The Internet is Disappearing

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[joeg]

The internet was better in the 90s and early 2000s. Now it's been taken over by a select few

[kubrickenigma]

This is why printed materials are vitally important for records, histories and writing.

[baum]

It's amazing how quickly pointless corporate greed utterly destroyed the single greatest creation since the printing press. The open internet is no longer a library of all of human knowledge; it's a meaningless billboard in the background. It's really sad how willing big tech and government was to destroy such an amazing human achievement.

[annie_xo]

Man, I miss the old internet so much. I started using the internet around 2000 and it was so much fun back then. I’m glad I got to experience it but it’s sad it will never be the same again.

[ScudX]

The Dead Internet Theory isn't a theory.

[leebalmforth]

In the late 90s/early 2000 i would put something in the search engine and 1000s of independent sites would come up. Now i search & 99% of sites are big corporations & news sites.
I miss the old internet 😞

[Skyduzzi]

Yes, I've noticed that too. I always thought the Internet was a gigantic, growing data storage facility, but the reality is that it's constantly being cleaned up. Data that's older than 5 years is simply deleted. Photos, products, audio books, films, entire pages, etc. are simply gone, as if they had never existed. That also shows how important printed books are.

[awrinkleintimeyesterday]

I was a freelance writer in the 1990s and was involved in the building of the content on the Internet. Myself, and a lot of other writers, wrote a lot of well researched, informative articles on a variety of topics to help web developers and other business owners get their businesses established on the Internet. We had human editors that did their jobs and only quality informative pieces were published. Most of that content stayed available and easily accessible through the first decade of the 2000s and some of it through the 2010s. Slowly we watched the articles disappearing for all of the reasons you mention here. Once we released the work it was no longer personal content, so most of us thought we had no reason to retain copies ourselves. We thought the information going onto the Internet would be there forever. Going forward I think we should all realize that any information we want to ensure we will be able to access again, should be kept in printed form.

[ErindidaJuanitaAaliyahRemeriez]

The old internet from 1999 to 2012 was awesome. Kids can only dream of it now. It was much more expressive and creative. Comparitively to now.

[Tine]

I miss the old days when everybody had their own free page, colorful and crappy with broken links and glitter gifs but so so fun to surf around and explore! Social media has killed every single one of these fun little sites! Nowadays a few hosting services such as neocities provide that experience but it‘s still not quite the same…

[Henry_GamesX]

Today's internet is all about Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, TikTok, Amazon, Ebay and mostly social media sites. There's not as many websites with individuality like back in the days. And some people don't go to individual websites as much as in the past.

[lorenzog]

I think the world really did end in 2012. This is limbo.

[wakeupkrissywakeup]

Shopping used to be extremely diversified, we had a grocery store, a hardware store, book store, music store, furniture store, shoe store, jewelry store, pet store, mall, etc. It took a bit of effort to get everything you needed but it could almost always be found at one of those stores. Now we have walmart, target, and amazon and if they don't have what you need, well too bad. Do without.

Now it's the internet's turn to get controlled, culled, and consolidated down to just a few main sites. You used to be able to find any info you needed(and then some, internet rabbit holes were so much fun), but now if it's not on any of the main sites then you're out of luck. Can't find small/user-created sites anymore unless you know the URL, they aren't paying to come up in google searches so they may as well not exist.

It genuinely makes me so sad. We've lost so much history and information. The internet 20 years ago was unorganized but god it was so much fun, now it's just another medium for ads and manipulation. AI is only going to make it so much worse too.

[chickenmuffin]

The internet from 2000 to 2010 was an unprecedented time never to be seen again.

[thequintanashow]

So timely. Yesterday read an article on Wikipedia and FOUR sources in a row that I clicked on were 404. I just said “eff it”

[Anime_Andrew]

I’ve been saying this for years! YEARS! The fact is that the internet used to be so open and accessible and once admins close their websites, we lose that information on that website. It’s even scarier to think that websites from 1996-2008 have disappeared - not sure if the percentage but it’s happening

[LikaLaruku]

I started noticing years ago, when I had strong nostolgia for 00s web design, midis, webrings, & vintage CGI abstract desktop wallpapers. Even if I tell google I only want results before 2006, most of the result are irrelevent.

[terig]

This and the dead Internet videos are some of your best work. I've shown a few people how Google lies about having millions of results and that you can basically never go more than 40 pages deep. Regardless of the reasons for all of this, it is certainly concerning.

[nevamo]

It's not "link rot" it's censorship

[kristalparsons]

So, I guess the moral of the story is...books and libraries will NEVER die!!! (Or at least, they shouldn't)