We Finally Have Proof That the Internet Is Worse

Getting hit by a paywall to read this article, maybe made the point better than the article!

it's so sad. this is going to sound pathetic, but -- i remember in high school browsing reddit and twitter and 4chan and almost getting a buzz off of it, the interactions felt so cutting-edge, funny and fresh and perfectly transient, it felt like i had a voice for the first time, able to post and have people like what i posted.

and now we're kinda just...going thru the motions and everything is worse and companies are just blindly nuking things we used to hold sacred

Imagine needing proof of something so basic that you could see it just being being online over the past decade, if not decade and a half.

In recent years, it’s been harder to love the internet, a miracle of connectivity that feels ever more bloated, stagnant, commercialized, and junkified. We are just now starting to understand the specifics of this transformation—the true influence of Silicon Valley’s vise grip on our lives. It turns out that the slow rot we might feel isn’t just in our heads, after all.

☹️

Archive.today link for those hit by the paywall: https://archive.ph/G2Dc7

Its much more than "the internet is worse". Everything technology is worse, can't have nice things.

Here's the proof: vaguely motions in the general direction of everything

Maybe it's time to regulate the fuck out of the internet.

> have proof that internet is worse
> requires subscription to read

There you have it, boys!

I mean I'm on board with the generality, but looking up the original article it looks like was was taken down, stating:

EDITOR’S NOTE 10/6/2023: After careful review of the op-ed, "How Google Alters Search Queries to Get at Your Wallet," and relevant material provided to us following its publication, WIRED editorial leadership has determined that the story does not meet our editorial standards. It has been removed.

Apologies for the disgusting timestamp. I'm quoting.

It could be I'm missing something though since I can't see the whole article. It sounded like the Wired article was the basis for this one by The Atlantic.

The internet isn't worse, it's just the web. The Internet is much better actually:

• There are more subsea cables with more capacity, the Internet is meshed better these days. Losing any single subsea cable doesn't have as much of an impact as it used to.

• Additionally you don't need to cache stuff with reverse proxies in each AS anymore because long distance transmission has gotten way cheaper, and more available.

• The last mile issues are also solved, though for now only in densly populated areas in advanced economies. With fiber connections to individual dwellings you get scaling that's infinite for practical purposes. This also means you can have a gigabit connection end to end without bloating buffers on DSL or DOCSIS modems.

Worse than what?

Just don't use amazon or google.