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What’s contributing most to the death of the open internet? (europe.pub)

submitted 20 hours ago by cm0002@europe.pub to c/ask@piefed.social

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It feels like the web is becoming more closed every year — fewer open forums, more platforms locking away data and communities behind logins. What do you think are the biggest forces driving the decline of the open internet? Are walled gardens like Discord the main problem, or is it something else like artificial intelligence, corporate consolidation, surveillance, or changing user habits?

OQB @PumpkinDrama@reddthat.com

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[–] ryathal@sh.itjust.works 9 points 19 hours ago

It's a little bit of everything, but the main contributor is the financialization of the Internet. Ads went from reasonable banners to ever more egregious and disruptive formats, which led to ad blockers. Then efforts went towards ways to embed ads in ways that couldn't be blocked or paywalls to keep revenue flowing, which hurts the value of the content. At the same time many companies started viewing the Internet as purely a sales and marketing platform, anything that didn't drive revenue was a cost center and eliminated. At the same time search engines were slowly getting worse due to increased ad presence and polluted results with seo garbage sites that aren't actually relevant. Everyone has slowly cannibalized their content to a point where the value isn't there anymore for actual users.

Things like AI and bot nets were more the final nail in the coffin. Another large contributor was the death of flash, which destroyed a large portion of the Internet at the time.

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 3 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Corporations. The matter is how: walled gardens, exploiting the commons, EEE, creating new barriers of entry, etc.

[–] dfi@lemmy.nz 2 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

100% this. The internet before business/corporations understood how it worked was a wonderfully ugly (by today's standards) source of information. It was really possible to get global reach as an individual if you created something interesting. Search engines just indexed at that point, no buying key words to get on the front page. If you made the best "something" out there it would organically find its way to the top of search engines.

I was a firm believer that it was going to change the world giving individuals a chance to get their ideas out to the world, give small businesses global reach. It did change the world just not in the way i had hoped.

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 1 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

It was also full of things a few people would love, and most would hate. Eventually replaced by things that are bland, unoffensive, "one size for all"; nobody hates them, but nobody loves them either.

[–] SparkleBooty@lemmy.world 3 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

Whether you like it or not, its censorship. Ppl with opposite political views silencing eachother creating echo chambers of only ppl who align with them politically.

Things are too strict now, every one has a mega phone and wants to shout at eachother and their opinion. The internet has become one big political pile of shit, most actually chill ppl, avoid it as a source of escapism.

Barrier to entry. Not enough laid back open minded ppl. So now, everyone's separated and closed off. Ppl just want control

It's not about connection and getting information, it's all about pushing some fucking agenda.

[–] Secret_Music@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 points 8 hours ago

Whether you like it or not, its censorship. Ppl with opposite political views silencing eachother creating echo chambers of only ppl who align with them politically.

Personally I don't buy this one as a problem. Pre social media, anarchists weren't sitting around a table sipping tea with nazis, alt people didn't have to put up with fkn jocks making the same comments about dyed hair and piercings that grandpa has been making since 1976 daily, if you want to the club and spent your time insulting all the regulars and staff and owner, you'd get your ass kicked out to the curb by the bouncers.

I think the problem is a certain crowd acting like they should have the right to just barge into whatever spaces they want and say whatever they want without any consequences. Life was never like that. And just because you're free to speak, doesn't mean that everyone should be forced to listen whether they want to or not.

Sometimes people who believe in jewish space lazers just need to be treated like the deranged fucking clowns that they are and not be given a seat at the table. The world would probably be so much better if these people would go back to whatever fucking holes they crawled out of.

[–] scytale@piefed.zip 2 points 17 hours ago

Centralization is one, where only a handful of big corporations dominate the internet. The other part is every platform trying to become everything and cornering all markets.

Take social media for example. In the early days, facebook was for connecting with your friends and family. Instagram was for posting and sharing photos. Myspace and twitter were for microblogging. Youtube was for long form videos and vine was for short form.

Now every social media platform wants to be a website, marketplace, payment processor, microblogging, short form video, music streaming, etc. This of course causes them to enshittify.