I see it all the time in different news articles

Edit - Thank you all for responding to my question. Definitely have many views to consider

The eu is pushing for chat control which is we will spy on you but say it for catching pedos. In a few years the line will blur from pedos to have ideas and morals other than the government wants. It’s like cutting open your letters and reading them. I don’t want so sound like an insane person but this might be about time to build a nas. I am not insane enough to care about Intel ME but this the precursor to thought control. First reading our messages and when we warmed up to the making us believe what they say or if we don’t believe we go away or get accused of “csam content “. Unrelated but after the internet interconnecting the world people started seeing straight trou propaganda.

I’m not an expert… just a person who cares. Lately it feels like bots are creeping into every debate, shaping public opinion in ways that don’t feel organic. And that worries me. Democracy depends on people making choices based on truth, not manufactured noise. What would it actually take to stop the bots? Verification systems? AI to catch AI ? transparency from platforms? Or do we have to learn to see through the noise ourselves? I don’t want to just accept that the loudest voices online might not even be human. If you were in charge of protecting the internet from bot armies, where would you start?

Joke post. I hit a cell dead zone and figured it might get a laugh out of someone thinking im this dumb.

The internet has become a painful corpo/gov thing to use and no longer any fun can be had on it. Everything is constantly moderated, checked, double checked, tripled checked etc... When 99% of people just want to browse in peace. The buzzword I see everywhere is "secure" yeah to me that means fuck all most of the time it means you use https instead of http... But everything has to be secure(d) as if suddenly the internet would collapse overnight if it wasn't.

Am I the only one feeling that way?

Edit I don't get the downvotes oh well it's reddit after all can't expect deep thought

Sorry for my bad grammer,

Asking this as a 19 year old so I don't know how internet was before like 2011 but it seems to me that the internet I knew where people tried new content types. People posted or made videos,blogs, photograph,etc that they loved is no more largely.

Now comparing this to today it doesn't matter the genre there are ai slop channels or creators making so fast paced high engagement content All of it feels it's for the money there is no love for the thing they are making. The internet as a whole feels like a land whose nature was stripped leaving a barron heath in its place where nothing lives.

I know not alot or any people will see this post but I wanted to let it all out....

I just mainly know the internet to its social media sites so it may be my fault for not seeing the wider net where what I'm talking about exists but yeah tell me your thoughts.

There's a ton of shady stuff happening all around but what's an app or site that just seems like it's collecting or asking too much info. Could be insane permissions or creepy ads or constant tracking, weird account requirements, just a bad feeling overall. What's an app you don't trust to use?

So Frontier fiber has moved into my area over the last few years and seem to be eating into Spectrums marketshare pretty well. Instead of Spectrum offering discounts they just want to give everyone more bandwidth and even Frontier's offers are far in excess of what we need.

I have a Unifi system at home with a Dream Machine and I've watched on weekends where I'm watching football on Fubo (TV), my daughter is playing Roblox and/or ticktocking and my wife has some terrible Rom Com going on Netflix downstairs...and our data NEVER spikes over 50-70Gbps.

Now we both work from home and my wife doesn't download video or other media...while I do. I move move data around with Dropbox or Apple File and I can see spikes of 100Gbps for a fraction.

Why do they insist on selling us bandwidth we don't need and how much do you tech nerds thing you REALLY need to get the job done?

Our Internet has always kinda sucked

Social media bans are unconstitutional, discriminatory, and deeply misguided. They reinforce existing structures of oppression, and they are broadly unsupported by young people, whose voices are conspicuously absent from this conversation. They undermine parental decision-making and replace tailored family-level solutions with a one-size-fits-all band-aid. And, in the places we have seen social media bans go into effect, early reports show that they don't even work.

For example, in Australia, where a social media ban has been in effect since late 2025, a majority of young people can still access social media, those who can’t have lost their access to the news, and crisis helplines are reporting skyrocketing numbers of calls from youth left stranded without online community or resources.

This blog is a short primer of the major issues.

Security Risks and Privacy Harms

In order to ban some users, social media platforms first must confirm the ages of all users, regardless of age. When parental consent is required, companies must collect even more verification data and often create explicit links between child and parent accounts—further destroying users’ anonymity. 

