwise_1]

it is what it is

[@oceanexblve884]

Yeah the quality of everything has gone down and ads are shoved down our throats. Like I can’t even google a item without at least 5 shein and temu listings

[@Otherwise_1]

@@oceanexblve884 We have to create the services that we liked before, because they will lose the competition simply if something normal appears and without such a huge monetization

[@schmecklin377]

everything is going to shit, but everything has always been going to shit

[@lambdanil]

We are the ones who flocked to proprietary, centralized services, now we have to pay the price for our stupidity. The internet isn't dying, it's healing and if things continue to go well we'll see many other services die soon.

[@Damariobros]

You omitted the fact that search operators, like excluding words with the minus sign, for example, have been quietly removed from pretty much all search engines on the internet, bar none. This makes the experience of searching the internet even worse than has already been talked about.

[@nielskorpel8860]

I knew it!

[@eekee6034]

They were never implemented in Duck Duck Go, I don't think. I asked for them early on, and got a reply saying it would be a good idea and easy to implement, but they never worked.

[@Damariobros]

@@eekee6034 DuckDuckGo's the worst offender. Absolutely no search operators except for exact phrase, but it doesn't work half the time. And even on Google, they've become more of a suggestion that may or may not be ignored by the search algorithm. It's so infuriating!

[@eekee6034]

@@Damariobros Yeah. I'm not happy with Duck Duck Go anymore, but I use image search a lot and none of the search engines I'd like to use seem to have it. DDG's image search has got really bad though.

[@TheSmart-CasualGamer]

The company that created a platform called Google+ now restricts using punctuation marks in searches. The irony.

[@paherbst524]

This was a well thought out and well made video. I think the problem is too many people rely on the convenience of other entities owning their data. I think the future of the internet could be better if it is more decentralized and open. Let's go back to forums and RSS feeds. Let's take our data back.

[@vylbird8014]

The problem there is that centralisation /is/ convenient. People want convenience. Need convenience.

[@cewla3348]

@@vylbird8014 well, with modern design ideas, we can solve this. Since there will be no profit incentives in this utopia, people WILL tell others the commonly asked questions and commonly stated answers, the other good sites, whether or not it's a bad site because the only incentive is the person behind the other screen. People can make folders, personal folders, of what they like - I already have some in my bookmarks bar. Instead of having one forum and subtopics, have many forums with many subtopics! Convenience doesn't go further than one click or hotkey and you're there already!

[@vidvad]

In the early 2000s, searching for stuff on Google and stumbling upon weird creative websites with videos, images, GIFs, etc, was the equivalent to today's infinite feed scroll of Facebook, Twitter or TikTok. I'd spend hours searching keywords and browsing the unknown. I miss the time when we wouldn't be bombarded by ads and fake content.

[@nightterror6727]

To be honest I think there's a light at the end of the tunnel. Eventually these corporations are going to push things too far and even the most basic Internet users are going to reject these mainstream websites. We've already received a taste of it with the failure of NFTs and the metaverse, so there is at least a little bit of hope left.

[@anty.]

I was originally motivated to continue using twitter and reddit (mainly due to addictions), but now im pretty turned away from them. With the protests and the number of users leaving, using them now just feels like scraping the bottom of the barrel. It's been dreadful to watch much of the internet that I've been using and enjoying starting to wither but it will at least give me an opportunity to focus on other things in life.

[@sinzones3909]

we're at the final stage of the shittification cycle, eventually better alternatives will pop up. once everything is dead communities will still form and make something better.

[@lukesilver5696]

Data is being used as a moat around big tech companies and I do believe data ownership is anti-competitive in nature. As an advocate for a free market I can’t argue with the future of the internet not being inclusive. Also enjoyed your take on futurism, great content.

[@UsenameTakenWasTaken]

So, a weird and genuine question from a dirty lefty that heavily favors regulation, but curiosity compels me. What's your take on your free market advocate peers, and as a clearly very separate question, what is your take on the Invisible Hand style free market absolutists that seem to worship at Elon's feet for eight dollars a month?

[@UsenameTakenWasTaken]

Hmmm, perhaps I should have put quotation marks around, "absolutists," lol.

[@mechanomics2649]

The free market is how we run into messes like this, guy.

