I miss the 2008 internet.
Every few years, I return to Michael Wesch’s talk, An anthropological introduction to YouTube. This year, what brought me there was actually an episode of This American Life referencing a songwriter who became popular on YouTube years back for her ukulele covers. I hadn’t heard the name in years, but immediately thought: Julia Nunes. I couldn’t quite remember her song, Balloons, but I remember how it felt – and when I found it, I was immediately back there.
Both of these videos were created in June 2008. The web was a different place. This was the year that Android was launched, and the iPhone was only a year old – the internet was still about the web, not app stores and social media algorithms. Looking back from the present age of reels and heavily produced video, what struck me watching these June 2008 YouTube videos was how raw they were. Julia used a slinky. The hero in Michael Wesch’s lecture at the Library of Congress was Gary Brolsma. The authenticity is endearing. It was June 2008 that my first few blog posts had just been published on Techdirt, because in the early days of Twitter, there was an online community that anyone could become a part of, even some undergrad who’d just started a blog. These were the copyfighting days when large corporations, on the heels of filesharing lawsuits against grandmas and laser printers, were trying to tame the web with digital locks and steep penalties criminalizing sharing, and internet users and internet companies were on the same side.
The internet was different then. I miss the open web.
Now, I get that I’m aging, and I’m acutely aware that my heartspace is steeped in nostalgia. As Cory Doctorow says Jim Griffin says: anything invented before you’re 20 was there forever, anything invented before you’re 30 is the coolest thing ever, and anything invented after that should be illegal. But as Cory Doctorow also says, everything has gotten suddenly worse: enshittification is everywhere online. (Okay, and reels probably should be illegal.)
It’s against this backdrop of nostalgia for the 2008 web that I’ve been reading Tim Wu’s 2010 book, The Master Switch. It’s been sitting in my pile of books to read since, well, 2010 or so, but I finally picked it up after attending an event with Tim Wu and Cory Doctorow in Toronto a few weeks ago about why the internet sucks now and what to do about it. Far from being outdated, The Master Switch is a fascinating read in 2026. During a time of much internet optimism and belief that the internet was open and resilient and different than those centralized 20th technologies, Wu and others were warning that each of those 20th century technologies had their period of openness before eventual corporate capture. The book is sadly prophetic.
This last decade has been very hard on my internet optimism. From being shattered by a deeper understanding of the trauma caused by the evil of pornography to being shaken by the widespread epistemic crisis and conspiracy thinking around me, most of that internet optimism has been dead, buried, and rolling over in the grave for years.
The spring of social media has also turned into the eternal winter of corporate capture, where the internet for most people consists of five giant websites full of screenshots of text of the other four. The Twitter network effect has been broken, but after a brief moment of hope for the fediverse, we’ve just seen a balkanization of social media. Whatever concerns about an algorithmic filter bubble, when people literally flock to platforms based on their ideology and political views, the entire chamber is the echo chamber. The mainstream platforms are full of engagement farming and ragebaiting, and segregated alternative spaces are full of complaints about their counterparts. Google has shifted from being a semi-protagonist for the open web in The Master Switch to becoming a nemesis, and after a moment of hope for software freedom, mobile computing and social media have brought about a free software dark age. Nevermind anything people are referring to as “AI” these days.
And, whatever the debates, as a parent, I do think there’s something substantive to the thesis of The Anxious Generation that we’ve replaced a play-based childhood with a phone-based childhood. Avoiding the problems of the present-day internet for my kids is an incredible challenge on its own.
This could be enough to send me into a full techlash – but every now and then, I get a glimpse of the internet I once loved.
Enter Molly White. When I heard her 2024 talk, Fighting for our web, I remember how I felt in 2008:
Do you remember the first time you felt like the web was magic? A lot of us, it’s probably been decades, right, that you’ve been on the web, so it might be hard to think of that very first moment, but there’s probably something that sticks out in your head. Take a second and just try to think about it.
For me, it was Neopets. How many of you played Neopets? Any Neopets people here? Awesome. So, I know it still exists—you can still go to Neopets.com today. I’m so afraid to ruin the nostalgia that I have not looked at what it is today. Hearing they were exploring NFTs a couple of years ago almost killed me.
But from what I remember of it, and bear with me because I was probably ten years old at the time, you would adopt these little cartoon pets, and you could feed them, and play with them, and buy things for them. And I honestly actually don’t remember that much about the gameplay aside from the fact that I think you could paint them different colors, and you fed them omelets for some reason.
