263

What do you miss from the old internet? (lemmy.world)

submitted 7 months ago by _number8_@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

231 comments fedilink hide all child comments

i think we need Cracked-style articles back. desperately. or like, a guy doing a weird thing and writing a piece on it. sites like those are declining faster than the glaciers.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] Max_P@lemmy.max-p.me 92 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I miss the simplicity and the focus on the information due to the technical limitations.

Websites just had the information, well presented. None of that blog spam with a massive story on how error code -21 could suck and seriously impact your business and that you should hire professionals. But anyway here's a command copied from a 10 year old StackOverflow answer that hasn't worked for 5 years and isn't actually related to what you were Googling at all, but now you've viewed 3 advert videos, scrolled through 10 sponsored ads and closed 2 popups. Here's the next article on error -22.

Also, downloads were "here's the link to it on our FTP server", none of that guess which download button is the real one, waiting 30 seconds for the download to prepare and having to sign up for faster download speeds.

[-] all-knight-party@kbin.run 19 points 7 months ago

Unless you're talking even earlier, I did a lot of guessing at which download button was real and downloading pirated games in many parts from shitty download services that only let you download one part per hour and such. In the late 2000s when I was old enough to really use the internet

[-] nehal3m@sh.itjust.works 10 points 7 months ago

Yeah in the late 90s/early 2000s it wasn't that predatory in my recollection.

[-] Max_P@lemmy.max-p.me 8 points 7 months ago

Early 2000s dial-up. It enshittified quite a bit even that decade. Back then you had like a Pentium 3 with Windows 98, XP just came out but was for people with very good machines. Netscape was still there but dying, Opera was paid and the free version had an ad banner but the browser was actually good and not just a Chromium reskin, but most people had Internet Explorer 4 or 5. DSL was new and expensive. There just wasn't all that much room to load ads, or even on screen: at 800x600, there's not a ton of pixels to put ads on. You'd look at your jpegs slowly becoming less blurry.

There was a time when even crack sites, it would just be like a list of cracks that just link to the exe and that was it. Sometimes there wasn't a page, just an FTP directory listing go find what you're looking for yourself. Of course there were popups and other crap but the web was just generally cleaner. Larger files were all P2P, it would already take you 15 minutes to download a single MP3 at those speeds.

The centralization and need for monetization for storage and bandwidth came a bit later.

[-] Reverendender@sh.itjust.works 4 points 7 months ago

You mean you didn't accept the invitation to the porn chat on MEGA?

this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2024

263 points (98.2% liked)

Ask Lemmy

26672 readers

1946 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Please don't post about US Politics.

Rules: (interactive)

1) Be nice and; have fun

Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them

2) All posts must end with a '?'

This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?

3) No spam

Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.

4) NSFW is okay, within reason

Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].

5) This is not a support community.

It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.

Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.