[@doomsdayrabbit4398]

​@@mechanomics2649 The "free" market which is heavily controlled by neoliberal maniacs who think history was over in 1992. We need to get rid of capitalism.

[@NXTangl]

​@@mechanomics2649there is no free market under capitalism, AFAICT, because a truly free market would not have investors, oligopolies, and regulatory capture, but capitalism necessarily produces these things.

[@catcatcatcatcatcatcatcatcatca]

I am cautious but exited for this development. We, the users, are the one thing truly free in the internet. It is nothing more than a protocol after all. Users were here before I was born. Reddit is a good source of information because it is truly user-generated and curated. Google used to be helpful because it directed you towards users. Internet was always a community library. Calling it a town square is deceptive, as you aren’t required to build a town square, you just show up. Community library is something that depends on the users participating to exist. We are not only responsible for typing information and opinions, or recording videos and audio. We have to build the bookshelves, donate the books, keep tabs on who loans what, and as a collective pay up for the rent or property. In my view, the first step is to personally curate the websites you visit, and share that information with others. Easiest way to participate is being helpful to others, and giving them relevant links. Be there before google, or when google fails. Encourage people to do the same. Because to make information useful, you need one person to write it, and 100 people to suggest it. Ultimately sharing useful information is something companies struggle to beat users at, because users share information for the sake of sharing it.

[@LuigiCotocea]

What should i look for a site when i curate it?

[@nielskorpel8860]

Will humans be able to shape the world, and by extension, the internet, in a world where AI can pretend to be human, jump any barrier of humanity proof, and do the shaping on a scale more massive and complicated than we could ever match?

[@williamshakemilk2192]

Nah man we’re all fucked just gotta try our best to adapt

[@CarmenShields]

We have to push back against these negative, anti-human, anti-free and open Internet trends and work together collaboratively and individually to create a free and open future and defend the Internet's ethos of free and open access to information. This is invaluable and we cannot let it go up in flames. Whether it is lobbying for pro-Internet policies, creating our own homegrown hubs of content, or working together to resist anti-Internet changes to policy, we must defend the principles of freeness, openness, and collaboration that keep the Internet free.

[@geckoram6286]

What some companies are doing to inactive accounts goes completely against my ideology. I think most information is worth to be accessible. In this point in time, we could store and preserve whatever we want for a really long time, yet we are destroying things, mostly trash but also some important things for people: Family photos, information on a really specific topic, general opinions on something that happened ten years ago. I mean I understand why companies can't store literally anything, but the methods they're using are a bit too much.

[@clubdoompsx]

I was wondering why searching on Google has become more of a chore lately

[@Cheerfuljochan]

People called me crazy when I said that I keep on saving a lot of different data to my own hard drives in case the internet goes down. I have seen this possibility happen since the dawn of internet and I hate being right about it. I guess these companies really just want piracy to become the only way for people to share news, information and data from here on out.

[@sdjhgfkshfswdfhskljh3360]

It should be not only stored, but also shared. Otherwise it makes not much sense.

[@sinzones3909]

some people call me 'old fashioned' (i'm genZ, literally what?) for even just knowing how to download data onto external drives. relying on a streaming service or company for anything i want to experience or keep doesn't sit right with me anymore. anything i own can be taken away, anything i like can be deleted. downloading all the stuff i want has been a bit grating but it's a much better experience than dealing with ads every 10 seconds, having to be connected to the internet all the time, having to deal with sudden deletions and paywalls, etc. plus alot of the stuff i like is niche, so if it ever becomes lost media i can easily share it with others instead of being sad that something i loved is gone. i genuinely hope piracy and other things like it become common knowledge, it's given me ways to encounter and enjoy art in cool ways and reuse my old tech.

[@Cheerfuljochan]

@@sinzones3909 Aye, this is literally the current situation in all media, especially streaming services.

[@eekee6034]

Rational people have always been called crazy. :(

[@KyriosHeptagrammaton]

I was just downvoted into oblivion on Reddit like 2 months ago for saying I download everything in case the internet disappears. Just realized the irony there.

[@shivadarling18]

Relying on mainstream sites and government interference have been the downfall of the internet. I remember going to websites my friends told me about and using whatever foul language I want. Now, everything's monitored and coersed into compliance.