Anyway, what I do really remember about Neopets was that every player got a profile page that was called a “user lookup.”
As far as I can remember, Neopets user lookups were the moment that the internet changed in my head from something with pages I could read and maybe games that I could play to something that I could change. What was once just a book on the shelf was now a canvas where I could create and write and remix.
I had already been drawn to computers even back when I thought it was sort of just a one-way street. I didn’t even realize how long I’ve loved computers until I unearthed this book that I made when I was five years old.
It was from, like, a little kit that you could send off and they would print out a book for you, and it was about my life, but I included in the “about the author” section that “for fun, Molly likes to play the computer.”
I have very similar childhood memories. I spent a lot of time exploring my family’s 486 (which is still operational in my basement today), and I remember using my parents’ laptops to dial up and talk about my dog on some online chat forum. My grade school “About the Author” blurbs would have mentioned “computers” too. It was in university that I discovered free software and GNU/Linux and began tinkering with alternatives to a proprietary ecosystem. It was a magical time for me, but it was also a magical time for computing and the open web.
I still see glimpses of that online today – like LibreArts, Ardour, Recording Revolution, or profound articles or meaningful conversations – but it’s increasingly hard to find that kind of authenticity online. Perhaps “podcasting” is the most “open” space these days, but it’s dominated by proprietary platforms and unintelligent (or grifting) influencers captured by their own audiences.
As Molly puts it, “as a lifelong lover of the web, it’s hard not to feel a little hopeless right now.” She says it’s tempting, amidst the decay, to yearn for the good old days of ICQ and whimsical GeoCities sites. “Some of this is nostalgia for our younger years… but some of this is certainly based in the feeling that the web was just better back then.”
Fewer trolls, and a lot fewer bots. Google search results that actually returned what you were looking for, not just the sites that paid the most. Cobbled-together blogs and LiveJournal pages written by people who felt authentic, who maybe wanted to attract more visitors to tick up their pageview counters or add entries to their guestbook pages, but who weren’t trying to cultivate a persona as an influencer or a thought leader, “build a brand”, or monetize their audience. More of a neighborhood feeling where everyone was a possible friend, and less fear that people might interpret your social media post as uncharitably as possible. The worry that the girl you were talking to might be a man pretending to be a girl, but probably not the fear that she’s a crypto romance scammer or part of a state-sponsored disinformation network. Fewer and less intrusive ads, less engagement farming, less surveillance. Fewer paywalls, more “information wants to be free”.
Molly describes how academics, first, and then, hobbyists, and then everybody came to the wide open fields of the web, but eventually large corporations figured out how to set up tolls, then put up walls, and after enticing people into the theme-park-like more “perfect places” they set up, they enshittified it to extract more value. But the place beyond the walls still exists.
We often forget: that world is still out there. […]
If we wanted, each of us could escape those walls and set up our own spaces within the limitless, fertile soil beyond. […] Though we now face a new challenge as the dominance of the massive walled gardens has become overwhelming, we have tools in our arsenal: the memories of once was, and the creativity of far more people than ever before, who entered the digital expanse but have grown disillusioned with the business moguls controlling life within the walls.
I don’t want to hate stuff. I want to make stuff. As Molly says, we can have a different web, if we fight for it.
I want the web I once loved back. And I’m going to do my small part.
There is much to be done at a policy and movement/community level, and I’m returning some of my attention to that space in the months ahead. But I’m really writing this blog post as a note to self. On a personal level, I am committing to:
- Reclaim the indie web with a POSSE approach like Cory Doctorow and Molly White (e.g. publish more here, spend less time on walled garden social media), and do my part to rewild the internet
- Replace attention given to secret algorithmic feeds of increasing garbage content with more time with my RSS reader, books, and podcasts (using AntennaPod)
- Make goals for creative output: writing, music production, and a return to some coding
- Foster in my kids a relationship with technology of creation not just consumption (no mobile computers or social media til 16+, only dumbphones for real world adventures, and GNU/Linux laptops with training to make things with tools like Kdenlive and Ardour)
I remember how the web once was – and I want it back.
I want to make stuff, not hate stuff. So that’s what I’m going to do.
Years went by and we got older
Remember the days when gas was sold
For $1.50 a gallon, oh how things have changed
Like those stylish fads and the look on your face
When you see me for the first time in years
We swore we’d never end up here
Well I won’t be alone
Written on my 2006 Thinkpad X60 running Debian 12
