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I go back on the 'net to the days of Mosaic, and earlier on Usenet and BBSs. I'm feeling pretty nostalgic, but also saddened. Between the crooks, the government, and fun loving pranksters it seems that there is no corner of the 'net that can be considered truly secure. I now routinely assume that nothing I do is safe.
I remember when the 'net was 90% thoughtful discussion, it was about web pages, pure HTML, and the content that they served up.
Now it seems as if no forum is safe from endless idiotic, threatening, and increasingly offensive trolls and bullies. Many good smart people just refuse to participate. In its early days the whole idea behind the 'net was the free sharing of information. Now you find things behind paywalls, registration pages, or removed after threats from lawyers.
Each week seems to bring another attempt by government or business to regulate the 'net, both what you can put on-line, and what you can look at. Add to that the many geographic blocks and other restrictions that keep out some of the people, some of the time. We rely on multiple layers of flash and java and other technology, each requiring some special software to make it work on your computer. Inevitably stuff breaks.
It was only a decade or so back that the very idea of marketing on the 'net was considered ridiculous. Now we're buried alive with ads, pop-ups, and stupid YouTube ads in front of every video - unless you want to pay them to remove them.
Increasingly using the 'net feels like more of a chore than a pleasure, and I can't see it improving. Is the Internet broken beyond repair?
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday May 18 2015, @06:18PM
Exactly. He's bemoaning the fact that the unwashed masses have jumped on the bandwagon and started playing in what used to be his private playground, essentially. But the internet is mostly what you make of it; no one is forcing you to use Facebook or Twitter or anything else; you can use whatever you want, as much or as little as you want. And ad-blocking is easy with ABP and uBlock; I just use uBlock and anything that gets through that I ignore. Besides, back before all this commercialization and advertising, all these sites with advertising simply didn't exist. All we had back then was USENET discussion groups, Gopher, and a bunch of tiny web pages which were basically single-person creations, residing on some university server. You certainly couldn't read up-to-the-minute news on there, much less buy all kinds of stuff.