[@biosphere-aka-lil-v-cast]

these days i get surprised when people do swear online

[@Sparky_Chipmunk]

Honestly, I never expected to go down this path, and I really hate this path. I hope something good happens or else things are going to be very grim for the future.

[@iamsheel]

Nothing can kill the internet other than censorship and copyrights

[@normanclatcher]

And maybe a Carrington event.

[@iamsheel]

@@normanclatcher oh if that happened I'd rejoice in the world chaos before I finally run out of reasons to keep on living

[@vylbird8014]

But censorship comes in many forms, and some have the potential for that.

[@calibula95]

Oh yeah? Observe: *paywalls the sh*t out of every single useful website*

[@sdjhgfkshfswdfhskljh3360]

DDoS/spam have potential too.

[@kchalu]

The user is the reason for the site to exist, people were paramount in the early days of the net. But now, site operators are aware that we are no longer visitors of the internet, we have made it our home.

[@vylbird8014]

The user is not the customer, though. The customer is the advertising service. The user is just the product.

[@erubianwarlord8208]

@@vylbird8014 how ever the advertiser is buying this product in the hope that it becomes a customer for whoever they are advertising for unfortunately for them they all got so greedy with wanting our attention that we deliberately shun them if ads had remained on the sides of the page and not overtaking the content they were intended to shown with then adblock would never have been made

[@kchalu]

@@erubianwarlord8208 This is what I was talking about. No website will make money if nobody visits them.

[@nielskorpel8860]

"Users have power and human shape the world" Haha AI

[@prestontiger]

This channel is going places, glad I found it.

[@mistavoid]

facts

[@Curvyfeets]

Same

[@lanceash]

But think about that: the very thing this video is complaining about: greed ruining everything, could be the very thing that ruins it one day, if it is indeed "going places."

[@Dave102693]

This channel is just SunnyV2 with a different name

[@zyme5998]

Anyone else notice that more streaming services are now hosting content made and owned by other companies with streaming services, even if they're no longer offering it? Getting real confusing, and in some ways these streaming services now reminds me of the premium cable channels in days of old... But as for throwing away content? some probably deserve it, but I predict a cycle of bringing back for a limited time every decade or 2 like Disney use to do in the VHS days...

[@lanceash]

The following quote by Erica Jong comes to mind: “In a society in which everything is for sale, in which deals and auctions make the biggest news, doing it for love is the only remaining liberty.... Do it for love and the rich will envy no one more than you. In a world of tuxedos, the naked man is king. In a world of bookkeepers with spreadsheets, the one who gives it away without counting the cost is God.” Don't know if or how that fits in exactly with the point you are making in the video, but for me, the internet is a convenient tool to explore and experience art that I might never have had the opportunity to find otherwise, as well as a place for me to display my art, something that, in this world of cut-throat commerce, is increasingly impossible. As long as those options are available to me, the larger trends of making money MAKING MONEY M A K I N G M O N E Y don't matter to me. But, of course, as with everything, that is what is "ruining" the internet and leading to its "end."

[@4473021]

Software companies try not to ruin absolutely everything challenge (impossible)

[@Doshiba]

If there's something i can guarantee to you is that using AI to search things on the internet is not gonna help If the algorithm that google been developing since the start struggles to show me a picture of a car i want to buy, don't think the AI is gonna fair much better.

[@nielskorpel8860]

AI existed ten years ago. It was something else, and much more shit. People thought it wasn't worth taking seriously. AI from ten years from now might be something else, much less shit. And we will anticipate it by not taking it seriously.

[@So1]

@@nielskorpel8860 ai isnt bad i love how some people use it for, its just stupid corps push it so much and do stupid stuff with it

[@droppers]

I created this youtube channel in 2005 and I can agree with this video. The internet has taken a 180 degree angle when it comes for useful information or hanging out with friends online, it has become a place for corporations to juice money out of the user's bank account. Honestly this was a good watch and I liked and subscribed.

[@hw9]

"I created this youtube channel in 2005" ... 🤓

[@droppers]

@@hw9 very nice fellow youtube veteran!

