I think you could argue that this is actually the case.

The high time of the internet was the early to mid 2000s. You could spend a whole evening literally 'surfing'the internet, especially the images. I used to put in one word randomly and then got millions of images. Everything. The images then led to websites, the websites then had a list of similar ones. It was fun and never got boring. Now it is all centralised. People visit two or three big sites like reddit, twitter, FB etc and rely on posts from others. I often proclaim after about one hour that 'I read the internet', meaning I've been to my few websites and read it all. This woke me up to the fact that we are relying too much on a handful of sites that can do what they want with us. And to make matters worse, we keep them alive through content we produce for them. So I have started to go back to the basics recently. Meaning I have tried to find dedicated sites with content I like rather than being spoonfed by reddit. I went back to 'funny' image sites and UFO sites and alternative news sites and actually worked on my entertainment by putting words that interest me into DuckDuckGo and see what it comes up with. Those that I liked, I saved and I will go back to.

However the web has changed. Instead of getting millions of images, I'll get 70!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Fucking hell, even on DDG, rather than google, they restrict the amount of images and show you a few 'selected' ones. I also agree with OP that smaller, interesting websites are completely obliterated. It really isn't what it was any more. The best times are over, kids who never knew how it was think it is only 'proper' when it is published on the big few.

I had enough of doing the work as content provider for nothing so that the big ones can get bigger. Even posting this is against my new found morals but I also think it should be shared.

I have already given up reddit for a week, as a starter and when I came back I fell for it again. I guess it's like any addiction, you wean yourself off slowly. But I crave the hours of fun I used to have.

What kind of Sites do You mean?

Just ask yourself whether it's censored and you'll have your answer.

I also believe in social media platforms like Twitter and Reddit 50% or more of the "users" are actually bots and AI. I even think the Reddit r/all page is curated by AI and not buy popularity or votes. It's curated so that you keep on scrolling and wasting time, feeding you fake news combined with some NSFW stuff and stupid pictures. It's a mind fuck. I almost feel like I have to force myself to stop if I ever go to r/all .

The quiet coup has already happened. Corp's now own the internet, most people just dont realize it yet. I remember a time that you could "stumble" onto new or interesting sites/forums when looking for information. That has changed a lot in the last 10 years.

Also, Google (Alphabet) recently said that they will be changing ranking for mobile/non-mobile websites based on their load time, regardless of content (though content will still be counted). So, how is this any different than fast-lanes or 'sponsored content'? Whoever can pay for the fastest pipe has the louder voice.

Decentralized search engines are coming and will be unstoppable. Support them if you want the old internet back.

Searx

I’ve been thinking more and more about this topic lately and I think OP nailed it.

Just about any neutral forum that’s uncensored is far more right wing than the mainstream. Censorship (whether overt or self-imposed)is off the charts bad.

You rarely find a random new site in any search engine. Somewhere along the line google results just turned to be useless.

Think there’s a lot of truth to this

You need to use Yandex sometimes comrade. Also make for good throwaway email account

Well its a false conspiracy then, I know many people and small businesses that own websites that show when you type them in

Ahhhhhhh! I fucking love this one. The singularly happened in the 90s. Ha ha there is no internet just a way to communicate with an ai.

it didn't used to suck

Who says it isn't? About 1%, if that, falls in to irl for me.

That's basically true though I don't know how much of it is left. If you were alive in the 80's and 90's to see what the internet used to be then it just goes without saying what it has become. If you weren't alive and using the internet when public use was in its infancy then I will tell you that most of the internet was individual's actual web pages. Those who were essentially computer-illiterate may have subscribed to AOL which was a propriety environment but allowed access to certain aspects of the internet in a limited way (main Usenet), so that doesn't really count in my mind. There were no corporate sites and no banner ads. That began in the 90's when the hurdles to actually configuring a computer to access the internet and the available of public ISPs were lowered and more common folk could begin to explore it.

Commercialization of the internet was phase one of destroying what it was but the centralization of it with the Facebook/Twitter duo and the Google/Amazon empires have really polished it off. Most community-based sites that allowed basic hosting disappeared making it easier for the common person to just make a Facebook page. Nobody is using unique client/server protocols anymore and everyone uses HTTP. As far as I can tell Gopher, FTP, IRC are dead. People don't use separate services and clients for their email, instant messaging, etc and they are allowing their entire online experience to run through Facebook and Google. It's completely sick and disgusting but if it weren't for the ease by which the common person can connect to and access these services they might not be on the internet at all. They keep allowing the internet to be centralized to these few powers by continuing to use the services. It really pisses me off to see people giving up all their power and allowing the internet to be turned into another cable TV type service. Except of course it's far worse than cable TV ever was because within a controlled environment like Facebook or pretty much anywhere now, they have the illusion they are experiencing other people's opinions and interacting when there is so much heavy manipulation going on to influence them, and every single thing is being actively surveilled and archived to be used against us all at any time in the future.

Now we have an entire generation coming into adulthood who literally grew up on Facebook and they won't be able to imagine any other way or see how wrong it is what the internet has been reduced to.

I noticed yesterday that voat gets included into DDG pretty quickly. Someone mentioned something about neural stitching and I wanted to know what that was. It turns out it's an entirely made up term but DDG picked it up within an hour because it was one of the top results.

Anyone remember webrings?

You mean, Jews DON'T run Hollywood?

Message to cyber control - we have a breakaway node in the matrix. Exterminate with prejudice. I repeat exterminate with prejudice.

My friend, I have the answer to all of your problems:

https://millionshort.com/

It's the shadow banning that's the most insidious. With software they can easily prevent you from saying anything dangerous. Normal things go through but any convincing arguments are "lost". Did you ever have to compare sms messages with a friend because there were missing texts that led to a problem? I have, and I know others who have.

They can persistently fuck with you in ways that no one would even believe are intentional.

Duh.

I find the same thing. Also alarming is that if the search isn't about news item terms, all you get is ten or twenty pages of "buy this" retailers.

Fake is in fabricated? I mean yeah it's made by people. Can you give some examples of what you had trouble finding and what you ended up with when you found what you wanted?

GI/GO- Garbage in, garbage out

A ton of the older reference materials that used to be on the internet are now removed, paywalled, or misplaced. Its so bad wiki mentions the problem as link rot. But people made decisions on the original uploads and even used them as references, so now we have a situation where there is endless rewashing of increasingly shitty content because you can only cut/paste so many times before everything turns into buzzshit.

Then there is the noise. The media turns out crap, and it gets huge viewership to the point that any combination of a few words gets a news article. Its only marginally informative. But this all gets high google placement.

Google scholar isn't much help either. Some links follow to high school, or 101 course-level papers.

BTW, I have the subverse v/staticwebpages where you can see some really old webpages.

SEO, what is it?

Pretty sure this is almost commonly already accepted as fact. I doubt the amount of genuine sites is low though. The age of geocities and angelfire is long gone.

And no matter how many times you explain it no one cares. They like being spoon fed by google and friends. Yes, i have noticed it. Back in 2008 the internet was rampant with crazy websites. A lot were looney, out of date and discussed things that were too far fetched to believe. There were websites for EVERYTHING you wanted to find. And many you didn't want to find. The dot com boom drowned out those voices but some are still there. Edit: i can't format. Hipiers.com. zoombo.com and such.