The Return of Web 1.0

To make progress online, we must go backwards

Sam the Cat surfing the web on the border between Webs 1.0 and 2.0 | Photo credit Bill Olen, used under CC BY-SA 2.0

Can you name the last brand or person to go viral on Facebook?

I can’t, and my full-time job involves monitoring the shifts and changes in digital culture. I am literally paid to be online.

Facebook in its current form embodies the famous line “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”¹ In spite of its three billion users — an estimated 60% of the world’s Internet population — Facebook the social network is dead, and it has been for years.

The social network’s descent into the content void isn’t a recent phenomenon. Between summer 2020 and June 2023, New York Times tech columnist Kevin Roose ran a Twitter bot that shared Facebook’s ten top-performing link posts each day. Nearly all the most viral posts fell into one of three categories: Right-wing rage bait (Ben Sha…