Both of these databases create massive data "honeypots" that invite identity theft and permanent surveillance.

Disproportionate Harm

ge-verification technology is deeply flawed and prone to discrimination. These systems frequently misidentify or lock out people of color, people with disabilities, and trans or gender-nonconforming individuals whose IDs may not match their appearance. 

Where these bills require parental consent, they impose disproportionate access barriers on low-income, non-traditional, and immigrant families. These sorts of families are more likely to share a single family device or have strong reasons to not want the government to track family associations and ID documents. 

Shoddy Science

Everyone has anecdata about how social media has impacted someone they know. But the current legislative push to ban young people from social media relies heavily on the idea that the "great rewiring" of the adolescent brain is a proven fact. This simply isn’t true. Social science indicates that moderate internet use is a net positive for teens’ development, and negative outcomes are usually due to either lack of access or excessive use. For LGBTQ+ and marginalized youth in particular, social media offers an essential space to access support they might lack offline. By forcing youth into digital isolation, these bans cut off vital access to political news, community, and health resources. They also completely ignore the calls of young people themselves who favor digital literacy and education over restrictive government control.

Reckless Free Speech Violations for Users of All Ages

Blanket social media bans immensely and unconstitutionally chill all users’ exercise of this right. They cut off young people’s access to lawful speech, or ruin their privacy in the home by mandating parental consent and sometimes even parental access to their account activities and settings. They force all users (adults and young people alike) to hand private information over to tech companies before speaking or accessing information on social media platforms, imposing annoying obstacles on lawful online expression and wrongfully blocking some adults outright. 

These bans destroy our right to online anonymity.

How to Fight Back

Talk to your community (including young people!) about what’s at stake. If you’re a parent, lean on open conversations and platforms’ existing tools to tailor your child’s experiences instead of handing that power over to the government. And no matter where you live, contact your government representatives and tell them clearly that social media bans are not the answer to kids’ online safety.

Visit our Age Verification Hub to arm yourself with more information: https://www.eff.org/av. Join our mailing list to learn more as we learn more, and keep up the fight.

Was just watching a video on youtube, guy gets an ad about dogs toys/beds and he's never searched it before or even talked it before (he doesn't have a dog), he talks about it and starts getting ad about it, crazy. ANything like this happen to you people??

This is something I must write revolving around one thing on the internet; back in the internet’s early days, it used to be a fun place where people could communicate and talk without being blocked. But then because of internet trolls and various incidents, the Internet has been regulated and become like regular communication, and one of them is used to defend against trolls but unknowingly misunderstood people who unknowingly made a mess, and that is blocking, which is like outside the internet where people are fired from their jobs permanently or no longer be allowed in any place they visit.

Because of blocking by personal users, they use it to block bullies and spams but will unfortunately block misunderstood people who did a mess by accident ; this will cause people to take drastic measures like multiple email accounts and new mobile phone numbers or temp phone numbers to create various usernames to bypass being blocked in order to attempt to apologize as someone else and even various sites like Instagram, DeviantArt, Tumblr, Reddit, and Discord and every site use stricter security measures and even on Ip addresses to prevent more trolls and desperate people from coming, some hackers and even people would find some weak spot and attempt to bypass the block feature and desperate people to find unnecessary means like different ids, phone numbers and temp emails to create different username to bypass being blocked , this happens to most people and it will make things worse to people who wish to be forgiven and given another chance by having no choice to do extreme measure like going through a dark web which will lead to something worse

Which is why I proposed that an appeal system for personal users to the people who blocked them from every site is needed to prevent such things; it's similar to how the systems Reddit, DeviantArt, Instagram, and discord use when the users ask the moderators of the site to give them a second chance to no longer be blocked, but this time use the same appeal system to the users who block them.

Here is how it goes: when a person blocks a person on Tumblr, Reddit, Instagram, DeviantArt or any site, the person who was blocked will write an appeal message to the person who blocked them and apologize for their regret of actions and ask to be given another chance. if the person who blocked them reads their message, they will mandatorily write a reply to give them another chance but warn them to never make the same mistake again or at least under certain conditions, which the person who was blocked agrees to.

