The internet used to be fun...

I am very fortunate to have grown up in the 90s,

that’s when the whole notion of the internet really started taking off. If you’ve ever caught the show Halt and Catch Fire, the last season kind of captures some of the fun that was being had with the early days with the internet and world wide web. The early days of the WWW were filled with all sorts of colorful, yet basic web pages, crude graphics and images, and MIDI sequences playing songs in the background of some pages.

The internet was where I eventually found myself exploring more as a teen… before I had my own dial-up internet - for you zoomers, that means we got the internet over the phone lines, yes the physical ones, I used a portal hosted by my local library. This allowed me to connect at the blistering speeds of 2400 baud and access a terminal shell that allowed me to use a text web browser called Lynx (it’s still around), get email with Pine, browse newsgroups on Usnet, and look at bulletin board services (think message boards). This stuff was free… yes, free. It was a wealth of data and information freely available to use and all it cost was your phone line being taken up while you were ‘online’. A few years later, I had a little money of my own, and I got a better modem (thats the thing in my computer that dialed in to the network connection) as well as my own internet service. This granted me faster speeds, up to 28Kbps. I could download video and higher resolution pictures - you can imagine what most of that was, I was 17 at the time… and I got more and more exposed to cool stuff on the web, as well as the internet. One of those things that really ended up consuming a HUGE amount of my time was IRC.

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a communications protocol that enables real-time text chats with other clients logged into servers across the internet. This was where I really became a digital citizen… I spent hours every night talking to people all over the world, sharing stories about our daily lives, talking about current events around the world, and generally having a grand old time enjoying the community of others around the world. This was the thing about the internet that I was most fascinated with. I could talk to people in a way that was more comfortable than face-to-face or over the phone. Communication with my voice has always been a challenge… because of my emotional dysregulation issues, speaking in a way that is coherent to allistics requires a great deal of effort on my part. Small talk is lost on me. I simply want to communicate!!

IRC was my connection to the world and to others… to my family, it seemed like an addiction, but they didn’t understand me - hell, the family I have left still don’t. They didn’t understand that I was making emotional connections with people and having real, meaningful conversations with perfect strangers - since it wasn’t face-to-face, for them, it wasn’t real and it wasn’t healthy. I should also point out that I had friends IRL that I spent time with, I even had a girlfriend (Jamie, I’m sorry about how it ended). I spent plenty of time going to the mall, the movies, record and book stores, discovering this coffee place called Starbucks… so I was, by all accounts having a somewhat “normal” social life outside of the internet. I guess that since I had that going for me, my grandparents didn’t make too much fuss… also, since I would only get online after 21:00 so I wouldn’t be hogging their phone line, they kinda gave me some grace.

For a few years, IRC was my main mode of communication… then I upgraded myself to AOL. Again, for you younger folks America Online was probably THE internet service to have. It offered a fully-integrated online experience with news, web search, shopping, email, aaaaaand… chat rooms. I spent more and more time in AOL chats and using their instant messaging service for more personal real-time communications. The instant messaging became so popular that it was AOL’s frontline service for several decades. AIM was freely available starting in the late ’90s until its eventual demise some years back… as long as you didn’t mind ads… and that’s where I think things started to go south with the internet. The monetization of being online and using basic services was probably the very beginning of the enshittification of the internet.

(Quick tangent) Now, I’m not dumb,

and I know that these services and tools come with a real cost. It’s not all freely available for unlimited use. Companies that sought to make services more broadly available had to find a way to cover the costs that go along with that, and also be able to turn a profit. Sure, there are still lots of free things available on the internet and the web (although that is rapidly diminishing); however, for the most-used services people are failing to see (or know and don’t care) that they have become human chattel to the operators of these “free” services, like social media - by being fed a constant stream of advertising… to keep you engaged, they devised algorithms that keep that dopamine kick going for hours… while shoving an ad into your face every few swipes or every few minutes. They even devised ad algorithms that update the kinds of products and services being shown based on how you engage or interact with content. Social media was supposed to be a lot like IRC and BBSes of the early days - but integrated into a single platform of communication tools that are mostly built on or around freely available technologies or protocols. The use of these platforms is not free - nowhere near that. The overhead costs for platforms like Facebook or Twitter even in early days, was considerable… sure, folks like Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey had plenty of capital investment, so money wasn’t an issue… but it wasn’t sustainable, and investors wanted a return on their shares. So, the platforms turned to advertising, silly games that included microtransactions to accelerate success, and monetizing the rapidly growing lake of user data that could be used for almost anything.

On social media… you aren’t a user… you are a product.

It was that realization that made me start to reject social media… all of these platforms started out with noble and perhaps even honest intentions (Google even had a rule at one point: “Don’t be evil.”). However, as userbases grew, and the investors wanted to see profits… they became something else. Something not noble… something not good. They started rolling out user agreements that became longer and more complicated to read - knowing full well most wouldn’t care and would just skip to the end and accept, and thus sealing their fate. It’s akin to selling your soul to the Devil.