[@LBoomsky]

I remember back when my parents would say "what you do or say on the internet was forever" But really its whatever you pick or choose with a big enough wallet

[@erics7004]

Time for decentralized internet is here. Torrents, Mastodon, Lemmy, Linux.

[@reisen_udongein_inaba_]

Lemmy?

[@DarasEs]

@@reisen_udongein_inaba_ @kwya Lemmy is an open source and decentralized alternative to Reddit. It's grown quite a bit since the things the CEO did during the blackout.

[@MarlKitsune]

More and more the "dead internet theory" is feeling like a prophesy.

[@anttam117]

The internet tanked for me by around the early to mid 2010s. Social media did most of the killing. I only go online these day to check my email, browse some news and watch a few videos in here, that’s it.

[@akteno2796]

With how reddit is headed currently they will get in trouble with EU in like a week or die before that week.

[@elio7610]

The fact that twitter did not completely collapse after musk messed around with it makes me think reddit will just keep going.

[@hydra3693]

@@elio7610 it will stay alive but become a terrible place

[@DanteLikesRock]

reddit is definitely not dying anytime soon lol.

[@akteno2796]

@@DanteLikesRock oh it is

[@TheSmart-CasualGamer]

Reddit, Twitter and Facebook have all come to blows with the EU due to their lax attitudes to safety, privacy and suchlike. Musk's Bird Website especially over the last six tumultuous months!

[@zyme5998]

Googles already deleted my Google Voice while I was in the hospital from a stroke. My debit card was almost impossible to access because I didn't have my phone which I couldn't access my money to replace (and they litterally blocked calls from phone #'s not associated with an account). Discord banned my cell phone # but won't say why or allow me to appeal, and many things are blocked w/o a registered phone# to your account. Amazon Prime Wouldn't let me login with a new device w/o a sms verification even though 2FA is off, but they will allow multiple accounts that use the same email address to login...

[@eekee6034]

I'm very sorry to hear that. I've never associated my phone number with any account, and I encourage everyone else to take the same line.

[@realkekz]

I've not even gotten 4 minutes into the video, but you've already summarized my thoughts perfectly. Can't stress enough that the tech industry is getting desperate, they're literally trend chasing like youtube "influencers". Neither blockchain, metaverse, crypto, VR, AR, nor AI are real futures, they're novelty items, Web 3.0 was a disastrous idea and has thus far only backfired and seen failure. The tech industry is absolutely hemorrhaging funds, resources, and innovation in a way that can't be properly quantified. From what I've seen thus far, ironically, Apple seems best positioned in the tech industry, and only because of their ridiculous brand loyalty, and the fact that they still produce actual items. Companies like Facebook and Twitter are in their death throes, KZbin and other Google products are nearly in the exact same area, but have become effectively too big to fail given how central they are to the internet's existence in its current form. Microsoft is losing marketshare in a way simply never before seen by the company, from 95% PC marketshare in the late 2000s to now under 70%, having dipped into the low 60s previously. I think the tech collapse is around the corner, the dominoes are in place.

[@Connorses]

Twitter clarified that they are archiving old accounts, and you can recover the account later. Archived accounts' tweets are still visible, but they don't contribute to official follower counts of people they follow. This seems completely reasonable to me, compared to what Google said they were doing.

[@scpatl4now]

This could be solved (in the US) if we had a government that wasn't either too stupid or too afraid of losing campaign cash to act by regulating and forcing existing laws on anti-trust to be enforced. It seems companies can move way quicker to consolidate (like in streaming) than regulators who are underfunded and demonized by the right can act to slow it down. It's much harder to break up a company than it is to stop a merger. All this behavior is clearly due to market power. Streaming services would not be burying content if they thought people would cancel and go elsewhere. Thing is, there isn't anywhere else to go. I've said it before...but you get the government you vote for, and if you don't vote these issues they think you don't care about them.

[@LukeForPuns]

Pretty sure any big corporation hates regulators unless they get special treatment. Also pretty sure any politician or lobbyist will do the same and demonize something whenever it doesn’t suit their agenda. Also, we’re living in a corporatized world, where massive corporations have incredible power over governments and nations, alongside the financial institutions that are backing them. If you go deep enough into the conspiracy rabbit hole, it might be the next (or current) world order. If the current government and political parties didn’t already get loads of funding from the same companies that want to monopolize, then maybe they would be more serious about anti-trust law, but I don’t see that happening without a serious shift or event. Very blatant conflict of interest.

