Some say tech peaked in 2013 in terms of pre-enshitification. What year do you think it peaked and why?

I was always skeptical about cookies, it was around 2004 when I first noticed advertising cookies. So I'd say 2003.

I think I agree. Still in the period when facebook's userbase was mostly teenagers, and before smartphones became ubiquitous.

In my opinion it was facebook buying instagram in early 2012 that signalled the beginning of the end. Of course they were only following in the footsteps of google and yahoo before them, but it was the first domino in the enshittification of social media specifically.

I'd go even earlier I think, to pre-smartphone.

Around 2007, perhaps.

You could message your friends and family on your feature phone and keep in touch, but the Internet was still something you had to sit down at the computer for.

Social interactions were uninterrupted by apps, and it was still impossible to cheat on pub quizzes.

Capitalism hadn't worked out yet how to make money from the Internet.

Forums and imageboards were in full swing, and the web was a glorious mess of bizarre small sites with niche content. IRC was the peak of online chat.

It was the best of times.

Free Software is better than it's ever been, but that doesn't outweigh the enshittification going on in the rest of the world. Way too much of my effort using Free Software is spent actively defending myself from surveillance, propaganda, and other threats.

There's no way to answer this really. Depends on what you're referring to. The actual technology is pretty great right about now, or at least a few years back before the RAMpocalype. The accessibility to technology is high, the learning curve is pretty low and Ui pretty good no matter what OS you choose. Little troubleshooting is required. You don't need antivirus, just best practices for app sources and to update your OS regularly. Internet connections are fast. Pirating is easy and plentiful if you want to dodge DRM bullshit.

The internet culture as a whole is garbage now though. Privacy is worse than Big Brother could ever hope for. Trying to exploit people with technology is at an all-time high. Selling licenses that can be taken back at any time, attaching internet to devices that havw no business needing an internet connection that inevitably break. Drop shipping garbage even on bigger sites. Social media was pretty fun at first, at least forums were. Now it is cancer. Ai is melting people's brains and the atmosphere.

If you want to average out the decline of those completely disparate things, sure, late 00s early 10s is where it is at. Corporate OSs like Windows 7 and Snow Leopard were at their leak. iPhone and Android were good enough but nobody demanded accessibility to you with them. Social media wasn't COMPLETE cancer yet. Lower component pricing especially for DIY PC gaming.

But the thing is, it's not inevitable. We can have the better tech without shittiness. Tech is neutral. It is PEOPLE that ruin it. If we stop rewarding influencers and enforce regulations upon corporations to stop abuse of Ai, increase worker's rights, and stop surveillance, we'd be just fine. We're here because we have allowed the slow decline of western culture with its emphasis on personal freedoms and rule of the people. Now it is just "freedom for me to fuck you over with no consequences". The solution is not going back in time, it is fixing our bullshit.

I agree with the date of 2010. That is when Web 2.0 started and the internet really started to be shitty. Now they are talking about Web 3.0, whatever that means.

I think stuff continued to get better for a long time after 1991, but upvote for Tandy.

(I wish I still had my Tandy 1000 RLX/HD.)

Phones were still fun to mess with and hack back then. Now I just try to use my phone less overall. They're all the same garbage gilded in fools gold.

Yeah, Web 2.0 was when they started walling everything off and displaying only a few posts or lines of text at a time. They already viewed your posts and info as theirs and were actively trying to make CTRL+F and CTRL+C useless for the average non-technical person. This war on copying and pasting led to all sharing being pushed towards their sharing frameworks on Android and iOS. No longer were we sharing links, but rather apps and info inside of apps.