Comment by dotnet00 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dotnet00 | Hacker News Reader

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While you have a point there since certain aspects of the internet experienced by each generation were different, I think a shared part of it is just the sheer sanitization of the 'open' internet that has happened since the mid/late-2000s. That aspect is not coming back in any way for the generation growing up on the current internet, unless they go deep into techie circles to 'frontier' places like certain corners of the fediverse or matrix, the only internet they'll know is the heavily sanitized corporate-run advertiser friendly side where everyone's walking on eggshells because a power-tripping moderator or AI has complete power over you.

This was something that turned out to trigger nostalgia of the 'old internet' between both me and decade older friends when exploring the fediverse, we realized that to us, the old internet was mainly defined by a stronger sense of connection/genuineness with other people's content because even if deplorable, it was mostly unfiltered. A similar feeling was evoked for me by Kagi's 'small internet' option.

So, I think the current generation might miss their 'old internet' only in the sense that by the time they're adults it'll probably have gotten even more sanitized.

> when exploring the fediverse, we realized that to us, the old internet was mainly defined by a stronger sense of connection/genuineness with other people

This is a sentiment repeated by almost everyone who finds their niche in the fediverse. Once you settle in, you get that early internet magic of simply connecting with people. The fediverse is all about talking to or showing things to other people.

It's pretty interesting what happens when you talk to people instead of just posting into the void. Interactions become purposeful and meaningful because it's clear there's a real person on the other side.

It really does feel like the earlier internet when we all posted anonymously on small forums with a few thousand users total. There's a sense of community.

There's also a really strong selection bias right now. People who use the fediverse are much more likely to be people sick of modern social media and want to return to the old days. So they went out and they goddamn made their own social media and made it feel like the old days.

I think it's a great place to hang out right now. It'll be interesting to see how things evolve over time. There's a push to bring back small websites, blogs and forums and I really hope that takes off.

>That aspect is not coming back in any way for the generation growing up on the current internet, unless they go deep into techie circles to 'frontier' places like certain corners of the fediverse or matrix, the only internet they'll know is the heavily sanitized corporate-run advertiser friendly side where everyone's walking on eggshells because a power-tripping moderator or AI has complete power over you.

Is this true? Maybe you just don't know the right places anymore. Im sure there's all kinds of crazy, basically unmoderated shit going down in discord or roblox or vrchat.

There's definitely a bunch of crazy unmoderated stuff going down in those places, but it does seem more underground and out of the way unless you specifically look for it.

Actually, I'd guess that it's probably easier for people to find themselves in such weird spaces today. There's a lot of resources and guides out there, and if you want to, you can most likely find them.

Ah that's a fair point, I do hang out in a couple of discords where we have that old internet feel, and same with vrchat.

But at least with the former we still have to be a bit reserved since discord can also be pretty heavy handed with moderation. It effectively suppresses less sanitized content in the sense that if your discord grows past a certain size, it's much more likely to catch their attention. So the old internet type content we have there is mostly a handful of private discords from friends with a handful of their friends there. At that point we just ended up setting up a matrix server for stuff we'd rather not leave to the whims of discord.

VRchat has the benefit that if you aren't in public, you're free to do anything. But that does still sort of mean that you need to know the right people to get into those circles, since public is generally unenjoyable, being filled with screaming "Quest kids" (and even if they weren't screaming, it's obviously awkward to be hanging out with children as adults).

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