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

[Another Iori]

I miss when YouTube wouldn't auto delete your comments for no reason

I don’t know if it also applied to YouTube, but I remember there was a rule in AdSense, which delegated the responsibility for a comment not following the rules not to the person who directly wrote it, but to the one who managed the blog.

However, for truly popular videos on YouTube, handling something like this would have been equivalent to a full-time job, therefore, Google has introduced an automatic filter function, which ranges from heavy, medium, and light, and so yes, expressing yourself in YouTube's comment section has become like walking on eggshells, and moreover you don’t even receive a notification to know exactly what went wrong.

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

and moreover you don’t even receive a notification to know exactly what went wrong.

Indeed. You don't even get it on the creator/uploader side of things.

"Your video is offensive/cannot be monetized for... reasons". Enjoy your wasted effort, sucka! It's probably gotten better in the years since, but was basically civil war material in 2017.

 

[TropicalFreeze3499]

You weren't constantly being advertised garbage products from a drop shipper.

 

[NeonKnights]

BBS's. Chat rooms in the Netscape days. YTMND. YouTube videos being linked to relevant content instead of algorithm generated slop and stuff you already watched.

 

[pict0]

The year is 2025, and it's time to use the Internet.
First step is to log into a website. Easy enough, right? You remember your username and password, but that isn't enough. The site wants to make sure it's really you, so they ask for your email and a confirmation code. Not too bad, you can easily get those things - but only after you finish the AI-training Captcha first.
OK awesome, you're finally in your account! Now time to interact with the website users. Dead Internet Theory seemed far-fetched a few years ago, but now a third of replies and content are AI content farms. If you told someone 20 years ago that a good percentage of Internet users are phantom accounts, it would seem like something out of a dystopian film. Images are fake, responses are fake, even product listings are fake. Controversial figures get more engagement. Content is fed to you instead of finding it yourself, and it's an endless scroll wheel. Websites (I mean, Apps) are designed to give you dopamine hits and keep you addicted to their platform like a casino.

This mainly applies to social medias like Twitter and Instagram, but that is the way most people experience the Internet now.

Of course, it's easy to romanticize the past, but I appreciate how forums were cut-and-dry ways to interact with people who had similar interests to you. There was always a lot of stupid forum and IRC drama, or stories of admins on a power trip, but those problems seem quaint compared to today's issues. And I'm glad websites like this still exist that more or less have the oldschool feel to them.

 

[cjl8336]

when the gubmint didn't track you with it

 

[sysuah]

My fondest memories of old internet is general web surfing before google made it impossible to do now
sort of glad wiby is still a decent site for that

 

[lil_thang]

there was somewhat more of a 'barrier to entry' to using the internet and computers in general, so when you came across enthusiast spaces they were generally filled with cool and enthusiastic people in a given subject (and trolls whatnot etc but just give me this)

now that everything is centralized into like 5 websites, and the 'barrier to entry' so to speak to internet computing is essentially gone, the signal:noise ratio of quality interactions has become significantly worse. not that they are gone entirely, but its far more of a task to seek out than it was in the askjeeves/early google internet era.

there are far too many idiot children on the internet now, eternal september has itself eternal septembered and now its majority children online.

 

[ExeExe]

Going to sound horrible, most likely, but... the fact that you didn't know what anyone looked like for the most part. Which has done such an 180º since social media became a thing, it's not even funny. I suppose it's part of the larger 'when the internet used to be anonymous' sentiment many others share, but still, it is a point that annoys me in particular.

Be it a youtuber's face plastered in the corner of a video where it adds nothing to what the video's subject, or in some cases, detract from it (such as covering/shrinking the gameplay screen, or in art videos, cutting away from the art to show the artist talking in front of a green screen for minutes at a time, etc), be it checking an artist's page on X/insta and being flooded with selfies instead, to people using their real face on random forums... you just can't escape it.

I don't know why people feel the need to do it (Need for attention? Trying to form parasitical relationships with their audience in this increasingly lonely world? Just to show off their vanity? Ignorance at how dangerous that is, since social media lowered their inhibitions?), but it's almost inescapable. Not only does this go against my deeply held, old internet practice of never showing you face/real name/anything online, but again, it just feels annoying most of the time.

Which again, I aknowledge it sounds horrible... but look, I don't care what you look like at all. I don't care about your age, your gender, your race, whatever. And unless I personally interact with you and care about you, I don't care for your personal life either. I care for what you create, be it art, stories, videos, or what your thoughts are on a game or whatever other topic we're discussing. Whether you're the ugliest person in the world, or the sexiest bitch alike, is completely irrelevant. I am looking at your stuff for genuine interest and desire to connect to it, and slathering that content with constant flashes of your face, just makes you look desperate for attention and kill that interest in the first place.

This is coming from someone who never had an interest in celebrity culture either, so I know I'm the very, very small minority. But by everything that is holy, do I miss the internet before social media...

