THE EPHEMERAL NATURE OF THE INTERNET

September 11, 2024 - Published

- last edited September 12, 2024

I'm writing this while I am very tired. Physically, sure, but mostly emotionally. There is no room for a negative article like this on my main website, but it needs to be written to be remembered.

Anything written on the internet lasts forever, they say, but that is only partly true. Anything written on the internet has the potential to last forever in a way that physical media never could (duplicated perfectly with no information lost or changed), but with the caveat that anything on the internet can also be deleted instantly

with the flick of a finger

permanently, with no traces.

This wasn't a relevant concept to me (other than maybe some cases of notorious Lost Media) until recently, that being the past few years.

The internet has become my second home, for better or worse. It's a place I can receive a lot of support for myself and my work, but it's threatened by the fact that the internet doesn't work like a "home." Services that allow people to connect to others are generally owned by a separate group entirely. Messaging services, social media, etc. are owned by companies, and can be updated instantly by them any time, any way that they want.

Discord is a platform I admire and enjoy very much, but I think everyone can agree that it is not perfect by any means. Most likely due to the massive surge of new users, many updates were pushed to increase the profitability of the app, but this meant advertisements put into users' faces and general anti-user design (why is buying a subscription service on the messaging bar?).

The mobile platform has also been transformed by updates to make it very buggy, where buttons will disappear randomly, and for some users, crashes may even happen regularly. While this could possibly be cirumvented by skipping updates, that's not possible for websites. I still use Discord regularly and it's very important in my lifestyle, but it doesn't feel immortal. Skype died. If Discord went down, I don't know where me or my friends would go.

Twitter was the first major website I left. I used it daily, an unhealthy amount, but continued to use it since it was still a net positive for me. Eventually, that balance tipped in the opposite direction, due not in small part to updates. Twitter became a different website -- not figuratively, but literally. New owner meant big rebrand: overhauls to the UI, changes in website culture, and many controversial decisions. That's the polite way of saying that the website reached an unprecedented level of toxicity for a website already infamous for toxicity.

Celebrities banned from the platform for misconduct were welcomed back in, even if they shared publicly misogynistic views, or worse. Having a large portion of the staff fired meant less securities against bots, which plagued the platform by spamming tweets and direct messages. People had to pay a monthly subscription for their comments to not get buried, and this was abused by both bots and people who considered harassment to be a hobby.

I had to leave Twitter for the sake of my mental health, exploring alternative websites instead. A common term used on these sites was "Twitter refugee" -- many people felt that they had been kicked out of their own homes. There were people who had businesses built up for years on Twitter through hard work and dedication, only to crumble in a matter of weeks due to changes in how the website worked. There were people who had social networks, friends and mutuals that could not stay on the website anymore due to the influx of toxicity.

It was a big change for me to go through. Twitter was the primary place I got commissions, and it was where I met a lot of friends. Catching up on the timeline had become part of my daily routine for many years, and moving to a new website was not as easy as just making a new account. Having switched computers multiple times, I had a lot of content that only existed on Twitter and wasn't backed up properly, so I had to download 7 years worth of tweets to sort through later. Following over 1,000 accounts, I had to find as many as I could and see if I could continue supporting them on any other websites. Would my friends move anywhere? What about my favorite artists? It was a diceroll whether more than a fraction of the people I knew would go to the same places I would.

I had to find websites that 1) were stable, 2) could support my needs, and 3) had a good culture, all variables I had to judge as a complete newcomer to the websites. I ended up joining about 5 new websites, much more than most of my peers. Each had pros and cons. None could be the same. I started setting down some roots on Tumblr, reposting some old art, experimenting with themes, finding friends, and I enjoyed it! Exploring some of the HTML functions, I made a side blog that redirected to one of my games as an experiment.

Deleted with a flick of the finger.

Both my blogs were deleted without so much as an email. An entire month's worth of work setting up my blog vanished. I messaged staff, no response.

It took 2 months before they restored my account. I had broken a rule that I didn't know existed. If I messed up again, my account would be terminated permanently. This was not a place I could make my home.

Cohost became a favorite of mine. The culture was wonderful, staff was very transparent, and the website was designed to be as comfortable as possible for the users. It was a bit risky since it was essentially an indie project (the staff was as big as 3 people), but they had run the site for about a year before I joined, which was a better track record than most options at the time.

As of the time of writing, Cohost has announced their shutdown just a few days ago.

I've been on the site for about 2 years. The staff had already promised beforehand that downloading our data before the site shut down would be an option, but it was then that I realized all the website culture would be lost. Cohost cannot exist again. Even if the website were built up exactly as before, the same people aren't guaranteed to go back to the website knowing what happened.

I've been kicked out of Twitter, I've been kicked out of Tumblr, I've been kicked out of Cohost, and I'm really beginning to get so, so tired. I could never even begin to make a full list of all the changes that I've had to deal with -- even things as minor as Twitter making threads not visible to people without accounts breaks an ARG I made in 2023, making it completely unplayable.

Monoliths of the internet you think would never change, as big as Google and Facebook, can change as quickly as the snap of some fingers, to change the places people live in or delete them entirely. Google+ was wiped. Facebook was rebranded and flooded with bots.

Imagine if one day every phone service just stopped working. Imagine if you woke up to your whole kitchen being an empty hole in your house. Life changes and moves on, yes, but the internet as we know it is ephemeral on a level that I don't think ever existed beforehand.

Programs we rely on daily can be changed without our permission. Websites can be shut down without a word.

And that's really scary to me.

I'm a digital artist, and a game developer. My hobbies exist in computers, and I have social circles that exist online.

Online is where I express myself, where my hobbies can be shared with others, and where my work must be stored. I need online stores to place my work, and online payment services for them to be usable.

The internet has become my home, but it cannot be my home.

It is ephemeral, it will last forever, and yet nothing in it will last.

...

It is now that I'm restructuring how I surface with the internet. I'm using more of this HTML website, as something that is simultaneously hosted online and stored internally, to hold some important thoughts and information. I encourage others to not put all your eggs in a basket that others have complete control over.

And with that all said, good luck on the internet.