I really never have believed times improved, and i am almost positive things will only get worse.
30 years ago we had a future to look to, the unshittified internet, great music, affordable land/housing, affordable durable cars, people actually interacted in real life, no social media trash. Now, we have billionaires and LLMs. I don’t see how anyone can possibly think times are better or going to improve.
Yes, everyone will say “civil rights improved” and yes thats maybe the only thing that has changed, however it’s getting taken away every day again so I don’t think you can even use that point anymore.
Personally, I do the same things on the internet now that I did in the 90’s. That’s one thing that hasn’t really changed.
Care to give more concrete examples of what you do on the internet now? You’re on Lemmy, which didn’t exist back then, neither did reddit. Other than that I don’t know what you do on the internet, but what I do is certainly different, even if we were to consider that Lemmy is not so different from the various forums that existed then, and do the same with Whatsapp and IRC, just yesterday I used: YouTube, Spotify, Banks, Maps, Ordering food, Netflix, and Video calls none of which was available in the 90s.
I browse websites related to my interests more than anything else. I don’t think the specific websites are important. Lemmy not existing as a brand name doesn’t mean anything. I had the same experience on dozens of other websites. In terms of experiences/activities, everything on this list was around by the mid 90s except for ordering food, but I didn’t spend much time doing those things.