You know, I hadn’t thought about that in a long time. I remember unironically saying things like “I am a citizen of the Internet“. I probably even used the term “netizen “. It did seem like we would form a global community of tech-minded people that transcended borders, and that it would be the future!

I’m probably a little younger than you, as I was on those BBSes throughout my childhood, but definitely not running them!

I did not get access to the Internet until I went to college. I guess I was right at the cusp of the changeover, as during my undergrad, I learned command line telnet, ftp, mail/elm, Usenet news/rn/ten, gopher, and all of the other early protocols. But then, right in the middle of my undergrad, the NCSA Mosaic beta was released, and I spent an entire night following an early HTML tutorial so I could make a webpage to host under my campus profile.

The Internet and web are very, very different from what I thought they would be back then. I hope the fediverse might be closer to our original plan for the Internet as a place for curious individuals to exchange ideas and learn from each other.

100% with you. Watching any kind of congressional hearing that relates to technology is so incredibly frustrating. I was also really happy to see mainstream journalism specifically acknowledge that Reddit is really just a web-enabled version of old newsgroups or discussion boards, and that all the value is provided by users. If only everyone thought that way!

Why would that surprise you? It was people his age who created the Internet and the World Wide Web. (Of course they weren’t that age back then, but you get the idea. :-)

There are fewer Internet-savvy old people, for sure, but when you do find one, they are more likely to be pre-web or web 1.0 “information wants to be free“ types. Younger users may have grown up in a more corporate space with a very different philosophy towards the Internet.

It seems like this could be another PR problem for Reddit if it becomes common knowledge that you effectively cannot edit or delete comments that you have posted. It would also seem to conflict with the European-style “right to be forgotten”.