[@battlelawlz3572]

any idea of society collectively doing something to better itself is naive and optimistic. in reality, people are far too incompetent, lazy and “can’t be bothered” with the details. the fact that “TLDR” is a regular saying is proof in the pudding. people just don’t care about details anymore. the reason why that is can be up for debate but it’s likely due to the “busy” culture we have adopted. people are too busy or don’t want to stand out from the crowd or don’t want to be ridiculed for being “different” and this creates a feedback loop of people doing what the rich elite do. who doesnt want to live like them anyway, right? the mentality of being “trendy” is way to popular (ironically) so believing people, especially the next generations, would ever get off their asses as a collective is just a pipe dream

[@axeslinger94]

Voting won't fix this issue.

[@funkyweapon1981]

@@axeslinger94 The ballot failed. Time for the bullet.

[@agentoranj5858]

Wow it's almost like democracy was a mistake and we shouldn't have taken each-other's guns away.

[@Bizarro69]

We all played ourselves with our sci-fi, futurist fantasy. Believing we were living in the same worlds that we read about and watched on TV. After everything is said and done, we remain in the real world where bad greedy people will do anything to hoard as much as they can. People used to dog on digital pirates, then those streaming services literally removed and made inaccessible so many shows! To this day can't get them! Unless you were a pirate of course. Same with internet archive, Gutenberg, nothing is safe and never believe it is, man!

[@SuperJayGames]

These Large Language Models (LLMs) are developing newer capabilities as their training as knowledge systems intensifies. As someone who's been in the software development sphere for some time, I've never observed such a phenomenon where 1) mass acceptance and 2) research is being driven by everyday individuals, in their spare time, exploring and enhancing these LLMs daily. It's almost as if people are so eager to avoid work that they're striving tirelessly to automate not just their roles, but others' as well. These aren't just ordinary LLMs, and the speed at which they're evolving suggests they'll soon be superseded by an even more advanced successor in less than a year. To elucidate what I mean by "new capabilities," let's consider this as simply as possible. GPT-3 fails to retrospectively assess its past tasks in any significant way. If it errors, it either stubbornly defends its incorrectness or retries and falters in a fresh manner. In contrast, GPT-4 can detect its mistakes and correct them, a capability that OpenAI asserts was not inherently programmed into the model. These models are improving at a doubly logarithmic pace, and already, independent enthusiasts are developing compact 13-billion-parameter models that sit somewhere between GPT-3 and GPT-4, which can be executed even on a mobile phone. I personally operate 40b models on my home computer. Understanding LLMs and their functionality is crucial, but we've barely begun to uncover the full range of what these systems can accomplish. Given the intense enthusiasm of a vast, freely collaborating online community, this progress shows no signs of slowing down.

[@alessandrobaggi6129]

And if this is what's "in the clear", who assures me there aren't already constructs like those monitoring and regulating the internet? I don't wanna have to wear a tinfoil hat, but this particular topic scares me quite a bit. I'm from 1983... it must be T2's fault... 🤷‍♂️

[@vylbird8014]

Hobbyist tinkering with LLMs is currently limited by access to processing power. You need specialised hardware, tensor processors, and a lot of it. A major factor in the sudden appearance of generative AI is the ability to rent access to this hardware now, but it's still expensive - hobbyists can't afford a few million dollars in cloud fees. But, as the model architecture is refined to be more efficient and the capabilities of hardware continue to improve, I wonder if that might change in a few more years.

[@nielskorpel8860]

This would explain the 'why do we so insistently keep developing this despite possibly shitty outcomes' paradox. I am scared.

[@dragondelsur5156]

"Freely collaborating online community", you mean the people who's data is being fed into an algorithm without their consent?

[@lelovsky.]

I've had Internet access my whole life. I'm 22. At this point 99% of searches I make are with "reddit" at the end. Otherwise I just get articles that I scroll in 3 seconds and they don't contain any answer. If Adblockers stop working I'll probably start going to dark net or just a physical library. Current state of the Internet is so exhausting that I wouldn't mind if it soon imploded. We should start building a decentralized net, I guess.

