How we can make the internet good again

I sometimes ask myself when the internet last felt truly good. For me, as someone who's been on the internet since the mid-1990s, I often say around 2007 or 2008. The internet still felt pretty innocent back then.

Netflix had just started streaming. Facebook had only recently become available to non-college students. Twitter was just starting to take off. YouTube was a place for humor, music and wild videos. Reddit was doing its thing, and there were lots of active forums. It still felt kind of like the Wild West. When politics got involved, we were fighting for our rights, like Aaron Swartz did.

As these companies grew and consolidated power, things took a turn for the worse. Social media became about outrage and holding people's attention at any cost, because that's how the platforms could make more money. Influencers became a thing. We lost our sense of privacy. Politics became more polarized than ever, and disinformation spread.

Suddenly, it felt like you were using the most deranged corporate products imaginable. With the introduction of generative AI, it certainly doesn't seem like we're moving toward something better. It feels like more gasoline is being thrown on the fire. It feels like a captive audience is being taken advantage of—drained of any remaining humanity.

I'd like to see an internet that's more wholesome, joyful and community-oriented. I know we can't go back in time, and I wouldn't necessarily want to, but maybe we can bring back some of the good things that used to define being an internet user. Maybe we can again start enjoying this place where we connect.

"How do we create a positive future?" Mike Masnick, the founder of Techdirt, recently asked me. "I'm talking about getting back to the feeling of innovation being for good, and in the interest of people, not giant corporations that are trying to suck everyone dry."

Masnick, along with several others, recently released something called the Resonant Computing Manifesto. With the growing influence of AI in mind, it's an outline for where we can take the internet next. It's a proposal for an internet that is less extractive, hollow and disorienting.

"There are multiple paths that we can go down in the future—some of which are very evil and bad," Masnick says. "But we can sort of nudge the system in a different direction to one where technology really is to our advantage as people."

If you ask Masnick, he says the internet was really good in 1995 or 1996. He's a bit older than me. He says he doesn't want to go back to that time, but he'd like to bring back some of the feelings that he felt back then.

"The World Wide Web was really taking off, and we were starting to see all of the possibilities," Masnick says. "There were all sorts of things that were suddenly possible—and for anyone. You didn't need some giant company. That was really, really exciting."