Internet was once a beautiful place

I was reminiscing on the time I first found the Internet. It was such a joy to find knowledge at your fingertips. You could get so much information online, even before Google launched their search engine. You could connect with people on forums, chat servers. You could publish your own blog and add RSS feed which people could connect to .You had this sense of individual identity in the expansive network of the web.

But things changed after Facebook came. One person’s dream to connect the world together.  The world was already connected but Mark wanted to connect them all together on his platform. Hence emerged the idea of Social Network, followed by Twitter and millions of other social networks. The issue is that these platforms control what to show to whom. Compared to the internet which is neutral to everyone, social media platforms including Google Search decide whether your content is worth sharing to others. Hence you start behaving in a manner conducive to those platforms and therein you lose your actual identity. You will start putting hashtags, links to other sites just so that your post is shared to as many people as possible. You will put click bait headings – ‘How to’, ‘Top 10’, ‘You got to see …’.  The problem of fake news is now at an alarming level. We are so dependent on these platforms to give us content that we don’t even care if the content is fake.

The solution is to go back to old stuff. Quit these platforms, go to news sites, use news feed.  Bring back the old Internet which was truly neutral.