I do think they will essentially die. They will morph into completely different websites, but I think they will be around for a long time, and I think their userbase won’t shrink even a bit.
Big websites are slowly adopting the facebook model: All the content is hidden and requires you login to view it. Creating an account requires some sort of personally identifying information like a phone number, photo of ID, mailing address, etc.
The old model simply turned out to be unprofitable. It was always done under the motto of “bring the people and the money will come” and so they made it as easy as possible to build up a large user base, but it turns out that motto is false on the internet, and investors have finally realized it. There is no point in having a massive user base if they don’t actually generate a profit for you. Anonymous internet users do not do this. They are indistinguishable from bots. If they don’t use adblock, they don’t click on ads. They don’t donate money. Yet they use up the majority of the server resources.
It used to be that you at least needed anonymous users to generate content for you, but (in part thanks to facebok) non-anonymous usage of the internet has become normalized. If anything the best content will come from someone who has their real name, and profile picture attached to the content they submit. The anonymous nobody is much less likely to post anything valuable.
I think the internet as we know it is dead, and tbh I don’t even blame big corporations for this. I blame mass tech illiteracy, and people’s willingness to sacrifice their privacy for some dopamine hits.
Yup, even Digg is still around. Like you, I think reddit will be around for many more years. The content quality, which is already bad, will continue to get worse.
I didn’t migrate to Lemmy to help kill reddit. I’m here to help Lemmy grow. It’s already a better experience in some ways. Rough around the edges, and needs some features and fixes, but I feel like the user base is already much better than reddit is.
Yup, even Digg is still around. Like you, I think reddit will be around for many more years. The content quality, which is already bad, will continue to get worse.
Digg?
Hell Fark is still there. And for that matter, Craigslist discussion forums are too.
And Hi5 Anyone?
Jez… you just remembered me hi5 was my second social network after MySpace…getting old!
Usenet is still around.
It’s not a site but an actual system and predates (by quite a lot) the Web.
It’s was the social media equivalent back in the old days of the early 90s Internet (before AOL linked to it, before the WWW, even before Gopher).
After that came IRC (which funnilly enough is also still around, along with modern clones of it such as Discord) as well as online forums (which themselves are the descendants of the old BBSs, minus the whole modem comms part).
So far in my experience, the only tech that “dies” (well, there often is a handful of people who still do it for fun) is that which is tied to specific hardware (i.e. you don’t really have BBSs anymore because people don’t use modems to connect to a central systems via the phone line anymore) as pure software can live forever on top of emulators or just be reimplemented whilst preserving core features.
Mind blowing that craigslist exists even at all TBH.
Bro craigslist missed connections in the early 2k’s…
Shit was wildin’.
I still use Craigslist to find bands to join.
I still use Craigslist to find jobs and apartments. I sold a car on Craigslist. I still find it useful.
I mostly agree with you, the internet must change, and it’s changing for the good with these non-profit decentralized networks like Lemmy.
These companies abused the internet too much and it’s hit a breaking point. People are taking the power back. I look forward to a user-owned internet again where the content I see is not entirely controlled by corporate interests.
I think these websites will genuinely die within the next decade. There’s just never been decentralized social media(of this kind) to compete with them before.
I hope this is what will happen
I don’t think most people actually think that these sites will literally die (well, actually Twitter/X literally dying at some point wouldn’t surprise me all that much), it’s more just hyperbole for jumping the shark.
I think the internet as we know it is dead, and tbh I don’t even blame big corporations for this. I blame mass tech illiteracy, and people’s willingness to sacrifice their privacy for some dopamine hits.
So, you’re blaming the victims? Not the billion dollar corporations, leveraging their immense power and wealth to drain as much value out everything they touch just to discard what remains the second it’s not creating enough money for them? Instead you blame the tech illiterate, that never had a chance? The poor and exploited, caught in the hamster wheel of capitalism barely able to plan until the next pay check?
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They’re already dead to me, that’s all I care about personally
I agree with you for Reddit.
For Twitter, it will burn under Musk’s leadership
Are you sure about that? Spez seems like a huge fan of Musk.
lol
I mean, remember myspace? It just warp into something worse
Main advantage I see with reddit is it fragmented in to many subs with years of content that people can join as per their preferences, not only that but they also serve you suggested subs and posts keeping you mindlessly scrolling
If anything the best content will come from someone who has their real name, and profile picture attached to the content they submit.
Which is why I, actual Hollywood superstar Margot Robbie, make the best “”“content”“” on Lemmy.
(It’s all shitposting.)
Reddit hasn’t made many significant changes yet, but Twitter is working hard to fail.
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The entire reason Twitter now called X is still around is because many news channels, politicians, well known people in entertainment, technology, science, etc. post their new content or notifications there, sadly they are not in Mastodon.
If large companies and influential people move to Mastodon then now it will make a lot of sense for people to go there and debate their opinions with the benefit of more privacy, less trackers and no ads.
If large companies and influential people move to Mastodon […] and no ads.
large companies and influential people are in the commercial platforms because of the ads. There is literally no reason for them to move in a place without ads.
Louis Rossman has said this stuff for a long time, and with each passing day it seems more accurate. The enshittification has just accelerated I due to higher interest rates on loans.
At least it made me realize I’m just not their target customer. I always ask myself why people still use tiktok, twitter, reddit, facebook, youtube, etc when they continually fuck with their users. The reason is simply that they are the target audience.
