We had the internet in 2007 my guy, and apple sold macbooks and imacs. I know. I was there. It was awesome. web ads and user interfaces didn’t take manipulative interactive psychology and science seriously back then—that wasn’t until android got popular. And we didn’t have Cambridge Analytica. We didn’t have personalized ads or the user base. It wasn’t until android really that put smartphones in everyone’s hands. I remember the dev conferences about getting the next billion users by making everything accessible and localized. It made great i18n tech but was specifically for google’s advertising purposes. Facebook capatalized with Facebook and buying instagram (ios exclusive originally. Facebook put it on that next billion Android) and whatsapp (part of that ‘next billion’ world in asia already)
It was shit back then, and the dawn of enshittification.
NGL I am desensitised to bad news. But I admit that I have been ragebaited, which doesn’t serve me but the algorithm and Palantir. I will avoid visiting the US for the foreseeable future even if Trump leaves…
Interesting inference, the meme implies that if society was thriving then it wouldn’t be a nightmare machine.
Is that honestly true? If most software on people’s devices was FOSS and the world was like 20-30 years ago, would it have the same magic of the past?
I’m curious how much or it is form factor and the addiction that goes along with it.
Personally I think it would be very different. Sometimes I get lost in an obsession over a random topic, I go to wikis instead or doomscrolling. I would imagine that smartphones in a good world would mostly be that.
Oh and games that aren’t trying to be gacha
It’s nostalgia.
People were just as shitty in 2007 as they are today. They just didn’t have FB accounts to publicize it to the world and they didn’t use social media to make money back then.
People don’t remember the past correctly, they only remember it selectively, and they super impose modern standards of living onto it. Like if people from 2025 had to go back to 1955 and live the way 1955 people lived, they’d be traumatized, because they have no idea how polluted, loud, and unclean awful life in 1955 was. They just think ‘cheap cost of living!’
Cool
