There's a whole lot going towards ending the web as we know it.

Censorship, consolidation, AI, greed, to name a few.

Why, I couldn't even get into the article before it faded into a paywall.

I get people want to be paid but splashing cash on every page is not the internet as I knew it.

Getting to this article from a social site(Lemmy) was also not how I knew it, that's the consolidation part. After MySpace, in the era of Facebook pages it started. Less personal websites, less websites in general, just get everything from Facebook and Reddit.

And sure, AI is also going to water down content, with prompts written by cheap corporate lackeys that we will still have to pay subs for after a social site sends us there.

And then there's also the censorship and laws coming out to restrict what's available. First to protect the children while they are young, then more to “protect” them as they get older, and eventually they will know nothing but state approved media.

To quote the article,

It’s the End of the Web as We Know It.

And I’m old and bitter about it. It had good promise, but enshittification took hold as was inevitable.