FYI ATS

[midicon]

The "Internet" has indeed changed over the past couple decades, and not always for the better.  As Max notes, the armies of social media and their hired disinfo agents is one of the negative things, but also in a larger sense just the sheer amount of information 'out there' has changed people's perceptions.

Many of the conspiracy theories of old have been debunked and/or had a lot of the blanks filled in to the point were new discussion topics are rare.  The exposure of world government corruption is the new conspiracy du jour. Additionally, social media activism has amplified this to center stage virtually everywhere you look.  All that massive wealth of new information which was supposed to help us and protect us hasn't really had that effect.  Arguably, quite the opposite; there's more hate in the world today than there ever has been.  Now people can hate other people they don't even know, whereas before their hate was limited to selected individuals and groups in their limited communities and world view.  Now everyone can hate everyone else...and seemingly do.

None of this was ATS' fault, or any other single site, but collectively the Internet has had a lot to do with social change in our society today.  ATS was a victim in a process which was so much larger than any website.  Bulletin board-like forums gave way to visual social media.  Platforms like Twitter made people express themselves in 240 characters or less.  And the whole globe began to believe reading the written word was just too much damn effort...so they just stopped doing it.  "Ain't got no time for that!"  Now society is controlled by sound-bytes and memes.  Paradigm change indeed.

When I joined ATS just 11 short years ago it was indeed a different place.  I'd known about ATS for a couple years prior to that, but never signed up because I wasn't sure what to make of ATS.  I saw real stuff, and I saw fantasy stuff, and I wasn't sure which to believe as the fundamental underpinning of the site owners.  ATS began to transition into more current events type subjects, and perhaps this was the "beginning of the end" for some.  I don't know.  For my part, it was the beginning.

I was never in on the ground floor of ATS back in the early 2000's, so I didn't see the owners as visibly as some did.  By my time most of them had gone their separate ways save for the periodic random post.  Therefore, I don't really have an opinion about "who" killed ATS other than lack of maintenance and updating.  Perhaps this was intentional, or maybe just a loss of interest...or both; I don't know.

I genuinely hope DI rises to the level of ATS in the future.  But then again, maybe this is not the desired trajectory by those in charge.  Candidly, I do believe it needs to grow some simply because right now user input, the lifeblood of any forum like this, is pretty slow.  No offense intended.  What content there is, is great, but there's just not enough of it, and this will take time, understandably. 

Just my .02 (which is probably worth a lot less, due to inflation, in the time it has taken to post this).

I noticed a change when ATS put up those little button icons for Twitter and Facebook. I can't recall when that was but it did lead to an increase in membership and perhaps a decline in quality and tone.