Make Internet Great Again

For years now, as we observe the excesses and the moral decay of humanity unfolding online, we keep asking ourselves why this is happening, and how we got here.

The most superficial response comes from so-called intellectuals, who claim that if you give everyone a voice, the only outcome is a flood of garbage.

But that’s not how things really are.

The greatest flaw in the arguments of those who try to explain the decay—or what some now call the “enshittification”—of the internet lies in one fundamental fact: they arrived after the decline had already begun.

They never witnessed the earlier, better days.

And this matters immensely.

Because no one forced the public to go online.

People joined by the millions because what they saw genuinely appealed to them.

Which leads us to a simple but crucial truth: there was a time when the internet was something truly beautiful.

So the real question we need to ask ourselves is this:

What was that earlier internet like?

Why was it, in the end, so deeply attractive?

And what exactly came along to ruin it all?

But to even begin to answer these questions, you had to be there.

You had to have seen it, lived it—and remembered it.

Even I had, in some ways, forgotten.

And the only reason I’m writing this piece now is because, quite by chance, I recently found myself involved in the so-called Fediverse, and decided to set up a federated forum using NodeBB.

And there, suddenly, I caught a glimpse—just a faint but unmistakable glimpse—of what the old internet used to feel like.

Here’s the real issue

Philosophers and intellectuals—especially those steeped in the academic world, where no one speaks unless they’ve earned a place at the lectern—often claim that the core problem was allowing everyone to publish, giving any fool a platform to pontificate on subjects they don’t understand.

But let’s be honest: that sort of thing happened before, too.

The difference wasn’t that fools suddenly found their voices.

The real problem was that, back then, the internet wasn’t dominated by social networks.

And in that older structure, people could always respond to nonsense, debate it, debunk it, or simply ignore it by isolating themselves from the noise.

It wasn’t the presence of stupidity that marked the decline.

It was the loss of mechanisms that once allowed us to deal with it.

Then Came Twitter

At a certain point, Twitter arrived—and in my view, it bears the greatest responsibility for what followed, even though Facebook played its part.

But it’s on Twitter that the imbecilization of every topic became unmistakably clear.

To begin with, you were given only 140 characters (later increased to 280) to reply to any nonsense someone might post.

Which means you could never go into depth.

No matter how complex or nuanced the subject, every conversation was forced to remain at the surface—reduced to snappy one-liners, cheap punchlines, and shallow retorts.

As if that weren’t enough, the timeline refreshed constantly.

If you didn’t catch a stupid comment the moment it appeared, chances are you’d never see it at all—it would vanish into the endless scroll.

And whether you saw it or not depended entirely on the algorithms, and on how long they chose to keep it in front of your eyes.

In the end, Twitter became the most intellectually damaging platform in the history of social media—measured by the sheer scale of harm it inflicted on public discourse.

In the earlier days, two main technologies were used for online discussions: forums and Usenet.

Though both were technologically primitive by today’s standards, they had one decisive advantage—conversations could last as long as they remained interesting.

Threads would stay active not because an algorithm decided they should, but because people chose to keep them alive.

There was no sense of urgency, no manufactured anxiety, no Fear of Missing Out pushing you to respond immediately.

You weren’t haunted by the idea that if you didn’t reply within five minutes, the thread would disappear forever into the abyss of your timeline.

Instead, discussions evolved slowly, thoughtfully, and on their own terms—without the artificial pressure of a constantly refreshing feed.

It wasn’t perfect.

But it was human

While Twitter eroded discourse through brevity and velocity, Facebook inflicted its own damage—more subtly, but just as profoundly.

Its core design was never about fostering meaningful dialogue, but about maximizing engagement.

The algorithm didn't prioritize truth, depth, or relevance.

It prioritized reaction.

Posts that provoked outrage, fear, or tribal loyalty were systematically amplified—not because they were insightful, but because they kept users scrolling, commenting, and sharing.

The result was a feedback loop of emotional manipulation, where the most divisive content floated to the top and nuance drowned silently below.

Facebook didn’t kill public debate by dumbing it down—it poisoned it by rewarding, with visibility, the worst instincts of the crowd.

With the rise of the new generation of social networks, a specific type of user became the intended target of the internet’s evolving architecture: stupid, impulsive, and malicious.

This shift marked the final blow to older ecosystems like forums and Usenet, which were steadily dismantled by platforms optimized not for thought, but for manipulation.

The arrival of monetization techniques only accelerated the rot.

What began with ad-driven engagement culminated in the implicit commodification of the self—exemplified by platforms like OnlyFans or ManyVids.

Here, a new kind of figure emerged: the influencer.

Not someone who contributes insight or depth, but someone who posts for clicks, visibility, and money.

They do not inform.

They do not think.

They optimize.

And what they produce is not content in the classical sense—it’s algorithmic bait, designed to trigger, provoke, or seduce, but never to elevate or help understanding a topic.

Another casualty of the social media revolution was user choice.

Back in the early days of the web, if you had a terrible Geocities or MySpaces page—or a personal website filled with nonsense—you’d likely get zero visitors, unless someone on a forum pointed at you to mock your stupidity.

And even then, the ridicule was short-lived, and you’d quietly vanish into digital obscurity, perhaps with a hint of embarrassment and a forced laugh.

