Yeah, back when there was a small barrier of effort to get to the internet. It didn’t really keep anyone out, but it meant that if you were here it was because you wanted to be, not because it had been made as easy as possible to access in an attempt to lure you in and extract data through every pore of your being. Lemmy feels similar, in that you have to make an account on an instance and thats slightly harder than clicking a single button to sign in with FB or Google.

I miss being able to share the cool things I find IRL. I made the mistake of doing that once with a beautiful little grove in a state park. The post went viral on insta and within a week the spot had been trampled flat and the rangers had to put up chain link to keep people out. Just awful.