It seems a cliche to hear that the Internet is dead now, but I have come to realize that statement really is true. What we knew as the Internet has been taken over by the corporations and tech giants. Many people talk about the “dead Internet” or the “death of the Internet,” but what do I mean? I mean this: the Internet that we knew back from the late 90s through the 2000s is now just an historical footnote. The Internet today is controlled by large corporations, and especially the tech giants—Google, Meta, Apple, Amazon, and X (or whatever Elon Musk is calling Twitter today). The idea that anyone could throw up a website, start creating content or selling a product and make money is just not real anymore.

Why is this? A lot of people have written about this, so it is not a startling revelation that the tech bros have put a stranglehold on the Internet by controlling what people see. They have done everything they can to keep users within their walled gardens, their silos of “information,” for one reason: to make obscene amounts of money.

Their algorithms feed you what they want you to see, not what you want. And that is one way they make their money, by targeted ads. The other way is to track literally everything you do, so they can sell that money to anyone who will pay—from sketchy corporations to our own government.

Make no mistake: money and greed killed the Internet. It did not turn into this utopia of information, where democracy flourished. Instead, it has turned into this slick, artificially controlled place where oligarchs decide what you see and even influence what you think. People who do not have our best interests at heart, but their own.

And that makes me very sad. I remember the Internet in its early days, and the excitement of discovering new things to see, and even getting out there myself. Now I am just angry when I see the shit that is forced on us. And that makes me even more sad.

But I think I have found a place where I see hope. That place is known as the Fediverse. I’ll write more about this in the coming weeks, but basically the Fediverse is a peek into what the Internet used to be, not what it is now.

The Fediverse is really a collection of servers that are usually free, use open source software and not owned by any corporation. They usually have communities that have built up around them, and are policed by themselves—their own community—rather than some corporation.

The best part is that these servers talk to each other, letting you have account on one server, such as a Mastodon server, and follow a user on another server. You choose who to follow, not someone else. You see the information you want, from across all the servers that are talking to each other. This is what some people are calling the “social web,” as opposed to the “social media” that we have come to despise.

Why does this give me hope? Because Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or Google are not controlling what I see. I am. And so can you. The Fediverse is open and raw, with all of the flaws that the Internet had in the early days. And that is the way I like it.

Marc #deadinternet #fighttheoligarchs #socialmedia #socialweb #fediverse

I cancelled all my social media accounts due to privacy concerns, and have never been happier.

What I Wanted From Social Media

I originally got on MySpace (yeah, I know), and then Facebook just to keep up with friends and family. Then I got on Twitter and Instagram for fun. I even got on Tumblr for the pics. It was great.

Then I started seeing them as ways to advertise my writing. I had pages for my various websites, Instagram accounts, the works. I was using tools to manage my online posts, tracking engagement, etc.

Still, over time I stopped being active on Facebook and Twitter, and even on Instagram and Tumblr. This really hit during the 2016 election, and I never really went back. When Threads came out, I got on there and actually was pretty active. It was a good way to connect with people who had the same general mindset, culturally and politically.

Why I Left

Last year, I started reading more about what all the tech giants were doing with the data they were collecting on all of us—especially Meta and Google. You know the saying… “when a product is free, YOU are the product…” Well, you better believe it. These people are making billions of dollars from everything we post, from emails to social media comments to our stored contacts.

And they are doing this without our real permission. Yes, they include some misleading comments in their Privacy Policy and Terms, but when was the last time you really read and understand those? These corporations count on that—and take advantage of it.

On top of the gross hypocrisy of the tech giants, there is the fact that social media had just become a cesspool pool of hatred and misinformation. There has been a great deal written about that fact, and how it is tearing this country apart, so I really don’t need to go through it here. I just decided that I didn’t need that toxicity in my life anymore.

And now that Trump 2.0 has taken office, you see the tech giants bending the knee to him to the point where Meta has said outright that they were disbanding their fact-checking group and forcing users to see more political content. (Never mind that since Elon Musk bought Twitter, he has turned it into a haven for right wing extremism and hatred).

It is just not worth it.

What Next?

I dunno. As much as I want to be lured back in to draw people to my writing, I have to stick to my decision that if I was going to start writing again, it would don’t be to make money or stress about how many people read what I write.

I do miss updates from family and friends, but if I was being honest… I was not really reading that much about them on social media anyway. I’m really trying to stay with my goal of simply contacting people directly. Even if that means texting, I want to stay in touch with the people I care about the old fashioned way—not through something where Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk or Alphabet, Inc make billions off of me.

So I have cancelled the social media accounts that I could. My next step is to get rid of my Google accounts. I have cancelled the few that I had, with the exception of one main one. That is taking much more effort, but I will get there eventually. I’ve just had it, and am doing my very small part to give these assholes the finger.

Marc #socialmedia #privacy #tech

(This was originally published on Medium on February 10, 2025).