I’ve known Lemmy for a few hours and I feel like I’m back in the early spirit of the internet.
Welcome :)
It’s a bit of a digital version of rural exodus. And since 2017/2018, I’ve noticed that everything that, in my opinion, represented the internet has disappeared.
This a very interesting metaphor, real spot on.
But I would say a lot of that rural Internet has not disappeared, not yet. It's still there, very much alive. People are simply not visiting it anymore. They don't dare go outside the pretty walled-gardens they're used to.
But those people wanting to stay parked in their corporate-owned gardens, or silos, doesn't make that small and more humane web go away. And would they chose to, they could still come visit it freely, they could still easily interact with their creators. They could even create and tend to their very own part of it, making that small Web a richer place.
They just don't do it. Most of the time because they can't be bothered with doing the actual work, or because they're afraid to try and to fail. They want to be fed easy to eat content, not learn to cook it themselves.
They want the a Web that is like those shitty fast-food serving standardized and over-processed industrial food. Something ready to eat that is barely food at all but that will stuff their belly and, more importantly, that will never surprise them. Alas, this food is as much a poison for their head as it is for their body. They will realize that too late. It probably already is.
Too bad, because the alternative is still a thing, not that far away.
The small web is still a thing. Many blogs still exist that only share content their author sincerely care about or is interested in, that are ads and tracking free, that respect their readers... But the majority of people have quit visiting them, they simply don't go outside of, say, YT, X, Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, TikTok or whatever where they can all stay together parked like the cattle they have not yet realized they have become.
Back to your original metaphor. Digital rurality is still there and many could easily own a small part of it and make it exwactly like they want it to be, and be happy with it. But they prefer staying in the large over-crowed cities, in small overpriced apartments like most their friends are doing.
Lemmy is a great alternative to reddit but it could relatively easily become another silos—just plural and not corporate-owned but silos nonetheless. It's up to us to keep it open to the alternatives. I mean, sometimes I feel sad to see little posts & comments inviting people to go read/watch something they liked that is not already hosted on some corporate-owned platform. Heck, sharing personal content feels so much like a lost cause to me that I seldom share a link to my own blog posts: why bother? I also publish a lot less often than I used to, here again: why bother?
Erosion?That's no erosion, which would be a slow natural process.
What happened is that Trump, in his usual delicate manner, put a bullet in the head of the US alliance with the EU.
And then, even it's not been officially acted yet, they also put a bullet in the head of NATO too. One just need to listen to mr Vance first Munich speech as vice-president. Sure, unlike his boss, mr Vance is not an illiterate pig, quite the contrary he is one of the smartest and brightest politician I can think of, but the message was still crystal clear: we the EU are on our own.
And then, seeing how Trump is willing to use 'his' economical power and 'his' armed forces to play bully against any country he disagrees with or that doesn't play along the US rules or doesn't pay the USA enough for his 'protection' (like some shitty gangster racketing local shop owners, in an Hollywood movie), I have little doubt what the USA would be willing to do to the EU (and to its too many rules and regulations) if they were given the opportunity. POTUS himself explained to the world we Europeans only exist to "screw America".
If that doesn't say it all about the state of any alliance between us I don't know what will.
And that's not just Trump being Trump. I mean, US people elected this clown twice meaning that's the kind of leadership they want to follow. Why keep on pretending the dude is merely an accident and that thing will get back to 'normal' after him? Normality is Trump-like. When mr Vance will become the next President he will obviously be (a lot) less illiterate and (a lot) less dumb than Trump is, but he certainly will not make us an ally again. They don't give a crap, that's their policy.
It's rarely a good idea to elect an hateful angry monkey as a leader, we can all agree on that but can we also all agree that the issue is never the monkey itself but the people deciding to put it in charge. And those people,they don't seem to me that much willing to change for the better, I'm afraid. Hate and violence seem to be the only plate on their menu, it's just the color of the name on the menu that's different.
The USA has made quite a few dumb decisions since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Decisions that mostly managed to strengthen their true enemies and rivals while weakening their rare real allies. This is just one more decision like that, but a huge one.