Leonard Kleinrock on what went wrong with the internet

Nobody invented the internet. It was only a matter of time before computers sent messages over far distances, like phones had already done. The internet isn't broken. There are millions of Internets just like the one the author laments losing, only they are for other people. The mainstream web is what has people down, because it's a reflection of the mainstream, which has long been foul. The problem there is using mainstream internet instead of using 50 year old technology to create your own networks.

> we don't even link to other websites anymore.

Meaning, there is no WWW anymore. (Just a bunch of isolated load-on-demand apps distributed by a network.)

Edit: Is this why Google Chrome is hiding the "www." sub-domain prefix, because it doesn't apply anymore? ;-)

> "Citizen-users need to hold websites more accountable. When was the last time a website asked what privacy policy you would like applied to you? My guess is never."

Wrong guess. This happens multiple times per day, thanks to the GDPR legislation in the EU. Annoying, but also correct. I take great effort to disable everything I don't like (ad tracking in particular), and like the article says I should:

> "You should be able to clearly articulate your preferred privacy policy and reject websites that don’t meet your standards."

There are increasingly websites I refuse to use because they don't work in a way I consider acceptable.

Some major websites are surprisingly broken. Twitter on Firefox on Android, for example, is notoriously bad.

Yes, this is a common topic between my girlfriend and me. Internet as we know it (we grew up in the 2000s with MSN, forums, etc) doesnt exist anymore.

First (at least for us, for other people there would be another "first") were the basic webpages done in Frontpage or Dreamweaver (if you had enough RAM), uploaded to free webservers like Tripod, Lycos, Geocities, copying and pasting scripts found out there to remove popups and iframes, reading Photoshop tutorials to do some effects or gifs animations. Everything were more crafted, it took more time to do these kind of things (now everything is an app or a drag and drop).

Then came the second version of the internet. Everything was a bit "more pro" - even amateur fansites payed for their hosting, they had forums, online chats, etc. The open source community allowed this. From Wordpress with its themes to phpBB2 forums, vBulletin, etc. Oh, I miss those days.

Then slowly all of that was lost. Nowadays we only have social accounts for things. Fansites? Only accounts on Twitter, INstagram, YouTuber. Ask an INfluencer if they have their own website. What for? Everything is centralized.

My dad, who started using a smartphone just 2 or 3 years ago, doesn't fully understand what the internet is. For him, it's just a set of apps (Whatsapp, Facebook, and the website of his fav newspaper). Outside that he doesn't understand there is (or there was) a full world of websites with a lot of contents.

It makes me sad because "the original internet" will be never be like what we experienced. I don't know who to blame for, tho. If I were in the shoes of Facebook or Twitter's founders I would have done the same. But they definitely have eaten all the webpages around them.

Your posting this on a website that is pretty much exclusively links to other websites, "hey I made this" stuff, and people talking about their hobbies.

I think it went /okay/.