The internet was wild before social media but somehow the weird stuff remained fringe before recommendation algorithms and the perverse incentives that emerged from recommendation algorithms and content creation meant that feeds became an on ramp to all kinds of nasty things
I'm not exactly a greybeard but I remember when happy slapping was a viral phenomenon but that seems pretty tame by comparison these days
4chan is a synecdoche representing all those fringe ~'social media' substitute sites; they'll soon be common knowledge in Aus, at least among the U16s..
Eh, not really. I'd consider myself a greybeard (not literally, but I am online since 90s) and everything is so much tamer now. It wasn't unusual to find open, unprotected and unencrypted sites with really, really weird stuff - that kind you only see on darknet today. Over the decades, everything became mild, normal, mainstream - which is IMHO bad and I blame the algorithms.
The internet was wild before social media but somehow the weird stuff remained fringe before recommendation algorithms and the perverse incentives that emerged from recommendation algorithms and content creation meant that feeds became an on ramp to all kinds of nasty things
I'm not exactly a greybeard but I remember when happy slapping was a viral phenomenon but that seems pretty tame by comparison these days