Reddit

[Wayno]

We need to find more people like St3ve..who long for the old internet. Reddit and Tapatalk are such horrible stripped down versions of what use to be amazing communal hubs.

I believe that the internet is going to see a lot more people like me as time goes on. I've noticed over the past year people have started to become dissatisfied with the modern internet. The internet has become centralised around a select few massive platforms, and those sites have progressively more soulless and corporatised. The rise of AI has led to those sites being bogged down with slop, and it is becoming more and more difficult to sift through the mountains of shit and find actually good content. Dead internet theory has risen from a 4chan conspiracy theory to a pretty accurate description of the state of social media. It hasn't come to this point yet, but I believe that we're gonna see an exodus of users who can no longer tolerate the platforms at some point. I doubt it will be a majority of users, but I certainly believe it will be a decent chunk of them. I believe that forums will see a resurgence in the next few years due to this, along with alternative social media and video platforms. Granted, I'm no expert on this topic, so I could be completely wrong, but there has distinct change in the attitudes of people towards modern social media recently

While I do agree with a lot of this, I'm less hopeful. Our technofeudal overlords have decided that AI is the way to go with everything. Whether we want it or not and the consensus is overwhelmingly not. AI is the new electricity and after your smartphones and smsrtwatches it'll be coming to your toothbrushes next. With a subscription based model, of course. And because they get to foist what they want upon us, because money, the same will apply to our online platforms. The mega sites are going to be the main landscape in perpetuity unless a new, decentralised internet comes along. I'm looking at you, HBO's Silicon Valley seasons 1-3.

I'm also less hopeful because a lot of the Internet users now are too young to even know what the Internet was actually like 15+ years ago. All they've ever known is outrage porn and engagement bait. I feel forums may take off again, but only those who know the way will make it there.