About a week or two prior to starting my own website, I had came across the old internet movement through a bout of nostalgia. Long-story short, I grew up with the internet and many of my fond memories were during the 2000s internet. Through some searching, I came across the Yesterweb and my fascination had begun. Besides a few one-off sites, I had no idea there was such a large amount of sites built with the old internet ideals and aesthetic in mind.
While looking through many of these sites, it had made me reminisce about how the internet used to be, and how the modern internet constrasted the old. Many websites on the yesterweb ring would post their 'manifesto', a statement on their ideology towards the state of the internet. I had found myself agreeing with many of these manifestos, and it inspired me.
To sum up the bulk of the previously-mentioned manifestos, and my own beliefs, the internet has changed for the worse. The internet is now much more homogenous and monetized. A few large corporations control a very large portion of what you see on the internet. Google and Facebook perhaps being the worst of these offenders. To make matters worse, they notoriously track their users and collect their data, to be sold to advertisers and likely catalogued for their own uses. What these uses are, I'm not entirely sure, but I don't like the implications of it.
This discovery had come when I already had a growing sentiment of quitting social media for other reasons, but this had cemented it. I've been on a constant and never-ending journey of self-improvement, and at some point, social media/technology and it's effect on mental health had entered my self-improvement sights. I had played around with the idea of removing them from my life. It was obvious I didn't get anyting out of any of the apps. I used Instagram for looking at memes and friend's photos. Facebook to scroll through the marketplace (I rarely ever actually bought anything), and Chrome had it's little news tab on the mobile version I would scroll through. I found myself going to them whenever I was bored, although I now realize being bored is a healthy and necessary part of life.
I want to clarify my social media habits were (admittedly) pretty good compared to the average person, or my friends. I had used my phone considerably less than a lot of people and I didn't let it effect my mental health or self-image, which is something I'm proud of. Even then, I still thought it was best for me to do away with them, as I think they do more harm then good for the large majority of people. I realized, that even though much of the accessbile internet is now under the same few companies, not all of it is. There is no law that demands you use certain websites. So I realized it was my own choice to broaden my internet horizons.
The internet used to be about expression and exploration. The large corporate sites made everything accessible, and soon I had forgotten the old ways of the internet. I had forgotten how to explore the internet, and I assumed that the internet had just changed. But an analogy I came up with literally as of writing this paragraph is this: The internet is like a tourist-city. Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, etc, are the touristy downtown areas of the city that everyone goes to. But there's always so much more to see in that place than just the tourist spots. Many times, the best times are made exploring, having unique adventures. So for myself, and I would imagine many others, we have boxed ourselves into this narrow view of the internet, when there is still so much more to explore.
To start, I had set three companies in my sights: Facebook, Instagram, and Google. My first steps were on my phone. I reorganized my phone's homescreen and apps, before removing Instagram and Facebook from my homescreen (just in-case I needed them for something). I had deleted Chrome entirely. On my Computer, I removed Facebook and Instagram from my bookmarks. To fix the search-engine problem, I made DuckDuckGo my default engine. It doesn't track your data like Google, and it gives you different results, instead of the same old sponsored and promoted crap Google will give you. I was already ahead of the browser problem, as I had switched to Brave on my PC a long time ago (and I recommend you do too), but I did so on my phone too. It looks just like Chrome without all the data tracking and collecting. Now I had rid myself of Facebook, Instagram, and Google. Since then, I learned to enjoy the downtime, and not reach for my phone, and I've found myself a lot happier, confident in my own ideals, and grounded. I recommend it if you're considering.
While this was mostly about my phone usage, I think it's relevant to the old web too. At the risk of sounding like an old person, I've come to believe that social media is completely deteriorating society, and as a result, the internet. Now, I don't think the companies are completely to blame. As consumers, when there is a company doing something we don't like, we don't give them our business. While some of the tech corporations might seem massive, almost monopolies, larger corporations in the past have fallen, and no empire lasts forever. These corporations won't be around forever, but that doesn't mean we have to use them, and avoiding them could facilitate or accelerate their downfall, or at the very least, influence them to change for the better.
Now, while I think this is very optimistic, there is nothing physically stopping people from changing the internet. By facilitating creativity, encouraging exploration, and refusing corporations, we could change the internet, perhaps to a form more closely resembling what it was, and not what it is now.
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