Not that long ago, the internet felt decentralized and human. Search engines like Yahoo and Google would highlight personal blogs, niche forums, and independent websites—each with its own voice, design, and perspective.
That experience has been fading for a long time. Google is a big part of the reason why. Search results are less about discovering authentic content and more about ad revenue, engagement, and promoting Google’s own business. Now, you’re more likely to find SEO content farms, Reddit threads, and—of course—Google’s often laughably wrong AI summaries. Google’s algorithm, which favors “fresh” content, ensures that constantly updated platforms like Reddit are promoted over static websites like personal blogs, no matter how thoughtful or relevant the older content was. This has also led to link rot and knowledge erosion, as many older sites shut down or remove “old” content to improve their ranking.
Individual websites aren’t gone—I mean, this is one. But they don’t get organic web traffic like they did in the past. That’s largely due to how big tech has monetized the web and controlled access. It’s unfortunate, because in the early days the internet felt like it had democratized publishing and broadcasting. Personal webhosting was affordable, HTML wasn’t that hard to learn, and sites had regular visitors. I miss those heady days when a random blog could reach thousands. Big tech has ascertained corporate ownership and monetized our social outreach.