[@krasistefanovlol]

if i have to search for a problem then i search for it and some results just send me to a reddit post where a guy had the exact same problem, and another person knowing a good amount on it and how to fix it if it doesnt link me to reddit right away then i start adding "reddit" at the end

[@retro5533]

Honestly it feels like we’re going back in some fashion to the 00s internet. As-ridden corporate wastelands aside, I’m hoping that the fediverse expands to take over what Twitter, KZbin, and Reddit used to be.

[@pinkcreeper100]

the federated internet is the future

[@eleghari]

Remember the whole point of switching to Google was they didn't mess with the search results and the ads were displayed on the side in small blocks....

[@Sanchuniathon384]

So it looks like the free internet will have to exist as a grey zone between the controlled internet (corpo-net) and the dark web. I think the original net was already that kind of grey zone, but gradually it's turned into the corpo net.

[@atomic_bomba]

If you use any google product without the correct software to negate their phishing and revenue schemes (adblocker, VPN, etc..), you are part of the problem. The issue with the modern internet is that so many people don't give a damn about being manipulated by these corporations. A decade ago, they were testing the waters. They weren't sure what they could get away with. Now they are. When you search something up now, the primary result is an advertisement - and that is because they are allowed to get away with it. By using a browser like Edge or Google, you are encouraging them to act in this way, and become even more zealous in doing so. Also, there will *NEVER* be a mass exodus to the dark web. Never. Just about every forum outside of the clearnet has protections in place to prevent an exodus flooding them. Allowing morons to access the web was a mistake - the darknet is one of the few places that hasn't been tarnished yet by cattle.

[@sdjhgfkshfswdfhskljh3360]

There were no connectivity problems back then. It is not possible to make "grey zone" without throwing away web technology sadly.

[@satohime]

genuinely flabbergasted that all of my childhood memories and grade school work would be wiped from the internet without my knowledge in less than 6 months had I not happened upon this video through autoplay... I'm terrified by the fact that Google didn't even announce this properly, and 2 YEARS?? that's bullshit, seriously, it means that I have 6 months to find a way to get into my deceased mother's Google account to access hundreds of family photos that were stored there in belief that they'd be safe forever. And I'm lucky since my mother passed away less than a year ago, imagine how many people may be in a similar situation to me, imagine how many elderly people are storing pictures in their google drives that they haven't touched since retirement...why would they be reading a google blog post to find this out?? this is blatant erasure of history, it's absurd to see such a thing done by ""free speech"" martyr elon musk. this is why we need to keep analog archives of everything, we can't trust the internet to store digital information for anything

[@TheAdvertisement]

The internet has ceased to be run by historians and is instead run by frivolous money-hungry CEOs. Unfortunate.

[@DragoNate]

7:36 wtf? I have literally NEVER added the-app-that-shall-not-be-named to the end of any search result, ever. In fact, for the most part, I always despised going there for answers because every time I did, if only searching, I found a lot of rabbit holes and if asking, I get trolled, insulted, deleted/removed/hidden, some sort of complaint etc. Twice. Only TWICE out of 7 years of using that site & asking a question now & then did I leave with a smile or neutral expression because someone actually helped me or I had a fun/funny exchange from it.

[@TheSmart-CasualGamer]

I hate how useful Reddit's search is, as in my mind it's still "The Platform with all the Nazis on it". However, Google has become such a sub-par search engine that even I've had to go through Reddit a few times.

[@DragoNate]

@@TheSmart-CasualGamer I've ended up there many times, I just usually have a terrible experience when I do.

[@user-vt1xy5ts6h]

Ragedit are ruled by trolls and has dumbest rules evar like ban on self-promotion.)

[@dannisan77]

I've got fond memories of cool websites full of fun information that have seemed to of disappeared without a trace. It now seems that Google is now less useful for looking up information and whatever shows up is either trash or isn't as good as what it used to be. I've been finding that KZbin is better for looking up information. The death of the internet is sad.

[@FromRussia_With_Love]

The internet is not special, it's like every other thing that was created and we loved. When companies realized that humans enjoy a thing, they find a way to profit off it, and eventually that nullifies the reasons we enjoyed it to begin with.