When do you think the internet started declining and why?

[TheCableGuy08]

When people online talk about an alleged decline of the internet, they mostly place it at the beginning of the 2010s, while others place it at the middle or even at the end of the decade. When do you think the internet as a whole started declining and why? I'm eager to hear your opinions because I really want to know exactly how and why the internet doesn't feel the same to some users, given that I don't know much about how it was in the past.

[cat]

I feel like social media like TikTok ruined the internet but that's just my opinion.

[rnottelovesowls]

it was 2020 for me. covid-19 changed everything. some embraced hope, some slipped into insanity, some became jerks, and executives kept getting greedier and greedier

[Daniele63]

I would say as far back as 2013, this is when I started notice bad changes on the internet, starting with Google+ being forced on users of YouTube, then copyright started getting worse with automated Content ID claims. Compared to the AI-pocalpyse of today it's nothing but this is when it started the decline to me.
It truly became trash when AI started to become widely used and shorts form content and "for you" agorithms started being pushed on every platforms.

[TriedWharf]

The internet started declining around when it became about money, which I'd place at about 2014. it was still ok, but it was the beginning of the end. then it *really* got worse when short form content came around. then slowly the interent morphed into whatever the hell it is now

[BingoBopple04]

Once the world began becoming corporatized instead of appealing to the customers. Internet became more of a business once everyone found that there can be tons of money made from it. Probably I would have to say somewhere by 2013 or 14, since then I just remember the constant decline of the internet in popular services such as youtube bringing in microtransactions and subscription fees. Suddenly the internet just didn't feel like it was for the common person anymore and instead more like the companies greed for money flooding their brains over customer satisfaction.

Edit: Just saw the other comments in this forum. I guess I was not the only one XD

[lakes]

i'm gonna say something that i don't see pointed out in these discussions
even the golden age of the internet paved for the gradual worsening of it
netflix selling dvds in the 90s allowed for it to become the streaming megacompany it is today
the battle over "piracy" led to entertainment conglomerates realizing they could make money off of digital media
youtube's popularity led to it being bought out by google
geocities' popularity led to it being bought out by yahoo
i'd argue there wasn't a single start point but a gradual process
that said if i had to choose it'd be the start of social media, places like myspace and facebook. sure it wasn't as bad as now because algorithms weren't as prevalent as now. but it was when people started using their real names online and were expected to in certain places. ir some kid getting flack for using "pizza" as a fake last name on myspace

[glaciation_trilogy]

i'm gonna say something that i don't see pointed out in these discussions
even the golden age of the internet paved for the gradual worsening of it
netflix selling dvds in the 90s allowed for it to become the streaming megacompany it became today
the battle over "piracy" led to entertainment conglomerates realizing they could make money off of digital media
youtube's popularity led to it being bought out by google
geocities' popularity led to it being bought out by yahoo
i'd argue there wasn't a single start point but a gradual process
that said if i had to choose it'd be the start of social media, places like myspace and facebook. sure it wasn't as bad as now because algorithms weren't as prevalent as now. but it was when people started using their real names online and were expected to in certain places. ir some kid getting flack for using "pizza" as a fake last name on myspace

I'm not sure how to approach this without sounding like yet another person talking about something they weren't really there for like they were, but it is interesting how things that were once seen as harbingers of doom for culture have become seen as retro classics now lol. I had this same feeling when people started talking about how great and "zomg nostalgic y2k" nu-metal, post-grunge and mall goth/emo were because I had been around long enough to know how widely mocked all of these things were by people older than me. As it relates to this I've seen an image macro where 2007 is pointed to as the year the internet was ruined between the Iphone, non-college FB/Twitter/Tumblr style social media coming online, and that infamous ridiculous Fox News bit with the exploding van bringing a large amount of annoying edgy kids to 4chan. Of course now 2007 is often seen as the year when the internet peaked. So I think you are right and people ignore how all of the groundwork was laid and a lot of this was inevitable in a way even if it wasn't clear then.

Personally, though, I started to notice it around 2015-2016. An increase in online culture-warring, social media beginning to become omnipresent and people first starting to sound the alarm on the negative impacts of it, Youtube becoming absolutely terrible in a number of unavoidable ways, and probably some other things I'm forgetting. As I said in my intro post I was ahead of the game in terms of the whole gen z internet nostalgia thing just from noticing the way things were going and wishing I had just been a bit older. (I guess I'm getting the first tastes of what I described in the first paragraph after seeing people wax nostalgic for 2016/17 youtube of all things.) After 2020-2022 it just became completely ruined, though. At least 2014-19 you could find elements of the older internet and places where sensible discussion could be had with people. And kids didn't feel the need to barge into places online aimed at adults and demand everything suit them. Plus aside from Vine, which was mostly a novelty from what I remember, short form content didn't exist to the extent it does today, and Google was still a reliable search engine.

[Vaking Voda]

I would say as far back as 2013, this is when I started notice bad changes on the internet, starting with Google+ being forced on users of YouTube, then copyright started getting worse with automated Content ID claims. Compared to the AI-pocalpyse of today it's nothing but this is when it started the decline to me.
It truly became trash when AI started to become widely used and shorts form content and "for you" agorithms started being pushed on every platforms.

Don't be evil. - Google pre-2014

[solinus]

After 2020-2022 it just became completely ruined, though. At least 2014-19 you could find elements of the older internet and places where sensible discussion could be had with people.

I agree, I feel that in the late 2010s we mainly tolerated the state of social media then, but several things happened between 2019 and now that cause the state of the mainstream internet to enter a 90 degree nosedive in terms of content. 2020 gave us the pandemic which pushed many of us to be more active in the already crappy social media landscape, which may have led to radicalization/polarization in some people (I BARELY escaped the right wing pipeline around that time).

In 2022, Elon decided to buy Twitter and allowed for post monetization and an algorithm boost when signing up for Twitter Blue. Unlike YouTube where some quality standards are expected (long form at least), the quality standards for Twitter are much lower. The result? Countless ragebait posts designed to maximize engagement and ruin one's mental health in the process, along with "dunks" on said ragebait posts which only attract attention to the original shitty post, making it worse. Gimmick accounts which I once thought were the least controversial and the only tolerable thing on the site, began to be bought and sold like it's the stock market, often with those gimmick accounts being retooled to be part of the spew of ragebait.

Around 2023, Instagram decided to start pushing controversial and mean comments towards the top, which probably helped fan the flames of modern ragebait (see also: "instagram comments compilation"). I haven't been on instagram but from what I've heard, this might've also happened on posts due to the reportedly high amounts of offensive content, even neo-nazi content!

And of course, we all know what AI had done to the internet, which helped us get to where we are today.

There's a very interesting video on the lack of empathy caused by the modern post 2020 social media landscape as well:


Of course, forums also have their own downsides, such as