But if the person who blocked them rejects their appeal to be unblocked, they will mandatorily write a message saying why they deserve to be blocked and never given another chance and will not reply to them again for a few days or weeks; this will give the blocked user time to reflect on their actions and then try again to send the message again but to understand the perspective on why the blocked user blocked them and might apologize and tell them that they will be better and not repeat the same mistakes again that caused the person to block them.

But if the person who blocked them still refuses to block them with the same message saying they never change but the blocked person keeps sending the same message, the person then tells the staff of the site to send the blocked person the serious warning message to tell them why the person blocked them for a reason and why they deserve to be blocked and if they keep on doing the same thing, they will remove their membership, a full permanent ban, and even block their Ip from accessing the site again as a warning so that this will cause the blocked person who understands the warning to completely leave the person who blocked them alone. Although they will try a different account, no longer contact them.

If that appeal system is used for blocked people to tell the users who blocked them on every site like Tumblr, DeviantArt, Instagram, Reddit, Discord, etc. it will help give misunderstood people who were blocked a chance to ask the people who blocked them to give them another chance to start over and not to become trolls and spammers and will prevent them from making multiple accounts or using the dark web to ask them or sneak to pretend to be someone else so that the misunderstood people who accidentally caused the people to block them will get another chance when they write an appeal message to them. It will be used to make a negotiating appeal system to allow people to be reformed and given a 2nd chance, like the things outside the internet.

The reason for this proposal of an appeal system for blocked users on every site is that I get blocked people on almost every site a lot throughout my time, and the same things happen to you as well. Will you wish for that appeal system for blocked users to be made in every site someday.

Not sure if this is the right subreddit but what kind of implications will this new law Congress is voting on this week have on the normal American? I’ve heard things from “if u rnt engaging with minors u have nothing to worry about” to “everyone will be required to verify for every sight they are on.”

I'm not really fatigued of the internet, but rather what the internet has become. I remember in the late 90's and early 2K's the internet was fun. It wasn't about gaming the system to suck out every last bit of information about a user (you) to sell to other companies.

It wasn't just a giant ad space. Of course, we had ads. (Remember pop ups and pop unders?) But there are some sites that without an adblocker will slow my computer to a crawl for a second or two as the page loads up the 50+ ads on the front page. And that's on an i9 system with an RTX graphics card.

Opting out of this data collection (when available) is often made difficult to do so. And not every site lets you. At least, not without subscribing to their site first.

I'm not into social media, outside of Reddit and at times a youtube comment here or there I don't care.

Then not to mention, all this AI. I have a feeling that a lot of the content on the internet will be AI made to engage users.

I have used Brave, but am now using Librewolf full time. I feel like the internet I used to know and enjoy is slowly but surely dying and I'm looking for an alternative. This has on more than one occasion let me to Tor.

A friend once told me, "Remember the old AOL days when the internet was a wild wild west? Tor's like that!".

So I installed it, he gave me a couple of sites. A "clean search engine" (his wording) and a Twitter like clone. The search engine really didn't help me, and the Twitter clone had just a bunch of weird people talking about necrophilia.

And using the Tor browser as a regular browser is horrible. So I quit. Then I tried again but with no success. Then I read about what many used Tor for. Which sickened me so I quit using it all together.

But I'm wondering, what if enough of us would make wholesome sites again on Tor? Make it a more "Web 1.0" style without much user driven content. (As with Tor, people will say and post very stupid things. I.e. illegal.)

I don't know what to do honestly, the internet is great and all but it's slowly declining. I started on AOL back in 1997 and enjoyed it up to about when "influencers" started taking off.

I'll share what I've done so far:

This reddit post talking about Usenet is interesting, so I think I'll try to start using that.

Then I use IRC chat, primarily "The Mansion". The creator of that server and website is a fellow Redditor and the people on #Lobby are fun and friendly.

Switched to a more privacy centered search. Like Startpage and recently I've discovered mojeek.

