[samsquire]

In early 2000-2007 I felt technology optimism (things like Digg, slashdot) about new websites and there was a hopefulness about new technology (file sharing) The spirit of new technology that "there is something new" and the "this is how things work from now on" (WAP websites, floppy disks, guest books, simple 1megabyte web hosting, geocities, fan sites, myspace, WhatsApp on cheap phones).

In other words, every new thing was something that may have been before but it was "this is how things work from now on". The platform defines and upholds the character of interaction. Twitter and Reddit do that and as pg highlights how twitter recipients is by algorithm. (From OP: "where you don't specify the recipients.")

I have fond memories of writing HTML from magazines and in the eras before me it was handwriting text games into BASIC interpreters.

[ryandrake]

The optimism and hopefulness got crushed under the boot of money. The spirit of sharing got crushed under the boot of copyright. The joy and excitement got crushed under the boot of metrics and engagement. In an alternate timeline, things could have gone a different way, but because the same old money and same old power structures controlled the direction of progress, we got the timeline where the Internet turned into Addictive Pay-per-view Disney.

[energy123]

Not untrue, but also not the only thing going on.

The authoritarian movements of the 20th century wouldn't have been possible without mass media. But it wasn't the profit motive that was the prime culprit for this enablement.

Ideologues found they had a powerful tool at their disposal to channel people's grievances towards an enemy, and to bind a large group of people behind this ideology.

The inventors of the printing press and the radio didn't intend for it to be used this way.

[brink]

> we got the timeline where the Internet turned into Addictive Pay-per-view Disney

Call me a cynic, but I really think that was the inevitable outcome. It's just flawed human nature. Yes, there are outliers - good people who make and keep that vision to the best of their ability. But the overwhelming majority will always be there to drive it towards the dismal outcome you're witnessing now.

[mongol]

I don't think it easily could have gone another way. Progress follows incentives, and money is a strong incentive. Only very fundamental changes to copyright and "publishing accountability" legislation could have put us on another path.

[agumonkey]

money and the realization that this "new" web was half computing half society .. and we now get the same need for rules, safety, morality as in the real world

[alliao]

it's a shame we can't recreate it somehow and even kept the optimism in a snapshot format. things weren't pretty, a bit clunky even. Unicode wasn't around, so encoding itself was a big deal all by itself. Internet was slow but it somehow retained the most critical part of application. there were many search engines, the first 5yrs or so when google arrived was the height of tech optimism for me, the search works so well it felt like magic. and most articles online were very personal. it felt like a village where people moved there voluntarily and were very eager to share with other villagers. alas.

[jillesvangurp]

The only thing that changed is that the people that were there are now grumpy middle aged people complaining that things have changed around them. Not realizing that it's they that have changed the most.

For technology optimism, look at younger generations. You are not going to find it in older generations. It's not a technical problem; it's a problem with aging. Young people are still expressing themselves online. Mostly not using any of the tools used by us older people. And good for them.

I grew up in the 1970s and 80s. I don't have a lot of patience for people of my own age these days. Not a lot of creativity there. Lovely people but just not very inspiring. Most of their great achievements are in the past. I try to keep some young people around me to keep me a bit more engaged. Much more fun. Young people haven't changed at all. I'm at risk of sliding into old age and being all grumpy about it. But I refuse to. Doesn't sound like a lot of fun.

It's not technology that's stopping people from expressing themselves but the fact that they no longer have the mental agility to make the most of what at the time were very primitive tools. If it was there (again) would you use it? Hint: it's still there and you are not using it like you used to! All the old tools still work. And there are some newer ones that work even better. The tools are there. But you aren't.

[graemep]

I would say that is young people have different, and IMO lower, expectations.

People of our age group expected internet technologies to be democratising and empowering. Instead they have become centralised and controlled.

PG is is right that Twitter's advantage was that it did not feel like it was owned by a private company. The problem is, that that feeling was entirely incorrect. Unlike open protocols things controlled by private companies are inevitably enshittified.

[camgunz]

I was born in 83, and yeah this drives me nuts too. My cohort will be like, "I hate social media; it's done bad things to kids, society, and me personally, but I have accounts on all the major platforms, I spend at least 2 hours a day on them, I might even work at one or even aspire to be an influencer."

Good lord it's so annoying. We're in charge now! We're literally writing gushing posts about Bluesky when it's solved exactly zero of the problems Twitter had (I guess it won't automatically switch you back to algorithmic feed, but honestly probably just give it time to enshittify).

Maybe I'm making too much out of what is essentially a collective action problem, but it's kind of heartbreaking to watch my generation sleepwalking into this weird social media abyss. Just don't keep walking! Quit making the abyss deeper!

[satvikpendem]

Sounds like you just grew up. I hear lots of people romanticizing the good old days not thinking about all the people who thought those good days were actually their current bad days, they were simply older than you; and similarly, I see lots of young people saying that these recent times are the good days while older people lament their downturn.

[ANewFormation]

This is not necessarily just a matter of perception if society is indeed generally on a downward arc.

This sounds melodramatic yet it's quite trivial to list countless things that have become much worse, while it's somewhat more difficult to list things that have become much better.

It's the issue with economic/technological development as the main milestone. Would you rather live as an aristocrat in Ancient Greece, or in poverty in the US today? Basically nobody would pick the latter choice but by the things we would typically list as better, a person in poverty today would have while our Ancient Greek could only dream of such. But it seems there's more to life than smartphones, medicine, and air conditioning.

[shombaboor]

bots, perpetual scams, enshittification, walled gardens, ai slop make me think things were better back in the day objectively content wise. no doubt the speed and general base tech has improved though