The emergence of social media has destroyed all the small communities to standardize communication and information.
It’s a bit of a digital version of rural exodus. And since 2017/2018, I’ve noticed that everything that, in my opinion, represented the internet has disappeared.
I’ve known Lemmy for a few hours and I feel like I’m back in the early spirit of the internet.
The Internet used to operate fine before this ad riddled slop was spoon fed to us.
I’m pretty sure back in the day you would get some ads on geocities sites and other free Web hosts, and it was fine, I don’t expect ads to vanish, you are making out like it’s an all or nothing proposition.
The paradigms for “content” is all wrong now, rather than the ads being needed to fund the content, the content is produced as a way to keep eyes on ads.
There are literally design/ux guides around how to best waste a users time to get more ads shown without getting them to leave, click bait shouldn’t even be a thing.
Now you can say “this is why we need to support people so they don’t need to do this”, but I don’t feel they do NEED to, they choose to do this as it maximises income, but why do you need to get paid for every thing you do?
Its like people used to Stream and make YT vids because they enjoyed it, uploading new vids whenever there was a reason to, not because some algorithm required it.
I’m not against people making a living from YT or streaming, or even the Internet, but there is a difference between someone who enjoyed doing something and made it big vs people who just want to make money and YT is the vehicle for it.
Too much of society is focused on money.
The Internet used to feel like a university with clever people sharing knowledge and discussing all manner of topics, with some fun student bars to hang out and chat.
Now it feels like a noisy bazzar full of pick pocketers and stall vendors with fake smiles yelling at you to support them and buy their merch (and or their sponsors).
Its a cess pit.