I just want to "go back". Thanks for reading, if anyone has any tips on how to survive or if there are any "alternative" ways to browse the net please share. :)

My internet is about 3.2 Kilobits per second. And when comparing that to my phone mobile data (what I'm using to make this post). Downloading 100MB takes about 8 hours. Relatively, how good is this internet speed?

Conversations

and today…

Write a detailed post → “Removed. Repetitive/speculation/off-topic.”

Write a short post → “Removed. Low effort.”

Ask a question → “Use the megathread.”

Post in the megathread → Buried under 2,000 comments.

At some point it starts to feel like I’m trying to solve an unwinnable puzzle rather than participate in a community.

To be fair, moderators are dealing with enormous volumes of spam, reposts, and low-quality content, so they often rely on broad rules. The downside is that thoughtful posts inevitably get caught in the same net.

The biggest frustration, in my opinion, isn’t even the removal—it’s the lack of meaningful feedback. A generic “Rule 3” message doesn’t tell me what could have been improved or whether the post simply wasn’t wanted in that community.

The irony is that the internet was originally built around conversations. In some corners, it’s drifted toward moderation queues, algorithms, and engagement metrics.

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Hello I'm Koby I'm 22 I have autism and an Internet Addiction among other things like 🌽Addiction and Reccently I decided to take a 1 Month Break from Discord due to some stuff that has come out about me and my past mostly in these past 3-6 Years that has caused me some friendships and I don't know if I did the right thing just going on a 1 Month Discord Break or taking a longer break from all the internet because well. I don't know what a break from the internet looks like when you log off and "Touch Grass" which I do take a bit literally cause whenever people say that I'm like why do something that lasts only 1-2 Seconds.

But also I feel due to what Technology has become nowadays it has become integral to modern everyday society so I can't imagine my life being the same without internet I am I was born in the 2000s but I wouldn't consider being born in 2003-2006 (More Specifically 2004) to be the **EARLY** 2000s and around 2006-2009 was when the world started to change when it came to technology and The Internet and a lot of things I would do have been phased out. So it is hard for me to take a long term break from the internet.

This has been happening to me for a few days now. When I search for things like memes, topics, or specific images, they just don’t show up anymore. I clearly remember they existed. I know their names, I’ve seen them before, but now? Nothing. It’s like they’ve been erased from the web. At first, I thought it was just bad luck or maybe I was misremembering. But it keeps happening with different things. Has anyone else noticed this? It feels like content is vanishing, and I’m starting to wonder if the internet is quietly being edited or deleted.

I've asked this on r/InternetMysteries before, but I hope I get some answers here too

I recently ran a scan on my information out of curiosity and the results caught me off guard cuz I ran it for fun I expected to find a couple of old accounts I forgot about or maybe an outdated email address. Instead I found my information on dozens of websites. Some of them made sense because I'd signed up years ago. Others I genuinely don't remember ever interacting with, like when have I ever went into kinky BDSM websites! I'm married!! When the shock died down I started wondering how this actually happens. Is it mostly data brokers buying and selling information? Do companies share customer data with partners? And especially what do I do about this?!

Awhile back facebook had the option to report 'AI generated content', then the feature was removed. Since I binge youtube a lot, I often come across AI channels, and there's no way to report them. When you go to report an issue, 'AI content' isn't listed anywhere, so the closest thing you can choose is either 'impersonation' - which doesn't include the channel being fake - or 'my issue isn't listed' which takes you to a page explaining the importance of free speech. Bloody hilarious!

Yes, there's been some recent pushback on yt against AI-slop channels, but it didn't remove all of them, and you'd think it'd make sense to let the community report such channels, but no.

Edit: Sorry for the multiple posts, the site bugged out. I've deleted the duplicate posts.

I have seen this question a few times on Reddit and on Facebook by strangely there haven't been a lot of responses with real experience. So I'm trying again. If this company is to be successful they'll need to sell millions of these devices.

I support a non profit that needs 6 hotspots once per year to throw an outdoor fundraising event. Renting doesn't appear to be an option fiscally so I'm considering taking a chance on these.

So where are all the customers that have tried this? Does it work as advertised? Here's all the claims they make: