Jeremy C.’s article What the Old Internet Was and Why it was Better will be on my mind today. Partially because it has some fantastic turns of phrase, partially because it explains a few of the legal and regulatory misfires that have led the internet to be what it is today, and partially because AI economics and wildly inflated valuations are the background radiation of life in 2026.
Someone once said to me, “Remember, everything on the internet was put there by someone who wants it to be there. The internet is just people. That’s a good thing, and a bad thing.” That was true in the late 90s and it was good advice at the time. It remained good advice until the mid-2000s at least. But I don’t quite know what advice to give in 2026. This article, at least, helped me reflect on the decisions that were made that brought us to this point.
What the Old Internet Was and Why it was Better – Jeremy C., Plain Meaning
