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submitted 1 year ago by Foresight@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

When I was growing up the internet was a place to be liberated from the world say what you want to say, be whoever you want and form genuine communities with shared interests. Now the internet feels like a tool to enslave the mind with identity echo chambers and any deviation leads you to being banned and blocked shunned and silenced within a void that is inescapable. Novel unique websites coded manually by hobbyists running servers for free in the commons allowing people access to the free flow of information under the banner of "information should be free" has largely gone away with corpratisation. I miss the days when the internet was populated largely by nerds aiming to make a better world not this controlled censored hell hole of profiteering.

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[-] Foresight@lemmy.ml -1 points 1 year ago

Couple that with 24/7 connection to the internet and smart phones etc. It's a recipe for disaster. Back in the dial up days these were not issues you logged on updated yourself with the latest forum etc and you turned it off. There were serious forums and what can be called these days as shit post forums. The discourse was much more civil and friendlier than today's standard. Everyone was anonymous and you was considered stupid for putting your personal information on the internet. Nowadays you get accused of trolling for having a different opinion, you get cancelled for wrong think and your life destroyed for not stepping in lock step, this kind of stuff was unthinkable in those days as it sounds straight from a nightmare dystopian novel depicting an extreme 1984 fascist society. The ethos around the internet was seen as a decentralised utopian world to free ourselves from the complex reality of our world, then the Normie's came online.

this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
167 points (75.1% liked)

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