The Internet Is Much Better Than Its Early Days

This was not possible on the old Internet (image licensed to author)

I sometimes see people having nostalgia for the early days of the Internet.

The days of BBSes, Dial-ups, early forums, and their online communities…The period from the late 90s until the late 2000s…

They say everything was much better then. That the quality of people online was much higher. Interactions were of higher quality. There wasn’t any misinformation.

And they say everything is much worse today. That there is crappy content all over the Internet, short video sites, meaningless posts, misinformation, fake news, influencers, monetization. Everything has gone downhill.

But all of it is rosy nostalgia.

They forget how the Internet really was back then.

A One Way Street

Gigantic corporations of the old establishment dominated the Internet back then.

Not even ‘upstarts’ like Google, Twitter, and the likes. With their new culture, the new way of work, and the new way of doing things.

For sure none of the things like ‘User-oriented technology’, ‘communities’, ‘ecosystems’. Which every ‘big tech’ company seems to be focused on, for empowering people on the Internet.