When I was growing up the internet was a place to be liberated from the world say what you want to say, be whoever you want and form genuine communities with shared interests. Now the internet feels like a tool to enslave the mind with identity echo chambers and any deviation leads you to being banned and blocked shunned and silenced within a void that is inescapable. Novel unique websites coded manually by hobbyists running servers for free in the commons allowing people access to the free flow of information under the banner of “information should be free” has largely gone away with corpratisation. I miss the days when the internet was populated largely by nerds aiming to make a better world not this controlled censored hell hole of profiteering.
I get what you mean, but I also feel like the fediverse has given many of us a return to some of the freedoms and feelings of the early internet.
I’m writing this from an instance I admin, an instance that exists, specifically to make a better world for queer and gender diverse folk. We prioritise minority safety over “federate with everyone”, but that freedom to exist without institutionalised transphobia being ignored like it is on most social media platforms, with the ability for us to exist and communicate without being dogpiled by haters, and to actively remove the bigots, that is a freedom I haven’t felt in a long time!