June 23rd, 2024

The Death of the Web

The internet's evolution from creative individual websites to commercial dominance is discussed. Optimism for global unity and knowledge sharing shifted to profit-driven strategies, concentrating traffic on major platforms, altering user experience.

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The Death of the Web

The article reflects on the evolution of the internet from its early days characterized by creativity and individual websites to the current state dominated by commercial interests. The author reminisces about the optimism surrounding the internet's potential to unite people globally and enhance knowledge sharing. However, the influx of users and commercialization led to the acquisition of independent websites by larger networks, resulting in the degradation of content quality with excessive advertising. The shift towards monetization altered the internet landscape, favoring traffic concentration on a few major platforms engaged in fierce competition for user attention. This transformation marked a departure from the personalized and diverse nature of early websites, emphasizing profit-driven strategies over user experience. The author laments the loss of the original spirit of the web, where individual voices and unique content flourished before the commercialization wave reshaped online interactions.

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Link Icon 2 comments
By @lovethevoid - 5 months
Am working on a similar piece so this is a bit biased, but it’s a known problem on the web everyone ignores for financial reasons. Don’t bother fixing cookie notices, there’s no money in that.

The frustrating part is Google could end this tomorrow if they wanted to as they are still the dominant web gatekeeper, except they also own the ad network so they’re not going to bother as all these garbage sites just increase ad revenue. So much for competition.

The fact that the government agencies explicitly suggest to use adblockers tells you everything.