Back when computers first started appearing in our daily lives, and for me this was in the late 70's but really in the early 80's, I experienced extremely frustrating situations that went something like this:

PERSON
You never [returned a book, deposited a check, filled out a form]

ME
No, I'm sure that I [did all that].

PERSON
But the computer says you didn't.

I remember once I actually had to go 'read the stacks' in a library to find the book I had returned in spite of what the computer 'said'.

The 80's and 90's was a horrible time for technology. It was incredibly fallible, and yet we were being socialized to be subservient to databases. You couldn't question what the computer 'said'.

Then there was a period when things started working very well, and on top of that, people were freely sharing ideas. We're talking here about roughly 1995-2005. THAT was the golden age of the internet.

And now that's gone. Free, open digital communication is closing, and we are entering a very dark period of centralized AI controlled digital lives. Forget about the Internet. It's gone. Formosahut-type sites are dying out with their maintainers, and they won't come back.

The monopolies have won.