What do you miss about the Old Net?

For those who used the internet pre-2009 what are some things you miss about the old net?

There’s a lot for me but the big ones is I hate algorithms, and I hate how everything turned into monetization. You cannot do anything without “But will it make me money though?”

On Sep 17, 2026, Xyphien said:

For those who used the internet pre-2009 what are some things you miss about the old net?

There’s a lot for me but the big ones is I hate algorithms, and I hate how everything turned into monetization. You cannot do anything without “But will it make me money though?”

I definitely agree about the algorithms and monetisation. I think what I miss most though is when the internet actually felt SOCIAL 😂 You’d log onto MSN, forums or a chatroom and actually talk to people. You recognised usernames, had running jokes and genuinely got to know people.

I miss how unpolished it was too 🤣 Ridiculous usernames, chaotic MySpace/Bebo profiles, forum signatures and MSN statuses that were very obviously aimed at one particular person. Nobody cared about reach, engagement or turning everything into “content”. We were just online having a laugh.

We’re probably more connected now than we’ve ever been, yet somehow the old internet felt more personal 🤷🏼‍♀️♡

Limewire 🤣

Most of all, the fact that it was fundamentally an “Internet of Discovery”: a place to get to know new people.

These days, it’s more of an “Internet of Familiarity”: a place to keep talking to the people you already know. Which is certainly useful, but I do wish it didn’t dominate!

On Sep 17, 2026, Gizmo said:

Limewire 🤣

Limewire is still around actually I found that out the other day lol. But it’s just like your typical file sharing site now similar to Google Drive. I miss when forums were the most popular way of communicating with people. Thankfully there’s still people like us keeping them alive and more people are starting to look for Discord and Reddit alternatives so there’s hope that many more people will flock over to forums again.

Honestly speaking, at that time internet was very much different. There weren't a lot of sites. Despite that, there was still a significant number of sites during that era. People mostly used to surf the internet just for fun. However, now things have changed a lot. Nowadays people are using the internet for many different reasons and making money is certainly one of them. At that one, there weren't many freelancing websites. However, now you can find many of them.

I miss when the internet is not controlled by any algorithms. So, you can still discover things organically. Now, everything is monetized and it has lost its fun unlike before.

One thing that I really loved about how the internet in the early days was that it was not wired to be a part of human lives that we have to live in the internet as we are doing now. People just had to visit the internet and leave. That's what I genuinely miss the old internet.

I wish there weren’t so many haters on social media; I’d like people to use social media to get to know one another rather than to fuel hatred—in other words, to use social media for what it’s actually meant for.

I miss when the internet felt more like a place to explore than a business trying to sell you something. You could stumble upon random blogs, niche forums, and weird little websites without an algorithm deciding what you should see.

On Oct 29, 2026, TheGhostWhoStayed said:

I miss when the internet felt more like a place to explore than a business trying to sell you something. You could stumble upon random blogs, niche forums, and weird little websites without an algorithm deciding what you should see.

Someone compared the old internet to a library and the current a store, good comparison I thought.