The internet itself.
Get off my lawn.
Homestar runner
I really miss MSN, I had really good times on it.
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The basic privacy. You could post on a forum and it was just you and the people on the board talking. Today you post anywhere and it’s the whole world looking at the conversation.
Privacy was worse back then but search engines got better since.
user population made of geeks and nerds. also, usenet and bbs raise nostalgia.
The population was the best. I think that’s why I like the fediverse so much so far.
I miss the days when it wasn’t flooded with weaponised idiocy.
That and neopets.
While not the same, neopets is still alive!
I’d like to see less use of JavaScript tracking and more “simple websites”!
I agree. I use Pelican to build my website and I don’t use any javascript. It’s simple, it’s fast (it doesn’t really have much content that would be interesting to anybody, but it’s mine and I like it!)
One of the things I like about Lemmy is that the devs had the forethought of developing in Rust rather than PHP or another prototyping language that doesn’t scale as well.
I really miss IRC and usenet. And I know both still exist but I miss the communities there 😊
usenet seems to be mostly used for filesharing/piracy these days. It’d be cool to have a resurgence of active, moderated text based usenets but most of them AFAIK are bot filled these days.
Yeah, those dang bots! I haven’t found a place I used to visit without tons of spam
I still hang out on usenet. It gets a little quieter every year.
I do sometimes go back, but most of the places I used to visit are empty other than bots sharing crap. It used to be such a great place, had really supportive groups but also many many weird ones.
I never really used Usenet but IRC I definitely miss. Its main problem was that keeping yourself connected and seeing messages when you are away involved having bots that replay them to you or some screen running on a remote server that lets you connect to it.
All these various communications apps we use today are largely just worse, but prettier versions of what IRC could do.
I agree. IRC was definitely great. Staying connected was definitely a problem, but the conversations made up for that. I had so many good friendships there, and I loved the ease of creating a new channel and gather there with friends. The ops system was definitely really good. You could do everything with the channel.
I do frequent old servers I used to hang out on sometimes, if they still exist, that is, but like usenet, most channels are for downloading or nsfw stuff. Really sad, it was such a cool place to be!
Better search. Even with modifiers, results are so chaotic and not what I’m looking for. Just the other day I was trying to find recent information and set the parameter to only results in the past month. Three separate search engines (Google, DuckDuckGo and Bing) all showed year old results first. Not to mention the bubble they put you in.
Then you don’t remember what search was like before Google. Google changed the game and was for a long time so superior to Altavista, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves etc for search results that it became the defacto search engine.
Of course, eventually it all goes to shit and Google is getting there by serving more and more ads across all their services.
Google was awesome when it appeared. Great search results, quick, no ads, clean UI. I’d pay to have it like that again.
You might like Kagi Search. I’ve found the results much better than the alternatives.
Thanks! I’ll give it a look.
Yeah the first 10 results are all ads or clickbait SEO things that don’t answer the question, and even you set the results to only the last year it just ignores it and gives you results from 2013 anyway.
Not everything being about profit
Not being 1000% about data mining
No god damn pop up’s. Every fucking site I go to takes like minimum of 6 clicks to get rid of useless windows
Ads All.The.Time. At this point, if your ad even remotely annoys me, I will go out of my way NOT to use your product.
Real people. So much online interaction is with bots now.
Being able to believe more things. It used to be pretty apparent when you were looking at a computer modified image. With all the deepfakes, bots, AI, etc I assume absolutely nothing is real or accurate info.
Info. Like useful info. Secondary, niche communities you could relate to.
No god damn pop up’s
We must have been on a different internet, popups back in the day were atrocious, and this was before adblockers were effective.
Install Ublock Origin. Seriously.
Doesn’t look like an option for safari.
Don’t use safari, then.
You can install Librewolf/Firefox through Homebrew package manager. See: https://brew.sh for more information.
Yes, I know. Safari extensions are all through Apple’s App Store which sucks.
Adguard
Use nextdns and popun some filters. Then use AdGuard for your safari. Worked wonders for me
Atleast the Fediverse is not about profit.
Yet.
Call me pessimistic, but with meta wanting to be here, it’s likely to ultimately be ruins/commoditized too. Eventually. It’ll be great while it lasts.
Partially yes, but never the whole fediverse. Even Meta can’t control all of it. Thats the beauty of it
To be fair, I only came online late 90s and all we had was Internet Explorer, no Adblock and a constant barrage of popups, ads and toolbar installers and even child porn. I remember downloading one song and having to close 20 windows.
There were ad blockers even then, like “Web Washer”. Browser plugins/extensions weren’t invented yet so these tools were locally installed proxy servers with simple black/whitelists. Worked really well!
Websites run by ordinary people, about things they’re interested in. Explanations in text instead of monetized YouTube videos dragged out so they can cram more adverts in. Decentralization, with lots of little hosts and sites instead of large walled gardens of corporately owned “content”. The absence of the concept of “content”. Places where people would chat just because they enjoyed talking to each other. Email that wasn’t mined for details of your personal life by megacorporations. Fascism still being universally reviled.
Yeah, I miss finding some very barebones website called like “Gary’s Favorite Garlic Breads”, just run by Gary, who isn’t trying to turn a profit or be an influencer. He just loves garlic bread and wanted to share.
I miss Gary :c
All those old websites with basic html were golden. Not always in quality, but in heart.
Yea
I work with Gary. He still likes to share, all the time, about everything. He talks a lot. F Gary
Great to hear… :c
- Usenet. Eternal-September.org still provides free access.
- Scorefiles / killfiles were brilliant
Yeah, Lemmy is more or less just a new way to do what Usenet has been doing for decades.
We could create a personal website without having to pay and without giving up personal details. Everything was anonymous.
Search engines actually found what you were looking for. No censorship or bad suggestions or trying to sell stuff.
Always finding something new and interesting, not being limited to a few commercial websites.
People were much friendlier and open to share.
God i hate how utterly useless search engines are now
That’s why I just use a metasearch engine (a public searx instance). It’s not perfect, but it usually pulls what I’m looking for from the cached web pages of other search engines and doesn’t let them know I’m searching.
I miss not having the expectation of every social media being so heavily moderated and sterile.
The old internet was like walking down a busy city street. You might walk by someone doing something absolutely batshit crazy, but you just think “Weird. Moving on.” and go about your day because getting emotionally invested would be dumb. The new internet feels like a workplace where people want to run to HR to report anyone who acts out so that they’ll get what’s coming to them.
It’s not all bad, but I miss the sort of “wild west” feeling where nothing on the internet mattered because it wasn’t real life.
It’s not all bad, but I miss the sort of “wild west” feeling where nothing on the internet mattered because it wasn’t real life.
Well… We have lemmy and kbin now, without algorithms promoting stupid shit like in social media.
It’s a weird feeling not being targeted with content and ads. I forgot what it was like.
I kinda miss the days of the internet being a bit of a gamble, where you might see cute puppies or someone shoving a Mason jar in their ass (back on the easier internet). Those days are gone, unfortunately.
The new internet feels like a workplace where people want to run to HR to report anyone who acts out so that they’ll get what’s coming to them.
This. Probably the most thing I hate about today’s internet, bunch of over-protected snowflakes who get offended by anything.
And what’s worse is how that’s spilled into everyday life. Movies like Blazing Saddles and Revenge of the Nerds would get obliterated if they were released today. Everyone’s immediate reaction to something they find unseasonable is to go absolutely nuts and cancel it instead of “huh, whatever.”
I still think we need to take most of the safety signs down and let darwinism take its course.
