There was a moment, somewhere around 2012, when the internet was as good as it was ever going to get. We did not know it at the time. We thought it would keep getting better. Instead it got worse, and we have been coasting on momentum ever since.
This is not just nostalgia. The structural incentives that made the early internet good have reversed. What we have now is optimised for different things, and those things are mostly bad for the people using it.
In 2012, the web was still mostly open. You could start a blog and people might find it. Search engines surfaced content based on relevance, not payment. Social media existed but had not yet devoured everything. RSS feeds still worked. People linked to each other’s websites. The smartphone had arrived but had not yet become the primary screen. People still used computers. The apps had not yet captured everything into walled gardens. You could browse the web without being funnelled into five platforms.
There were ads but they were not yet surveillance capitalism. The tracking was crude. The targeting was rough. You could use the internet without being minutely profiled and manipulated based on that profile. Most importantly, the internet was still made by people who wanted to share things. Personal websites. Blogs. Forums. Communities built around shared interests rather than engagement metrics. The content was created by humans for humans, not by algorithms for advertisers.
Everything that was good about the internet was systematically dismantled in the service of engagement and advertising revenue. Google search got worse because SEO got better. The results are now ads, then optimised garbage, then maybe what you were looking for. Finding information requires sifting through pages designed to capture your click, not answer your question. Social media ate everything. The open web died as content moved to Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. These platforms optimised for engagement, which meant optimising for outrage and controversy and addiction. The content that performs best is the content that makes you upset.
The smartphone completed the capture. Apps replaced websites. Each app is a silo. The linking and discovery that characterised the early web does not happen in apps. You are inside someone else’s controlled environment, seeing what they want you to see. Surveillance capitalism matured. Every interaction is tracked. Every piece of data is collected. The profiles are comprehensive and the manipulation is sophisticated. You are the product being refined and sold.
The early internet was built by people who wanted to share. They created content because they wanted to, not because they were incentivised to maximise engagement. The economics did not matter because there was not much money involved. The current internet is built by corporations that need to monetise attention. Every design decision is made to capture more attention and convert it to revenue. The platforms are not designed to be good. They are designed to be addictive. This is a structural problem, not a personnel problem. The people working at these companies are not evil. They are responding to incentives. The incentives reward engagement over quality, addiction over satisfaction, surveillance over privacy. The output reflects the incentives.
I miss the old internet. I miss when Google worked. I miss when social media was fun instead of exhausting. I miss when I could browse without feeling like I was being tracked and manipulated. But you cannot go back. The economics have changed. The infrastructure has changed. The expectations have changed. The old internet exists in fragments, in personal websites and newsletters and niche communities, but it is not the mainstream anymore. The mainstream is captured. The walled gardens won. The platforms are where the people are, and being where the people are requires accepting the terms the platforms set. Those terms are bad for users and good for shareholders.
The internet still works in the sense that you can still find information and communicate with people. But we are coasting on infrastructure and habits built during the good years. The search engines still surface useful results sometimes, because Google has not quite destroyed the index they built when they cared about quality. The social networks still connect people sometimes, because the network effects persist even as the experience degrades. The web still has content because people have not completely given up on making things. But the trend is negative. Each year the search gets worse. Each year the platforms extract more. Each year the web becomes more hostile to users and more friendly to advertisers. We are coasting downhill.
There are still blogs. There are still personal websites. There are still communities that care about their members more than their metrics. There are still places on the internet that feel like the internet used to feel. You have to look for them. They are not on the front page of anything. They are not optimised for discovery. They exist in spite of the incentives, maintained by people who care about something other than engagement. I spend more time in these spaces now. Newsletters from people I trust. Forums about specific interests. The small weird corners that the platforms have not noticed or cannot monetise.
The internet peaked around 2012 but it did not die. The good parts are still there, buried under the garbage. You just have to dig for them.