What made this system functional—and, in hindsight, almost elegant—was that people actively chose what to read.

They sought out content.

They curated their own internet experience.

There were no algorithmic overlords serving up a feed of rage, porn, and clickbait based on your worst impulses.

The beautiful catastrophe of the early web was human-driven.

Today, what you see is chosen for you—by systems designed not to inform you, but to addict you.

But Now, There’s the Fediverse — A Second Chance

Today, we have the Fediverse.

And with it, perhaps, a second chance.

The first time around, we never stood a chance.

We couldn’t keep Geocities alive.

We didn’t have the money or infrastructure to sustain IRC, Usenet, or forum systems capable of supporting two billion users.

Only massive corporations could do that—and so they did.

But federation changes everything.

It allows small, independent servers to link together, enabling global communication without centralized control.

Through federation, tiny communities can connect to a vast, decentralized network—one that, in theory, could support the same scale as the corporate giants, without replicating their toxic dynamics.

So, you might ask: problem solved?

Not quite.

The Fediverse Inherits the Flaws

The fundamental issue with the Fediverse is this: most of its platforms were born by copying the very social networks that caused the original collapse of online discourse.

Mastodon was designed to mimic the chaotic shouting match of Twitter.

Friendica followed the architecture of Facebook.

Pleroma, Misskey, and others followed similar paths.

But replicating the problem will never lead to a solution.

These platforms may be decentralized, but their core interaction models still carry the same structural stupidity that plagued their commercial predecessors.

Visit any large federated instance and you’ll see it for yourself: the same dynamics emerge—virality over depth, identity over ideas, and shallow engagement masquerading as conversation.

Federation solves the scale, but not the design.

What Made the Old Internet Work

At the heart of the old internet—and of its capacity for meaningful debate—were a few simple but powerful principles that have been entirely lost in the social media age:

• Persistent threads.
  Conversations didn’t vanish into a fast-moving feed.
  You could read replies at your own pace, reflect, and respond when you were ready.
  There was no need to rush, no timeline to chase, no pressure to be the first or the loudest.
• Room for depth.
  The platforms allowed—encouraged—long, well-structured responses.
  There was space for real argument, for reasoning, for citations, for nuance.
  You weren’t limited to a character count designed for slogans and snark.
• No engagement algorithms.
  Content wasn’t filtered or ranked based on its ability to provoke.
  There were no hidden forces selecting what you saw based on emotional triggers.
  What you read was what people posted, not what an algorithm decided you should see.

These principles didn’t just shape better platforms.

They shaped better conversations—and, perhaps, better people.

To be clear: the current generation of Fediverse platforms hasn’t yet brought back the core values of the old internet.

At least, not most of them.

The vast majority still mimic the flawed logic of Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube—merely replacing centralized control with federation, while keeping the same shallow structures.

But something is starting to change.

We are now seeing the rise of new platforms—true alternatives—that are not just federated versions of broken social media.

Projects like Lemmy, Kbin, NodeBB, Piefed, and others are beginning to reintroduce the forum into the Fediverse.

And not just any forum—the federated forum, with all the advantages of decentralization combined with the depth, clarity, and structure of the old models.

Yes, some of them look too much like Reddit for my taste.

Personally, I prefer the explicit hierarchy and topic clarity of something like phpBB.

But that’s a detail.

The essential point is this: persistence, depth, and structure—the very things that defined real discourse—are finally returning.

And in my view, that’s not just progress.

It’s a quiet revolution.

A Mixed Feeling

On the one hand, I’m genuinely encouraged.

Because it’s becoming increasingly clear that the so-called “winning” platforms of Fediverse 1.0 are, at this point, little more than legacy software—systems locked into imitating the same tired, broken social networks they were meant to replace.

Talk to their developers—people like Rocko, "Lain," and others—and the feeling you get is unmistakable: they’re not really trying to build a new internet.

They’re just trying to build new social networks.

The goal isn’t transformation; it’s replication, with a slightly different skin.

But to be fair, these developers weren’t around when the internet was great.

They never saw what was lost.

They didn’t witness an era where ideas mattered more than impressions, where conversation was slow, thoughtful, and grounded in shared curiosity rather than dopamine loops.

And so, how could they know?

Yes: Lemmy and Kbin, and now Piefed, are growing more rapidly within the Fediverse than Mastodon, especially when looking at the specific surges triggered by Reddit-related events.

The rise in posts, user registrations, and new instances reflects a genuine migration toward platforms built on a different structure than microblogging—platforms that foster a growing community with a vision less dependent on speed and brevity, and more focused on depth and substance.

So What Can You Do?

Are you someone who enjoys hosting federated social networks—and wants to actively contribute to the revolution of a true Fediverse 2.0?

Then here’s what you need to do:

Instead of spinning up yet another Mastodon or Pleroma instance, consider hosting platforms like Kbin, Lemmy, or NodeBB or Piefed.

Federation is improving rapidly, despite resistance from the so-called "Fediverse 1.0" platforms.

By choosing to support and expand these new tools, you won't just be running a server—you’ll be part of something far more meaningful.

You’ll be helping to build a better, smarter, freer internet.

Make Internet Great Again.

And you won’t even have to impose tariffs to do it.