Was the web an easier place to be in Y2K

[greenberet79]

And as if by magic...

http://www.simplesite.com/makebelieve85

That person is an adult - she's been schooled, she has a job, she can vote...

God help us all.

[Liamh1982]

^ Still not as depressing as 99% of YouTube comments...

[GarryG]

I'm a web based .net developer so I have to say the technologies are much better now, but the commercialism has definitely stifled, and may yet kill off, the freedoms antimony and creativity of the earlier web.

It's more about the money now, and less about the 'Wow, look at this!!!'

A lot of people are saying the 'content' is better. What content is this exactly? The 'packaging' is fancier, there is much more 'filler' but for 'content'... the early web was full of it in easy to load simple pages...

You should see the junk code behind many modern web-sites nowadays! For me it's now all mostly 'filler' with no 'killer'.
Web 1 was all about being slick and simple in order to get the information out as easily and quickly as possible.
Web 2, and up, seem to be all about fancy graphics and junk!

[Rinoa]

I wouldn't say easier, but it was certainly better in my opinion.

The internet just seemed more fun in the late 90s/early 00s. Every man and his dog are online now, but back then not so many people had the internet so it seemed a bit more special.

[Andy L]

I first got internet access at home in 1997 and although it's much better now with reliable home and mobile broadband, vast amounts of content, streaming video/music services etc, I don't like how it's lost its homespun charm and pretty much every major site has become so commercialised. I've browsed with Adblock on for years but if you turn it off, it's quite an eye-opener to see just how many ads companies and website owners expect their users to put up with. I'm not a fan of Facebook and how it's crept across the web to the point where you need to have an account to sign in for completely unrelated websites/services either. Spam is another horrendous problem which never used to be the case!

[station]

Use the internet outside of work related duties once every other week - it's now a playground for twitter/facebook types - I've heard someone call the internet (ie the whole thing) 'Facebook'.
There's a million things wrong with, but like the fact I can order stuff on Amazon and download music. Social networking/celebrity news, you can keep it, I don't need it.

PS. I used BBS's in the early 90's - it took about 30 - 60 minutes to download a floppy (if I remember correctly) on a BBS that had to be connected to a turned on computer all the time. My mum was going ballistic as it was going to cost a fortune, but me and my mate's covered the cost (5 - 10 quid). I used to download 'restricted' stuff about aliens and government conspiracies the feeling I felt at having access to all this information was great. It think it's wasted now.

[bobturnip]

I first connected to the web in '96. It was all going so well until social networking arrived. I would love the world to turn back to the days just before myspace/facebook. It was a much nicer place back then.