Then… we have the issue of minors. Yeah, social media is fun and cool because you can still talk to your friends outside school and whatnot. It’s a vast digital playground for them. Yet, there’s little parental supervision or regulation - things start happening, bullying becomes an issue, sexting becomes a sex crime, sick people start grooming kids so they can take advantage… it becomes a very dangerous place, fraught with all sorts of legal issues for these companies. So, what is a multi-billion dollar company peddling a “free” service to users in exchange for monetizing their every move on them to do?

Well, to satisfy the government (who really doesn’t give a shit, since a lot of them are in the pockets to these services - or their back room partners), they start implementing “age restrictions” and “parental controls” that are such a pain in the ass that a lot of parents just let their kids bypass them to have unfettered access. Because some people can’t be bothered to parent their children, these services become more and more awful. Then, the governments get their asses on their backs and do something drastic - they start requiring proof of age. The EU was the first - using ID or facial verification. The facial verification is quickly bypassed by kids using models from a video game. This becomes even more prevalent when the UK tried to do the same thing. Now, we’re starting to see it domestically in the US.

Which brings me to what led to yet another exhaustive missive from your favourite internet badger…

Discord. Starting in March of 2026 (a few weeks from now as I write this), they are going to require users to submit their government-issued ID or a video of their face to verify their age. Discord says that this is all going to be client-side, and that it will not be a problem… but let’s face it, it is already a problem that we even have to do it. Now, I believe that there is a need for some kind of age verification for things on the internet, but I also have to maintain that one of the most beautiful things about the internet is the fact that we can be afforded some kind of anonymimity. When we start giving or using biometric data or sharing our IDs with companies, it becomes data that can be used for tracking activity. That then turns into a question of user privacy and the fact that we have a constitutional right to our personal privacy.

I am an advocate for privacy and free speech… and the internet was built around both of those ideas. When we start allowing companies to collect this data, it can then be subject to subpoena by the government for whatever investigative reasons they might have. Then they have the ability to see how we are using a service, what our interactions are, our movements over the platform, etc… and even worse, this data could always be subject to a data breach by malicious private or state-sponsored actors. Personally, I have nothing to hide… the most illegal thing I’ve done in life is probably drove home from a party completely drunk - I was young and stupid, and I only ever did it the one time (because I realized that I’d be no better than my dad if I did). Yet, even though I am an open book, I don’t necessarily want to disclose my identity to the whole world. I like having a bit of privacy… even though I have shared selfies out there, so it’s not really hard to figure out who I am. I’m not a controversial figure, and I think thus far I’m a pretty likeable person.

So, I have decided to leave Discord… well, not totally, but I’m only going to use it for messaging the friends I already have.

Now, you may wonder - “why is that such a big deal?” Well… Discord was like reliving my days on IRC and AOL Chat. My entire social network is wrapped up in Discord. My interactions with people I have met in person, as well as the multitudes of acquaintences I’ve made over the last however many years have largely been within Discord. It was a fun place to meme, talk, share ideas, debate, and have a great time. Now, they had to implement these age verification steps… and I don’t agree with them. They claim it’s all client-side, and that no data ever resides on their servers… but I don’t trust it, because I don’t trust companies anymore with this kind of data. There’s been too much made of leaks, compromised servers, and so on that I just don’t feel comfortable with this. It rubs me the wrong way. So, I have to say goodbye to the platform that gave me so much joy. It’s painful… I’m losing a part of myself doing this. I am actively grieving this… even to the point that I wept openly yesterday after leaving a server that has become like a home, the people there, my new chosen family.

It’s been a few days since I made this decision, and it is still a painful thing to comprehend. I still feel disconnected and alone, and I am having to start all over again with things like Matrix and Telegram. It’s a giant pain in the ass, but I know I’ve made the correct choice for myself. There will be those who may see it differently, and that’s alright by me. For me… I just don’t want to be on Discord more than I really have to. Just like with Meta, I closed up my Facebook and Instagram accounts a while back, but I do have a new Meta account that is only for use with the Quest headset I have… and I mostly play VR stuff on my computer, so I’m not using Meta’s junky store or the apps on there. The future of the internet is really in its past, and we should all consider decoupling ourselves from these companies and begin to look at more independent ways to connect with others in this space. Of course, face to face is always the best way, but that’s not always possible or convenient, so the internet is our next best modality for interpersonal communications.

Take a look at what the Fediverse is - Things like Mastodon, Matrix, and Stoat are a few independent alternatives to the bigger commercial platforms, and even better - if you have the means and ability, you can host your own.

Let’s bring the internet back to the people… and let’s make it free and open for everyone, and not a place for financial gain.

Sorry for the rambling, but this is simply a stream of consciousness writing - and there’s not a lot of structure here. Anyway, if you made it to the end, bless your heart and thank you for being awesome enough to stay with me. ❤️

Until next time, critters.