What do you miss the most about "the internet of old"?

[Deleted member 494]

i miss when i could just download stuff off websites without having to do military-grade wizardry to circumvent anti-bots measures

can't even download a music on youtube without updating yt-dlp daily and being logged in
can't even watch stuff in a private window anymore ("Sign in to prove you're not a bot" kind of bs)
can't even browse reddit from a phone cause they nuked third party apps (maybe that's a good thing, that i can't browse on my phone)

---

all the rest, forums and stuff simple HTML and stuff, never died the community is just smaller

---

no there's one thing i miss actually GARFIELD DOT COM NICKELODEON NUKED THAT WEBSITE FOR NOTHING NO REASON AT ALL I WISH THEY GO BANKRUPT FOR DESTROYING SUCH A HUGE MONUMENT OF THE CYBERSPACE

 

[Another Iori]

• Not being forced to censor swear words on YouTube, because otherwise the algorithm automatically deletes your entire comment.

• To share personal information openly without the fear of being victimized by telemarketers, scammers or mentally disabled criminals.

• Browsing the web with a peaceful and carefree mind, before finding out you're being recorded for everything you search, find, publish or talk about too close to your phone (as if you were a mob boss or something).

 

[MegaDrive1987]

Anyone remember Burnt Face Man?

 

[strawberry29]

i miss the days that not everything about wars, porn, boring updates from your favorite sites from colorful to plain ass white and gray.

i pretty much just starting to hate how internet is now, a long time ago everything wasn't serious and it takes you out of reality without reminding you what your running from.

 

[Sweetmint]

I miss the days when bs age verification didn't exist online. and censorship was barely a thing at least on the internet & of course people on mainstream social media are constantly arguing whether it's gaming, about bullshit worldwide government laws or some random stupid thing that doesn't matter. it's so fucking tiresome to see every single day. but that's why i like retro game talk or forums in general. it seems way calmer in forums than social media. if i make any sense...

 

[Doomsday519]

I miss the old wrestling forums and news sites. Loved this one site Lords of Pain that is totally different now. Also miss flash sites and flash games. So much heat coming from individuals just trying to make fun little games and videos. And related to that I miss the old Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon sites. The free games from those channels' sites were premium. I generally miss recklessness in which I could pirate and torrent stuff.

 

[Ikagura]

Why did I get unsubbed?

I kinda like userbars. I got inspired and made one that you could see below:

 

[Sweetmint]

I miss the old wrestling forums and news sites. Loved this one site Lords of Pain that is totally different now. Also miss flash sites and flash games. So much heat coming from individuals just trying to make fun little games and videos. And related to that I miss the old Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon sites. The free games from those channels' sites were premium. I generally miss recklessness in which I could pirate and torrent stuff.

Didn't the RIAA exist and tried to arrest innocent children back in early 2000s?

 

[Luz de Luna Luz de Luna Luz de Luna's icon]

Why did I get unsubbed?

I kinda like userbars. I got inspired and made one that you could see below:

Unsubbed from what/where?

I like your userbar -- that's something that should have never vanished.

 

[elbanano]

One thing that I miss is things taking time to load, which is a weird thing to miss but I will explain; The faster things loaded the easier it was for me to wait and look for more things, going from a hobby to an addiction, that's why I don't see discord servers the same way I see forums, they technically work the same way but the speed at which I go from one server to another makes it very easy for me to waste hours on the internet rather than doing the things I had to do, that is a personal problem I need to solve but I remember not having it back when opening a single site would take a good minute to load, simply go, wait, do what you wanted, and feel grossed at the idea of waiting for a different site to load.

It isn't good for work, but it is good for life.

 

[JellyjamLu]

Old MSN messenger, used to spend tons of time on it, I also miss listening to the sound of getting online with Telewest Dial-up.

 

[waterxwraith]

I yearn for the days when everything online wasn't centered solely around youtube, instagram, twitter, wikipedia, google, tiktok, and facebook. I'm not anti-social media (though personally I've cut out everything but tiktok and barely even use that) but I miss when everything had its own website with its own layout and distinct sense of personality. The internet feels like its shrunk, and thats really sad. the inability to even read twitter feeds for news since deleting my account feels bad, but not bad enough to go back.

