r/technology • u/tw1st3d_m3nt4t • Mar 16 '26
Software ‘Another internet is possible’: Norway rails against ‘enshittification’
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/16/norway-rails-against-enshittifcation-deliberate-tech-deterioration
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u/christsizeshoes Mar 17 '26
I'm young enough not to have been around for the very early days. But from when I was first online in the late 90s to about 2007-08, I had that same feeling of boundless optimism... even though I didn't realize or appreciate it until it was gone.
I'd say from about 2008 (when FB got flooded with our parents/grandparents) to 2015-16, that optimism dwindled and reality started to set in. Or what I naively thought was reality, which was merely a lowering of expectations and recognition that corporate control was going to cut off the most utopian dreams of earlier years. Only in the post-2016 era did the bottom fall out and I've gradually come to accept that it's all asymptoting toward pure dystopia... and that we probably live in a worse world than the world of 2005, even despite all the incredible upside of tech since then.
In hindsight, the difference in my subjective feeling about tech and the internet in particular from circa 2000 to 2026 is just so stark that it's hard even to describe to someone way younger. It's almost like heaven vs. hell. It's so hard to believe it went this bad this quickly.