Web site can be two words or one. I tend to use it in the former.

Recently, I wrote about taking all of the old Key 23 articles—sifting through anything that may or may not be good—and placing some of the articles here. As I was going through the volumes of records in the database where they were stored, I took a detour into the user table. Back then, when people signed up to Key 23, we always had a field for them to add their web site. Key 23 had hundreds of regular users (people actually registered to the site and not just readers/lurkers)—almost every single one of them had a web site filled in.

These web sites weren't inactive either. There might have been some that were placeholders or contact pages, but the majority of these web sites were blogs: Hundreds of people with their own web sites, writing about whatever they wanted. By registering, adding a web site, and commenting on other blogs, links back to their web site were created, but more importantly, commenting created community. You spent some time talking to someone and eventually found your way over to their web site, learning more about them, and if they had a blog, you eventually added them to your RSS readers, and gave them a nice new shiny spot in the blogroll on your sidebar.

This is no longer the case.

Niche message boards and weblogs survived Friendster and MySpace, but flamed out once Facebook took over social media and Google killed their Reader. People now point to their Twitter or Instagram handles (both owned by billionaires).

When you use another person's platform, you give up control—all of your ideas, thoughts, and expressions are shaped by the design of that platform and the algorithm that runs it. I rarely log onto Facebook, but when I do, my feed is littered with advertisements and articles from pages I never "liked" solely because the algorithm believes I want to see that. Instagram (which I do use) is not much different (and owned by the same Facebook people).

The Internet is endless, but I am fast seeing that the endlessness is littered with garbage. It's a farce, a parody. All value has been extracted and what remains is an abandoned coal mine. Venture capital has moved on to the next big thing: A Large Language Model (LLM) interface offering users even less control.