 

[Ikagura]

I like your userbar -- that's something that should have never vanished.

Thanks, bless those generators.

 

[Tonberry]

Decentralization in general.

 

[semyaza]

we must mass ban people from using the internet to save it

 

[Luz de Luna Luz de Luna Luz de Luna's icon]

View attachment 125576
Old MSN messenger, used to spend tons of time on it, I also miss listening to the sound of getting online with Telewest Dial-up.

I really, REALLY dug that one service.

It was the only one I could reliably load on my 56K connection and the first one I'd hop on to as soon as I got home from school.

 

[iamthemilkman]

Less AI slop and less censorship. X is, for better or worse, a return to what it once was like. Personally, I'm all for it. While the AI slop gets tiresome, speech is less regulated. Yes, that means you'll see and hear offensive things, but the opposite to that are places like Bluesky and Reddit where you always feel like you're walking on eggshells. Perhaps I have thick skin, but edgy comments and mean words don't have an effect on me. I've been using the internet for over 20 years and I've heard/seen it all. I've been called every name in the book.

I tend to be a free speech absolutist, though. Free speech isn't just for speech that you agree with, it's also for speech that you don't agree with.

 

[semyaza]

X is, for better or worse, a return to what it once was like

i get your point but its sorta desperate, x has basically become 4chan + our politicians and whatnot, many people can handle 4chan type of stuff but to get the masses hooked on it will not be good lol

 

[Ikagura]

we must mass ban people from using the internet to save it
View attachment 125619

Correlation isn't causation.

 

[MegaDrive1987]

View attachment 125576
Old MSN messenger, used to spend tons of time on it, I also miss listening to the sound of getting online with Telewest Dial-up.

Wow you've just took me back, we had AOL dialup before we moved to Telewest broadband. I've got original screenshots of an MSN conversation from 2004 here backed up from an old disc years ago. Dug them out a few months ago just for the nostalgia, there's only two but still.

EDIT:

Got it wrong I've only got one screenshot now that I just double checked but still, also got my MSN contacts list backed up in a .ctt file from 2004

 

[Big Finger Jim]

I miss the battlegrounds that were old CoD lobbies, that shit was hilarious.

 

[MegaDrive1987]

I miss the battlegrounds that were old CoD lobbies, that shit was hilarious.

Oh yeah back in 2009 when I got MW2 they were brutal

 

[elbanano]

...but the opposite to that are places like Bluesky and Reddit where you always feel like you're walking on eggshells...

The moment I decided to stop walking on eggshells and pointed at the hypocrisy of a post I got permanently banned from that subreddit.

I'm okey with walking on eggshells when it comes to stupid individuals who make good art but have a fragile ego, but when it comes to big parts of a site just because the mods have a fragile ego and ideology? no man, that's so stupid, dont make up stupid new rules only to ban me

 

[deceptionfalls]

i miss internet mysteries and theorycrafting, remember when Five Nights At Freddys first came out? i was so scared by it, it felt so real and the world had so many mysteries and we used to watch endless theory videos about it, i miss when not everything was spelled out for us, when we had to come up with our own answers. a time where anyone could start an internet mystery and we would play along, that innocence is lost now and there isnt a suspension of disbelief anymore, everything is either explicitly passed as fiction or quickly debunked.

i also miss when the web was more lightweight and browsers werent so heavy on my machine, geez

 

[elbanano]

i miss internet mysteries and theorycrafting, remember when Five Nights At Freddys first came out? i was so scared by it, it felt so real and the world had so many mysteries and we used to watch endless theory videos about it, i miss when not everything was spelled out for us, when we had to come up with our own answers. a time where anyone could start an internet mystery and we would play along, that innocence is lost now and there isnt a suspension of disbelief anymore, everything is either explicitly passed as fiction or quickly debunked.

i also miss when the web was more lightweight and browsers werent so heavy on my machine, geez

For mysteries in gaming, those still exist, but to get them you need to try less known games, an example is Corn Kidz 64 which has multiple secret collectibles that the community is still trying to find and what they mean, sadly to have mysteries people has to pay attention to the details in everything to make connections and that is harder than it seems