I hear this narrative a lot and I agree it's largely true, but I also think it's very hyperbolized. Did the internet lose its joy or did we?

First a concrete example: as someone who is not American I don't see the same issues on Twitter that Americans do. I hear the narrative a lot— the internet elected Trump! If platforms just forbid white supremacists, fake news, etc. everything would be as good as it was before!

In my humble opinion as a foreigner Trump fits what I think of as an "American president". This is the same country that elected Bush, that's had racism problems all of this past century (and still does), that still doesn't have universal health care for some reason and that likes pointing fingers at others instead of themselves, cause after all "America is #1", no? I know this isn't the sentiment everywhere, but it is for a lot of people.

There's still so much more to Twitter than "white supremacy" and politics. A lot more. It's still a fun place. The platform is designed for you to follow more than you unfollow, and I did follow too many people. I was getting a lot of stuff I didn't care about on my timeline, so recently I made it my goal to unfollow at least 100 people in 10 days. For those 10 days every time I opened the app I'd consciously thought about what I was reading, and unfollowed authors of tweets that were useless, repetitive, or just not content I want or need.

The result is a feed that's much more enjoyable. It's great. I also have decided that instead of getting news automatically I'll try to poll them myself. There's so many cool things posted on twitter all the time though, from artists, musicians, developers, travelers, etc!

I remember the "old times" of the internet, and they're definitely being romanticized. Back in the "old times" things weren't more fun. I couldn't follow these people because they weren't on Twitter. I couldn't watch high-quality video that wasn't produced by "hollywood", because there was no platforms for independent video creators. Patreon didn't exist to support a lot of artists. Kickstarted to find cool new things people are working on. I couldn't find about local events in my city as reliably as I can now, nor figure out who in my friend circles was interested.

Twitter had less thoughtful content and more people posting text-only descriptions of mundane things I didn't really care for. Stumbleupon was interesting for a bit, but most pages weren't that great. There wasn't such a wide variety of memes! There were far fewer communities on reddit around niche interests or specific types of videos. Geocities sounds like the pinnacle of free expression online today, but did anyone actually use Geocities? I kinda got one running I think, never visited one, hardly ever updated mine.

What is true is that we were younger. I shared more on Facebook because I wanted my crush to notice my music taste, or I thought something would be funny to my friend, or I thought of something I thought was super clever in the endless free time I had before college. I felt like I was "exploring more online" because I knew less, and everything was new. I had more fun online because I was more fun in general— I was younger, had more time to waste, less things to care about.

Now I use Facebook to buy furniture, and that's fine. I'm sure there's young people out there, who are not posting lengthy blog posts or HN comments still doing goofy stuff online. Let's not get this wrong— the big companies are still broadening their scope, optimizing their metrics, finding ways of making money. They are big, proper corporations now, not idealistic startups. We should regulate them. We should protect the internet.

But not because the internet was better before— it's definitely better now. We have to do it because it's really good now but it could be better.