Okay, when did something so fundamentally break on the web between the days of weblogs and RSS 0.90—where the element was the only mandatory field—and today’s social media platforms (like LinkedIn, X and Instagram), where setting an external link is penalized by algorithms?
Honestly, the first social medium on the internet, namely weblogs, were purely link-sharing platforms. People surfed the web and referred to cool websites they had found, usually with a short introduction or comment. But the primary goal was linking.
Today, we mainly peddle content to foreign servers that are operated at the mercy of others, and we are penalized if we dare to set an external link. Today, you can be grateful if the platform allows you to place a link to your website on your profile page.
It’s like a Stockholm syndrome in a hostage situation of a walled garden. Stockholm syndrome, because a bunch of clowns proudly report on how to crawl up these algorithm's backside.
What has gone so terribly wrong with the users of the WWW in the last 26 years? I dare to guess that humanity was and still is not ready for true self-sovereign information exchange. Not yet ready for the real web that Tim Berners-Lee envisioned.
After all, he had intentionally addressed scientists back then. So, intelligent people. Not plebs like us.