The emergence of social media has destroyed all the small communities to standardize communication and information.
It’s a bit of a digital version of rural exodus. And since 2017/2018, I’ve noticed that everything that, in my opinion, represented the internet has disappeared.
I’ve known Lemmy for a few hours and I feel like I’m back in the early spirit of the internet.
I just gotta say, I felt that switch too around that time. 2016-2019ish. Something about how Instagram moved away from encouraging posts of your life to family//friends for pushing an influencer/celebrity sphere. People stopped sharing their lives, ordinary content wasn’t ranked as high. And then the other social platforms copied it
I think it’s way earlier than that. Early Facebook was horrible. But everyone bought into it.
The early years of Facebook as a teenager were great for me! No advertisements, just friends and friends of friends posting updates about their thoughts, activities, and photos. Somewhere in my college years (2011-15) it definitely got worse but not to a degree I’d call ‘bad’. Not disagreeing or anything, just sharing!