 

[lil_thang]

i too miss culture before selfies

 

[King Koopa's iconKing Koopa]

No AI. Nuff said

 

[Vetusomaru]

I miss internet being decentralized, social media not being a thing, people using internet as a nice way of escapism (unlike today with people mixing internet and real life into an unhealthy level, especially thanks to social media), the majority of people not being obsessed with politics and stupid dramas all the time...

Post automatically merged: Feb 10, 2025

No AI. Nuff said

AI is from the few, good things of the modern era. Unless they're used for shit like moderating sites.

 

[Nidoking's iconNidoking]

I miss that feeling of it being... a new frontier, in a sense. It felt like you were always discovering something new or different, and usually you could introduce other people to something they'd never seen. Nothing was "old", things could actually feel shocking or exciting.

Now it's just so... "standard." It feels stale and more like a way to keep a distance between people than to bring them together. It's so easy to just "Poke" someone and let your connection become... passive.

 

[NaoPb]

This one might surprise most people; forum lets plays.
Let’s plays begun as a forum thing, people started a thread, they’d discuss a game they’re playing for the first time and share thoughts and images about the game and everyone discusses OP’s experience and reactions.

I remember getting into Sid Meyer's Covert Action like this. I started reading a thread on the Something Awful forums where people would challenge one another to make Let's Plays of that game. I decided to look at those and eventually subscribed to them.

 

[Deleted member 884]

Yahoo Answers.

 

[Parasite_Steve]

Not every single avenue of creativity was commodified and commercialized. It’s insane just how corporate the internet has become, especially given the inspiration behind its creation.

I also miss the time when crazy echo chambers and their beliefs were just a forum filled with a couple of weirdos and not a significant player in geopolitics ?

 

[regularmilo]

I miss when the Internet was so much less homogenized. Nowadays it feels like walking down a one-way-road where the content is forced on you whether you want it or not. The "algorithm" tries to figure out what you want to see and you go, "eh, I guess." Before, it was like walking through an ancient forest and you'd find a little grove with like minded individuals to hang out with. When you were done you'd leave and maybe come back later, but you were off to find another space to hang out in.

I've slowly been detaching myself from that style of Internet, making efforts to not browse reddit on my phone and only "use" the Internet if I'm in front of a computer, like the old days. I tried to turn off notifications and use my phone as literally a phone and my friends got mad at me cause I wouldn't get back to them timely enough lol. It's kind of a bummer, because I wholly agree with the sentiments expressed here previously that the Internet was better when it was separated from real life, but it's so ingrained now that even if you try to take measures to remove it from your life it doesn't jive with the world at large and can make things really difficult.

 

[abu2411]

I think you make a good point about the customisation of the internet of old. Ironically the old internet could at times be a better outlet for self-expression. I wish I knew of this back when I first started using the internet more and more during the early 2010s.

 

[stealthRUSH stealthRUSH]

absence of algorithms

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

I miss when sites like VampireFreaks and RetroJunk would program their own boards, offering perks and features not seen anywhere else on the net. It gave you plenty of incentives to join them.

 

[Vetusomaru]

I miss the time when there was very little to non ads on youtube.

There were times YouTube had no ads? Daaaaaaamn! I forgot about it.

I miss the time when people where less dumb. It´s like internet has made people more stupid.

Stupid people always existed at the internet. But I agree that there weren't as many stupid people as there are today. Also back then it was the norm to make fun of these stupid people. Now for some fucking reason they glorify them and make them famous and rich.

I miss the time when people was not offended by everything.

AMEN! And even when few idiots were getting offended, the worst they would do was writing you angry emails. And only if you were a famous internet celebrity with offensive humor like Maddox and Filthy Frank. Now it's the norm for toxic internet cults to send death threats even to teenage girls over "problematic" Steven Universe fanarts.

I miss the time of my space and MSN when social med was just that social media instead of cults for stupids.

I second that. Even with forums that many people feel nostalgic about there were toxic cults for stupids way before social media normalization. Personally while I feel nostalgic for the old internet I don't feel nostalgic for forums except the more niche ones (like the ones dedicated to certain video games franchises) and the ones for pirated material.

 

[bigthecat_]

This one might surprise most people; forum lets plays.
Let’s plays begun as a forum thing, people started a thread, they’d discuss a game they’re playing for the first time and share thoughts and images about the game and everyone discusses OP’s experience and reactions.

We can do it again here.

 

[Vetusomaru]

There was a community for nearly everything.

There are now too but unfortunately they're hard to find, they're mostly to discord, they're often dead and they're full with bots.

 

[MajesticSiN]

I miss the ads being less intrusive. I mean they still existed and were pretty stinky but they weren't this bad.

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

I miss the ads being less intrusive. I mean they still existed and were pretty stinky but they weren't this bad.

Agreed. They were also somewhat relevant to the site you were visiting.