If you had a time machine that could set the internet back to what it was like in a certain era, when would that be?

2000, when we were all chatting through AIM and Napster had just hit the mainstream. Unlimited, above-board piracy.

The late 90s or maybe the early 00s Probably pre-Google (so pre-1998) but maybe in their earliest days. Definitely pre YouTube and pre Facebook (so pre-2004). It's been pretty much all downhill since then.

The problem isn't the internet, the problem is Capitalism, that used internet to turn more suffering into money. The problem is, there was never that magical time when everything was great, it's a fallacious thinking. It also applies to the internet.
The only path to anything positive is progress, not trying to go back to imaginary times that never existed.

I would set it back to the early to mid-90s, when I first experienced it...

Am I one of those old fart trying to say it was better in the good old times? Yes, and no.

Back then the Internet was limited, it was hacked together and there was no professionally designed website with pretty animations, security was... not much, there was no mobile web and, as a matter of fact, no 'app' at all since smartphones were not yet a thing. There was not even script languages like Javascript or PHP to develop all those shit... amazing dynamic features we're now surrounded with. So, yeah, it was limited. But...

There also was also no social media, no monetizing, no tracking, no corporate mafia-like CEOs trying to took us hostage or to milk us to death, and hands in hands with their politicians friends, trying their worst at transforming our free societies into some fascist dystopia that if they succeed (and it looks like they could) will make look all the XX century monstrosities mere child-play.

There were already evil corporations and assholes politicians back then, sure, but for the most part the Internet was people, not businesses. And it was not populated by those armies of braindead, tantrum-obsessed and hysterical morons we now consider the normal 'user'.

Trolls were already a thing, obviously, but there were not millions of them waiting to be mobilized through social media like a good army of haters ready to go stampede into oblivion anything nice or daring anyone could be willing to do. It was ok to not be nice, to not be liked, and to take risks.

I mean, it was actual people with their qualities and flaws, people that were willing to share content they were interested in and to discuss it. People that were not expecting to make a fucking cent out of every single fart they would make online. Nor to gain any Likes...

So, yeah it was rougher, so much more limited and a lot less cool. It was also a lot less polite. But it was so much more free and less full of shit.

(end of that old fart rant, promise)

Back to the days when there were only a few TLDs... like .net .org .com. I'd then campaign for a law that disallowed any income-seeking behavior ... adverts, tracking, cookies, porn, scams, promotion, surveillance ... everywhere EXCEPT .com. Break that law, you lose your business and your servers, the CEO does serious time in jail, and noone working for that company is allowed back on the net anywhere until forever.

I wouldn't. I'd leave things at now.

I think that the Internet has pretty much monotonically improved over time. Oh, sure, there are some things that I miss, but overall? Today wins solidly. Today:

• Bandwidth is much higher.
• Availability is much more widespread.
• Security is a lot better in most respects. Used to be most traffic on the Internet wasn't encrypted.
• Flash and ActiveX are gone on the Web.
• IPv6 is widely available, alleviating address constraints.
• Email spam is more or less solved, though it does make running your own mail server today a pain.
• Open source is a lot more widespread and mainstream.
• I'd say that the reliability of a lot of online services is better.
• The widespread use of containerization and VMs has dramatically reduced the cost of having a small server in a datacenter.
• GOG and Steam are pretty amazing ways to buy video games. The selection is inexpensive, readily available, and ludicrously vast.
• Ditto for Amazon compared to brick-and-mortar plus mail order.

For me personally it was from 2010-2016. It might have just been that I was younger and didn’t care as much what was going on in the world but I still felt like the world was improving. Technology felt like it was making the world better without being overly bombarded with algorithms and ads. A lot of early streaming services were still very affordable and actually good. Online multiplayer games were a great time to play without every game feeling like you need to play full time to keep up with the meta. Sure Russia invaded crimea in that time, and the U.S. was bombing children in the Middle East but compared to today it felt like the world was mostly at peace.

I was just thinking of YTMND today, and I'd like to go back to that internet.

I never got to experience the BBS systems or things like Usenet. Would love to go live in that era!

20 years before the internet would suit me just fine.

If I had my way, the Internet never would have existed. Despite the positives, I feel it's done more harm than good. It had the capacity to do great things and yet we used it to spread misinformation and evil. There is no benefit worth the evil that's happened due to giving everyone a voice. "Freedom" doesnt come from some obnoxious cunt ranting from their $80,000 truck drivers seat. Burn them, burn them now and let's move forward.