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The internet was pretty great when it was just people sharing info without looking for a advertising partnership with Land 'O Lakes.

It's all very well lamenting the Good Old Days of the web when the content was free and the adverts were few as if it's disappeared but it really hasn't. There are thousands of people making content and publishing it to Instagram, YouTube, and various recipe websites and blogs every day. They do it for the love of publishing their thoughts. People still do that.

Two other things are different now though.

Firstly, our expectations changed. Unless someone is an "influencer" or a "thought leader" many people deem them not to be worth their time. We have a measure of quality and anything that falls below it gets ignored (or even ridiculed.)

Secondly, we stopped searching for content. Today people don't search the web for content. They go to a website where an algorithm curates "the best mashed potato recipes ever" in to a playlist or a listicle for them. It's not surprise at all that's the content produced by professional content marketing companies, and it's the stuff that has adverts on it.




>There are thousands of people making content and publishing it to Instagram, YouTube, and various recipe websites and blogs every day.

I really don't think that it's possible given the engineering of those platforms. They are literally spending millions, if not billions, of dollars on addiction technology. To think that an individual can overcome that is naive and hubristic.


Check this out, it's a 90s/00s-style Web Ring full of interesting indie sites with no marketing/SEO angle to them

https://marijnflorence.neocities.org/linkroll/




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