It’s not unreasonable to percieve the WWW for the past 20 years, definitely 10 years, to basically being a handful of website with 90% of the users.

I for one miss the smaller internet of days past, but I’ve always assumed I was in the minority here, as most of my peers don’t seem to care about everything being on Facebook these days.

However, as AI slop overruns these platforms, I’ve noticed increased interest in alternatives. As each major platform gets slopified, the sites and communities that are too small to warrant much interest from bots become more lucrative.

And as for the ones who are fine with the slop feeds who think what they’re seeing is actually real, I guess we’re not losing much of value if they stay with InstaFaceTwitterTok

  • Libb@piefed.socialEnglish
    5·
    21 hours ago

    I for one miss the smaller internet of days past, but I’ve always assumed I was in the minority here

    No idea how many we are (I’m not much into tracking users online, so I also don’t want to know how many we are ;) but I can assure you are not alone, no matter how few or how many of us there is :)

    Also that Web is still there, and alive. Apparently, it’s just too much to ask to those many people that are used to mega-corp owned walled gardens to go have look on the other side of the fence.

    However, as AI slop overruns these platforms, I’ve noticed increased interest in alternatives.

    AI is dumb but keep in mind it improves at an incredible pace. Those mega-corps don’t invest billions in it just to make it look nicer, nor to please shareholders (go have a look at how Amazon was hammered for announcing its next round of AI investments). When it starts getting less stupid, AI will most likely regain whatever fraction of those users it… deceived.

    Imho, the small web should not be offered to the public as an alternative to an AI-filled Web, but as plain and simple human-centric that is not corporate-owned. My own crappy part of that small Web is also AI free, and will most likely remain so, but it’s out of sheer habit (I’ve posting online since the late early 90s without any AI-crutch) what matters to me is that it is independent (and add-free and tracking-free) ;)